"Hearing"

Description: Auschlander asks Fiscus and Luther to help him get Marijuana for his chemotherapy symptoms. White and Daniels face the medical board hearing. Westphall defends a deaf employee against his impatient supervisor. Ehrlich meets Roberta's snobbish parents.



Cast

Starring
Ed Flanders as Dr. Donald Westphall
and
Norman Lloyd as Dr. Daniel Auschlander

Also Starring (in alphabetical order)
Ed Begley, Jr. as Dr. Victor Ehrlich
Ellen Bry as Nurse Shirley Daniels
Mark Harmon as Dr. Bobby Caldwell
Terence Knox as Dr. Peter White
Eric Laneuville as Luther Hawkins
Howie Mandel as Dr. Wayne Fiscus
Kim Miyori as Dr. Wendy Armstrong
David Morse as Dr. Jack Morrison
Christina Pickles as Nurse Helen Rosenthal
Kavi Raz as Dr. Vijay Kochar
Cynthia Sikes as Dr. Annie Cavanero
Nancy Stafford as Joan Halloran
Denzel Washington as Dr. Philip Chandler

and Starring
William Daniels as Dr. Mark Craig

Watching St. Elsewhere on Hulu or elsewhere? Feel free to comment on this episode below.

Video: Dr. Auschlander Tries Medical Marijuana

St. Elsewhere broke ground with this story about using medical marijuana to treat chemotherapy symptoms in 1984.

Dr. Daniel Auschlander (Norman Lloyd) sees "what all the
fuss is" about cannabis.

This is one of the many reasons Norman Lloyd is awesome--his comedic chops and pathos in this episode from February 3, 1984. His character, Dr. Daniel Auschlander, fights a battle with liver cancer throughout the entire run of St. Elsewhere. He was originally slated to die off after four episodes, but Lloyd proved to be too good to jettison so early, so his cancer went into what Lloyd has described as "the longest remission in television history".

Auschlander's recurrent chemo cycles affect his ability to do his job, and by the middle of season two, he's feeling particularly beaten. In the season's twelfth episode, "Hearing", his oncologist, Dr. Morton Chegley (Arthur Taxier), suggests several options for relieving his patient's pain, and laments that he is not legally permitted to prescribe THC caplets, which, he hears, are quite effective.

Auschlander is not warm to the idea of circumventing the law, but his symptoms push him to take action. He spots Dr. Wayne Fiscus (Howie Mandel) in the cafeteria, and asks if the young doctor might be able to point him in the right direction. Wayne, delighted by the notion of the septuagenarian taking a walk on the wild side, has no luck with his old connection, but enlists the help of orderly Luther Hawkins (Eric Laneuville), to whom Wayne must admit he approached because he assumed that an African-American ghetto-dweller would be able to score some dope.

His assumption was correct, and soon after, Fiscus and Hawkins are supervising the elderly experimenter on a trip to a convenience store, to find the ideal munchies for the occasion. They have some serious explaining to do to a skeptical police officer when it becomes clear that the test subject can't handle his smoke.

The next day, Dr. Auschlander confides to Dr. Fiscus that the whole experience--the undignified behaviour, the night of sleep lost to hallucinations, and the ill effects of a junk-food-munchie-binge--was not worth repeating, and that he'll endure his chemo symptoms without chemical enhancement.

Enjoy the clip!

• I don't know if this was the first "medical marijuana" storyline on network television, but it certainly brought up the issue long before there was such a thing as the "medical marijuana industry".
• A lot of TV shows have done the "pot" episode, where the joke is that the characters get high and act stupid. For me, this is one of the better ones. Credit that to the writers (Mark Tinker, John Masius, Steve Bello, Robert Daniels), director Charles Braverman, and, of course, the great Norman Lloyd.
• When the police officer asks Dr. Auschlander for "his story", Auschlander relates that when he was a boy, his father used to take him to the Metropolitan Opera House. This is the same story, almost word for word, that he tells Dr. Westphall at the end of the series' third episode, "Down's Syndrome".

Video: Interview with Norman Lloyd

Videos of an interview with Norman Lloyd about his career and his experience on St. Elsewhere, courtesy of the Archive of American Television and YouTube.

Norman Lloyd (Dr. Daniel Auschlander) discusses his long
career and his time on St. Elsewhere.

Here are some clips from an interview conducted from September 7, 2000, hosted at the Archive of American Television, and also divided into sections on YouTube. In the full version of the interview, Lloyd discusses his long and accomplished career, from studying with Eva Le Galienne (who came out of retirement to appear in the Emmy-winning episode "The Women" in season two), joining the Mercury Theatre, appearing in the title role of Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur and his long association with the legendary director, and much more. I haven't watched the whole thing (it's long), but I'll bet it's interesting. If you're looking for St. Elsewhere stuff, jump to six minutes into part six.

The following clips from YouTube are excerpts from this full version.