How TV Doctors Changed the World

Originally part of the Original Let's Talk TV Live Brodcast on BlogTalk Radio. Enjoy this classic episode from a few years ago while you're waiting for new episodes to drop!

Have you ever wondered how TV medical dramas have mirrored and shaped society's view of healthcare over the decades? Join us as we sit down with Wally Podrazic from the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago. Wally, a renowned pop culture and television history expert, shares his vast knowledge and fascinating insights from his co-authored book, "Watching TV: Six Decades of American Television." Together, we explore the universal appeal of medical shows, their blend of soap opera elements, and the critical role of the Museum of Broadcast Communications in preserving this genre's legacy.

Travel back in time as we trace the captivating evolution of medical TV dramas from the 1950s to the 1980s. We'll discuss iconic series like "I Love Lucy," the educational "Medic," and the serious "Ben Casey" and "Dr. Kildare" of the 1960s. Experience the lighter yet impactful tones of "Hennessy" and hear about personal favorites and unforgettable episodes that have left an indelible mark on viewers. Wally and I share our love for these classic series, highlighting their varied storytelling styles and timeless appeal.

Our conversation takes a deeper turn as we discuss the profound societal impact of these shows. Learn how medical dramas tackled controversial social issues, reflected societal attitudes, and even influenced career choices. We'll explore how "MASH" uniquely blended comedy and drama to portray the harsh realities of war and how "Emergency" brought emergency medicine into the spotlight. This episode promises a nostalgic and insightful journey through the history and influence of TV medical dramas, shedding light on their role in shaping both television and society.

Transcript

TV Medical Show History Discussion

Speaker 1 0:00

Blob Talk Radio.

Speaker 2 0:22

And that's our theme song for let's Talk TV Live, written for us by a fan of the show who felt inspired at the end of the year and felt that I needed an actual theme song. So thank you. Fan of the show who is now asked me not to mention his name, so I'm not going to do that. Welcome to another edition of let's Talk TV Live. I am your host, barbara Barnett. I'm executive editor of Blog Critics Magazine, where I also serve as senior TV and film editor, and I'm also the publisher and editor-in-chief of let's Talk TV TV blog.

Speaker 2 0:58

And tonight we have a very special guest, wally Pedrezic, from the Museum of Broadcast Communications right here in Chicago. I want to promo first, just really quickly. Tomorrow night we're going to be doing a house show. Sorry, I've been off the air on Tuesday nights for a couple of weeks unavoidable circumstances but tomorrow night we're going to have Andrew Holtz, who wrote the great book the Medical Science of House MD, and we're going to be talking about the show from a medical point of view and then we'll get back to our weekly rewatch.

Speaker 2 1:34

Next week, next Monday night, we'll be back talking about Once Upon a Time I know you guys are all looking forward to the episode the Queen is Dead, which I have not seen yet, and we'll be talking about that next Monday night. And the Monday night after that we'll be on the air to talk about the Miller's Daughter, which I have seen, which is the next episode. But on Tuesday night, instead of my house show, I will be welcoming to the show Jane Espenson, the wonderful TV writer who's written for Battlestar Galactica and Buffy. She's most known for Buffy and has been on the show a few times and she's become a great friend of the show and she'll be on to talk about her Once Upon a Time episode the Miller's Daughter. So some really exciting things coming up. Wally, welcome to the show.

Speaker 3 2:25

Well, it's a pleasure to be here.

Speaker 2 2:28

We spoke a little bit before the show, but it's been a couple of years since we were on a panel together talking about House of all things and things medical. And things medical and things TV-ish. So tell us a little bit about yourself. You've got quite an illustrious CV and some of the things that you've done.

Speaker 3 2:52

Well, a little bit of background, since this is a show about TV. I've co-authored 10 books with a Northwestern college friend of mine, associate Harry Castleman, and they're a mix of pop culture topics. The ones most relevant to our discussion, of course, are about television, and the latest book is the expanded, revised edition of Watching TV Six Decades of American Television. It's a season-by-season story of television, and I say season-by-season I mean going back to, like the 1944-45 season, going all the way through into the 21st century.

Speaker 3 3:41

Well, I just described it is that each chapter is a season. There's about 70 chapters, and if you want to just say I don't know anything or don't care anything before 1960, start in 1960, because each one is self-contained. You want to start on page one and go all the way through. It also flows that way and it combines narrative text with a little bit of timeline highlights. We call them date boxes. It has some pictures and fall schedule grids for each of the seasons. And another way of telling the TV story is at the Museum of Broadcast Communications, which is coming on the first anniversary of when it opened officially in its new home in Chicago at 360 North State.

Speaker 3 4:33

You can go to museumtv to get a little bit more information about what's going on there in general special events and all going on there in general special events and all. But I did the 125 panels of genre TV history which can be read in any order whatsoever because that was my charge, each one about 110 words or so, so you can get basically a real sweep of TV history by genre when you come to the TV floor of the museum and then the floor below that is focusing on radio.

Speaker 2 5:13

Cool, very cool, good stuff that you're involved with Very good stuff. We actually spoke on. This panel was at the University of Illinois. It was almost exactly two years ago, wow.

Speaker 3 5:27

Time flies, house retired since then.

Speaker 2 5:30

Yeah, we'll get to that.

Speaker 2 5:33

So have you been? I grew up with medical shows. My mom was an addict of medical shows. She was a big soap opera person, but she was I think she was in love with Ben Casey, and so I would, if I wanted to actually like you know, like hang out with her, it would be to watch medical shows, because that's what she was doing all the time. So my my love affair with with the shows probably doesn't go back quite that far. I mean, I remember Dr Kildare and I remember the nurses and Zena Bethune, but my thing with medical shows probably started in the 70s, I would guess. Are you a big medical show fan? Hello, uh-oh.

Speaker 2 6:24

We have lost our guest. Oh, and here he is again.

Speaker 3 6:32

He kind of disappeared into the ether.

Speaker 2 6:35

Oh my gosh, what happened I?

Speaker 3 6:36

have no idea, it just stopped. But you were saying that you and your mom would watch Ben Casey and you used the term soap opera. Yeah, and you mentioned Ben Casey and it got me thinking about, of course, one of the hooks I've always thought of for medical shows is they draw people, because, of course, they are often soap operas. Yeah, because what could be more engaging than a life-and-death struggle that does not involve a shootout at the OK Corral?

Speaker 3 7:18

Right right, right. And so people are really involved in life-and death decisions, either as doctors or as patients, right?

Speaker 2 7:30

And one of the things I find really interesting and I think what's unique about medical shows as opposed to crime dramas or lawyer shows or any other genre is that everybody gets sick. Everybody sees doctors. Everybody once in a while has to encounter either themselves or a family member in the hospital, and we don't necessarily all see lawyers. We don't hopefully not get involved in the crime, you know, in the police drama, but we all get sick. So I think that's kind of a unique thing for us.

Speaker 3 8:07

And we're all sort of on the edge of mystery, but a different kind of mystery. You know, you walk in saying I'm feeling this way and self-diagnostically, I think it's X and part of what unfolds in these shows is solving that mystery. Preparing for this, I went looking for one of the earliest medical shows, an episode of that called Medic. Oh yeah.

Speaker 3 8:34

And this was with Richard Boone playing a doctor, but it was more like a drama anthology in that he would. Sometimes he'd be in it, but mostly he's just introducing it. He's introducing other characters, and the one episode which was easiest to find searching online was one with Dennis Hopper.

Speaker 2 9:04

Oh yes, I've seen that one.

Speaker 3 9:06

Exactly, and when I was watching it pacing-wise, once you got past the setup where you know hi, I'm Richard Boone, and here's what we're going to talk about it was almost like a house episode. Yeah, in that you have. Here's an idyllic scene, and, and it looks really nice, and here's this young man. There's something a little strange, oh, and suddenly there's this turn and he's having what we later find out is an epileptic seizure, right, and it's like, oh, my goodness, what happens next? Okay, now the story starts.

Speaker 2 9:39

Right. But one of the interesting things about that episode is that and it struck me about Medic, and I've seen a couple of episodes of Medic I was really, really fascinated with it, partially because it was not sponsored but it had the imprimatur of the Los Angeles Medical Society.

Speaker 2 10:02

LA County Medical Association the logo right at the end yes, yeah, it was a really almost like an educational tool, and I think that that episode with Dennis Hopper is really an educational piece, educating people about the fact that epilepsy, which back then was thought of as a sort of madness, was really a medical condition that could be treated, not to institutionalize someone. And I think that that medic did a really good job of really kind of lecturing to a, you know, a much more innocent, naive United States population who didn't know. I mean, medical science wasn't as far as it was. Now there was another episode on Medic and I don't know if you've ever seen it where it was very science fiction-ish and there was a nuclear attack. And did you have you ever seen that?

Speaker 3 11:01

No, no, I have not seen that. So you'll have to paint the picture for me and for your listeners.

Speaker 2 11:06

Yeah, it was an episode. There was medical professionals responding to an atomic bomb attack at a local school and of course this was at the height of the Cold War on everybody's mind and they were so overwhelmed and here people thought they were really prepared for this sort of a huge emergency.

Speaker 2 11:30

And finally and ultimately, they realized that you cannot prepare for this, for something like this is so devastating that you can't prepare for it, and it was actually a really bleak and very I thought would be something that would be hugely controversial for that time, because it was really quite anti-Nuke in its own way get.

Speaker 3 11:55

Is that the thing about the 1950s is they took their, that the creators took the charge of doing serious drama very seriously yes you had dry.

Speaker 3 12:14

Look the I Love Lucy's of the era paid for everything, but but something like a dragnet which was, I'd say, the, the, the creative cousin to Medic, in that it was based in quotes on names changed from official police files of Los Angeles, and so Medic, just of course, was the same type of thing, right? And if you look at these starkly black and white not because they were trying to be noir, I mean, that's what they could afford and that's what they were doing.

Speaker 3 12:51

It's not just medic, but so many of the shows you watch then you are just struck by how they were willing to show things that don't work out Right to show things that don't work out. These were challenging stories, as I say to sort of balance off the fact that much of the rest of the schedule would be light and fluffy.

Speaker 3 13:12

These were people who felt like, yeah, this is a great medium, let's use it to educate. As you mentioned on the epilepsy episode for a medic, and now this example of you know, this isn't really survivable. A desk doesn't protect you.

Speaker 2 13:30

Right. Yeah really yeah, so that was really interesting. You know, I want to go back to the very, very first medical drama, which was called City Hospital.

Speaker 2 13:41

And that debuted in 1951. And it actually I was very, very intrigued by the fact I could find very little about it. I actually was at Paley Center a couple of summers ago and I was doing some research on medical TV, medical shows, and one of the things I found out about City Hospital is that it featured a female doctor. There was a male doctor and there was a female doctor.

Evolution of Medical TV Dramas

Speaker 3 14:10

And how revolutionary was that. Yeah, there's no way of getting around. Yes, that's definitely revolutionary and you know that was another one of the great parts of what's called the golden age of. Tv drama is who says you can't, why not Go ahead? And of course I referenced I Love Lucy. You know the star of the first major comedy was female. And you know what else? She had a Cuban husband. So I mean you had mixed ethnicity. First major comedy was female. And you know what else?

Speaker 3 14:45

She had a Cuban husband, yeah, so I mean, you had mixed ethnicity, you had the female lead. Now, yeah, she did goofy stuff, but so what? It was still a female lead. Right. And so the idea of oh so, how about a female doctor here? Sure, now back, then, let's see it only ran. What about a season or so season and a half, something like that.

Speaker 2 15:10

Yeah, it didn't run very long.

Speaker 3 15:14

And that was part of the excitement of that era too, is that, you know, we talk about now all these series that maybe play on cable for like eight episodes or ten episodes, and they come back in a year and a half or so In its own way. Early television did the same type of thing, or if you want to flip it in its own way.

Speaker 3 15:34

Contemporary television gives you those same opportunities. Let's see what happens with these nine episodes. You know we're not going to ever do any more. That's okay. We got to tell these stories.

Speaker 2 15:46

Right, right. I think one of the things that was so common about 50s medical shows was they were all very educational, almost documentary. I thought Medic was just really particularly a very documentary, almost a documentary show. You really believe Richard Boone was a doctor.

Speaker 3 16:08

Oh yeah, and the characters, yes, they would have the. Let's face it, there was a little bit of soap opera in terms of nurses identifying with the patients and trying to help them and the reassuring voice of the patients and trying to help them and the reassuring voice of the doctors and all, but it was still in this context of frankly lecturing. At times I was again talking about epilepsy, where Richard Boone's character in character was just saying this is important to understand that. And then you have like a minute explanation of what all this is about. Right, right, right. So it is your responsibility as a citizen to learn this.

Speaker 3 16:58

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And I think it's Sorry go ahead.

Speaker 2 17:01

Go ahead.

Speaker 3 17:02

Well, one thing that struck me is when one of the creators behind Medic you had started by mentioning Ben Casey, of course then goes over to Ben Casey in the next decade, and there you layer in that very handsome, hands-on lead character to die for and that's your soap opera. Hook the medical force in there that's going to face these tough decisions. But man, I hate to say it's eye candy, but that was part of it.

Speaker 2 17:41

Well it is. It goes from being almost documentary to being almost one of those PSA kind of shows, public service kind of shows, to taking a page from their radio soap opera cousins saying, well, let's make this more populous, let's make this bigger audience, let's, you know, make this more populous, let's make this bigger audience. So I have a question before we go through some of it, we go through the decades, because one of the things that really fascinates me is how shows change from decade to decade and generation to generation. And.

Speaker 2 18:16

I'm really intrigued by that. But do you have any over, you know, having grown up, I think roughly over the same period of time I have. Do you have any? Favorite medical shows having grown up, I think roughly over the same period of time, I have Do you have any favorite medical shows?

Speaker 3 18:31

You know, to be honest, there was always the question Kildare versus Casey.

Speaker 2 18:39

Oh yeah.

Speaker 3 18:40

Basically, and so I was probably more a Kildare guy, maybe even back then I knew that he had deep roots. But I'm going to throw kind of a curveball to you Right around the same era you know what medical show I liked? Hennessy, yeah.

Speaker 2 19:01

And that's if you're in 59.

Speaker 3 19:03

So that was kind of yeah right, yeah, yeah, so it actually preceded these, though technically Kildare preceded them all, because it was a movie series and a radio series and all but Hennessy was something you don't see that often or hadn't seen that often a half-hour drama with comic elements, Yep, yep yep, it was military too, because it was military. Yes, yeah, he was like a naval doctor.

Speaker 3 19:28

Yes, and to this day, I still remember an episode where let's see Eppie Dalton played his assistant and they were involved in a surgery and she was panicking, she was losing it, and the reason she was is because they were operating on her dad and so Jackie Cooper, who had the lead role, sent her out. You know, you said you could do this. You can't do this, you have to leave. You have to leave now. And it showed how, no matter how much control you think you have in the matters of life and death, everyone is going to cry if daddy's hurt. Everyone's going to just identify with the relative on that operating table and, yeah, you better step away. You better let the people that really know that you have to do the best. But you can't be that emotionally connected with it.

Speaker 3 20:34

And it was just stunning. And I think it worked even better because it was a drama with comic elements. So, in other words, you like the characters. It was not. This is going to be a serious soap opera or this is going to be a dramatic documentary or documentary type, like Medic it was. This is a lighter show but could turn at any moment, and so it lures you in and then it turns and I used to. So if you're saying what was my favorite, that actually was my favorite.

Speaker 2 21:08

Oh cool, my mom loved that show and I was like five years old or something like that when that was on. But my mom just loved it and I know she had a huge crush on Jackie Cooper.

Speaker 3 21:21

Well, I sort of liked Abby myself.

Speaker 2 21:24

Oh, yeah, well, yeah, you would, of course, but as far as Kildare versus Casey and my mom watched both, and I watched them both with her, you know, even then I liked the cynical doctor. I did. You know, I was definitely a Ben Casey girl. You know why, though, I think I was intrigued by that man-woman-birth-death infinity.

Speaker 3 21:48

Okay, yes, I will have to backtrack just slightly. If there was anything that I would watch regularly, it would be that opening minute. I love it when you get to see the chalkboard. And what we're describing now is there would be a hand drawing on the chalkboard the symbols for man, woman, birth, death, infinity. And then that is the jumping off point for that week's drama. I thought that was just so. It was great. Basically, that's storytelling right there.

Speaker 2 22:24

Where else can you go. It never left me. I mean, I remembered that when I was in. You know, oh, what's the symbol for male? You know, and you knew it, you just knew it Well, of course.

Speaker 2 22:37

But that whole idea of what is medical science and what is science actually was a big influence on me, even though I was really little, but it really influenced me. And that whole idea of the mystery of science and even a little bit of philosophy because those symbols are almost philosophical really intrigued me and I think probably subconsciously influenced my decision to major in the sciences when I was at college. So, bad choice for me, but that's OK.

Speaker 2 23:09

That's a different story for another time, but never. Nevertheless, I was a biology major and I think that was a lot of the reason why. But yeah, I was definitely, you know, with Ben Casey. What I thought was interesting is now you have the first show, I think, where you have maybe it's not the first show, but the first show that I can think of where you have a generation gap. You know, you have Ben Casey who is passionately for the patient and if he's breaking the rules, so be it. This noble.

Speaker 2 23:44

he was a surgeon, I believe, a surgical resident, and it didn't matter what Dr Zorba thought. Oh well of course you know if it was good for the patient. Breaking the rules, breaking the Hippocratic Oath, whatever it took, that was it.

Speaker 3 24:00

Boy, I see you setting up some of your later medical affections right now.

Speaker 2 24:05

See, I see you setting up some of your later medical affections right now. See, I'm consistent. I'm consistent with the kind of hero that I like. I'm a Byronic hero fan and I've always liked Byronic heroes on TV and in film and in literature and I've always liked cynical I don't give a vague about the rules kind of doctor. Those are the doctors I would like to be treated by, who say you know what, I'm going to save your life, no matter what risk it is to my career. They don't exist in real life, Sure.

Speaker 3 24:41

Going down the. Where does the pendulum swing? One of the reasons that medical shows come and go and come and go is that, as I said, you can have life and death decisions without pulling the trigger. Right.

Speaker 3 25:00

And they're usually the go-to if there's one of those waves of television is too violent, usually because of cop dramas. That's where you can still have the fight for life and not necessarily have it involve a shootout or stabbing or whatever I mean, yes, those might be the causes of why someone's in the hospital, but it isn't the total focus of the cops breaking down doors and having the shootouts with the bad guys. Right right.

Speaker 3 25:38

Well, can I jump in? You were asking about favorite medical moments. I have also another. That's I'm thinking about. It Also goes military. I'm jumping a little ahead and we can go back to the 60s in a second, but MASH.

Speaker 2 25:57

I want to spend a lot of time on MASH, so I'm going to get there.

Speaker 3 26:00

Okay, you're going to get there. We'll put that aside. Because we still have to go through. There's still you like Marcus Welby and all.

Speaker 2 26:09

Yeah, yeah, I'm going to get there. We're going to waltz through. So we have Dr Kildare. I'm going to skip things like the Bob Newton, tom Dick and Mary oh, but I do want to make a mention of the Nurses, which premiered in 62. And what was interesting is there was a huge amount of controversy because doctors, the AMA, were very upset that there was a show that featured nurses so prominently.

Speaker 1 26:36

So the show then became the doctors and the nurses and the doctors, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 26:43

Three, uh huh, and that was because and I remember, I vaguely remember my mom like yeah, oh, why are they doing that? And it was because the AMA said wait a second, the doctors are the people who treat people, not the nurses, and so that was kind of an interesting pullback almost.

Speaker 3 27:05

So that was kind of an interesting pullback, almost yeah, of course you could then say well then, how about when we show female doctors in greater number?

Speaker 2 27:13

Yeah, really, really. And speaking of breakthroughs in 68, of course we had Julia, which was a comedy.

Speaker 3 27:20

Right.

Speaker 2 27:20

Which featured an African-American as a nurse in a starring role and I think that was kind of a breakthrough comedy. You know, a single working mom, medical professional.

Speaker 3 27:34

Yeah, and that was Diana Carroll in the lead, and that was when you talk about breakthrough. It's hard for us perhaps to appreciate in today's television and general media context, but there was a long period where there just were rarely African-American characters, and certainly not as carrying the lead of a series. Now, there are always exceptions I mean mention the decade, and Bill Cosby is an exception that you come across repeatedly.

Speaker 3 28:14

But it's all right, let's quote take a chance with this type of casting. And it was about as I don't think it was a coincidence that you had something that was medical and professional. So it was saying, look, we are going to have a story here which is it's going to be controversial enough to start with, so we don't want to have us being accused of having negative portrayals.

Speaker 3 28:46

So, this is going to be a real professional. So we don't want to have us being accused of having negative portrayals. So this is going to be a real professional.

Speaker 2 28:53

It's not going to be like this was not the time to introduce Sanford and Son, for example.

Speaker 3 28:58

No no, no, no. So that worked well. It was on for a couple seasons. It did not become a breakthrough definer, but you need the first couple to get things going.

Speaker 2 29:11

Right, right. And then the next year after that we had Medical Center debut, which was really a transitional kind of a series. I think Again did not hesitate to go after controversy. And there were a couple of episodes actually interesting. First episode I watched the series.

Speaker 2 29:33

I had the opportunity, the very first episode of a it was a football player, a college football player, who was being an African-American kid, who had this ticket out of poverty. But he was sick and the doctor, you know Joe Gannon, said you know you really shouldn't be going out there. And he insisted and and if he, you know you really shouldn't be going out there, and he insisted, and if he, you know, if he gets his college draft, you know his mother is going to be fine. So he goes out there and of course he gets sick and he has to be treated. And as I was watching it, I was like, wait a second. They did this on house in the episode Moving the Chains, which, moving the Chains, you know, like the football term.

Discussion on Medical TV Show Impact

Speaker 2 30:32

And it was exactly the same story. And I couldn't believe it, because this is 30 years, it's more than 30 years, it's 40 years later and here they have the same exact story, not the same medical condition, but the same sociological story and I thought that was kind of cool.

Speaker 2 30:52

But another thing that they did in the first season is they attacked abortion and of course this is 1969. This is pre-Roe versus Wade. This is pre Roe versus Wade, and there was a disagreement between Gannon and a female doctor about whether this patient should get an abortion. There was an illness, she was sick, she was going to die. Gannon thought she was going to die if she carried the baby. It was second trimester and ultimately she decided to keep the baby. But I thought it was fascinating in that sort of pre-Roe v Wade environment to be talking about something like abortion.

Speaker 3 31:33

Well, I would like to point out, and we're going to vary just slightly from medical. You would have seen the same thing in the TV show the Defenders too, which was EG.

Speaker 3 31:41

Marshall, robert Reed, and that was at the beginning of the 60s until about the mid-60s, and a lot of the reason that you would see such topics tackled is you did have folks that were proud of the golden age of TV drama from the 50s Some came directly from it, frankly and so they said, all right, we'll do a TV series because drama anthologies aren't working, though they would become the movie of the week for a long stretch too, sort of drama anthologies in disguise, but under a regular series, because you would have the guest characters. Well, there's your drama anthology. There are the characters you actually are never going to see again.

Speaker 3 32:31

So you can really push some of these issues to the front and because they involved characters other than the main ones, that is, the heavy-duty decision was probably not going to be from the lead doctor, I mean they would be involved in the execution but, it would not be the person who was the reason for having the decision in the first place. You could go places Right.

Speaker 3 33:01

And there was also, as I said, a great deal of pride in look what we can do, look what we can do yeah. Look what we can do on television, and I know every generation has a tendency to think that they invented it from ground up. And in effect you do, because you know, as NBC used to say, if you haven't seen it or done it before, it's new to you even if it's an actual rerun.

Speaker 3 33:30

But it shows how that some of these stories, some of these themes are timeless and that they do translate and can get reinterpreted from decade to decade, and that's really exciting.

Speaker 2 33:43

Yeah, and the issues change. You know the controversial issues change and you know one of the things is, as these issues come up, whether they're political or whether they're just societal, is they're almost, because TV is continues to be but certainly was especially very popular shows was a real, like shared American experience. They really provided that sort of talking point, that water cooler talking point for talking about these issues, that sort of you know, kind of maybe influenced people's opinions and almost was a precursor to some you know different societal changes that happened, I think, in some ways.

Speaker 3 34:31

Well, in effect, they were less threatening than if you did an in-your-face documentary. Yep, you might want to come later and see that documentary, but in terms of introducing topics to the dinner table, that was a good place to do it.

Speaker 2 34:46

Right, and whether it was abortion in 1969 or 1970, or whether it was AIDS later, or whether it was, you know, having an African-American surgeon heading up. You know whatever that was, or it could be mercy killings, exactly.

Speaker 3 35:03

It could be anything that does not necessarily have a yes. This is the unquestioned way to go. It's like we don't know. We're dealing with it right now. Here's one way of going.

Speaker 2 35:16

Yes, absolutely. And get to MASH, which premiered in 1972, starring Ellen Alda, based on the movie which still stands as one of my. I cannot. Every time the movie MASH with Donald Sutherland and Elliot Gould comes on the air, I cannot avoid watching it.

Speaker 2 35:39

It is, without a doubt, one of my favorite movies. It came out about a month before my 16th birthday Now you all know how old I am and it was rated. You had to be 17 and over to go and I was really upset and I remember my mother calling the movie theater and making a big stink about it and they let me go in. But the movie is fantastic, but the show endured much longer than the movie stayed in consciousness. So talk about MASH you wanted to talk about.

Speaker 3 36:14

MASH, one of the things. Let me go right to the medical center which, very early on, is established, which very early on is established, which is look, this is a situation comedy, that's how it's packaged on CBS, which is its network home. And it was a time saying, look, we're adapting a hit movie, that's all. And they brought a really talented group to the fore and you mentioned Alan Alda as one of the leads, larry Gelbart, of course, with a long history of good, solid comedy writing, but also writing for the theater, if anything happened on the way to the foreman.

Speaker 3 37:03

Those had to tell a story, and so in the first season they established right from the get-go no laugh track in the operating room.

Speaker 3 37:16

We could do whatever silly surgeons tomfoolery out there. No laugh track there. And then they also said you know, this is a war setting. And in capturing also said you know, this is a war setting. And in capturing what I like to call the gore of war and the joy of sex which is what the combination of the movie within TV limits they did that, the gore of war especially. I want to get to the two rules of war because that was sort of like this defining moment in early first season of MASH. Hawkeye is dealing with a friend he hasn't seen for a while and all, and the guy's hit, he's on the operating table and Hawkeye's trying to save him and he can't and Henry Blake sends him away saying move away Pierce, move away McIntyre, come in and finish this. And his friend dies. And so Hawkeye's trying to deal with this, this irreverent character, and Henry Blake who's up to that point mostly not a buffoon like kind of silly Right.

Speaker 3 38:24

He says, look, I don't know, but they taught us in officer's training the two rules of war. Rule number one patients die. Rule number two doctors can't change.

Speaker 2 38:39

Rule number one oh, I remember that.

Speaker 3 38:42

And that was just wow, talk about spot on dialogue. That, frankly, can apply to all medical shows, because it's basically I'm going to try to stop this person dying, and you know what, sometimes I can't.

Impact of TV Medical Shows

Speaker 2 38:59

Exactly, it was because of the times that it was on. It was also an avatar for the Vietnam War. Oh most definitely, and it allowed, yeah, and it allowed really to explore the horror of war so very far away in. You know, where there are guerrilla warfare and the stories around it. I mean the medical stories, I mean the other part of it that I loved is, no matter how much they all couldn't quote, unquote, stand each other, you know when they were being normal. Yes.

Speaker 2 39:38

As soon as there was a medical emergency, they were all right on the money.

Speaker 3 39:43

Even Frank Burns.

Speaker 2 39:44

Even. Frank. Burns.

Speaker 3 39:45

The much mocked. Right right. The comic foil, and that was very much picking up one of the themes of the MASH movie too which is main characters come in and say who are you? We're the pros from Dover. We're going to save this kid's life. We're going to crack this chest open and then go out and have a round of golf. We can get away with all the stuff we're getting away with because we're really good at what we do. You know it, you know it, we know it.

Speaker 3 40:19

And because of the war setting the rules don't apply. We need to fix these poor kids that have been caught in war. And it's not pretty, but we get the job done.

Speaker 2 40:39

Right and it doesn't matter whose side they're on.

Speaker 3 40:42

They're still human life.

Speaker 2 40:44

And that was a huge. I thought that was a huge, important thing. That was a source of conflict within the medical staff, especially with Frank Burns and not so much with Winchester Winchester. Thank you, yes.

Speaker 3 41:04

Well, there are different phases of MASH, obviously, but the first, oh, I'd say the first four to five seasons. As long as Larry Gelbart was there, it was still the embodiment of the movie, now done a hundred times over, really taken to a whole new level, using the medium of TV to tell stories in these self-contained 30-minute units.

Speaker 3 41:33

And thereafter it became a different, still good show but it became a different type of show further on, because they were getting farther and farther away from the analogy to the Vietnam War and pretty much making it a drama anthology, but with many reoccurring characters.

Speaker 2 41:54

Oh yeah, they were great. I loved Sidney when he would come back and forth the psychiatrist and there were just a lot of great recurring characters and changes of characters and deaths of characters.

Speaker 3 42:06

Finale which was focused very much on Alan Alda's character dealing with a death that he saw that he had been part of. He, the healer, had been the cause of the death. But what moved me equally was you mentioned the character of Charles Winchester. Charles Winchester took some he couldn't speak a word to some prisoners, some Korean prisoners, but they were musicians. Yeah, and he had such a deep, deep affection for them. Yeah. And they didn't make it.

Speaker 2 42:50

Right, I remember that I just loved that show. There was just so much in that show. I could go on talking about MASH for an hour.

Speaker 3 42:56

Well, let me do a quick footnote on that and to show how the setting of war helped it do so many things that you couldn't do in other settings when they did after MASH, that you didn't have people under the gun, not by their choice, far away from home, having to deal with the army, bureaucrats etc. Your inclination watching Aftermash which was a number of the characters back home, not Alan Alda but Colonel Potter and Father Mulcahy and Clinger the reaction was well, you don't like it leave and Klinger, you know the reaction was well, you don't like it leave.

Speaker 3 43:39

You know it didn't have that same. I'm trapped here, so we've all got to work together. It's instead. Well, you can go wherever you want, because you're home now.

Speaker 2 43:57

And that cut off some of the storytelling style that had worked so well in MASH.

Speaker 3 44:00

It takes some of the intensity away from it Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 44:03

But I want to go on a little bit. I can't believe we only have 15 minutes left.

Speaker 3 44:06

Oh my goodness, oh my gosh, this is like.

Speaker 2 44:09

I just want to make note. Another 1972 show, emergency. I was having a discussion with a friend of mine who's the dean of a medical college in.

Speaker 2 44:17

Michigan. I was having a discussion with a friend of mine who's the dean of a medical college in Michigan and he says you know, one of the things about medical shows is it affects medical students, it affects the things that people want to go into. And he gave me this specific example of emergency and he said after that show made emergency medicine so sexy, um, even, you know, with the paramedics and all that sure, I mean it literally was an emergency setting it actually, um, meant a like a huge kick-up in the number of paramedics that would train but also turned people on to emergency medicine.

Speaker 2 44:58

and the other thing that my friend said to me he says you know medics that would train but also turned people on to emergency medicine. And the other thing that my friend said to me he says you know, gone are the days of Marcus Welby and internists. Everyone wants to be the specialist that's so sexy on television and it's had a real negative, in some ways a very negative impact on medicine and medical schools. I thought that was a really interesting observation.

Speaker 3 45:24

And actually you touched on to Marcus Welby when we kind of slid over and part of it is because, frankly, he wasn't that dramatic. You know, it was hi I can take care of things, and I'm the wise general practitioner, family practitioner, and you know, that's actually whom you and I would love to have as our doctor. But that wasn't quite as dramatic a set of stories, though it was a hugely successful series. It was.

Speaker 3 45:53

You don't really remember it in that same way of I want to be just like that. You don't really remember it in that same way of I want to be just like that, not when you have. Well, what would be like? Bobby. Troop and Robert Fuller and those stars in there from emergency.

Evolution of Medical TV Shows

Speaker 2 46:09

Right, right. And the same can be said of ER too, which was later. But yeah. I mean it made certain kinds of medicine very sexy later. But yeah, I mean it made certain kinds of medicine very sexy. So I want to talk about going from the sexy to the unsexy to Saint Elsewhere and segue into the 80s.

Speaker 2 46:27

That was probably one of my favorite shows of the 80s. It just showed a whole. It took the seamier aspects of medicine from MASH you know sort of gritty aspects of medicine from MASH and the darker side and moved it to a hospital.

Speaker 3 46:48

And one of the things it did is these people remember I had said, oh well, you can move elsewhere. Well, in saying, elsewhere, you really couldn't Right. Oh well, you can move elsewhere. Well, in St Elsewhere you really couldn't Right, for whatever reason, either because they had an affection for this old, old, old hospital, or they really didn't want to go to a different center, they didn't have respect for it or what have you. They were kind of stuck at St Elsewhere and so were patients who ended up there. I mean, because, it was not.

Speaker 3 47:20

the hospital was not called St Elsewhere. The hospital was called St Allegius yes. But St Elsewhere was the sort of dark nickname for it, because if you can't afford, well, the pricey hospital, this is where you end up.

Speaker 2 47:35

Right, it's like going to Cook County Hospital and not Northwestern University Medical Center.

Speaker 3 47:39

And because of that the doctors there took incredible pride as teachers, as a teaching hospital, to be cutting edge to get things done, because you know they were pulling down okay salaries but this was not the top spot that you wanted to end your career or advance your career at. But if you went there you wanted to do the best and really push cutting edge, but with minimal, minimal financial and equipment support.

Speaker 2 48:15

Oh, yeah, yeah, it was great. It was great and it was. You know, it crossed into you know, now we're in the 80s with the yuppies and the yuppie puppies, and now it's a whole new generation.

Speaker 3 48:26

Well, the other thing was you talk about a series now where we might want to talk about an episode of Once Upon a Time, or Lost as each episode unfolded, or lost as each episode unfolded. St Elsewhere, even more so than its thematic brother Hill Street Blues, st Elsewhere was the type of show that, as soon as the episode was, over in the pre-Internet days, I would be on the phone talking with friends saying okay, so did you get those allusions, with friends saying, okay, so did you get those illusions?

Speaker 3 48:59

Okay, well, I didn't get that illusion because it was so sharply written, so knowingly written, and they would have almost these by the ways that I said. Do you realize that's alluding to? And then you get either literature or pop culture or previous and it was just amazing to watch.

Speaker 2 49:16

Oh yeah, it was great. It was great. Katie in the chat room says the St Elsewhere finale is overrated, though I would agree.

Speaker 3 49:25

Well, here's how I saved in my mind this whole St Elsewhere series. I interpret that as not negating the entire series as the creation of a young, ill child, autistic child, but rather to focus on what was the last image, which was he takes this snow globe and puts it on top of a television set which is turned off at the moment. But he puts it on top of the television set and one of the other characters I forget, which says something like I can't imagine how you spend all those hours just looking at that glass.

Speaker 3 50:04

And I say okay, I think they're just having some fun there. I don't think they're saying you have to take this literally as negating everything you've been involved with for the last what's it? Seven years, but I think instead they're making a little jab at TV viewing in general.

Speaker 2 50:23

So that was the way.

Speaker 3 50:24

I save it for me.

Speaker 2 50:26

Absolutely, and I'm you know. We've got nine minutes left. We haven't talked about house.

Speaker 3 50:33

We have to go to house. Well, actually I was trying to set up the medic to house, in that the same type of thing where there's a mystery, except house, more explicitly makes it a mystery. I'll tell you the thing I love about house. I know you've done a whole book, so you obviously have an affection for house. The thing I love about house is the character gets to have it both ways. He gets to be the smarter-than-anyone-else-in-the-room doctor who is looking for other people to give him the inspiration so that it just stimulates his brain and then he solves the mystery of the week. But also he becomes a stand in for the viewers with his incredibly caustic analysis of everyone else at the hospital.

Speaker 3 51:28

In other words, if there's anyone who can be critical and who can't be critical of what you have to go through now in terms of medical treatment, there's the man who could do it, all saying the same thing you would.

Speaker 2 51:40

Exactly, exactly, I mean. I think one of the things that I found compelling about House was the character and, for some of the same reasons that you say, but also, you know, the passion that that character had for saving the life of the patient. He would put his own medical career at risk, he would break the rules, he would do things that were illegal, things that he felt in his own incredibly consistent but very idiosyncratic moral code, and it was very consistent. People said, oh, you know, his ethics are all over his life. I'm like, no, they're not. He's got a very consistent ethical code and it carries through throughout the series and maybe not so much in the last season, but which has its own issues. So, yeah, but he would go to the mat for his patients. Now the problem with that was that sometimes his being that advocate for his patients, because he was such an advocate for his patient, meant that some other patient maybe didn't get the transplanted organ that his patient would get.

Speaker 2 52:59

And there's an episode in the first season where there's a woman who's a bulimic and she cuts herself, she definitely would not qualify for heart transplant because of her emotional issues. He doesn't want to see her die and lies before the medical board when he's already in trouble with them. He lies to the hospital transplant committee to get her the heart and it saves her life. But what if there was another patient that would have met all the criteria that was denied the heart? You know how do you make those. You know how do you make that choice. And was that the right choice, or was that not the right choice?

Speaker 3 53:41

And, frankly, having the discussion coming out of an episode like that is, I think, one of the strengths of what you can get out of house Because, frankly, we had no chance as viewers of ever figuring out what the actual disease was. Right.

Speaker 3 53:58

Because it would be all right. If he said so, then that's probably what happened, right? But that didn't matter because we were involved in a bigger story, so to speak. Right Though I will say without doing spoilers. One of the things I loved about the house finale was that we finally had a mystery, which was a mystery that we didn't need any medical knowledge to solve. And. I thought that was a brilliant turn, and even the title Everybody Dies was a nice takeoff on his Everybody. Lies Right. And usually house titles were revealing. Oh yeah.

Speaker 3 54:47

And I sat there and said you know, talk about being true to the Everybody Lies part. This episode. Yeah, everybody does lie, oh, yeah, everybody does lie.

Speaker 2 54:59

Oh yeah, I thought it was just, I loved and I had some problems with season eight the final season. A character like House, who can be very unlikable on paper, is that if you push him over the edge to the point where he is unlikable, it's like well who cares, you know, you need to care about him.

Speaker 2 55:28

You need to care that, despite his drug problems, this is a man who's in pain. This is a man with a troubled psyche, a troubled. He's a troubled man and you can't push him to being so unlikable that you cease to care. And I think that they did that too often in season seven and eight and people stopped caring. Some people stop caring, yeah.

Speaker 3 55:55

I sort of I was fine with it. One of the things that helped me a lot is I actually came into house late and then caught up on reruns. I know, one of the controversies was the change of support staff and all. I had no problem with replacing any of the original trio, et cetera.

Speaker 2 56:16

Yeah, I didn't either.

Speaker 3 56:17

So I was fine.

Speaker 2 56:18

Yeah, I was fine with that, I was fine with the. Everyone has their own relationship issues with House and, you know, with this one or with that one, and I really kind of you know, I always say to fans I said you know, it's not your show to write, it's not my show to write, it is David Shore's show to write. And if you don't buy into the narrative that he's, the story that he's telling, well, that's fine, that you're right. But you can't expect him to write to what you want, because what you want is what the other guy doesn't want.

Speaker 3 56:51

It's sort of the exact opposite of what we started with in terms of medic and a drama anthology where you have all these different characters and all when I teach my class. I teach at the University of Illinois at Chicago. I have a history of TV class and I use House as an example of a series I love. But it is the ultimate in satisfying formula series. You actually don't need to see more than a couple episodes to quote get it.

Speaker 3 57:20

It's just that once you've gotten it, you like to see it done again and again. But if you said I just want to watch a couple episodes, have I seen the Essence of House? And I'd say yeah, you have.

Speaker 2 57:30

But, that's okay, I would disagree with you.

Speaker 3 57:32

See, we disagreed about this, oh I know, I know, but I'm trying to make the contrast between a formula series and an anthology, which always has different characters facing medical situations, right and so, in that sense, house is telling medical stories for a different century, frankly in a different way?

Speaker 2 57:57

Absolutely is. And to me the essence of House is those procedural. The procedural format, the formula is really just a skeleton for telling this incredibly interesting character story. You know, my book actually has very little about the medicine, so it's four hundred and twenty nine pages and about 10 pages that addresses the medicine of the show. And you know, because I always felt that the essence of House and they don't really care about the character of House, never mind anyone else then you're right, you know they can see a few episodes Reichenbach falls, sherlock Holmes ending really does round out the character to. It answers the question does House care about anything other than himself? And the answer is, of course he does.

Speaker 3 59:10

Of course he does. Yes, and frankly he cares cared about basically the only character I really really deeply cared about besides House. I liked a lot of the other characters but, my God, I loved Wilson.

Speaker 2 59:26

Wilson was a great character. What a great character. And writing off into the sunset and we're going to need to write off into the sunset because we are just about out of time for another episode of let's Talk TV Live. This has been so much fun.

Speaker 3 59:42

Well, it's been fun for me. I invite people to go to museumtv to hear about the Museum of Broadcast Communication, and watchingtvorg to hear about my book Watching TV.

Speaker 2 59:53

Absolutely wonderful and everybody should do that, and I'm looking forward to coming down to the museum and seeing the new digs.

Speaker 3 1:00:01

Well, we look forward to seeing you.

Speaker 2 1:00:04

Thanks so much, Wally.

Speaker 3 1:00:06

Thank you.

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Speaker 2 1:00:06

Okay, take care and thank you everyone for tuning in tonight. Tune in tomorrow night when my guest is going to be Andrew Holt, the author of the medical science of house, md. See you guys next. Audio For free.

Speaker 4 1:00:40

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