The May 25, 1988 series finale inspired as many arguments as The Sopranos series finale: Was the entire 1980s medical drama a fantasy? "I like to think of the snow globe as a meta-commentary on the universe of TV generally," says Matt Zoller Seitz, "one that resonates more strongly now than it did three decades ago, when there were only three major broadcast networks, PBS, cable, and a bunch of syndicated stations, yet people who wrote about the medium for a living still worried that there was no way they could watch and keep tabs on everything. The snow globe of TV has expanded exponentially since then, to the point where a viewer would have to clone themselves 20 times to watch every sitcom or drama worth having an opinion on — a scenario that wouldn’t leave much room for watching other types of programming, or for eating and sleeping."
TOPICS: St. Elsewhere, NBC, Retro TV, Series Finales