Thoughts about "The Doctors" - July 1975

Another month's worth of episodes of "The Doctors" has aired on RetroTV. Below are my thoughts on what has aired for the month of July 1975.

Greta and Mike interacted, but we didn't get to see her getting the news about her brother, which was a disappointment. I so was looking forward to that. Mike continued to want Toni back, which obviously upset Alan. Mike agreed to giving Toni up after three months if it didn't work out, but all Alan felt was jealousy. This hurt Alan's work life as he was only competent in surgery instead of outstanding. Matt decided to suspend him for a week due to the distractions. Baby Michael Paul seems the happiest with Mike, which is kind of amusing, and they blamed that on how his specialty had been pediatrics before he went into forensic medicine. (Overall, the baby seems the happiest with Grandpa Matt of anyone since the baby was on camera.) Mike took a meeting that was set up by Cadman, so he could work for the police. Earlier in the month, Alan interrupted a night that Mike and Toni were going to share with the baby. Martha lost it, and told them both to leave, as the month ended Toni was torn with a dream or was it a nightmare of both men wanting a life with her.

Tom and Althea went out again. He also got help from Mike about his lithium project notes.  As usual, Maggie tried to be a good friend giving advice, sometimes she was successful, but other times she did not.

Andrew's granddaughter MJ Match came to town. She did an interview, and now she's a nurse at the hospital, taking over as one of the nurses near Matt's office. She and Rico met in the elevator, and flirted, though nothing happened between them. Rico and Althea also interacted, and he thanked her again for the stethoscope. When Rico and MJ were at Pete's they saw Stacy crying, while eating steak. She ended up choking and Rico saved her life via the Heimlich Maneuver. There was a later scene where Matt gave a tutorial on how to do this procedure if someone couldn't breathe due to lodged food. Stacy and Andy were having issues even if they did sing together on stage (what's interesting is that Jack Urbont - soap opera theme song composer is on screen at times for the musical scenes - he wrote the "General Hospital" theme that was used prior to "Faces of the Heart" and the "Guiding Light" disco theme), things got heated romantically, but she cooled them off upsetting him. Andy went to see Stacy at her apartment, and she pretty much said she was done with him. Rico came over, and Stacy got him to sleep with her. Rico was upset that Stacy had been a virgin and lied about it. (Before Stacy and Rico had sex, Stacy asked both Carolee and Toni advice, when in theory the person she should have been talking about sex without love shouldn't have been either woman, as neither could be a good example.)

Since Penny and MJ both couldn't afford to live on their own, they decided to live together. Of course, Penny has no idea that MJ and Rico have met, or that Penny knows the Bellini family.

Ann still hasn't moved out of the Aldrich house, even if she has gotten a cleaner bill of health from Matt. She is back working at the clinic part time, while Karen is moving to Kingsbury. Althea has noticed that Ann is depending on Steve a bit too much, and called both Ann and Steve out on it. (Steve likes the attention, but he kind of is wearing the dunce cap of Madison these days, if one would exist, which says a lot for his behavior at least he dresses well.) Althea also mentioned it to Carolee, and considering her issues with jealousy this wasn't good, and we got a flashback to the scene where Ann confided into Steve, in the middle of the night, while in his robe showing more skin than normal.

In custody news, Karen and Steve had two meetings with Judge Bowman, and while it was nice to see Lydia Bruce's husband Leon, I'm a bit annoyed with the character's decision about Erich. He said the only way to keep this from going to court, was for the Aldriches to give Erich to Karen for three months of temporary custody. This was after Bowman had spoken to Erich off screen. Karen had tried to convince Erich that she was the one, he wanted to be with, but we're told that he wanted to continue to see his family. (This doesn't make sense to me, because it is family court, and that kind of information is sealed for the sake of the child, and they wouldn't allow a seven year old to watch any parent get their past history dragged up on the stand. Now if Erich was Billy's age, I'd get the concern.)

Those were the highlights of July 1975, all episodes were available. I'm not sure what my favorite scene of the month was, though I wish we would finally see a Martha/Ernie date. Also I'm not sure what I think about Rico and MJ yet as characters, though it is sad not to see Lauri, poor Hank.