Checking into St. Elsewhere

You might want to read this - stat! Before medical dramas on television were taken to new heights by ER, Grey's Anatomy, Doogie Howser and Chicago Hope, they had St. Elsewhere to show them how to do it.

Thanks to my wife, who introduced me to the show (and who in fact introduces me to most of the shows I become a fan of) I was a huge fan of St. Elsewhere. With it's stellar cast including a then unknown Denzel Washington, Mark Harmon, Ed Flanders, Norman Lloyd, David Morse, Ed Begley Jr., William Daniels and, as Dr. Fiscus, Howie Mandel to name a few, St. Elsewhere was to medical dramas what Hill Street Blues was to the cop show: groundbreaking.

For the first time, characters died. So did patients. Dream sequences were surreal, scary and violent. Topics that hadn't been taken on before like autism (one of the main characters had an autistic son), rape, AIDS and mental illness were intelligently written about and sensitively portrayed.

The show had a brisk and dark humor which made it all the more appealing. It was produced by John Masius and Bruce Paltrow, Gwyneth's dad.

I liked the show so much I did something I'd never done before: I wrote a letter to Brandon Tartikoff, then head of programming at NBC to tell him how much I enjoyed the show. In the letter, I asked him if it would be possible to visit the set, and to my ever-lasting surprise and gratitude, he said yes. He had his second in command, and eventual successor, Warren Littlefield call me and schedule the visit.

When I got to the set, Masius and Paltrow were my guides. They personally toured me around, showed me the script they were shooting that day and introduced me to a few of the actors.

While we were talking over coffee at the craft services table, Bruce Paltrow casually asked me how I knew Brandon Tartikoff. I said that I didn't - I'd just written a letter he liked. Paltrow laughed, and said it must've been some letter because Tartikoff had given them direct orders to treat me like I was his mother.

Next comes one of the biggest regrets of my life. I've never spoken about it before because it's just too embarrassing, but here it is.

In that same conversation, both Masius and Paltrow asked what I did, and I told them I was a copywriter. Then Paltrow asked if I'd ever written any television, and I told him I hadn't. He then asked me if I'd like to. Let's just say at the time I was much more enamored of advertising than I am now, and gave him an answer which I regret to this day. I'll regret it for all my days.

But enough about my bad choices.

The series ended on a controversial note. It turned out that the entire six seasons had been the imagination of the autistic character I talked about earlier. A lot of people thought it was a cop out, including me at the time. But as I watch the scene now, and the alternate reality it presents for the characters, and what it says about what's going on in the head of an autistic child, I like it.

For some reason only the first season is available on DVD. When they're all finally released, I'll curl up with the wife and we'll spend a weekend or two watching them all again to see the characters we love, and the moments we remember most.