![]() ![]() It was constantly positioning itself in relation to other shows that were on TV at the same time, as well as older programs, both canonical and obscure. The series was always very aware of itself as a series - a fictional construct that came out of a particular set of traditions and tried to honor them even as it played around with them. It was the culmination of tendencies that existed in St. That ending wasn’t an ostentatiously “meta” touch that just came out of nowhere. ![]() “We believed that our show was just a speck in the universe,” Fontana told the Paley Center, “and then it turned out that our show was the universe.” Eligius crew, and he has appeared on shows ranging from The X-Files to The Wire, effectively making him the Patient Zero of the Tommy Westphall Universe theory.” Elsewhere episode Cheers spawned Frasier, a character who appeared on Wings John Munch, the detective from Homicide, had mingled with the St. Eligius stopped in to have a drink.Īs Jake Rossen explained in an article for Mental Floss, “The doctors had visited the bar on Cheers in one St. The origin point for this theory isn’t the snow globe itself, but a scene on another Boston-set NBC program from the 1980s, Cheers, in which doctors from St. The Westphall theory posits that the show serves the same function for television itself, acting as a portal through which the medium’s past and present can flow. Elsewhere was an “institutional series” par excellence, showing the day-to-day workings of a major urban hub through which a cross section of humankind constantly flowed in and out. The snow globe inspired the so-called Tommy Westphall theory of TV interconnectedness, one of the most playful and expansive fan theories of all time. The snow globe of TV has expanded exponentially since then, to the point where viewera would have to clone themselves 20 times to watch every sitcom or drama worth having an opinion on - a scenario that wouldn’t leave much room for watching other types of programming, or for eating and sleeping. In other words, try not to be too crushed that it’s ending, because it never really existed to begin with.” I like to think of the snow globe as a meta-commentary on the universe of TV generally, one that resonates more strongly now than it did three decades ago, when there were only three major broadcast networks, PBS, cable, and a bunch of syndicated stations, yet people who wrote about the medium for a living still worried that there was no way they could watch and keep tabs on everything. Elsewhere was ‘merely’ a work of fiction. I think other people will find it puzzling, odd, maybe unfulfilling in some way.”ĭavid Bushman, a TV curator at the Paley Center in New York City, recently described the final shot of the snow globe as “a reaffirmation that St. “I think some people will think it’s extraordinary and existential and quintessential St. Law, Dead Like Me) - trying to say? Was it all the dream or fantasy of an autistic child? Was there some supernatural aspect to the series that everyone had missed throughout its six-season run? “I expect a very mixed reaction,” Bruce Paltrow, one of the show’s executive producers, told the Chicago Tribune. What were series creators Joshua Brand and John Falsey - and the episode’s screenwriters, Tom Fontana ( Homicide, Oz) and John Masius ( L.A. Daniel Auschlander (Norman Lloyd) - who had died earlier in the episode - was alive and well, and was suddenly Tommy’s grandfather.Īt the time, this puzzling closing image inspired as many arguments as the ending of The Sopranos 18 years later. Westphall was now a construction worker rather than a doctor, and St. To make things weirder, the characters weren’t the characters anymor. Eligius Hospital, the show’s principal location. Then the boy puts the snow globe down to prepare for bed, and the camera slowly zooms into the snow globe to reveal a miniature version of St. Westphall (Ed Flanders) watches his autistic son Tommy (Chad Allen) stare at a snow globe that he gazes at all day long. Today is the 30th anniversary of one of the most famous endings in all of television. ![]()
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