Our exploration of long-running and/or otherwise significant series in medical dramas moves on to PART 3! 

The Good Doctor lasted 7 seasons – a total of 126 episodes– on ABC. Though a select few medical dramas (and comedies) have had longer runs (much longer!), TGD stands among a dozen or so since the early days of TV that reached the coveted Season 7 mark.

Click here to read about the earliest ones I covered in Part 1 of this State of the #Shea EXTRA (Medic, Dr. Kildare, Ben Casey).

Click here to find out about the shows covered in Part 2 (Marcus Welby, Medical Center, The Bold Ones, Emergency!)

In part 3 we move on to the progressions of the late 70s, 80s, and 90s! Let’s get started:

Knowing that “M.E.” stands for Medical Examiner means understanding the main thing that sets Quincy apart from others in the genre. For Dr. Quincy was a forensic pathologist– the doctor who examines people after they’ve died in hopes of determining a cause of death. So traditional hospital scenes were less frequent, while autopsies (and investigations about them) were the mainstay, bringing police into the story more often than fellow doctors. Consequently, Quincy was classified as a mystery medical drama.

But the series is better recognized as being the first to feature in-depth forensic investigations, which came to be the heart and soul of the CSI: Crime Scene Investigation series franchise, the NCIS series franchise, and numerous other detective series of the late 20th/early 21st century. It was also one of the first medical dramas to devote entire episodes to social issues with loose ties to medicine, including airline safety (brought to Dr. Quincy’s attention during a rescue mission), hazardous waste dumping, and upticks in handgun usage. Sometimes the subject matter took Dr. Quincy all the way to Washington D.C.; in one instance, his portrayer (Klugman) testified before U.S. Congress in real life on behalf of a topic covered on the show!

Here’s a clip of “Quincy” (his first name was never mentioned) doing what he did so well…getting himself in trouble while doing what he believed was right. In this case, “trouble” meant actual jail time:

Some TV dramas are “spinoffs” of other TV dramas (as The Good Lawyer would have been a spinoff of The Good Doctor, had it been picked up by ABC). Some TV sitcoms are “spinoffs” of other sitcoms, as Laverne & Shirley was of Happy Days. But in the late 70s, we also got two dramas starring former supporting characters of hit sitcoms. One was Lou Grant (born from The Mary Tyler Moore Show). The other was Trapper John, M.D. (from M*A*S*H).

If Trapper John was an unrecognizable spinoff to some, that’s because it took the relatively young character from the Korean War-era comedy and moved him to present-day (over 25 years later), where he was Chief of Surgery at San Francisco Memorial Hospital. Trapper bore many similarities to medical dramas before it in that the titular character was the experienced, father-figure type who wasn’t afraid to challenge the system for his patients’ sake. And he worked alongside Gonzo Gates, a younger doctor (and fellow veteran, having served in Vietnam) with a passion for life… and a shower scene included in the opening credits. (Yeah, that’s right, adolescent me remembered that part VERY well.)

Thanks to the influence of the widely-acclaimed cop drama Hill Street Blues in 1981, the medical drama genre followed suit one season later with St. Elsewhere (described early on as “Hill Street Blues in a hospital.”)

MTM Enterprises produced both series, and both introduced “gritty realism” to TV by way of more handheld cameras, tighter shots, and quicker-paced editing With St. Elsewhere, the “grit” was enhanced by the dilapidated St. Eligius hospital itself (set in Boston’s South End).

In its 1988 finale, St. Elsewhere also created one of the most talked-about final moments of any TV series to that point…

This was widely interpreted to mean the entire world of St. Eligius that viewers had come to know over those 6 years was created via the imagination of a non-verbal autistic boy. It was a mind-blowing twist at a time when series finale “shockers” were few and far between– and for TGD fans, perhaps an intriguing look at the way autism representation on TV has evolved since then. 

(If you watch the entire clip above, you’ll see how Mimsie the Cat (a.k.a. the MTM Enterprises mascot) gets involved in the show’s demise… which is sad all by itself!)

In September 1994, two medical dramas were set to premiere in prime time. One was thought to become a breakout hit. The other one was ER.

In fact, CBS’ Chicago Hope (starring veteran actors Mandy Patinkin, Hector Elizando, and Adam Arkin) was initially scheduled for Thursday nights in head-to-head competition with NBC’s ER (featuring a lesser-known cast, including some guy named George Clooney…?). But Hope drew 11.2 million viewers that first year, while ER came away with just over 30 million. 

As mentioned above, ER was a monster hit that had a 15 season run. In fact, the only TV medical drama to last longer is Grey’s Anatomy (20 seasons and counting). I’ve refrained from writing about those two, along with M*A*S*H (11 seasons), Scrubs (9 seasons), and maybe a couple others, primarily because they were such anomalies in the genre of medical drama. But if you’d like me to write a post about them for this “EXTRA” collection, please leave a comment saying so! If there’s enough interest I may change my mind! 

In any case… thanks for taking this detour through TV history with me!