St. Elsewhere’s Christmas Episode Perfectly Captured the Show’s Mix of Comedy...

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...and Drama

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We continue our look at some notable 1980s Christmas episodes by looking at St. Elsewhere's only Christmas episode, which captured the spirit of the series well with the title alone, "Santa is Dead."



We continue our look at some notable 1980s Christmas episodes by looking at St. Elsewhere’s only Christmas episode, which captured the spirit of the series well with the title alone, “Santa is Dead.”

St. Elsewhere was basically the medical equivalent of Hill Street Blues, the 1980s versions of “prestige dramas.” It was a heavily serialized show about a group of doctors at St. Eligius, a delipidated hospital known as “St. Elsewhere” because of how it wasn’t where you would want to send anyone if you cared about them.

The empathetic Dr. Donald Westphall was the Director of Medicine, and actor Ed Flanders was the first actor on the show to win a Best Lead Actor in a Drama Series Emmy, but then William Daniels’ take on the bigoted but brilliant Dr. Mark Craig became a bigger character on the series, and Daniels began winning the Lead Actor Emmy.

Norman Lloyd rounded out the three main veteran doctors on the show, Dr. Donald Auschlander, the Chief of Services at the hospital.

In this Christmas episode, Auschlander’s grandkids are at the hospital for a visit with Santa Claus, but the actor playing Santa Claus has a heart attack in front of the kids, and then dies.

St. Elsewhere was all about being offbeat, mixing dark stories with comedic ones. The cast was FILLED with famous actors, from Denzel Washington to Howie Mandel to David Morse to Ed Begley Jr. In this episode, Begley Jr’s Dr. Victor Ehrlich draws his colleagues’ ire by giving out “gifts” of a one dollar bill, while expecting actual presents in return. When he is called out for his behavior, he decides to prove his selflessness by taking extra good care of a woman who has to miss her flight home for Christmas for observation (in the end, she sneaks out against doctor’s orders to fly home).

Craig and his wife (played by Daniels’ real life wife, Bobbie Bartlett) had recently taken in his dead son’s baby daughter (the mother, like their son, was a drug addict, and she abandoned the baby, and then their son OD’ed), and they are giving her her first Christmas. Mark obviously is struggling heavily from the loss of his son, and he skips out on his annual Midnight Mass at their church.

Westphall and his college-aged daughter hosted her boyfriend for Christmas, and he was put off by the fact that they didn’t really do much FOR Christmas (but really, he was just missing his family, which had decided to go to Florida for a holiday). In the end, Westphall decides to join his family at the Midnight Mass. His autistic son, Tommy, happily embraced his dad (and yes, Tommy is the same character who we would later bizarrely learn that the series was all just a figment of his imagination in the final scene of the series).