"Give the Boy a Hand"

Description: Dr. Woodley tries to help Maddy decide what to do after her baby is born. Dean sets up a disastrous drug deal. Ehrlich offends a disabled cafeteria worker with his Health Spot segment. Lizzie returns home unexpectedly, hoping to escape the pressures of college life.



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
Stephen Furst as Dr. Elliott Axelrod
Mark Harmon as Dr. Bobby Caldwell
Eric Laneuville as Luther Hawkins
Howie Mandel as Dr. Wayne Fiscus
David Morse as Dr. Jack Morrison
Christina Pickles as Nurse Helen Rosenthal
Cynthia Sikes as Dr. Annie Cavanero
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.

Retcon Alert! Father McCabe Is Alive and Well and Living in Arizona

Just noticed a pretty glaring continuity error, probably the only big one in the series.

Alex Corey (Jeff Allin) tells version one: Father McCabe
died while posing for his portrait.

Recently, I was browsing the Wikipedia entry for the show King of the Hill when I came across the term "retcon", which I had never heard before, but which refers to a phenomenon with which I am familiar. "Retcon", a verb, is a portmanteau of the term "retroactive continuity", which refers to "the alteration of previously established facts in a fictional work."

St. Elsewhere pulled a pretty big retcon, and I'm glad they did. In the third season episode, "Give the Boy a Hand", we are introduced to one of my favorite recurring characters, local artist Alex Corey (Jeff Allin). Alex has been hired to paint a portrait of St. Eligius's Chief of Services, Dr. Daniel Auschlander (Norman Lloyd), to celebrate his long tenure as the hospital's head administrator. The portrait is to hang in the chapel alongside that of Father Joseph McCabe, who founded the hospital in 1934, according to this scene.

I watched St. Elsewhere's seasons in reverse order on the Prime cable channel back in the nineties, and until I saw this episode, I had wondered just how the hell this guy ended up painting Dr. Auschlander's portrait, judging by his three subsequent appearances. Alex Corey is a very serious artist. He resents the assignment, and he's not shy about sharing his feelings. His father painted the portrait of Father McCabe, so he was given the job. In between gripes, he tells Dr. Auschlander that his father was amazed at how perfectly still Father McCabe could sit. That is, until the elder Corey discovered that his subject had died.

This version of events stands until the following season, when the history of St. Eligius was explored in the multiple-Emmy-winning two-part episode, "Time Heals". It starts off with a flashback to the hospital's grand opening in 1935. We learn that Father McCabe, rather than dying in his chair as an old man posing for his portrait, departed the hospital in 1955, dismissed after the hospital was sold to the City by the Catholic diocese, and was re-assigned to Arizona. Edward Herrmann earned an Emmy nomination for his guest appearance as Father McCabe.

Father McCabe (Edward Herrmann) is still alive, though
not exactly kicking, one year later.

Father McCabe returns in the season five premiere, "Where There's Hope, There's Crosby", so there's no doubt that his presumed demise in season three has been re-written. He comes to St. Eligius from Arizona suffering from ALS and about to take up residence in a nursing home. He is paralyzed, depressed, and he wants to be euthanized until he is inspired to carry on by a heartwarming encounter with Dr. Westphall's autistic son, Tommy.

These days, I'm accustomed to having back episodes of my favorite TV series at my fingertips, so I have to think back to my younger days to remember how they used to broadcast network TV shows. A few new episodes, then a rerun or two, either from a previous season or the current one. They'd spread out the twenty-two episodes from September to May. You'd see the old episodes again, but few people had VCRs back then, so it wasn't like you were expected to go back and look up what happened.

So I'm thinking stuff like this wasn't as big a deal back then, unless you were an obsessive detail hound like me. I feel the poetic license was justified in this case. Edward Herrmann as Father McCabe is a great addition to the show's mythology. After "Time Heals", they changed the portrait of Father McCabe in the chapel to resemble Herrmann. It's clear that the "Time Heals" version is the preferred version of events.

Update, February 1, 2014: Spotted another one... In season two's "Vanity", the voice-over in the TV documentary on Dr. Craig mentions that St. Eligius became a public hospital in the late forties. That got re-written in "Time Heals" as well.

Drs. Westphall and Auschlander regard the original portrait
of Father McCabe in "Breathless".

Update, February 21, 2014: The Father McCabe story actually changed twice, I've discovered. Early in season three, in the fifth episode, "Breathless", Daniel is in the chapel communing with the portrait of Father McCabe (he feels remorse over his handling of the nurses' strike and discovering that longtime maintenance supervisor Rawly Moreland is suffering from asbestosis from working at St. Eligius) when Dr. Donald Westphall (Ed Flanders) enters.

Daniel asks Donald if he ever met the man, and Donald says 'no'. (In "Time Heals"--Father McCabe is a mentor to the troubled young Westphall.) Then he states that McCabe founded the hospital in 1932.

Ah, things were so much simpler before we had all this digitization!

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.