![]() Elsewhere” was nominated at the Emmy Awards for all six seasons as Best Drama Series but lost to “Hill Street Blues” twice, “Cagney and Lacey” twice, “L.A. SEE Emmys Best Drama Series gallery: Every winner in Emmy Awards history Elsewhere because its rundown conditions), tackling topical medical subjects with unexpected deaths among the patients and staff members throughout the six seasons airing 1982-1988. The show was set at the fictional Boston hospital St. Eligius.The series never had the greatest of overall ratings but was saved time and again by the Peacock network due to its Emmy wins and nominations, plus excellent demographics among the 18-49 viewers who advertisers coveted. ER? Grey's Anatomy? Scrubs? Hapless interns all, pale echoes in the hallowed but crumbling halls of St. The show killed off its cast members with as much unsentimental abandon as it dispatched its often impressive roster of guest stars, which during season one included a baby-faced Tim Robbins as an unrepentant terrorist bomber and, most memorably, Doris Roberts and James Coco as a co-dependent homeless couple in the Emmy Award-winning episode "Cora and Arnie" (both included here along with 20 other episodes, an audio commentary, and several featurettes). ![]() Others would join on in subsequent seasons: Alfre Woodard, Mark Harmon, Bruce Greenwood. Jack Morrison William Daniels' insufferably egotistical heart specialist without a heart, Dr. Philip Chandler David Morse's empathetic, tousle-haired resident, Dr. ![]() Elsewhere's enormous ensemble cast was probably bigger than its audience, but a few standout performers quickly rose to the top: Denzel Washington's ambitious but compassionate Dr. The show's consistently low numbers (highest Nielson rating: 49) kept it hovering on the critical list, its tenuous life-support system subsidized by upscale sponsors who coveted the show's small but affluent viewership. Elsewhere was an armchair sociologist's wet dream, brimming with hidden non sequiturs, homages to pop-culture icons (keep a keen ear open for familiar names over the hospital PA), and sly in-jokes that flew right under NBC censors' radar ("she placed her tulips on my organ"). In addition to claiming one of the all-time great theme songs (the Eighties were the golden age of TV tunes), St. Elsewhere would last for six stellar seasons, growing increasingly surreal until finally imploding with one of the most controversial series finales in broadcast history, complete with a flatlining MTM cat logo. A few savvy critics noted the show's debt to Hill Street Blues, which had premiered one year earlier. Elsewhere premiered in 1982, initially befuddling the curious few who tuned in: Was this a comedy series? A medical drama? A soap opera? Elsewhere's layered storylines "arcs" in the parlance of the Eighties were a near-flawless assemblage of diverse subgenres surgically joined together by a vision that was simultaneously bleak, humanistic, and often seriously skewed. The brainchild of Joshua Brand and John Falsey (who would later conjure the equally cultish Northern Exposure), St. Elsewhere: That's where deportees from the city's more prestigious medical centers find themselves diverted. The decrepit old teaching hospital on Boston's South Side is better known as St. ![]() Like visitors to a Roach Motel, patients may check in, but they seldom check out. Eligius Hospital, because the harried staff there probably won't. 20th Century Fox, $39.98 God save the luckless souls who find themselves admitted into St.
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