THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, December 29, 1994 TAG: 9412290038
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LARRY BONKO, TELEVISION COLUMNIST
LENGTH: Medium: 83 lines
BE PREPARED to be jolted out of your La-Z-Boy by what happens on the CBS hospital drama ``Chicago Hope'' at 8 Sunday night.
As surgeons prepare for a heart transplant, an operating room nurse accidentally drops the heart and watches in horror as it skids across the floor. The heart is booted behind some equipment by another member of the transplant team.
In the meantime, the transplant surgeon played by Mandy Patinkin is yelling orders: ``Will somebody pick up the heart and get it over here!''
The heart is bathed in three trays filled with antibiotic solution and inserted into the chest cavity of a 76-year-old rabbi. Afterward, Patinkin advises his horrified operating-room team not to fret because, after all, the heart is nothing but a ball of strong, solid muscle taken from an 18-year-old accident victim and will survive being drop-kicked.
It's a scene that will likely have viewers buzzing for days.
When David E. Kelley, the creator and executive producer of ``Chicago Hope,'' met with TV writers in Los Angeles not long go, he said it will be a series with hardly any whimsical moments. But there will be some dark humor.
``There will be some scenes that will cause the audience to flinch,'' he said, ``but our idea is not to promote nausea across America.''
Decide for yourself if playing kickball with a heart is merely shocking or sickening.
By shifting ``Chicago Hope'' to Monday night at 10 starting Jan. 2, CBS figures it is giving Kelley's series a better chance of surviving than the poor rabbi whose new heart was bounced around the operating room. It's dropped as low as No. 63 in the ratings while the show it once engaged in head-to-head combat on Thursday night, ``ER,'' is a ratings smash.
In just four months on the air, ``Chicago Hope'' has been moved three times on the schedule, finally landing in the slot that once belonged to ``Northern Exposure.'' That series, once the toast of prime-time, begins airing Wednesdays at 10 p.m. next week.
CBS scheduled repeats of ``Chicago Hope'' four times this week, including tonight at 9 and Friday night at 10, followed by new shows Sunday at 8 and Monday at 10 p.m. Monday's show is a corker, too, with members of the hospital staff placed in quarantine and forced to cope with one another's gigantic egos during two days in isolation.
Here's a touch of irony:
When the new TV season started in September, and ``Chicago Hope'' and NBC's emergency room drama ``ER'' went head to head Thursday night, CBS eventually blinked. The network moved ``Chicago Hope'' up an hour. Now, ``Chicago Hope'' will be on Monday nights.
Guess what kind of competition the show faces next Monday? The two-hour pilot episode of ``ER.''
That upset Patinkin so much that he complained to NBC's West Coast president.
He's one actor who is passionate about his work. To prepare for his role on ``Chicago Hope,'' Patinkin sat in on 17 operations.
While the doctors and nurses on ``ER'' hustle and sweat in a blue-collar, big-city emergency room, the cast of ``Chicago Hope'' works in nicer digs. When asked if ``Chicago Hope'' compares to a former series on NBC, ``St. Elsewhere,'' Kelley said both shows are about the practice of medicine, but there the comparison ends.
``The hospital on `St. Elsewhere' was on the opposite end of the spectrum from the hospital on `Chicago Hope.' As opposed to being a dilapidated old warhorse that is trying to stay alive, the `Hope' hospital is rich with cash and resources and is a glamorous-looking place.''
The staffs who work in emergency rooms here and elsewhere have given ``ER'' a passing grade for accuracy. Does Kelley take pains to make sure that ``Chicago Hope'' is reasonably close to real life?
``Not only do we have two doctors on our staff who go over every script and give us notes on those scripts, we also have a network of other doctors to whom we can go for quick answers on specific cases. I'm a lawyer, not a doctor. So I have surrounded myself with a lot of technical help in the medical field,'' Kelley said.
It is those experts who told Kelley that it's OK to transplant a heart after it's been booted around the operating room. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
To prepare for his role as a doctor in "Chicago Hope," Mandy
Patinkin observed 17 operations.
by CNB