Saturday, June 9, 2012

Latest Work

More images for the Cast page...a bit of behind-the-scenes explanation.

I've added more images on the Cast page. I never gave it much thought until I sat down and started putting it together, but I found myself having to make a lot of judgment calls as to how to organize the thing. The IMDB "Full Cast and Crew" page simply orders everyone who appeared on the show by the number of episodes in which they appeared. But I didn't feel like doing it that way. That's fine for a site like IMDB, where they need a standard means of organizing pages that's formulaic and self-regulating, but I wanted to make a page that represented the history of the fictional hospital itself.

Edward Herrman
as Father McCabe
Louise Lasser
as Aunt Charise
So I started with the guest actors who played hospital staff, followed by featured family members and relationships of staff, followed by staff that appeared in an arc of episodes, then featured or recurring patients and characters, and then patients with story arcs, then everyone else. There's not really any rhyme or reason to it. Nick Moats appears in more episodes than Father McCabe, but I don't want him higher on the page. Father McCabe and Aunt Charise may only appear twice, but they are mentioned frequently. It all comes down to my own subjectivity.

Some factors are obvious. Some characters are clearly supporting characters, in that they are there as someone with whom a main character interacts, like the Galeckis. Other guest actors and supporting characters carry episodes and storylines and stand out on their own. I wanted to put Mr. Entertainment higher, given that his character was prominently featured, and I really liked him, but he was only in two episodes, and was featured more like a guest star, sort of like Betty White as Captain Gloria Neal... it's tricky! So I'm not going to worry about it too much. My aim is to simply have a listing that jogs viewers' memories, and reminds them of how many great acting performances and interesting characters made St. Elsewhere worth watching.

Remembering Betty White's appearance makes me think I'll probably add notable one- or two-off guest stars as well. Eventually.

In other developments, I've also changed settings so that comments don't require admin moderation before publishing. I'll get any offending ones afterwards.

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Due to the volume of fake/spam blog comments this site receives, I will be moderating comments. If your comment is a real comment about the show or the website, I will approve it within a day or so. I used to work in SEO, so I know what fake SEO comments look like. If that's what you're doing, go somewhere else.

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