Sunday Fun: The Shulman and Medical Files & Titles

The Shulman File

"Look at you. You're a bunch of weirdos!"

So explained Dr Morton Shulman to his crowd of guests as he rocked back and forth in his comfy office chair. In that week's case his invited targets were into fetishes. One mustached guy in particular wore a half-face masquerade mask and would express himself by answering the show host's questions with a simple question: "In what context?"

"Morty" was not afraid to stick it to his special guests, be they politicians, labour union leaders, or an assortment of the offbeat.

The embedded video clip above is from a show titled: "UFO's and Psychics. Fact or Fraud?" (1983)

The Shulman File premiered in 1977, and from that point onward I watched on a regular basis. It did not matter to me what any given week's theme was. After all, there was that great theme tune to get one in the mood for some television fireworks.

Toronto television station CITY-TV was great at one time. In its mix of creative programming sat a controversial presenter. Morton Shulman, politician, physician and coroner, stirred things up, but did so from an intellectual platform ― not sensationalism for the sake of sensationalism, and ratings (as in Bill O'Reilly).

It would be nice to see complete episodes; there are bits and pieces to enjoy on YouTube.

We need a show like The Shulman File today to grill our surfeit of "weirdos".

The Interns

It's a curse. I must be called "The Chop Guy". It seems that whenever I took — yes, the past tense — to a television series, word would get around that it was not long for this world. My television viewing past is littered with what I thought were quality programs, but ones that didn't last past one year, barely touch two, or didn't even manage to get that 'mid-season pickup', if it did managed to reach 13 episodes at all. Hour-long dramatic series such as: Planet of the Apes (1974 - 1974), Lucas Tanner (1974-1975), The Gemini Man (1976 - 1976) and The Fantastic Journey (1977 - 1977) would fall into that box; as would.... 

How I discovered The Interns I do not remember, but I do remember making sure I caught the CBS medical show every week on the Sony black-and-white portable upstairs. To this then young one the subject matter was adult at times — there was an intense episode which featured a prison — but for some strange reason I could handle the material, even if I did not always understand it.

Seeing the show intro on YouTube a few years ago brought back the memories. While watching it I realized that I had remembered so much of its imagery and narrative, especially the climactic bit where the intrepid young medics run into an unimpressed Broderick Crawford.

A few years ago I watched a complete episode on YouTube: The Interns was a product of its era, which is not necessarily a problem, with the titular characters too-heavily involved in one another's stories; whereas in the real medical and doctoring world, each would have his or her own patient — their own "case". In the show I watched, the entire intern cast visited a location to check for some evidence. This is hardly the reality of that field. However, it is "television"... which is why I'm hardly around to curse any programs these days. (I should note that I once worked as a hospital photographer, including in "Emerg" for some of that time.)

The cast: Crawford, "Mr Highway Patrol" himself, of course; Christopher Stone; Stephen Brooks; Hal Frederick; Sandy Smith; Mike Farrell; and Skip Homeier. (Even then I was familiar with some of these actors as I had seen them in other television series.)

The Interns and I enjoyed just one season.