Solipsist Television

[Warning #1: Contains series ending spoilers for St. Elsewhere, Newhart, a season spoiler for Dallas, and an episode spoiler for The Twilight Zone]

[Warning #2: Probably contains an overly-broad interpretation of the term “solipsism”. Philosophers beware!]

There is a most special type of TV series that does something very peculiar in the final series episode: the two that come immediately to my mind are St. Elsewhere and Newhart. And what is it that happens in these episodes but the very overturning of reality itself!

The hospital drama series St. Elsewhere was a continuation of the successful formula that was demonstrated in the police series Hill Street Blues. It presented a view of life at a big hospital through the experiences of its employees, from the lowest levels all the way to top management. And it was moderately popular, lasting six seasons. I watched it from time to time, although I couldn’t call myself a regular viewer. But I did watch the final episode, which changed everything. For in the closing moments of that episode, it was revealed that almost all of the characters and all of the episodes were the product of a little autistic boy’s strong imagination!

The comedy series Newhart was Bob Newhart’s follow-up sitcom series to his wildly successful Bob Newhart Show. In Newhart, he pretty much kept to his trademark comic personality from the earlier series, but his character, his wife’s and all of the cast were completely different. Newhart was set in Vermont, while The Bob Newhart Show was set in Chicago. At the very end of the final episode of Newhart, though, we find Bob waking up next to Emily, his wife from the earlier series! It appeared that the entire Newhart series was a dream of the earlier Bob Newhart character!

What unites these two widely different series is that they display the concept of solipsism. Solipsism, briefly (and probably crudely) stated, claims that one’s own self is the only truly real element of the universe. Whatever else there is either an unreal illusion, or a creation of the self. I love series that end this way. That St. Elsewhere ending especially had me yelling out “WHAT?! WHAT?!!!”

Besides hitting the viewer with a solipsist revelation at the end of a series, solipsism can appear for a season or for one episode. The overblown eighties prime time soap opera Dallas belongs in this category. For one entire season of the series, one of the characters dreamed everything that happened (without the audience being informed of this as it was happening). In this case, a lot of the viewers reportedly felt (rightly) manipulated.

The Twilight Zone had an episode titled Shadow Play where a man was put on trial, condemned, sent to death row, struggled to get a pardon, and then got electrocuted in a 24-hour period. But it wasn't real either, but rather a continuing nightmare. All of the characters and the world around the protagonist were his creation; only he was real. And when the switch was pulled for his execution, the dream cycle started all over, with the various imaginary people in his story randomly switching their roles around in the repeating nightmare. There is one stirring moment in this story when one of the characters believes that he isn't real and that his own "life" will end at the dreamer's execution.

The idea that a character is completely responsible for creating his/her environment, even to the extent of having all of the people being unreal, occurs from time to time in different shows. If done well, revealing this solipsist “universe” can be pretty jolting to the viewer (like in St. Elsewhere). But often, as in the case of Dallas, it can result in nothing better than groans from the viewing audience.