“Digging Deeper” is a closer look at notable TV moments from the past four decades.
Maybe you loved Ted Kennedy, maybe you didn’t, but you can’t say the late Democratic lawmaker didn’t work hard for the causes in
which he believed.
Take health-care reform, Kennedy’s signature issue.
Thirteen years ago tonight, a few months after he introduced legislation to create government insurance for poor children, the Massachusetts senator appeared on CBS’s “Chicago Hope” to highlight the issue.
The episode, “Mother May I?,” is a typically uneven installment from the hospital drama, which was never as good as it should have been.
Kennedy probably recognized the script was weak, but he also knew an appearance in prime time was too valuable a platform to pass up.
In the episode, Chicago Hope Hospital owner Tommy Wilmette (Ron Silver) and his ex-wife, Kate Austin (Christine Lahti), the hospital’s chief surgeon, come to Washington to testify on health care before a Senate subcommittee.
Of course, this wasn’t “The West Wing,” so the episode is less about health care than it is about Tommy and Kate’s relationship. The story finds the two agreeing to finally forgive each other for the failure of their marriage; the congressional testimony is merely the plot device that brings them together.
Meanwhile, back at Chicago Hope, the subplots concern a pregnant teenager (guest star Julia Stiles) arranging to give up her child for adoption and a difficult elderly patient who exasperates Dr. Jack McNeil (Mark Harmon).
Kennedy’s brief appearance comes near the episode’s end, when he gavels the Senate hearing to order and delivers opening remarks about the government’s obligation to insure the 10 million children who “have no health care coverage whatsoever.”
“These are the sons and daughters of working families, men and women who work 40 hours a week, 52 weeks of the year,” Kennedy says. “And the critical issue that is before this committee: Do we have the political will to provide a health insurance to cover those 10 million Americans?”
The senator’s remarks are striking, not because of their eloquence – Kennedy, who was known for his passionate rhetoric, is surprisingly restrained – but because of their specificity. At no other point in the episode is children’s health care mentioned; in all of Tommy and Kate’s previous scenes, they only discuss “health care reform.”
When Kennedy finishes speaking and Tommy’s testimony begins, he speaks of reform in general terms. “We need to disconnect profit from care. There should be no profit from the pain and misfortune of others,” Tommy says. “The marketplace may be efficient, but it is amoral.”
(Tommy also refers repeatedly to his testimony as his “speech,” one of many anachronisms in this episode that would probably go unnoticed by anyone but creatures of Washington.)
According to newspaper accounts at the time, Kennedy’s “Chicago Hope” cameo happened after Silver met the senator at President Clinton’s second inaugural and invited him to appear on the show. Kennedy reportedly leapt at the opportunity, even writing his own lines for the scene in which he appears.
Watching the episode today, one can’t help but think the whole thing was a missed opportunity.
Wouldn’t the episode have been more interesting if the issue Kennedy addressed in his remarks – children’s health care – had been a recurring theme throughout the episode? Wouldn’t it have packed more emotional punch to see a storyline about an uninsured child who required treatment playing out back at Chicago Hope while Tommy and Kate dealt with the policy side of the equation during their scenes in Washington?
“Mother May I?” was seen in 9.7 million homes the night it aired, ranking 28th among the week’s 106 prime-time broadcasts. (The era’s other hospital drama, NBC’s “ER,” drew 23 million households that week with an episode about Nurse Hathaway being held hostage during a convenience store robbery.)
It seems unlikely the “Chicago Hope” episode did much to help advance Kennedy’s cause. Then again, he probably didn’t need it.
By the end of 1997, Kennedy’s legislation to create government insurance for poor kids was enacted. Within 10 years, 7 million children from low-income families were enrolled in the program; last year, President Obama signed a bill to allow an additional 4 million kids to sign up.
Today, “Mother May I?” is more historical oddity than anything else – and not just because of its lackluster approach to health-care reform.
Somewhat eerily, the three principals in the Washington storyline – Silver, Kennedy and 1996 GOP vice presidential nominee Jack Kemp, who also had a cameo – each died within months of each other last year.
Elsewhere on Television
TV Guide listings for February 17, 1997:
9 PM CBS MURPHY BROWN (CC) – Comedy
Murphy resorts to desperate measures when Kay threatens to move the team to L.A., but they soon become allies against a double-crossing Andrew (Paul Reubens), who’s scheming to split up “FYI.”
… And in the News
New York Times excerpts from February 17, 1997:
Panel Chairman Says Inquiry Into Fund Raising Is Expanding
WASHINGTON, Feb. 16 – The Republican who heads the House investigation into influence peddling by foreigners said today that his panel was sharply expanding its scope.
Dan Burton of Indiana, chairman of the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, said on the NBC News program “Meet the Press” that the investigation was “going to be much broader than I would like.”
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