St. Elsewhere Season 1 Music Changes & Cuts

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DavidBanner

St. Elsewhere Season 1 Music Changes & Cuts

#1 Post by DavidBanner »

I have only watched pieces of three different episodes of this series, but I have already noted a significant edit in one episode. From this, I think there are likely to be more edits and music changes throughout the series.

Specifically, the edit I noted was in the 5th episode of the season "Samuels & the Kid". The ep ends in a Boston bar with a scene between David Birney and Ally Sheedy. As originally aired, the scene was backgrounded with Boston's "More than a Feeling". On the DVD set, and I presume in syndication, this song has been replaced by what sounds like the Peter Cetera-era Chicago, or a sound-alike of them.

In addition, a chunk of David Birney's monologue in the scene has been removed. As originally aired, after a pretty heavy personal revelation, he quotes a couple of lines from John Lennon's Instant Karma with some mimicked gunshots, and then says "Well, Lennon got his, huh?" On the DVD, this part of the dialogue has been cleanly removed. It doesn't affect the music as the bar song is faded out before the monologue starts, and the show's score doesn't come in until a few beats after the cut section. But it's an interesting edit. I have to ask if this was another royalties issue or if it was something else.

On other TV series compilations, I have also noted missing pieces of scenes that defied explanation. On Miami Vice's first season, for example, there is missing dialogue in both "Heart of Darkness" and "Hit List", neither of which would seem to be royalties matters, but which beg the question why they were done.

In the case of St. Elsewhere, in prior syndication or commercial tape releases, there's been a LOT of music changes, which I would expect to continue if more of the series comes out on DVD. St. Elsewhere actually used a LOT of contemporary songs in many scenes, either as scene scoring or as background music in the ER or other places. One of the biggest examples of this was "Time Heals", a two-parter in the 4th season that went through the history of the hospital. In that episode, the original airing featured many songs that were contemporary to each era presented, from the mid 30's to the mid 80's. When the episode was syndicated, ALL of the contemporary songs were replaced with generic soundalike material. I personally can't stand it when this happens, but I understand that it's based on the fact that all these songs were only purchased for the purposes of the initial network airings. Nobody ever thought there would have been much market for them afterward. But I'm a purist, and I wish this stuff wouldn't happen like this.

Still, I love the St. Elsewhere series - it's up there in the top 5 of all TV shows in my book, and I'll still pick up the season sets if they will be good enough to release them.

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