Nostalgia
44 Years Ago Today, This Hospital Drama Premiered, and Its Finale Still Leaves Viewers Speechless
‘St. Elsewhere’ premiered in 1982, and its shocking finale twist still sparks fan debate 44 years later.
Forty-four years ago, on October 26, 1982, St. Elsewhere premiered on NBC. The medical drama ran for six seasons, and many of the stars who were relatively unknown then went on to have big careers. More than four decades later, perhaps the one thing from St. Elsewhere that gets fans talking the most is the show’s final scene.
When it debuted in 1982, St. Elsewhere starred William Daniels, Howie Mandel, Ed Begley Jr., Alfre Woodard, Denzel Washington, and Mark Harmon, among others. The show tackled a range of controversial topics, including having Harmon’s character, Dr. Robert “Bobby” Caldwell, be diagnosed with HIV, noted MovieWeb.
When the series ended in May 1988, St. Elsewhere viewers were left speechless by the final moment. As TVLine shared, in that last scene, Dr. Donald Westphall (Ed Flanders) and his father, Dr. Daniel Auschlander (Norman Lloyd), talk about Tommy Westphall (Chad Allen), the young son of Dr. Westphall.
Tommy was on the autism spectrum, and his father admitted he wished he could know what was going on in his son’s mind.
Tommy was mesmerized by a snow globe, and as the family moved into another room, the snow globe was set down. Then, St. Elsewhere viewers saw that the building in the snow globe resembled St. Eligius Hospital, where the show had been set.
The implication was that everything that happened throughout the six seasons of St. Elsewhere took place solely in Tommy’s imagination.
The finale twist was completely unexpected, and fans of St. Elsewhere still look back on how groundbreaking it was. Discussions on that shocking last scene pop up online regularly, and not everybody was happy with how the series ended.
In one recent Reddit thread, one fan of St. Elsewhere suggested, “If the internet was around then, St. Elsewhere’s ending would have broken it.”
Another Reddit user noted, “That show has one of the most unforgettable endings of a series ever.”
Someone else admitted, “I felt very let down by the final episode when it aired.” That person added in an additional comment, however, “In the 30+ years afterward, I have come around to it more, but at the time I was very frustrated by that.”
