Comments on: Tommy, Can You See Moesha?

By: Liz

Liz — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:18:28 +0000

This is ridiculous. Did anyone think that perhaps the autistic boy in St. Elsewhere watches too much television and thus imagined his dad and fake hospital workers in these fictional scenarios? No. It’s best that we get all dramatic about it. “Oh no, all our fake T.V. shows really are fake! How depressing! I know, I’ll make a graph about it. That’s totally not a waste of my life.”

By: Woushou

Woushou — Thu, 21 May 2009 00:48:13 +0000

Really nice work.

If you remember there was the quiet same idea in some episodes of “Buffy the vampire slayer”. In fact she would be in a psychiatric hospital and “dreaming” all the events…

Still as you pointed it, as Buffy’s not a Doctor, lawyer… she can’t spoiled all the TV show world by dreaming she kills vampires.

It make me think about Shakespeare “to be or not to be, that is the question” or the Plato’s Myth of the Cave. But I’m over thinking it….

(ps: if you think my English sucks, I have an excuse, I’m French *smile*)

By: Lazerface

Lazerface — Sat, 02 May 2009 09:12:06 +0000

Maybe the kid didn’t dream up all those shows at all. What if it was a magic snow globe? Try to prove it wasn’t.

By: Brad

Brad — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 05:58:18 +0000

@Baldie

Yep, I remember that one too. The weird about the Seinfeld/Mad About You connection is that there was one episode of Seinfeld where George and Susan are watching Mad About You!

This is a really awesome theory by the way! I love it!

By: Frank

Frank — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 03:04:53 +0000

Well, if the last 5 minutes of St. Elsewere are the only real TV fiction ever, the Tommy Westphall Hypothesis could be functional.

I mean, we saw just 5 minutes of this ficticious reality, and we don’t know it’s rules; so, for all we know, people in that reality could have super-intelligence, enough to create all these shows.

By: Baldie

Baldie — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:32:30 +0000

In all this analysis, they forgot one important connection. I don’t see Seinfeld in the mix and it should be. On one episode of Mad About You, it was revealed that Paul still had his bachelor apartment and sub-let it. It turned out that he had sublet it to Kramer, who appeared in the episode.

By: Dave M

Dave M — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 22:48:38 +0000

IMO, the ending of Saint Elsewhere takes it into the realm of the “fantastic”. In fantastic fiction, I believe it is an established trope that autism is basically a super-power, or at least associated with super-powers. I always kind of assumed that was why that kid could create a whole world with his mind, he dosen’t have regular autism, he has Philip K. Dick autism.

By: madmonq

madmonq — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 17:37:05 +0000

Other mental health issues may be the only way to describe some of these shows. The American version of the Office? Any of the Law and Orders’? Blah!

By: Gab

Gab — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 14:52:25 +0000

Ah. Well, to be fair, I’ll stop barking, since I’ll admit I never saw the show. To form a valid opinion, I’d need to see how he was portrayed in those other episodes- was he just an autistic kid, or was he a kid with autism? There is a distinction, after all, and making him a throwaway/stock disabled child in other episodes would be just as bad, if not worse, than if they had only shown him in the finale; but, in contrast, if he had more to him than just his autism, it would be a much easier “answer” to swallow. For me, at least. Because, you know, I’m not very opinionated or anything.

By: Matthew Belinkie

Matthew Belinkie — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 05:26:23 +0000

@Gab – Well, the character wasn’t actually introduced in the final episode. He was in 13 total over the run of the series, and his autism was well established. So unless they KNEW how they were going to end things very early on, I think they didn’t make him autistic just for the snowglobe thing.