There was this one episode!!
Donald Westphal (Ed Flanders) just saw his daughter off to college in September, now, six weeks later, she is back, not just to visit, she is sort of seeking a permanent retreat to her sheltered childhood domicile!! This precarious situation garners an unhealthy complacency for both of them!! Under the guise of justing hanging around for a little longer than a weekend, the daughter is increasingly favoring the comfortable alternative of not returning to college at all!! What the daughter has experienced is just one or two searing snake bites of reality...It is now painfully obvious to her that she can no longer just get by on the proverbial "innocent girl sweetness" and nice handwriting!! Coccooning herself to the sadness and reassurance of her father, he too falls prey to a resumed innocence of his daughter's adolescent days of yesteryear!! Finally, it dawns on Dr Westphal that his daughter is hiding from her first dose of life lessons!! While very content with this dubious homecoming, he knows that his daughter must get back to her life... Turning one of your children away when you are desperately dependent on them being the recipient of your love, becomes a painstaking act of intuitive discipline!! For this is not tough love, it is utterly brutal!! "Yes my beloved daughter, leave me, remind me of the painful experience it is to see you grow up!! Let me be alone in my declining and callously disconcerting emeritus years!!! Rather than having you smother me with your cherished support and joy, I have to be alone, and be decimated by a horrid silence around me that is not only deafening, but also, omnipotent because I am usually alone, and nobody out there really cares about me.. This is everything a decrepit widower dreams about!! Being trounced by recriminations and primal doubts, and being torn asunder by regrets and desultory conclusions is something I will welcome into my life with open arms!! I anxiously await the inevitable nightmare of growing old and dying alone... This does not sound right, does it? So why am I hastening the process? For you, my darling daughter, yet another supreme sacrifice!! This sacrifice is as subtle as all of the other ones I have made for you, and once again, you can show your ingratitude for me by categorizing me not as being magnanimous, but, as being very difficult to understand!!"When you stop and think about it, we should all be horsewhipped for the things we have done to our parents... Just how self-centered are children anyway? The love and the selfless acts of parents is something that children take for granted in the most reprehensible way!! Parents do without material items for their children constantly...This is just one of many forms of tremendous sacrifices that parents endure!! In the case of this "St Elsewhere" episode this was an instance of a father welcoming into his life an onslaught of emotional adversities which included the heinous ordeal of being deluged by arctic desolation, and the agony of being stalemated by escalating insecurities!! This compendium of anguish ridden endeavors that Dr Westphal must develop a tolerance for, is all for the sake of his daughter attaining a stronger psychological resolve to mature as an adult, and face her life head on!! This may seem like a common scenario that television depicts all the time, but, this "St Elsewhere" version was far more poignant and compelling!! You could almost see Dr Westphal being fed to the wolves!!! This series was excellent, this particular segment is something I do not wish to see again, it was way too depressing!! The directors and writers and everyone else did their job though, this was a superb segment of "St Elsewhere" I will stick to listening to the theme song of "St Elsewhere" that is pleasant music to hear!!
score 10/10
dataconflossmoor 18 July 2007
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1696134/15024
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