Quincy M.E.: For the Benefit of My Patients starts as a 44 year old man involved in a serious automobile accident is seen to by Dr. Danny Varney (George Deloy) at Terrace Hospital, unfortunately the man has no medical insurance & therefore cannot pay for his treatment so the hospital administrator & owner Dr. Chet Rawlings (James Karen) orders him to be transfered to the county hospital. The man is badly hurt & dies on his way, the next morning & Los Angeles coroner Quincy (Jack Klugman) does the autopsy & realises the man wouldn't have died if he had been given proper treatment at Terrace. Then the same situation happens again, only this time an 18 year old gang member is stabbed & dies shortly after arriving at the county hospital after being refused treatment at Terrace. Enraged Quincy is determined to put an end to Rawlings policy & stop him from buying another community hospital & turning it into a money making machine...
Episode 10 from season 5 this Quincy story was directed by Jeremiah Morris & in my opinion is average Quincy at best, I mean it's not totally terrible but I certainly wouldn't rank it amongst my favourite episodes. The script features a very American phenomenon, certainly here in the UK we have the NHS which gives free hospital treatment to anyone living here day or night. The whole story revolving around having to pay for medical care is really hard for me to relate to since it does not & never has been part of British culture. Of course that's not the fault of the writers, it's because I live in a different country which has different rules so the basic story of For the Benefit of My Patients is somewhat lost on me although still sound in principal. I can certainly see why it would be a very emotive issue, I can see why the Quincy production team decided to make an episode revolving around the price of medical care but as I have said I can't really relate to it that well. Then there's the fact most of the things I like about Quincy as a series are missing here, there's no murder, there's no mystery, there's no twists or turns & the story has a rather unwanted routine & predictable feeling. Hell, there isn't even much humour in it. Overall this is not an episode which will live that long in my memory.
For the Benefit of My Patients opens like a lot of Quincy episodes with a gag about the coffee Dr. Asten provides his staff, in this case Quincy is angered when Asten takes away the free coffee to be replaced with vending machines on every other floor. Speaking of Dr. Asten there's a nice rare character developing scene where he confides in Quincy how his dad died & why he wanted to get into forensic pathology. There's some really suspect police procedures here, Lt. Monahan actually brings three young thugs into Dr. Varney's hospital room after he had been beaten up so he could identify them! Yeah right, wouldn't a formal identification be made at the police station with Varney behind a see through mirror so his attackers wouldn't know who were possibly sending them to jail? Also, why did Varney say that the three thugs didn't attack him when it clearly was? The acting is alright, Klugman is on top form as usual & a joy to watch his performance.
For the Benefit of My Patients is average Quincy, there's not much here to get excited about to be honest. The moral issue is sound enough I suppose but with no murder, no mystery, no humour, a predictable plot with an all too neatly tied up happy ending & some questionable police work there's little here to recommend.
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