White's Wounded Women

Some of St. Elsewhere's Season Three Players.
Fans of Babylon 5 might recognize Stephen Furst in the middle. 

I guess you could say that Doctor Peter White's story began with some whimpering, and ended with a bang. A couple of days ago, I wrote about my amazement regarding the character's dark turn, and how I wondered how the writers could possibly bring him back for a third season. 

They found a way. White is a deeply troubling foil for the first third of the season, shoving his verdict of innocence in the faces of his colleagues while continuing to brazenly rape women--including a second attack on one of his prior victims, who winds up deeply psychologically damaged on top of her physical trauma (and little wonder). 

Three of White's victims: Nurse Shirley Daniels (driven to murder), Doctor Wendy Armstrong (victim of attempted rape, assaulted, driven to suicide), and Doctor Cathy Martin (raped and assaulted twice, driven to madness. Also, Ed Begley Jr.

Having White parading around St. Eligius as if he wasn't a violent rapist gets to be too much for Nurse Shirley Daniels (Ellen Bry), who steals a weapon from a police officer in the ER, hunts white down, and shoots him. White survives for a couple of hours, but ties before he can name is killer. It doesn't matter, because while it took forever for the police to arrest White for his crimes, poor Nurse Daniels is caught within hours. Hmmmm. 

The whole arc has, thus far, shone a lot of light--maybe accidentally, maybe not--on how women are treated at home, in the workplace, and in fiction. Wendy Armstrong (Kim Miyori) lasted only a season and a half on St. Elsewhere, and I can only think of one episode in which she was the focus and got a win--a "win" defined as a moment of respect from the male doctors. Even worse, Cathy Martin (Barbara Whinnery) was written from the beginning as a flighty, promiscuous eccentric--part of the reason her testimony is dismissed by the jury. The show neglected Armstrong and killed her off--without much real buildup or even proper connection to her frustration with White's trial or her assault. It just felt like the writers didn't know what to do with her. But Martin fares even worse, treated as comic relief for most of her appearances, then as a victim--twice--and then to madness. (She might recover; I haven't watched the whole series yet.) And the formerly level-headed Nurse Daniels becomes erratic enough to take revenge on White, resorting to a murder that she surely knows she can't get away with. She also confesses to a crush on Doctor Jack Morrison (David Morse), without any hint of having those feelings in previous episodes. One of the episodes I watched tonight culimates with Nurse Daniels being captured by the police, so I assume that she'll be written out shortly, as well. 

David Morse as Doctor Jack Morrison

The somewhat hapless Jack Morrison has, all the while, stuck by his friend, Peter White, despite everyone else at the hospital believing White to be responsible for the attacks. At one point, White asks Morrison "Why do you believe me?" Jack says something like "Because you told me you didn't do it, and that's good enough for me." He believes his male friend, but not the multiple women colleagues who were victimized. This really puts a dark stain on Jack's character, who I really want to like because he's the most compassionate doctor of the bunch. But wow, his reaction here is completely tone-deaf, and he seems to be confident in it even after White is shot! (Morse is a superb actor, by the way; I still remember him as a police officer blinded in the line of duty in Homicide: Life on the Streets.)

Eric Laneuville as Luther Hawkins, a character carried over from The White Shadow. 

To be fair to Jack, in the last episode I watched tonight, "Sweet Dreams," it appears as though Jack does indeed have doubts. Jack, Dr. Victor Ehrlich (Ed Begley Jr.), and orderly Luther Hawkins (Eric Laneuville) are all involved in a dream study. Ehrlich, true to his character, dreams of being stranded on a tropical island with beautiful warrior women who sentence him to death by, er, snu-snu. Hawkins' dream is a wonderful spoof of the ZZ Top music video for "Legs," complete with the music track, several members of the cast dressed as the band and sexy models, and the ZZ Top roadster famous from the video. 

Jack, on the other hand, has a terrible nightmare about Peter White. Only in the dream do Jack's doubts materialize, and though he asks "Who killed you?" (White says "That's classified"), he does not ask "Did you do it?" 

But he doesn't need to, because the dream shows that he knows the answer is "yes" and hasn't been able to accept it. White bids Jack farewell, then puts on his ski mask and laughs manically, mocking Jack for his unearned trust. It's a very chilling sequence, and redeems Jack a tiny bit. I hope he apologizes to the women he dismissed.