The Ski Mask Rapist, Parts 1 & 2

St. Elsewhere got nice and dark with this season two storyline--a serial rapist stalks St. Eligius.

Dr. Peter White (Terence Knox) lends an unwanted hand to
Nurse Shirley Daniels (Ellen Bry).

In my previous video post, Peter White's Downfall, the disgraced doctor (Terence Knox) had been censured--stripped of his license to prescribe drugs after being bamboozled by an undercover police officer in the E.R. His testimony protected Nurse Shirley Daniels (Ellen Bry) from punishment, but the price he paid was stiff: he's been transferred to pathology, his career prospects have been curtailed, and his permanent record is forever marred.

The season two episode "Drama Center" (aired February 15, 1984) opens in the St. Eligius parking lot. A woman is having trouble starting her car in the cold weather when a man in a ski mask appears at her window, offering to help. She declines, but he reappears at the other window and smashes it.

The woman, Roxanne Reid (Allyn Ann McLerie), enters the E.R. reporting a broken wrist. When Dr. Wayne Fiscus (Howie Mandel) tries to take her for x-rays, she confides that she was raped as well, and Dr. Annie Cavanero (Cynthia Sikes) examines her. As she recovers and is visited by a social worker (Jenny O'Hara), she seems to be handling the ordeal remarkably well, despite her husband's discomfort. But at night, she is plagued by nightmares of the assault. Ms. Reid benefits from a therapy session where she works through her trauma.

Elsewhere, Dr. Peter White visits the emergency room and snaps into action when an unconscious man is carried in. While Dr. Wendy Armstrong (Kim Miyori) and Nurse Daniels treat the patient, Peter, the former E.R. physician, pitches in to help, even though he's not allowed to. When they remind him of his restricted status, he grabs Shirley's arm, angry over being stuck in the morgue, and reminds her of the favor he did for her. Later, Peter's friend, Dr. Jack Morrison (David Morse), visits him in his new digs. Peter is bitter, and not appreciative of the support. And he has resumed his addiction to painkillers.

• This episode was included in the VHS collection The Very Best of St. Elsewhere.
• For me, I will always identify Allyn Ann McLerie with her role as Carmen Carlson, wife of General Manager Arthur Carlson on WKRP in Cincinnati. I've been a fan of Jenny O'Hara since her role on Beverly Hills 90210 as the grieving mother of accidental suicide victim Scott Scanlan.
• Jack asks Peter for the Spelling autopsy.

In the next episode, "Attack" (aired February 22, 1984), Peter is performing an autopsy in the morgue with his more experienced colleague in pathology, the flaky vixen Dr. Cathy Martin (Barbara Whinnery), ignoring her spiel about the benefits of Tibetan ginseng. Peter's skills are in need of work, and when his drug-fuelled clumsiness results in the destruction of her IPG stains, Cathy gets upset with him for ruining six weeks of work. But the compassionate Dr. Martin can't help but notice that something is off with Dr. White, who fidgets nervously and says he's fine.

Dr. Victor Ehrlich (Ed Begley, Jr.) returns from his honeymoon and is shocked to learn from Nurse Lucy Papandrao (Jennifer Savidge) that a woman was raped in the parking lot and another was grabbed on the way to the elevated train, but got away. Later, a young candy-striper (Amy Resnick) nervously approaches Nurse Helen Rosenthal (Christina Pickles) and breaks into tears as she describes how a man lured her into a supply closet--the ski-mask rapist has struck again.

The ski mask rapist picks his moment.

Director of Medicine Dr. Donald Westphall (Ed Flanders) orders the hospital locked down and hires extra security to interrogate visitors like City official Joan Halloran (Nancy Stafford), who wants to hire undercover cops to pose as orderlies. In the cafeteria, Rosenthal, Dr. Jackie Wade (Sagan Lewis), and Dr. Wendy Armstrong (Kim Miyori) debate whether they should fight back if attacked. Wade has seen too many women beaten up for resisting, while Armstrong wants to fight back, as she has read that women who fight back are less likely to be depressed afterwards. Rosenthal doesn't want to rearrange her life and give away her power.

The female staff are treated to a rape prevention meeting from the security consultant, who advises the women not to "get hysterical". They are not assured by his statistics about the unlikeliness of being murdered or the airhorns he hands out to them for protection. Cathy Martin, on the other hand, feels that her aura will protect her--rapists seek out victims, and she doesn't project a "victim aura".

Dr. Wayne Fiscus tries to help out by organizing an escort service for the women at the hospital, but Dr. Annie Cavanero points out the flaw in the plan--"how do you know you haven't signed up the rapist?"

Nurse Shirley Daniels has obtained a license to carry a can of mace for self-protection. When she enters a secure prescription drug storage room, she hears noises and springs into action when a man rushes at her from the shadows. The attacker, however, turns out to be merely a thief who picked the wrong drug closet on the wrong day, and he is charged only with criminal trespassing, to Shirley's dismay.

Meanwhile, Dr. Peter White  is not having a good night. We join him as he fails to perform with a prostitute at a seedy motel, and he explains that it was the night of his wedding anniversary, and he and Myra were all set to go out and have a good time when their kids started acting up, triggering the same fight they always have--Myra feels Peter is too lenient on the children and he feels she's too hard on them. He expresses his frustration with family life and leaves.

Back at St. Eligius, Dr. Cathy Martin is at work in the morgue when a ski-masked face appears at the window. The assailant enters, and despite Cathy's aura, he advances on her. In the struggle, she pulls off the ski mask and reveals the identity of the rapist--Dr. Peter White. The clip cuts off the ending, but after she pulls off the mask, he threatens, "If you tell anyone, I'll kill you." Roll credits.

• To keep the clips shorter, I decided not to include the "red herring" storyline. In "Drama Center", Dr. Annie Cavanero is dating Dr. Christopher Rant (Michael Goodwin), the moonlighting physician who dumped an indigent patient on St. Eligius in "A Pig Too Far". At Annie's place, Chris won't take no for an answer, and Annie has to fight him off with a face slap. In "Attack", we see Annie enter the rape prevention seminar--she has just had one last fight with Chris, who was getting grabby again, and left with a "to hell with you." Goodwin has a similar build and height to Terence Knox, and both characters kept grabbing women forcefully, so the guy in the ski mask looked like it could have been either of them.
• "That's why lions sleep in trees." I always enjoyed the show's dark humor. I hope rape prevention lectures are delivered with a bit more sensitivity nowadays.
• Wendy intends to fight back because she's heard that victims are less depressed afterwards if they resist. This is some pretty brutal foreshadowing, as we shall see.
• Some even more brutal and amazing foreshadowing--Wayne says to Jack about the panic that has gripped the women at St. Eligius, "I guess we'll never know what the women are going through." In season four, Jack gets raped while doing community outreach work at a prison, and is then stalked by the assailant after he is released in season five.

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".

The Mrs. Hufnagel Chronicles, Part 20

Elliott meets Mrs. Hufnagel's son, Alvin, and bids her a final farewell with a burial at sea.

Dr. Elliott Axelrod (Stephen Furst) brings mirth to a
grieving Dr. Daniel Auschlander (Norman Lloyd),
with some help from Gary Larson.

At last, we've reached the final chapter in the saga of Mrs. Hufnagel (Florence Halop), St. Eligius's most memorable patient. Dr. Elliott Axelrod (Stephen Furst), is a carrying the box that contains her ashes, which Dr. Wayne Fiscus (Howie Mandel) assumes contains cookies. After Elliott explains what the box is for, Wayne tries to convince Elliott that his obligation as a doctor ends when the patient dies, but Elliott feels bad for the medical mismanagement that led to her demise, and he feels that she deserves to have her burial wishes carried out with respect. Elliott intends to have a memorial service in the chapel and bury her at sea, to which Wayne responds by suggesting he just flush her down the toilet.

In the chapel, Elliott is having a solitary moment of remembrance for his departed patient when he is joined in the chapel by a despondent Dr. Daniel Auschlander (Norman Lloyd). Auschlander is mourning the death of his old friend, Dr. George Wyler, who was featured in a three-episode arc earlier in the season. Dr. Wyler was a Nobel-winning humanitarian who worked in Africa, but ran afoul of the government in his adopted homeland, and returned there knowing that the consequences would be dire. And lo, they were--he was greeted with a hail of machine-gun fire. During George's visit to St. Eligius, he and Daniel shared some meaningful moments while playing the chapel's organ, so it was a fitting place for Daniel to mourn his old friend. Elliott approaches, and can't but giggle at the Far Side comic in the newspaper sitting on the organ ("The real reason dinosaurs became extinct"), which brings a smile to both their faces.

Alvin Hufnagel (Boyd Bodwell) bids his mother a curt
farewell before kicking his guests out of his new apartment.

Wayne and Elliott then pay a visit to Mrs. Hufnagel's apartment, which Elliott has inherited. Wayne discovers a personally autographed photo of Bobby Orr, and Elliott explains that she was a season ticket holder to the Bruins; however, the seats have been left to Ernest Borgnine. (Wayne feels that Fuji was the real star of McHale's Navy.) He finds a baseball glove that was given to her by Ted Williams, which tells Wayne he can keep. Elliott is planning on selling the stuff, or giving it away, with the exception of the gerbil, which has joined its owner in the great beyond. Then there's a knock on the door. It's Alvin Hufnagel (Boyd Bodwell), who immediately recognizes his glove in Wayne's hands. He gives Elliott a particularly dirty look.

After playing with the dead gerbil, Alvin gets down to business. "You stole mother's affection," he accuses Elliott. Elliott tries to explain how they bonded over the death of Murray Robbin, but Alvin is convinced that he deliberately charmed the old woman with the intent of being included in her will. He's hurt that she didn't leave him anything, but he's a little too sensitive to hear Wayne's criticism about never having visited. When he calms down, Alvin has to admit that they didn't get along. Elliott tries to make Alvin feel better by giving him the computer, but the dejected son wants everything, which the good-hearted Dr. Axelrod concedes without a fight. He invites Alvin along for the burial, but he's not interested, and wishes her a terse, "Goodbye, Mother."

Elliott delivers Mrs. Hufnagel to her final resting place.

In a moving final scene, Elliott delivers what he hopes are appropriate final words, from Sir Walter Scott's The Lady of the Lake:

Fleet foot on the correi,
  Sage counsel in cumber,
Red hand in the foray,
  How sound is thy slumber!
Like the dew on the mountain,
  Like the foam on the river,
Like the bubble in the fountain,
  Thou art gone, and for ever!

He pours out her ashes, and bids a final "Goodbye, Mrs. Hufnagel," before tossing the rose from his lapel in the water.

And so ends the saga of Florence Hufnagel, ashes to ashes, dust to dust:

There's one last bit of Hufnagel mythology left over. In the season six episode, "Night of the Living Bed", which aired three days before Halloween, 1987, Mrs. Hufnagel is believed by many at St. Eligius to be making her presence known once more. The room where she died seems to be haunted, its lights and TV flicking on and off on their own. Eventually, the bed starts shaking, the floor starts shaking, and the floor opens up and pulls the bed down with it. But it turns out not to be a haunting--the magnetism from the new MRI machine installed on the floor beneath was just too much for the old facility to handle.

So that doesn't quite count as another appearance. As the Gluck family always said: "it is better to be despised than forgotten."

The Mrs. Hufnagel Chronicles, Part 14

Mrs. Hufnagel needs gallbladder surgery, but she insists on a new physician when she meets Dr. Chandler.

Ham radio enthusiast Mrs. Hufnagel (Florence Halop)
assumes that Dr. Philip Chandler is an orderly.

In her previous appearance, Mrs. Hufnagel (Florence Halop) had been discharged from St. Eligius, but a visit from Dr. Elliott Axelrod (Stephen Furst) and his gift of a baked ham for his former patient aggravated her gallbladder symptoms and landed her back in the hospital. In "Give the Boy a Hand", her case has been assigned to Dr. Philip Chandler (Denzel Washington). Mrs. Hufnagel, whose racial insensitivity had been established in her first appearance, is trying to get a signal on her ham radio to connect with her compadre in Puerto Rico. Phil enters, but she assumes he's an orderly and asks him to adjust her antenna.

When he explains that he's her new doctor, she's not having it, and insists on someone else. Phil asks her why, and she's not shy about her reason: "You're colored." While conceding that Phil is a snazzy dresser, and despite learning that he went to Yale, Hufnagel is wary of his credentials, as he was likely put through due to affirmative action. Phil defends himself--he graduated pre-med Summa cum Laude with a distinction in biochemistry, his grade point average was 3.9, and he finished in the top 2% of his class at Yale. Her dismissive, racist, yet hilarious reply: "Go tell it on the mountain."

Dr. Chandler handles Mrs. Hufnagel's (Florence Halop)
racially-insensitive remarks with class as only Denzel can.

Her colicystitis requires surgery, and all the physician has to do is see her through post-op follow-up, but when he asks his colleagues Axelrod, Fiscus (Howie Mandel) and Ehrlich (Ed Begley, Jr.) to help him out and take over his case, he gets a sharp rebuke from the three doctors who have already done a few rounds with St. Eligius's most infamous patient. So, with the other doctors "too chicken" to take her on, she warms up to her latest physician. She's in good spirits after her operation, especially pleased the whiz of a surgeon was Asian.

It occurs to me now that not everyone might find such overt racism as funny as I do, but if you've got the kind of sensibilities that led you to watch and enjoy St. Elsewhere, then you'd probably get why it's funny coming out of this abrasive, old woman. Things have changed a lot since then. I haven't interacted with an overt bigot in a long time myself.

Despite her racial insensitivity, she's friendlier to Phil than all the other doctors except Dr. Bobby Caldwell (Mark Harmon). I think she respects people who stand up to her (or in Caldwell's case, those who charm her). Or maybe she just likes the good-looking ones.

Some other observations:

• Chandler says he has taken over her case from Dr. Po, who has been called out of town. We met Dr. Alan Po (Brian Tochi) in the third season premiere, when he was one of the first-year residents taking a tour of the hospital led by Wayne Fiscus. Unless some stuff with him got cut out in syndication, this is the only other mention of that character. I enjoyed that the character's name was a goof on "Edgar Allan Poe".
• Elliott's neck brace is the result of a headlock applied by a large, agitated patient in E.R. who freaked out while Elliott was taking blood. 1990s TV viewers will recognize him as James Avery, who was hilarious as Uncle Phil on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. His name does not appear in the credits.
• We learn a bit about Mrs. Hufnagel's background. Florence's family, the Glucks, came over on a ship that pulled into Plymouth Rock just after the Mayflower. I couldn't make out the name of the boat. If anyone wants to take a stab at it, feel free to do so in the comments section.

The Mrs. Hufnagel Chronicles, Part 11

Mrs. Hufnagel interrupts Jack's sleep, invades his privacy, and meets a doctor she actually likes.

Mrs. Hufnagel (Florence Halop) sheds some
crocodile tears.

The scenes in "Whistle, Wyler Works" featuring St. Eligius's most difficult patient, Mrs. Hufnagel (Florence Halop), are two of my favorites (her encounter with Westphall is probably #1). In the first scene, it's because of her reaction to having someone call her out on her behavior; in the second, I love that we see what happens when she meets someone about whom she has observed no personal weaknesses to exploit.

Dr. Jack Morrison (David Morse) is asleep in the on-call room when Mrs. Hufnagel wheels in to remind him that she wanted a consult with a plastic surgeon and to return his red knapsack, which he left in her room the day before. When she reveals that she read the letter his sister (probably; Jack doesn't confirm it), wrote him, Jack gets angry at her for violating his privacy. He berates her for only caring about herself, and her attempt to elicit his sympathy by "crying" proves ineffective.

Later, plastic surgeon Dr. Bobby Caldwell (Mark Harmon) arrives to provide a consult. The only flaw she can seem to find is that he looks young. She wants the Phyllis Diller treatment, as her new boyfriend Murray is in show business, and she needs to compete with the babes for his attention. Caldwell tells her that if he were to take away her lines, she would lose the beauty that comes with wisdom and experience. He says she doesn't need to change a thing, and that Murray probably agrees with him. She's thoroughly charmed.

Caldwell then runs into Ehrlich (Ed Begley, Jr.) and Fiscus (Howie Mandel) in the hallway and asks why everyone is so upset with Florence, who he found pleasant. They incorrectly presume she must be feeling better.

Other observations:

• Little did Mrs. Hufnagel know that Jack had plenty of practice dealing with awful patients. In "Bypass", the second episode of the series, he made a big speech to Westphall about how he didn't like having to treat awful patients like murderous terrorist bomber Andrew Rhinehardt (Tim Robbins). Seems like Jack has become more cynical since his first year of residency.
• "No wonder your girlfriend moved out. You look terrible when get up." Mrs. Hufnagel is apparently the hospital's busybody--Jack had recently attempted co-habitation with his girlfriend, Clancy (Helen Hunt). One of my favorite Hufnagel character traits is that she manages to discover all the major, defining events in other people's lives. How? We don't know. But she seems to know the hospital as well as anyone, except probably Luther.
• I think this is my favorite Bobby Caldwell scene, even more so than the dark stuff that comes the next season. I love that Mark Harmon's most charming moment is with Florence Halop. And because Mrs. Hufnagel is so vile to everyone else, it's hilarious.
• Mrs. Hufnagel is bored in the first scene because she can't watch Wink Martindale on her TV. At the time, he was the host of the game show Tic Tac Dough, which was one of my childhood favorites.

The Mrs. Hufnagel Chronicles, Part 6

Dr. Victor Ehrlich's recent professional success affords him an opportunity to rid himself of his least favorite patient.

Dr. Wayne Fiscus (Howie Mandel) congratulates
Dr. Victor Ehrlich (Ed Begley, Jr) on his new TV job.

In "Fade to White", TV producer Bill Wolf (Michael Richards) returns to St. Eligius, having first appeared to shoot a documentary about Dr. Craig in season two. This time, Wolf is looking for a personable, intelligent young doctor to appeal to the younger, upscale demographic that he wants to court with his station's evening newscast (a nod to the very demographic that made St. Elsewhere appealing to NBC executives). Several residents apply for the position, including Dr. Wayne Fiscus (Howie Mandel), but the successful applicant is Dr. Victor Ehrlich (Ed Begley, Jr.).

Fiscus is not discouraged by his unsuccessful audition, acknowledging that his "persona is a little too kinetic", and would be "testing the limit of the medium" (a nod to Howie Mandel's stand-up comic stylings at the time). He runs into Ehrlich in a stairwell and proposes to help the new commentator to cash in on his new-found fame through merchandising deals. Victor, in a hurry to get to the studio, has a favor that Wayne can do for him in the meantime--check in on a patient, a nice older lady with phlebitis.

By the time Fiscus sees the name on the chart, it's too late--Ehrlich has disappeared down the stairwell, singing "There's No Business Like Show Business".

The Need for Closure

From season five, episode four, "Brand New Bag". Relying on someone else for closure is a sure way not to get it.

I had remembered this episode for the story where Elliott, in one of his most unprofessional moments, reacts with disgust to a patient who has to use a colostomy bag (Corinne Bohrer). But watching recently I was much more moved by the story that had started in the previous episode, "A Room with a View", and had its ultimate origins the previous season.

In season four, Dr. Westphall returns from Africa chock full of idealism and decides that the residents need to feel more of sense of service to humanity, so he creates the Community Outreach program, which requires the doctors to do ten hours of community service every month. The program has some disastrous results, with doctors suffering from abortion clinic bombings and prison rape.

Wayne Fiscus, on the other hand, is sent to do house calls for elderly shut-ins. Wayne is an E.R. doctor who loves the adrenaline rush of medical emergencies. He also hates being told what to do and resents authority figures, so having Westphall order him to spend time with boring old people who are running out the clock is like being handed a prison sentence. But Wayne comes around, learns a thing or two, and by "A Room with a View", he spends time with his elderly friends because he likes it. He visits one named Joe Ewell (George Petrie) and gets no answer when he rings the doorbell. Looking inside, he sees Mr. Ewell collapsed on the floor. He breaks the window with a lawn sprinkler to get inside, and calls for help.

Kathleen Lloyd

Mr. Petrie has suffered a stroke, and his two grown daughters come to see him at St. Eligius. Joe Ewell has always favoured the older, bitchier daughter Lorraine, played by Kathleen Lloyd, who looked awfully familiar, so I looked her up to find I knew her from both Magnum, P.I. as A.D.A. Carol Baldwin, and from Hill Street Blues, as Howard's girlfriend, Nurse Linda Wulfawitz. The younger daughter, Katie (Christine Healy), has always longed for his approval. The stroke has rendered him unable to live on his own, but he doesn't want to spend his last days in a nursing home. Lorraine isn't willing to take him in as her hands are full with her own family, so Katie offers to care for him.

In "Brand New Bag", Mr. Ewell has moved in, and Katie is holding out hope that her bedridden father who can barely speak will show her some gratitude, and maybe even finally tell her he loves her. She was hoping they could use this time to finally have some kind of emotional connection. But it doesn't happen. Joe keeps asking for Lorraine, who couldn't be bothered to visit that day. Other than him at least recognizing her and letting slip that he thought of her as his pretty baby girl, Katie is left without any resolution when he dies.