My father and I went to see the new film adaptation of "Murder on the Orient Express" the other day.
It was appropriate that we did. My parents were avid readers of Agatha Christie's books, just as I am today, and I remember watching the 1974 movie adaptation of the story with them. I loved the cast; it was truly a star–studded show — Albert Finney, Ingrid Bergman, Lauren Bacall, Anthony Perkins, Sean Connery, John Gielgud, the list went on and on. A real blockbuster.
But there was some impressive talent in the remake, too — Kenneth Branagh, Judi Dench, Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Willem Dafoe.
I asked Dad if he liked it, and he said he did. But he noted the same differences between the movies — as well as similarities — that I did — some noteworthy, some not so much.
We were both glad that Branagh, who directed the movie and played Christie's Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, didn't do an exact remake of the first movie — even though the first movie stayed pretty close to the original book while the 2017 version freely admitted in its credits that it was "based" on Christie's book.
Even the parts of the films that were essentially the same were presented differently. In general I could live with that, but the heart of the story was the kidnapping and murder inspired by the real–life abduction and murder of Charles Lindbergh's young son, and that seemed to get the short end of the stick in the remake. At least compared with the '74 adaptation.
We agreed that the 2017 adaptation was superior to the 1974 version in its technologically aided production. It's a good thing the acting in the '74 adaptation was so impressive because the '74 movie could never stand up to the new one on technical merits.
The cinematography in both movies was superb. How could it not be with all those picturesque scenes — in the snow?
But the big problem for the latest incarnation of this classic Agatha Christie tale is exactly that — the story itself. Or, rather, the adaptation of '74. Most folks have already heard about the original — and they know about the unusual twist ending.
So it is somewhat anticlimactic when the solution is revealed at the end of the movie.
Besides that, though, the acting was just so good and the '74 movie itself was just so memorable that the new adaptation simply couldn't compete.
I'm sure that those viewers who had no previous exposure to the earlier adaptation found the latest one to be a much more impressive movie than I did.
Not that I am saying that this adaptation was bad. I'm not saying anything like that.
I just think the '74 adaptation was better ... but I preferred the mustache on Branagh's Poirot.
"My looks are my comic equipment, and they are the right packaging for my job."
Marty Feldman
As hard as it is for me to believe, it was 35 years ago today that Marty Feldman died of a heart attack in Mexico City.
He was 48 years old.
I was deeply saddened when he died. It was no secret that Feldman had health issues — he suffered from thyroid disease and developed Graves' ophthalmopathy, causing his eyes to bulge, among other things — but Mel Brooks, who directed two movies in which Feldman appeared ("Young Frankenstein" and "Silent Movie"), apparently had a pretty good idea why Feldman died so young.
"He smoked sometimes half a carton of cigarettes daily," Brooks said, "drank copious amounts of black coffee and ate a diet rich in eggs and dairy products."
Feldman was a unique comedic talent, and, yes, he was right when he said his looks were his equipment. His bug–eyed look was a huge part of his appeal. It is impossible to overestimate the value of his looks to his vocation.
Somehow I think he still would have been funny with more normal eyes.
But without those bug eyes would it have been as funny when Gene Wilder said, "Damn your eyes!" in "Young Frankenstein," and Feldman replied, "Too late"?
I seriously doubt it.
I know that, if he had lived, Feldman would be in his 80s now and almost certainly retired. But we sure could have used his sense of humor in as many of the last 35 years as the fates would allow.
"You'll have bad times, but it'll always wake you up to the good stuff you weren't paying attention to."
Sean (Robin Williams)
If you judge solely on the basis of Academy Award nominations and/or wins, "Good Will Hunting," which premiered on this day in 1997, was Robin Williams' best movie.
It may well have been.
When Williams died, I visited Facebook and all my friends were sharing the titles of their favorite Robin Williams movies. And they were all great choices, too. Everyone has a different fave, and it is a tribute to Williams' remarkable talent that so many of his movies made such lasting impressions on people. That is quite a legacy.
I would have picked different movies (I couldn't narrow it down to only one), but I could live with "Good Will Hunting," which was mentioned frequently that night. I only wish I had seen it sooner. It was a powerful performance, and it brought Williams his only Oscar.
That was the year that "Titanic" seemed to sweep the Oscars, collecting 11 awards (14 nominations in all) — but "Good Will Hunting" made its mark, receiving nine nominations and winning two awards. Williams was honored for his acting, and Matt Damon and Ben Affleck (who also appeared in the movie) were rewarded for their screenplay. (Damon was also nominated for Best Actor but lost to Jack Nicholson in "As Good as it Gets.")
I suspect there were lots of folks in the last decade or so who could empathize with Will Hunting (Damon). In the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, millions of people probably found themselves working at jobs that didn't match their intellectual predispositions. In those days you found many people with college degrees who were flipping burgers and waiting tables. Still do in some places, I suppose.
But those people were forced to do so by circumstances. Will Hunting was not. Not really. He was, by all accounts, a brilliant individual, and yet he worked as a janitor at MIT — apparently by choice. Why was that?
Well, that was at the heart of the problem — and the movie. The answer wasn't easy to find.
Will Hunting seemed to provide an answer when he spoke admiringly of people who were engaged in manual labor. In his mind, that was real work and worthy of respect and admiration. Mathematics, on the other hand, was not real work. Not to him. Real work required effort.
Will made finding answers look easy. At the beginning of the movie a math professor (Stellan Skarsgard) challenged his students to solve a complex mathematical problem that took multiple chalkboards to present. The professor told the students that few people had been able to solve the problem over the years.
The answer was found written on a board in the hall outside the lecture room the next morning. None of the professor's students would admit to having written it; turned out that Will had written it.
Among other things, there is frustration in being able to see true genius in others and pursuing it yourself but falling short. To be fair, the professor had experienced a certain amount of success in his field, but like Salieri in "Amadeus," he was bewildered when he saw someone who was truly gifted and for whom the application of that gift was effortless but who was almost casual in his treatment of it.
There were many people who tried to help Will find his way — the professor, one of Will's childhood buddies (Ben Affleck), a girl he met (Minnie Driver).
And then there was a therapist (Williams), who had been the professor's college roommate and stood in awe of the professor's intellect. The professor reached out to the therapist when Will ran afoul of the law as a condition for Will's release.
As Williams and Damon explored Will's psyche, it became a journey of discovery for both characters.
Damon's character was driven in part by an affinity for his old friends and neighborhood and in part by emotional injuries suffered earlier in his life. Childhood was clearly a mixed bag for Will.
Williams' character had his own wounds, and he helped Will get on the road to recovery by sharing them. Damon and Affleck put the words in Williams' mouth, but they were good words, and he delivered them with such feeling that the audience believed them to be true. In some ways, I think they were.
"Good Will Hunting" also received Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Director (Gus Van Sant), Best Actor (Damon), Best Supporting Actress (Driver), Best Original Dramatic Score, Best Original Song and Best Film Editing.
Had it not been for the language in the movie and the release of "Titanic" a few weeks later, I am convinced that "Good Will Hunting" would have been a bigger Oscar winner in the spring of 1998 — although I am less convinced that it was the best movie of the year. A blockbuster like "Titanic" can come along and overwhelm everything else at any time.
As for the language, well, it wasn't pleasant, but it is an undeniable fact of life that people use those words in everyday conversation — a lot more than they did just a few decades ago. It is realistic for characters to use that kind of language in movies — but it probably was not as commonplace in 1997 as it is today.
Thus, while "Good Will Hunting" was not the big Oscar winner a couple of decades ago, it might well be if it was being released today — even with "Titanic" in the mix.
"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" hit the music stores six months earlier, and it was still making headlines on this day in 1967 when "Magical Mystery Tour" was released.
But so were other songs the Beatles had written and recorded but had not yet released on an album — like "All You Need Is Love" and "Baby You're a Rich Man," which were released as the two sides of a single six weeks after the "Sgt. Pepper" album.
The Beatles were constantly experimenting with sounds and recording techniques. They rose to prominence with no real long–term expectations and therefore felt free to go wherever their interests took them. I saw an interview with Ringo Starr from around the time the Beatles made their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, and he said he hoped the group would be successful enough that he could use his earnings to invest in a beauty shop in London. Neither he nor the other Beatles would have believed it if they had been told their recordings would still be influencing popular music half a century later.
Anyway, following the completion of "Sgt. Pepper," Paul McCartney had a brainstorm. He wanted to create an extemporaneous film about the Beatles and their music. "Ordinary" people (including the Beatles) would travel on a bus and have magical adventures.
The project yielded a 52–minute movie that was aired on the BBC the day after Christmas and was so savaged by the critics that it has been seldom seen since.
It also produced six new Beatles songs — not enough by themselves to make an entire album. Capitol Records rounded out the album by including five previously non–album singles.
As always, the music was good. In fact, for many observers, it was the music that salvaged the entire project. The film had no script and no real direction.
Still in the context of what had come before — and what was yet to come — "Magical Mystery Tour" was exactly what it seemed to be, a hodge–podge of songs consisting of a brief soundtrack and a group of songs that had been released as singles within the previous year.
As I say, though, the music was good. George Harrison was bursting with creativity that would reach full flower a few years later when he released his triple–album solo effort "All Things Must Pass." In 1967, though, he was still a member of the Beatles and getting a handful of spots on albums that were largely dominated by Lennon–McCartney compositions.
Nevertheless, Harrison contributed "Blue Jay Way" and shared credit with John Lennon, McCartney and Starr on the instrumental "Flying."
Yes, the music was good, but the album and film were disjointed. It wasn't surprising that both got mixed reviews.
It richly deserves its place in the Beatles discography. But it doesn't flow seamlessly in the Beatles' musical timeline.
Coach (Nicholas Colasanto):Damnedest thing. I've been shivering all the way over here.
Diane (Shelley Long):Well, Coach, you don't have a coat on. It's 30 degrees outside.
Coach:Oh, thank God. I thought I had malaria.
I often think what a shame it was that Nicholas Colasanto died only a few seasons into the lengthy run of Cheers!
As a result, many of the people who watched the show never knew Coach — just as many people who watched M*A*S*H never knew Henry Blake (McLean Stevenson).
Stevenson left M*A*S*H voluntarily but later said he regretted that decision.
Both departures were abrupt. Through nearly all of his last episode, Stevenson was believed to be going home (leaving open the possibility of future guest appearances) — until his airplane was reported shot down over the Sea of Japan in the episode's final minutes. Coach just died without any explanation being given.
And both departures brought replacements — Col. Potter on M*A*S*H and Woody on Cheers! — who are remembered and loved while their predecessors have mostly faded from memory.
The episode of Cheers! that first aired on this night in 1982, "Coach Returns to Action," provides an indication of what was lost.
For the benefit of those readers who missed the character entirely: Coach was a former baseball coach, and he had been Sam's coach before the series' timeline began. When the series premiered, Coach was retired from coaching, now a bartender for Sam (Ted Danson). He was rather slow and plodding but with the proverbial heart of gold.
As the episode opened, Coach was even more out to lunch than usual. An attractive young woman named Nina (Murphy Cross) had moved into his apartment building, and he had helped her with her furniture. In the process he had become smitten with her.
The thing that bugged Coach was the difference in their ages. It was never specified for the audience, but there was a quarter century between the ages of the actor and actress, and the audience could see there was an age gap when Nina visited the bar.
Diane (Shelley Long) encouraged him to ask her out. She also ran interference for Coach, trying to dissuade notorious ladies' man Sam from approaching her. Sam approached her anyway and kept getting shot down.
Meanwhile, Coach made a sincere attempt to invite Nina out to dinner, but she insisted she still had a lot of unpacking to do.
That was when Coach used a ruse to turn things around. I'd rather not spoil it for those who haven't seen it. Catch it on the DVD of Season 1 or on Netflix. You'll thank me for it.
This episode also had one of my favorite Cheers! dialogues that had nothing to do with the story but everything to do with the characters' personalities.
Diane wondered aloud why people drink cold beer in winter. Norm (George Wendt) turned to know–it–all Cliff (John Ratzenberger) and asked for an explanation.
"How do you know he has one?" Diane asked Norm.
"Five bucks says he does," Norm replied. "Ten bucks says it's a doozy."
They both looked at Cliff, who said, "When the British ruled the Punjab ..."
Ordinarily I don't like to devote a post in this blog to anything — movie, music, book, TV show — I have written about before.
But I'm making an exception for "Hans Christian Andersen," which premiered in New York 65 years ago today.
It was one of my favorite movies as a child, and that was what inspired me to write about it seven years ago. But what I wrote on that occasion was different than what I want to say on this one. This time I want to talk more about the movie.
Although, on the other hand, I really should start with something that I mentioned indirectly in 2010.
Before I learned to read, my mother read all kinds of children's stories to me, and the Hans Christian Andersen stories were always my favorites. I liked 'em even better than I liked Dr. Seuss — probably because they were more applicable to life as I knew it.
And that led to my introduction to the movie that made its debut in 1952.
I wanted to share that movie with the stepdaughter of one of my oldest and closest friends. I'm not sure how old she was at the time — maybe 6 or 7 — but I felt she was just the right age for the movie (it seems to me that I was 6 or 7 when I first saw it) so I made a video tape of it and gave it to her.
And it turned out I was right. I may not be exactly right about the age thing, but she loved the movie. Her mother told me she would sing snippets of the many songs Danny Kaye sang in it.
Talk about making a joyful noise.
The movie was never intended to be a true biography so I wouldn't recommend it as a source to anyone who may be writing a paper on Andersen's life. Instead it was a fictional account of Andersen's life based on his famous fairy tales, among them "The Emperor's New Clothes,""The Ugly Duckling,""The Little Mermaid" and "Thumbelina," among others — and there were songs written for each. In the movie Andersen told his stories to groups of children from his village and sang the songs for them.
It was enchanting — and, as I have said here on other occasions, I am not a fan of musicals. Elise found it enchanting, too, and I decided her Hans Christian Andersen experience was incomplete without the actual stories that she could read when she got old enough — so I gave her a collection of Andersen's writings.
The movie was in the works for more than 15 years. It was the brainchild of producer Samuel Goldwyn, who had several writers work on the screenplay over the years. There was even a time when it appeared Walt Disney might produce the movie, but that didn't work out.
My guess is that Disney regretted that. The movie received six Oscar nominations, and it was one of the top 10 moneymakers in 1952.
One never really outgrows the stories of Hans Christian Andersen. Sure, they are aimed at young people, but there are also valuable lessons for adults — and they are written to appeal to both groups.
"I sell gasoline. I make a small profit. With that I buy groceries. The grocer makes a profit. We call it earning a living. You may have heard of it somewhere."
Jeff (Robert Mitchum)
One of my favorite Paul Simon songs never made much of a ripple on the radio but rode "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" to the top of the charts as its B side — "Some Folks' Lives Roll Easy."
"Out of the Past," which debuted on this day in 1947, always makes me think of that song.
Because, as the song says, some folks' lives do roll easy, and "some folks' lives never roll at all." Some people follow straight trajectories onward and upward to the top (or, at least, in that general direction); most of us, I guess, have something in our pasts from which we're trying to escape.
In director Jacques Tourneur's "Out of the Past," Robert Mitchum was trying to break free from his past as a private investigator. But, like Al Pacino in "The Godfather Part III," he kept being pulled back in.
The story line doesn't exactly roll easy, either, but that is what might just make "Out of the Past" one of the best film noirs of all time — maybe even the best. Don't sit back to watch this with a beer in your hand, though. You'll need all your wits about you to keep up with the twists and turns in this one.
You'll find it is worth it.
There is an intriguing dynamic between Mitchum and Kirk Douglas, who were distinctly different in their styles. In a typical film noir way, the movie reeks with symbolism from the (literally) dark scenes to the clear cinematic triangle of good–guy Mitchum, bad–guy Douglas and femme fatale Jane Greer.
Douglas was a gangster, and Greer was his mistress. Douglas alleged Greer had shot him and stolen money from him; Mitchum, as a private investigator, had been hired to track her down.
After he found Greer, Mitchum became infatuated with her and ultimately confessed that he had been hired to find her. This did not come as a surprise to Greer; in fact, she had suspected as much and had been preparing her story all along.
And what a story it was. She denied stealing Douglas' money and urged Mitchum to run away with her. But Mitchum discovered that she was a liar and a killer.
Then the story got complicated ...
It is probably important to note that much of the story was told through flashbacks. After Mitchum and Greer eventually split up and Mitchum tried to start over again as a gas station operator, part of his new life involved a new girlfriend. This one, played by Virginia Huston, was much nicer, a real girl next door, and it was to her that Mitchum told the story as they were driving to meet with Douglas.
"She can't be all bad," Huston said at one point. "No one is."
"She comes closest," Mitchum replied.
His character was right about that. Greer had the qualities of a great femme fatale — on the screen as in life, a true femme fatale has no remorse for anything she does. She is completely self–centered, and she is beautiful and seductive enough that any man, even ones as smart and as tough as the ones with whom she was involved in "Out of the Past," could fall for her.
Although uncredited in many of his early films, Mitchum was known largely as a film noir actor at first. In hindsight, he seems like a natural choice for the role in "Out of the Past," but he was the fourth choice to play the part. Humphrey Bogart was the first choice, and by all accounts I have read he wanted to play it, but Bogart was under contract to Warner Brothers and RKO Pictures owned the rights to "Out of the Past."
John Garfield and Dick Powell turned down the role, and it went to Mitchum.
Mike:You're gonna cheat the insurance company and Ma.
One of my favorite movie lines comes from a relatively unknown 1950s Christmas comedy, "We're No Angels," in which Basil Rathbone's character remarked, "Sentiment has no cash value."
That could have been Archie Bunker's mantra in the episode of TV's All in the Family that premiered on this night in 1972 — "The Locket."
Well, it could have been his mantra throughout the entire series — but especially in this episode. Archie had little regard for sentiment — except his own.
Edith (Jean Stapleton) couldn't find an antique necklace she had inherited from her grandmother, and Archie (Carroll O'Connor) had no interest in the matter until he learned how much the necklace was worth — enough to buy a new color TV.
Color TVs were real status symbols in 1972. Many folks still had black–and–white TV sets in their homes, and the one the Bunkers had in their home may have been a black–and–white. Most blue–collar households had black–and–white TVs in those days. When a household acquired a color TV, it was an event.
Archie hadn't been thinking of buying a color TV until that moment when two things happened at once — one was the disappearance of Edith's antique locket and the other was the fact that the picture tube was missing from the Bunkers' TV set. Edith told Archie that the repairman told her a new one would cost $75 — a considerable sum in 1972.
As Archie was complaining about his day, Edith commiserated and told Archie about her missing locket. When Archie dismissed the locket as being worthless — he called it a "hunk of junk" — Edith protested that a local jeweler had offered her $150 for it. Archie's eyes lit up, and he concluded they could get $300 from the insurance company when sentimental value was factored in.
Money could never replace the locket, Edith insisted, and Archie replied that it wasn't going to be replaced by money. It would be replaced by a brand–new color TV.
So Archie paid a visit to his insurance agent to report the loss and learned that he was only covered if the locket was stolen — and he made up a story about the locket being taken by "the neighborhood mugger."
There were too many gaps in Archie's account, though, so the insurance company arranged to send someone out to the Bunkers' home to get some additional details.
In the meantime, Edith returned to the house with good news. Her locket had been found. It turned out that the locket really had been stolen, and she had been called to the police station to identify it. The police were holding it as evidence for the trial of the thief, then it would be returned to her.
All the activity had kept Edith from doing her shopping so she left to do it then. Better late than never.
Archie, still unaware of Edith's news, returned home to accept delivery of a new color TV. He was positively elated. But his elation soon dissolved into desperation and despair when he learned that Edith's locket had been found, and he was determined to keep Edith away from the house while the insurance agent was there.
So he sent Gloria (Sally Struthers) out to run up and down the street and try to divert Edith when she came into view. Naturally it didn't work, and Edith showed up shortly after the insurance agent did. Archie thought all was lost.
But then Edith told the insurance agent that her locket had been stolen and she described the man who stole it. She even provided his name. Archie was delighted and encouraged Edith not to push her luck. She insisted that she wasn't lying.
Then she proved it.
When the insurance agent produced a document for her to sign stating that the locket had been stolen and she didn't know where it was, she balked.
"But I do know where the locket is," she said, and out came the whole story about her locket. The agent was delighted, having saved the company $300. Edith was delighted that the locket had been found.
And Archie was left with the bill for a new TV. It is safe to say he wasn't delighted.
For a long time, "Mourning Becomes Electra," which premiered on this day in 1947, was treated like a cinematic afterthought.
It was seldom seen on TV and unavailable in video tape or any comparable format (such as laserdisc) until it was finally released on DVD about a dozen years ago.
Why was that?
Well, it could have been the movie's performance at the box office. It lost more than $2.3 million.
I've read some reviews in which critics dismissed it as "stagey" and "wordy." I could understand that being a problem today. If it seemed that way to critics 70 years ago, I can only imagine what today's critics would say.
But it was adapted from a play written by Eugene O'Neill so it was to be expected that it would seem stagey. After all most of the action took place on a single set. And it would also be expected that it would be wordy. Plays tend to be driven by dialogue, not flashy explosions or car chases.
And, for its time, the movie was rather long — nearly three hours. But when it performed poorly at the box office and failed to win an Oscar, RKO Pictures made a decision that made matters worse — to slice about an hour from the film and re–release it. The original version, while long, made sense; the chopped–up version did not.
Fortunately, the movie has been restored to its original length — and, while it is not ordinarily my policy to promote a particular TV network, I must say that you can count on seeing that original version on Turner Classic Movies, which airs it fairly frequently. That is where I saw it, and I was impressed.
As a matter of fact, TCM will be showing the restored version on Tuesday, Nov. 28 at 3 p.m. (Central). Do not — I repeat, do not — watch the pared–down version. You have been warned.
In case you aren't familiar with the background of the movie, it was an adaptation of O'Neill's 1931 play that was, in turn, a re–telling of Aeschylus' Greek play "Oresteia" set in post–Civil War America.
Rosalind Russell's performance as Lavinia was so good it was a foregone conclusion she would win an Oscar; according to Oscar lore, when the Best Actress nominees were recited but before the winner was named, Russell rose from her seat, only to sink back down in it when it was announced that Loretta Young had won for "The Farmer's Daughter."
The comedic actress was nominated for Best Actress four times but never won.
Michael Redgrave was nominated for Best Actor that year but lost to Ronald Colman in "A Double Life." That was a pity, too, because it was his only Oscar nomination in a long and distinguished career on the stage and screen.
Redgrave, incidentally, is the only Best Actor nominee to have two daughters who were both nominated for Best Actress as well.
For some Russell's performance may seem overblown, and maybe it was, but I thought the character called for some of that, and Russell was good at it — better than Katharine Hepburn or Bette Davis, both of whom reportedly were considered for the role.
Kirk Douglas and Raymond Massey were great, as always. In fact, the acting on the whole was superb.
O'Neill's play has long been regarded a jewel of the modern American stage so it was no surprise to me that the actors turned in top–notch performances, and that can be enthralling on the stage, where the play can easily run twice as long as the movie.
Producer/director Dudley Nichols adapted the play for the screen, and as a writer I can appreciate his fealty to the original work. If you have ever seen the play and the movie, you know he tried to resist the temptation to stray from O'Neill's work.
But that may have worked against him. As New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther observed in his review, "It is one thing to watch a group of actors hiss and scream their deep emotions on a stage; it is quite something else to see the same thing done at great length by a group of photographs."
Motion pictures were still evolving in 1947, and filming adaptations of plays was still something of a mystery for many. That is why so many such movies appear now to be little more than films of stage productions — because that is essentially what they were. Shakespeare's plays have always been great on the stage, but it took considerable adaptation and experimentation to successfully bring them to the silver screen.
That was still a problem for O'Neill's plays 15 years later. By all accounts, director Sidney Lumet did a great job with "Long Day's Journey Into Night" — it even brought Katharine Hepburn an Oscar nomination — but, because that play, too, was largely confined to one set, even Lumet could not break past the impression that he had filmed a stage production.
In "Rooms With a View," the episode of Frasier that first aired on this night in 2002, Niles (David Hyde Pierce) had been brought to the hospital for heart surgery — an event that had been set up nicely by the previous week's episode (in which the audience was introduced to a rarely discussed medical concept called referred pain).
Having spent more time in hospital rooms than I care to think about, I enjoyed this episode for its satirical treatment of the topic. The opening segment, in which the family was waiting with Niles for his surgeon to arrive to go over the procedure with them, was hilarious.
Frasier (Kelsey Grammer) had beaten the surgeon to it. He had researched Niles' condition, put his findings on paper and made copies for everyone. That was his way of coping. In another episode, Frasier had bragged about his lifelong prowess at homework. This proved it as far as he was concerned.
(Frasier made sure that everyone — especially the surgeon — knew he had consulted with a colleague from his alma mater, Harvard.)
Martin (John Mahoney), on the other hand, was engaged in his typical response to a medical crisis — denial. It was what he had been doing as long as Niles and Frasier could remember — pretending the problem didn't exist.
"Things always turned out all right, though," Frasier told Niles. "They will this time, too."
Daphne (Jane Leeves) was simply terrified. Nothing would reassure her until Niles was out of surgery — although Roz (Peri Gilpin) tried her best to be reassuring, suggesting things like thinking about fun things to do (like take a trip somewhere) when it was all over.
But it was the next segment, in which Niles was being wheeled to the operating room, that gave the episode its name — and poignancy. Under the strong influence of hospital–administered drugs, Niles imagined moments from his past that had been spent in hospitals.
Like the time he was in the hospital with a broken leg, suffered when Frasier allegedly pushed him down the stairs (although Niles confessed that he hadn't been pushed; he had jumped because he wanted to fly like a Valkyrie). Niles recalled the scene in his hospital room when Martin brought him an Archie comic book to help him pass the time.
And the time he visited a heavily bandaged Maris following plastic surgery.
And the moment that had just occurred seconds earlier — when Daphne promised Niles she would be waiting for him when he came out of surgery.
In a few minutes, Frasier displayed the kinds of moments that hospital personnel have probably seen countless times.
But one of the best moments was one Niles couldn't possibly have remembered. It was the scene in his mother's hospital room after she gave birth to him. Neither mother nor baby could be seen — only a young Martin holding a small Frasier.
When Martin told Frasier that was his new brother in the crib next to his mother's bed, Frasier, in a typically honest child's response, replied, "I don't like him."
While the family was in the waiting room, Frasier remarked on how life was played out within the walls of the hospital. And there is no disputing that. People are born in the hospital, they recover from injuries and illnesses in the hospital — and sometimes they die in the hospital.
For most people that is probably where it all ends. Speaking of which, Martin's hospital flashback concerned the time the doctor shared a dire prognosis for his wife.
It didn't end that way for Niles, though. At least, not yet.
And as she was leaving his room, Daphne walked past another room and had her own flashback — or should that be flash forward? In it were Niles and Daphne — Niles held a small child and Daphne, in her hospital bed, held a newborn.
At the time, Daphne and Niles had been married a short time and had no children yet. The clear implication was that life would go on.
I got my bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Arkansas, and I got my master's degree in journalism from the University of North Texas. Most of my adult life has been dedicated to writing and editing in one form or another. Most recently I have taught writing (news and developmental) as an adjunct journalism professor at Richland College, where I advise the student newspaper staff. Go, Thunderducks!
