A Trip to Elsewhere

By Rom Watson
c. November 19, 2011

Every television series holds within its heart the very reason why watching series television is a waste of time.  An often entertaining waste of time, but a waste of time all the same.

From 1980 until I married in 1988, I shared an apartment in Los Angeles.  At first with two roommates, and then with only one, Judy.  I did not own a television, but Judy did, and I would occasionally, (The Oscars, The Tonys, etc.), watch it with her.  On October 26, 1982, NBC premiered a one-hour television drama entitled St. Elsewhere, and Judy began to watch it.  Not being interested, I didn’t pay much attention.  I would hear bits and pieces of it if I happened to be in the living room or the kitchen, but I didn’t watch it.

Until the finale of the first season.

I was in the kitchen eating dinner and Judy was in the living room watching St. Elsewhere.  What I heard intrigued me enough to go into the living room and watch the remainder of the episode.  It was startlingly good.  When the second season began, I parked myself on the couch next to Judy and watched it with her.  I wanted to know what was going to happen to those characters.  We watched that show for the next five years.

St. Elsewhere was a medical drama with a large ensemble cast and numerous guest actors.  It was well-made, intelligent, well-written, well-acted, sometimes moving and often quite funny.  I thoroughly enjoyed the show and never missed an episode.

Until the final episode.

My fiancé and I moved into our own apartment in June of 1988, and were married in October of 1988.  (We remain happily married to each other and are both still friends with Judy.  We get together with her for dinner once or twice a year.) The final episode aired on May 25, 1988, and being preoccupied with my impending move, plus having to go out of town the next day on a short trip, I didn’t see it.  I didn’t own a video recorder at the time, so taping the episode wasn’t even an option for me.  There was nothing I could do.  That ship had sailed.  (In those days, TV series were not available for purchase, as DVDs were not developed until 1995.)  I heard about the episode after the fact, including intimations that the series finale was unsatisfying and bizarre, with a twist absolutely no one saw coming.

Life went on, and the disappointment at having missed the finale gradually faded.

In August of 2001, (that’s thirteen years later for those of you without access to a calculator or extra fingers), The Museum of Television and Radio held a screening in its Beverly Hills facility of the series finale of St. Elsewhere.  I read about it, rearranged my work schedule in order to attend, and on August 16, 2001, finally saw the final episode.

I was shocked.  There were characters I had completely forgotten.  Talking about things that made no sense since I had long forgotten the storylines that led up to the finale.  There were actors I had completely forgotten.  People I had watched and empathized with every week for five years, and then never saw subsequent to the series’ cancellation.  Some, (Denzel Washington, David Morse, Ed Begley, Jr., Mark Harmon,) remain in the public eye, but many of the actors apparently fell off the face of the earth.  The final scene, which I had long since read about, was indeed an odd twist, but without the context of everything that led up it, there was no way to know if it was satisfying or not.  The passage of time had dulled any element of surprise.

I should note here that I have a very good memory.  I am often quite shocked at just how good a memory I possess.  While channel surfing, I’ll see a few seconds of film, such as an image of boats in a bay basking in the sun, and know instantly the film is The Last of Sheila, which I have not seen since its release in 1973.  As the film continues it becomes apparent it is indeed The Last of Sheila.  Another example: the other day I typed the word “entrepreneur.”  As I typed it I thought, “I’ll have to run spell-check on this.”  When I did, it turned out I had spelled it correctly.  From memory.  I’m not even French.  And the one semester of French I took was decades ago.

As a result of similar instances recalling dates and other arcane trivia, I have, over time, learned to trust my memory.  This made the unfamiliarity of the episode all the more shocking.

I was glad I finally saw the episode, but as I walked out of the building onto Beverly Drive that Thursday afternoon, blinking in the sunlight, I was left with the odd feeling of having just returned from a trip in a time machine.  A trip that yielded the following insight.

You don’t want to travel back to the past, for the simple reason that it isn’t there.  There is no past to travel to, so give it up.  There are relics and reminders, but they are not the past.  For better or for worse, you are here in the present moment.  Deal with it.

As I put on my sunglasses and headed to my car, I was left with an unexpected lesson, a lesson more interesting and instructive than the insight above.

If a television series continues for years, it begins to resemble a human life: an often directionless, mutating mass of contradictory impulses, unmemorable because it lacks shape, structure and focus.

The more time a story tries to encompass, the more it dilutes its power.  For any story to linger in the mind, it has to be like a good song.  It must contain words chosen through a painstaking process of trial and error, it must possess a rhythm that constantly moves it forward, and it must be short enough in duration to have a discernable shape.

What I learned that day was this:

Even a really good TV show is completely forgettable.