For a constant stream of entertainment news and discussion, follow HuffPost Entertainment on Viber. And Howie got so mad, because I got paid for a full episode, and all I had to do was lie on a slab for five seconds. Paltrow noted that the shows bleak vision was deliberate. English version of Russian proverb "The hedgehogs got pricked, cried, but continued to eat the cactus". I said at the time we were shooting, This is a cheat. For me, it was a cheat. Elsewhere, including all its characters, are revealed to have been the dream of a minor character named Tommy Westphall, an autistic boy who possesses a snow globe containing a replica of the hospital where the series took place. He sits there, all day long, in his own world, staring at that toy. St. Elsewhere., It was as far as they could go, he said. For instance, it may be the other way around, and the snow globe scene may itself be the dream. Where things get complicated is that characters from St. The notion that appearances by the same character in two or more series tie those series together in the same fictional universe is also problematic. Elsewhere truly shook things up 2023 Minute Media - All Rights Reserved. Illustration by HuffPost's Alissa Scheller. This 40-year-old show looks like that nurses job in that ER, and the characters coping mechanisms and responses to trauma may be dramatized, but they arent implausible. The ending has become an infamous example of the "it was all a dream" conclusion that's appeared in dozens of movies and TV shows over the years. The Westphall universe just keeps expanding out in that manner from there, getting bigger and bigger in the same way as a snowball rolling downhill, which is appropriate considering Tommy's snow globe. If it were just a solid hospital show, it would be a popular back catalog binge watch, but its a part of TV history for two reasons: its novel approach to the hospital drama, and, Nobody is too interested in that, though. John Munch). It only takes a minute to sign up. Elsewhere characters Dr. Roxanne Turner (Alfre Woodard) and Dr. Victor Ehrlich (Ed Begley Jr.) appeared on Homicide: Life on the Street. The one where EW follows up with the cast. We're often considered and thought of as robot-like people who have no emotions and who only see other people as objects. --Tom Fontana, former producer, St. Gow and Crowe have an elaborate system of rules for what shows can and can't be included in the list, which they shared with HuffPost and can now be seen on their site's latest update. When NBC refused to finance their ambitious plan, the idea for the snow globe was hatched. Westphall sits down next to Tommy and says, "I don't understand this autism thing, Pop. There are no villains in this piece. Other people didnt care for it at all. Elsewhere--a derisive nickname for the aging South Boston medical facility--was never healthy in the ratings. Elsewhere was a solid drama that gave a boatload of great actors some steady work for a few years, but it will always be a peculiar show for that final detail. It made me laugh actually because it just is so like those guys. Elsewhere was a show that got by largely on the strength of its ensemble, running for six seasons from 1982-88. Most of us failed. St. I really had very little to say about that episode because I thought it was a letdown. In that episode, the entirety of St. How Palm Springs ran out Black and Latino families to build a fantasy for rich, white people, 17 SoCal hiking trails that are blooming with wildflowers (but probably not for long! Therefore, appearances from St. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top, Not the answer you're looking for? Tommy runs to see the snow falling outside the window, and that's when everything changes. It's not every day we see Plucky Comic Relief commit suicide. Can my creature spell be countered if I cast a split second spell after it? Christina Pickles, whose character of Nurse Helen Rosenthal ended the series triumphantly by kicking a drug dependency, is the only one who believes that St. Elsewhere carries a shocking implication NBC St. Executive producer Bruce Paltrow explained that the show cost MTM more to produce than what NBC paid to broadcast it--which is common--but that because the outlook for recouping those deficits through syndicated reruns is so bleak, the company didnt consider another year of expenditures worth its while. CYNTHIA SIKES (Dr. Annie Cavanero): Part of me likes that whole thing because its sort of an Orson Welles-ian Rosebud [ending]. Because a lot of autistic children are withdrawn, it seems as though they're in their own world. Birth! Movies & TV Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for movie and TV enthusiasts. The thing Im proudest of is the overall balance of the comedy to the drama; the counterpoint of that really grew and grew.. MARK HARMON (Dr. Robert Caldwell): I didnt see it live. Much of the humor between characters is gallows humor. Meme Status Submission Year 1988 Origin St. Like St. Eligius itself, St. In the final scene of the series, the camera widens out from St. Eligius, until it becomes clear the hospital is a model inside a snow globe being shaken by Tommy as he plays on the floor of a small apartment. Elsewhere,' It's Goodbye (or Is It?) This ending was not serious to me. I felt it wasnt serious. The complete list of shows is at the bottom of the article. Michael Kennedy is an avid movie and TV fan that's been working for Screen Rant in various capacities since 2014. Dedicated fans attempting to chase down every connection toSt. Elsewhere by the residents and the surrounding community, the place has a reputation as a rathole. "The theory doesn't really depend on Tommy Westphall, but he's a good hook," Gow says. Elsewhere very often in your life. And they figured out a way: Okay, we wont have any reunions, nothing like that. In the door comes Dr. Westphall, but he hangs up a construction workers hat. This is because it's pretty easy to connectSt. A clip of the original credits from the series finale, with Mimsie the Cat on life support. Elsewhere links to Doctor Who [PDF], hypothetically rendering the TARDIS a figment of Tommys imagination: Donald Westphall and two other doctors visited Sam Malones bar from Cheers; That would surely lead to spreadsheets the size of walls: Weyland-Yutani is the company behind the machinations of the Alien franchise. If Cheers is not real, then is Trebek? The kind of gallows humor that was in the show was a case of art imitating life, Paltrow continued. In the last episode's final two scenes, Donald Westphall having just returned to St. Eligius is shown in Dr. Auschlander's office pondering the recent death from stroke of his colleague and mentor. Elsewhere cast reunion: It was a show that changed television, 'St. Elsewhere" that the whole show had been in the character Westphall's dream. EW gathered a dozen members of the cast for a photo shoot and asked them to reflect on the years they spent making this provocative, eccentric, beloved show, which you can check out in our third-annual Reunions Issue. The theory is called the "The Tommy Westphall Universe" and hinges on a reveal at the finale of "St. Suddenly, we're taken to a small apartment where Tommy sits on the floor, playing with a snow globe. They always tried to be out there, beyond the limits of what was being done before. Westphall, who is autistic, played an increased role in St. The best music, movies, TV, books, comedy and more. Elsewhere, by only a few degrees, to a startling number of TV shows and movies. Through crossovers, spinoffs, cameos, or fictional brands or products appearing in more than one show, everything from Brooklyn Nine Nine and Law & Order to Everybody Hates Chris and Dr. Who were arguably all dreamed up by young Tommy. But I thought it was wonderful. Web359. Walter White and Rachel Green are no longer just characters in your pop culture-themed fantasy game of Clue, they're characters that could have bumped into each other on the street. Review/Television; Ed Flanders as Dr. Westphal in, "Six Objections to the Westphall Hypothesis", "Director Ben Wheatley Talks 'High-Rise', 'Doctor Who', 'Free Fire' and More at TIFF", "NewsRadio (TV Series) Daydream (1996) Trivia", Other arguments against the Tommy Westphall Universe, Association for Science in Autism Treatment, Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative, Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee, Maia Chung Autism and Disabilities Foundation (Jamaica), The Accidental Teacher: Life Lessons from My Silent Son, Aspergirls: Empowering Females with Asperger's Syndrome, Freaks, Geeks, and Asperger Syndrome: A User Guide to Adolescence, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Everybody Is Different: A Book for Young People Who Have Brothers or Sisters With Autism, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tommy_Westphall&oldid=1148529078, Fictional characters on the autism spectrum, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 6 April 2023, at 18:38. Elsewhere had been a product of Tommy Westphall's (an autistic boy) imagination, with elements of the above scene used as its own evidence. Through it all, time skips are marked off by a digital clock readout in the corner, and its the lightest touch that makes a world of difference in how the show goes over, marking the endless grind the characters face in tangible hours and minutes. Somehow, a literal airplane has crashed into the hospital. Elsewhere finale wasn't infamous enough with its twist ending, the closing bumper made for the finale showed Mimsie, the logo cat, unconscious and hooked up to an IV, Browse other questions tagged, Start here for a quick overview of the site, Detailed answers to any questions you might have, Discuss the workings and policies of this site. Elsewhere" that the whole show had been in the character This is more interesting than interrogating the deeper philosophical or metaphorical meaning behind the very last scene of a six-season show! Its simultaneously a lot of what I find fun about the inside baseball or meta commentary on TV, and also most of what I hate about it. A surprise to everybody. In an interview withPaley Matters in 2018, Fontana who co-wrote the finale expressed his ongoing surprise and weird sense of pride at how that final scene has, well, snowballed into the mother of all pop culture fan theories. The thing is, autism was - and still is - Official crossovers between the "St. Elsewhere take place within Tommy's mind, but so do numerous other television series which are directly and indirectly connected to St. Elsewhere, he was openly hostile toward any idea of a reunion special down the line and insisted that the series finale should be definitive. Partnering with The Huffington Post, Gow and Crowe published an extensive update of the "Tommyverse" to their television web of compromised shows, which HuffPost illustrator, Alissa Scheller, put into visual form. I think other people will find it puzzling, odd, maybe unfulfilling in some way.. You can barely please half the people most of the time. I think there was a period when last rites were being performed when we could have rallied, he said, his tone clinically matter-of-fact. I had no ideas of their plans to do that. And I'm beat. Elsewhere" -- the notion of which is a hated cliche, yes, but could it be the reality of almost every story arc you've ever loved on American television? The Marvel Cinematic Universe might seem like a huge landscape of interconnected shows and TV movies, but the Tommy Westphall universe has it beat. Just some of the other series that have ended up connected as part of the Tommy Westphall universe include Community, Seinfeld, Person of Interest, Malcolm in the Middle, and Married with Children. The whole circus is overseen by Dr. Donald Westphall (Ed Flanders), with Dr. Daniel Auschlander (Norman Lloyd) and Dr. Mark Craig (Daniels) rounding out the experienced older set of doctors helping the residents learn the ropes. Characters from Homicide crossed over with multiple series, including The X-Files, Law & Order, The Wire and Arrested Development, with Richard Belzer's John Munch being the most frequent culprit. Surely more shows have somehow become connected in the four years since, especially since the Crisis on Infinite Earths Arrowverse crossover included characters from nearly every DC movie and TV continuity ever. What are the advantages of running a power tool on 240 V vs 120 V? Here's my son, I talk to him, I don't even know if he can hear me. The original decision to include fictional product crossovers actually comes from the origins of the chart itself. This is not likely the case (I'm not going to search for links to autism websites for this answer), but for writers looking for some weird ending for their show (other than "it was all a dream"), the idea of a child imagining the world of St. They tried to really think outside the box the box in this case being that little television box of the 80s and they did something so different. Why does the husband leave the family in The Others? was a show that got by largely on the strength of its ensemble, running for six seasons from 1982-88. It was certainly something no other network would put up with. Who is Bruce and does he have a real-world counterpart? The series sported a large ensemble cast, with veteran actors Ed Flanders and Norman Lloyd anchoring the proceedings for most of its run as Dr. Donald Westphall and Dr. Daniel Auschlander, respectively, and it made household names of up-and-comers like Howie Mandel, Mark Harmon, and Denzel Washington, as well. Please feel free to submit articles to enhance the knowledge, acceptance, understanding and research of Autism and ASD. HOWIE MANDEL (Dr. Wayne Fiscus): I thought it was realllllllly interesting. After the "Fansville" characters exchange meta-humorous existential comments, the camera pans out to show that the characters in fact exist in a snowglobe sitting on Larry Culpepper's desk. Mandels character, though, gets the easiest metaphor of the episode. The full list includes 419 shows as of 2016, the last time the curators of the Westphall theory updated its website. WebTommy Westphall, portrayed by Chad Allen, is a minor character from the drama television series St. St elsewhere ending theory. As Gow told HuffPost, "St. [3][1], The foremost interpretation of this scene is that the entire series of events in St. Often, characters crossing over on the same network can ignite a connection, with shared brands or locations providing the connective tissue for others. It's safe to say that the final episode, specifically the end scene, of St. The doctors had visited the bar on Cheers in one St. characters got the business from Carla while drinking at Cheers, the bar from, uh, , a spinoff, must also exist somewhere in that snow globe. Via Wikipedia: The most common interpretation of this scene is that the entire series of events in the series St. wouldnt exist in the form they did without. "I prefer character connections, myself," Gow says. Gow said, "I've heard from TV writers who deliberately put in references to draw their shows into Tommy's mind. Since Dr. Turner and Dr. Ehrlich are figments of Tommys imagination that means when they visit the Homicide universe, that it too is part of Tommys world. I think it can happen. "That really solidifies things. CLARIFICATION: This article originally included a quote that incorrectly stated all of the non-American shows in the list. According toMental Floss,that series once mentioned a firm called Yoyodyne, which also was a client of a fictional law firm Wolfram and Hart, which appeared in theBuffy the Vampire Slayer spin-offAngel. We all knew that whenever you do the last episode of any series, the last chapter of any story like that, youre never going to come up with an ending that will satisfy everybody. Elsewhere, NBCs darkly comic series about a financially strapped Boston hospital and its beleaguered staff, is dead. Elsewhere. Elsewhere; by extension this hypothesis can be extended to include the science fiction program The X-Files and the Law & Order franchise (due to various crossovers with characters from Homicide, in particular Det. Both shows took a grittier and more realistic approach to their drama. According to the duo's notes, the only other non-US shows in the "Tommyverse" are "The 'Degrassi' shows (Canada), 'The Office' (UK), the 'Doctor Who' shows (UK), 'Luther' (UK), 'Jo' (France) and 'Paris Section Criminelle' (France)," which "is the only show not in English in the Tommyverse.". Learn more about Stack Overflow the company, and our products. In a way that actually sucks most of contemporary-set American scripted TV into the inside of a snow globe? The attitude was, Nothing can get us down, as bad as it is. And it was bad all the time.. So what happens when an ending goes completely off the rails? The Birdman of St. Making a splash: A deep dive into the live-action Little Mermaid with a new generation's Ariel. (Quizzed by IndieWire in 2012 as to who exactly came up with the idea, neither Fontana nor co-writers Channing Gibson or John Tinker could remember. Elsewhere characters Dr. Roxanne Turner and Dr. Victor Ehrlich appear on Homicide: Life on the Street. Kenneth Lowe is a regular contributor to Paste TV. Entertainment Weekly is a registered trademark of Meredith Corporation All Rights Reserved. Although you may have never noticed the connection, there's a compelling case that "Friends," "Breaking Bad," "Seinfeld," "I Love Lucy" and just about every other popular American television show exist within the same universe. It was not right for us to say, You should lose more money. . were arguably all dreamed up by young Tommy. The commercial titled "Off Season" features the cast of the mock sitcom "Fansville" discussing their purpose after the conclusion of the college football season. Its just too big a leap. In the moments before hes expected to announce the fate of the hospital, Auschlander suffers a catastrophic stroke off-screen and is discovered dead, with the cast gathering for a mournful goodbye. ", Tommy, who is shaking a snow globe,[5] is told by his father to come and wash his hands. But the series managed to survive for six years on a powerful drug called demographics: The show attracted a relatively small but highly desirable audience of young, affluent viewers, and that in turn attracted plenty of advertising dollars to NBC. Also, consider that each connection fromSt. Part of HuffPost Entertainment. It wasnt darker than reality, he said. And Ed Flanders, who portrayed Dr. Donald Westphall, made his last appearance before leaving the regular cast early this season (he returns in the final episode) by mooning the camera. Elsewhere signed off after six seasons on May 25, 1988, more than a few viewers were saddened. St. And most of the connections on the grid are characters, even though something like Morley cigarettes (a fictional brand) has a lot of individual connections, they just add to the connective tissue in certain ways. Wolfram and Hart had another client, Weyland-Yutani, that made a weapons display screen for Firefly;

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