Mandy Patinkin - Chicago Hope Article

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Peter MacNicol, "Chicago Hope's" Alan Birch, won Viewers for Quality Television's award for best supporting actor last season. He also nabbed great reviews and memorable scenes. So why was he killed off during Monday's episode? The short answer: Besides being great storytelling, it gave producers a strong reason for Dr. Jeffrey Geiger's (Mandy Patinkin) departure from the hospital.

After Birch was gunned down, Geiger operated on him to save his life, but the wounds were fatal. Before he died, Birch indicated he wanted Geiger to care for his young child. It's a redemption of sorts for the troubled Geiger, and it offers an out for Patinkin, who is relinquishing his full-time role on the show to spend more time with his family in New York. The long answer: After series creator David E. Kelley, a former lawyer, cut back on his "Chicago Hope" work to spend more time with his family, MacNicol was unhappy with the scenes the new writers were creating for him. He asked new executive producer John Tinker to rectify the situation. They both concluded that all the great legal/medical arguments had been played out on the show. So when Kelley sat down to write the good-bye episode for Geiger, he decided to deal with MacNicol's situation as well by killing Birch. "The idea just seemed so powerful and organic," says Tinker, a former writer/producer for an earlier medical drama, "St. Elsewhere." "Geiger always put himself first. Now he has to give it all up and put (Birch's) baby's needs before his. If we could have done that without killing Birch, we would have." In fact, after Kelley wrote the script, CBS and production company 20th Century Fox Television balked at the idea of shelving another of their main characters. Kelley re-wrote it so Birch lived at the end, but no one was happy with that outcome.

"It was not a personal falling out here," Tinker says. "As the only lawyer in a medical show, there were only so many issues he could deal with - malpractice, court dates and the like - and without David here, there was no one to come up with new stories for him. Peter wants to move on, and we're on great terms. Peter will come back to the show."

But Birch is dead.

Still, Tinker says Birch will return in a future episode. As a ghost? In a flashback? He's not saying. Patinkin has promised to return for at least two episodes this season, which will probably air in May. The losses of Birch and Geiger are just two of the changes Tinker, son of former NBC chairman Grant Tinker, has brought to "Hope." The show that began as a series about two doctors - Geiger and Aaron Shutt (Adam Arkin) - their high-strung chief of staff (Hector Elizondo) and the house lawyer (Birch) who always gets them out of trouble has turned into more of an ensemble piece.

The show now includes stories about the chief of staff, seven doctors, including new hires Christine Lahti and Jamey Sheridan, and nurse Camille Shutt (Roxanne Hart). When "Hope" premiered last year, it was compared constantly to the other new medical series, "ER," which went on to become the ratings phenomenon of the 1990s. "Hope" struggled at first, but now it's doing quite well on Mondays, No. 21 among all shows season to date. Tinker says he has not seen a complete "ER" episode. He doesn't want to be accused of copying the show.
"We do a different show. From what I've been told, they sometimes have like 47 stories going on at once. We tell four. And on 'ER,' they don't get to know their patients as well."

Fans complained on the Internet about the new "Hope" theme song, but Tinker says he had no choice. When new CBS Entertainment president Leslie Moonves (who in a previous job sold "ER" to NBC) came to the network, one of his first moves was to tell Tinker to scrap the old theme. "He said it wasn't memorable and asked for something more contemporary. When the president of the network asks you to do something like that, you do it."

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