St. Elsewhere/Characters

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Staff

Dr. Donald Westphall (Ed Flanders)

Chief of Medicine of St. Eligius, widower and father of Elizabeth and Tommy.

• Dark and Troubled Past: Survived an apartment fire that killed most of his family when he was six years old.
• A Father to His Men
• Reasonable Authority Figure
• Southies: Westphall grew up in South Boston.
• Tranquil Fury: After Peter White is found not guilty for rape, Westphall makes him aware that he not only is disappointed in him, but now has has no respect and utter contempt for him as a human being.
• Verbal Tic: Has a tendency to address people as "pal" or "lady".

Dr. Ben Samuels (David Birney)

• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome

Dr. Daniel Auschlander (Norman Lloyd)

• Cool Old Guy

Dr. Mark Craig (William Daniels)

Chief of Surgery at St. Eligius.

• Badass Mustache
• Break the Haughty
• Catch Phrase: "Oh, for crying out loud!"
• Dr. Jerk: Especially earlier in the series. In the second episode, after saving a man's life with a bypass operation, he comments to the patient's young, chubby son that his son's a doctor, and that maybe the younger Craig will operate on him someday.
• Good Is Not Nice: Type 2/Type 4. He is very blunt to the point of rudeness. He is impatient, fussy, and arrogant. What drives him, though, is a deep conviction in the preciousness of life, and he will not tolerate any less of others than he does himself.

Dr. Hugh Beale (G. W. Bailey)

• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome
• Deep South
• The Shrink

Dr. Victor Ehrlich (Ed Begley Jr.)

• Character Development: Matures both as a doctor and as a person to the point where he is Happily Married with Nurse Lucy Papandrao.
• Dr. Jerk: A much milder case than Dr. Craig, though.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: A non-sexual example: he is at least a foot taller than his fellow surgical intern Jackie Wade.
• No Social Skills
• Phrase Catcher: Particularly through season 2, where every major character utters a variant of "You're a pig, Ehrlich."

Dr. Peter White (Terence Knox)

• Drugs Are Bad
• Face Heel Turn
• Sanity Slippage

Dr. Wayne Fiscus (Howie Mandel)

• Big Applesauce
• Looking for Love In All the Wrong Places
• Manly Tears: When he, Shirley Daniels and Jackie Wade can't revive Wendy Armstrong after her suicide attempt.
  • Also happens right after he wakes up for the first time after being shot. When he sees his surgical scar on his chest, he weeps.

Dr. Jack Morrison (David Morse)

• Butt Monkey
• Designated Victim: Starting in Season 2, something bad would usually happen to Morrison.
  • Season 2: His wife Nina dies after slipping and hitting her head in the bathroom. He is cut from the residency program. Is only reinstated because a slot opened up after Wendy Armstrong's suicide.
  • Season 3: Faces the end of his career over a Worthless Foreign Degree
  • Season 4: Injures himself while running to make rounds and slipping on vomit. Son Pete is kidnapped. Raped while doing a Westphall-mandated community outreach service in a local prison.
  • Season 5: Suffers from PTSD as a result of his rape. His attacker escapes from prison and stalks his family. Son Pete inadvertently shoots his attacker dead.
  • Season 6: Second wife Joanne moves back to Seattle after her first husband sues for custody following the death of Morrison's attacker.
• Trauma Conga Line: And how.
• Worthless Foreign Degree: In the pilot episode, Morrison tells a patient that he had to go to medical school in Mexico because his grades were not good enough for American universities. In Season 3, it is revealed that the school was a shady "accelerated" program that counted experience instead of giving a full medical training, and Morrison has to fight to keep his job.

Nurse Helen Rosenthal (Christina Pickles)

• Drugs Are Bad
• Your Cheating Heart: Her fourth husband leaves her in Season 3 because of her affair with Richard Clarendon, the union negotiator. Apparently, this happens so often that four of her five children aren't particularly fazed by it.

Dr. Vijay Kochar (Kavi Raz)

• Demoted to Extra: Was a regular during Season 1 and 2, only billed as a guest star thereafter.

Dr. Annie Cavanero (Cynthia Sikes)

• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome
• Married to the Job

Dr. Philip Chandler (Denzel Washington)

• Dead Big Brother: Older brother Russ was killed in the Vietnam war, and when he died, his career path was inherited by a reluctant Phil.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Chandler's main motivation for getting into medicine was to please his father.
• Written-In Absence: Was off in Missouri for training when Denzel Washington was filming a movie.

Nurse Shirley Daniels (Ellen Bry)

• Ax Crazy: After being released on bail before her trial, Shirley exhibits no remorse for murdering Peter White in cold blood. On her first shift back in the ER, she pulls a gun out on a patient and refers to him as "Peter".
• The Bus Came Back
• Hypercompetent Sidekick

Dr. Wendy Armstrong (Kim Miyori)

• Driven to Suicide
• Killed Off for Real

Dr. Cathy Martin (Barbara Whinnery)

Pathology resident

• Broken Bird: Especially after being raped. Twice.
• Bunny Ears Lawyer: It is revealed in "Rough Cut" that she had the highest score out of the first-year residents' board certification exams.
• Cloudcuckoolander: At one point, after Ehrlich comments "Is there an echo in here", she says "I don't know. Is there? Hello?"
• Creepy Mortician: A mild case.

Dr. Jacqueline Wade (Sagan Lewis)

Mature and capable surgical resident from Lewiston, ME.

• Ascended Extra: Has one line in the pilot during a grand rounds scene, then becomes a Recurring Character later in the season. She gets her Promotion to Opening Titles in Season 6.
• Deadpan Snarker
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Fellow residents Victor Ehrlich and Jack Morrison tower at least a foot over her.
• Married to the Job: Wade's eleven-year marriage ends in season five, as the long hours of her residency leave husband Robert to seek affection from a younger woman.
• Only Child Syndrome
• Plucky Girl

Nurse Lucy Papandrao (Jennifer Savidge)

• Ascended Extra: Goes from an uncredited Bit Character in the pilot to a more prominent Recurring Character in Season 3, then a Promotion to Opening Titles in Season 6.

Luther Hawkins (Eric Laneuville)

• Orderlies Are Creeps: Averted. Luther is the one person any doctor, nurse or patient would be glad to have around.
• Uncle Tomfoolery

Dr. Robert Caldwell (Mark Harmon)

• Byronic Hero: Particularly during Season 4, when his impulsive and reckless side comes to the surface.
• Porn Stache: In the first half of Season 2, Mark Harmon had a very thick mustache. He gets rid of it in the episode "A Pig Too Far", but not before walking around with it half-shaved off.

Dr. Eliot Axelrod (Stephen Furst)

• Adorkable
• Big Eater: One small arc in Season 4 has Eliot and his girlfriend go on a diet. She does better than he does.
• Killed Off for Real

Dr. Michael Ridley (Paul Sand)

• The Shrink

Dr. Simon Weiss (Philip Sterling)

• The Shrink: The longest lasting psychiatrist character, although less prominent than Beale or Ridley.

Warren Coolidge (Byron Stewart)

• Gentle Giant: At 6' 8", he towers over patients and doctors. Used to moving effect in "Weigh In, Weigh Out", where he fulfills a dying man's request to be rocked like a baby.

Dr. Seth Griffin (Bruce Greenwood)

• Smug Snake: Griffin at least started out this way, particularly when he tried to pit fellow first year residents Carol Novino and Susan Birch against each other. Birch ends up taking the fall for a patient death for which Griffin was responsible and is kicked out of the residency program.

Dr. John Gideon (Ronny Cox)

• Bad Boss

Patients

Florence Hufnagel (Florence Halop)

• Jerkass: Mrs. Hufnagel gets passed around from doctor to doctor because of this. Even kindly Dr. Westphall pawns her off on Dr. Craig.
• Screw Politeness, I'm a Senior!
• Shout-Out: At one point, she mentioned she and her husband used to have a diner together, Flo & Eddie's.

Outsiders

Elizabeth "Lizzie" Westphall (Dana Short)

• The Caretaker: She is this for her autistic brother Tommy, to the point where she feels guilty for going to Vassar and ends up transferring to a local school.
• Dead Girl Junior: Named for Dr. Westphall's mother, who died in a fire when he was young.

Tommy Westphall (Chad Allen)

• Dead Guy, Junior: Named for Dr. Westphall's late father Thomas.
• Verbal Tic: Due to his autism, he always refers to himself in the third person and in very simple, broken phrases ("Tommy want cereal", "Tommy go now").

Jeff Rosenthal (Ian Fried)

• Mouthy Kid: At one point, he calls Santa Claus an "old fairy" to his face.