While Sylvia and I were watching The Pitt a couple of weeks ago, a demented idea popped into my head.
Imagine an emergency room doctor who never learned how to be dispassionate, how to remain composed and professional when faced with the daily horrors of the ER. This hypothetical doctor can hold his emotions in check for the first few minutes of diagnosis and treatment, but then he breaks down in tears and has to complete his work while sobbing brokenly, whether he's treating a broken toe or a mortal gunshot wound.
In a real-world setting, I would expect that such a doctor would be eventually dismissed for his effect on morale--both patient morale and the morale of everyone else in the ER.
But imagine further that this emotional doctor also happens to be a preternaturally gifted genius who saves people in even the most desperate medical circumstances. Time after time, he saves patients that no one else could have saved. Once, his colleagues called him Doctor, Empathy, M.D., with the M.D. standing for "Mucho Depressing" instead of "Medical Doctor." But now, they see him with a mixture of bewilderment and awe, calling him "Master Diagnostician," "Master of Disease," or "Medically Divine." His colleagues can find Doctor Empathy exasperating, but they can see the value of his work, so they devote themselves through getting Doctor Empathy through each shift with his--and their--sanity intact.
I think this might make a pretty good dramedy.
It reads better than it lives.
ReplyDeleteOK, more to this, if you read back to any posts on your blog. I've mentioned this before: you're really just coming back to M*A*S*H, arguably the best medical show ever on television, and perhaps just one of the best shows period. I recommend the unedited episodes minus the laugh track: the show plays much, much better that way. The network had a way of butchering television, especially if the show was heading into syndication. Even so, M*A*S*H was clumsy by today's standards in dealing with issues like racism, sexism, nationalism, and gender identity, but they pioneered in placing these issues in front of the prime time TV audience.
ReplyDeleteA key factor was the mental health of Dr. Hawkeye Pierce. M*A*S*H established what is well-known in real life but not on television: that all doctors and nurses carry a lot of emotional baggage. Hawkeye in the initial episode is clearly insane. He is a talented young surgeon who lacks the mental strength to operate in a war zone. While M*A*S*H generally never depicts graphic wartime violence, it is inferred through the bizarre antics of Dr. Pierce and his reaction to the world around him.
When the ongoing war ensures that there will be no resolution to Hawkeye's mental instability and the show appears headed for syndication, Dr. Pierce's personality is adjusted so that he becomes an alcoholic womanizer, traits that can easily be allowed to continue for several seasons. The rest of the cast is coerced into stabilizing Hawkeye's dominant character arc.
There is an interesting podcast with Alan Alda where he addresses this. From the beginning, he established himself as the star of M*A*S*H. For most of the run, he positioned himself to be the show's most indispensable player (trivia: Jamie Farr's Max Klinger has the most scenes in M*A*S*H!). Only towards the end did Mr. Alda come to recognize the strength of a true ensemble cast.
At this point, M*A*S*H returns to its starting point: allowing Hawkeye to succumb to the madness of war and go insane again. This time, the cast is in a better position to support Hawkeye/Alda. We are given Dr. Sidney Freedman as a guide into Hawkeye's state of mind: his role is to cure Hawkeye as well as to illuminate for the audience Hawkeye's deranged state of mind. This is powerful television, and predictive of other great series to follow.
M*A*S*H leaves an indelible mark on its audience and cast, and especially Alan Alda. His podcast "Clear And Vivid" goes into great detail on what he has learned about the value of human communication and empathy, often in relation to the fields of medicine and acting - two professions that are closer in nature that one would think. Alan Alda today is neither the egotist he was in the early seasons of M*A*S*H nor the broken doctor that Hawkeye eventually becomes. Instead, he is able to distill the wisdom from all of that, the fictional and the real, to present (there's no other way to put this) a clear and vivid picture of what a fully human, conscientious, and nonjudgemental person should be.