“The worst thing anybody can ever say about Mark Sloan is that he’s uh…uh…colorful!”
– J.L McCabe
Synopsis: After having an argument with the hospital administrator over charges against him, McCabe’s doctor, Mark Sloan, is accused of murder when the administrator is found dead. Against McCabe’s orders, Mark and three of his medical students investigate the murder for themselves.
This Jake and The Fatman episode was a backdoor pilot for a new television series starring Dick Van Dyke as the crime-solving doctor, Mark Sloan. As with most spin-off episodes, Jake and “The Fatman” McCabe are hardly in the episode at all. McCabe only appears a few seconds at a time and Jake leaves on business within the first fifteen minutes.
Our first view of Mark is him roller-skating into work at the hospital, which is fantastic! After learning of the charges against him, Mark says he is leaving the hospital. Unfortunately, this, and the fact that he is who finds the body of the murdered administrator, leads Mark to becoming prime suspect. The other two suspects are two other doctors who the administrator had also brought up on investigations, a surgeon and an OB-GYN. Mark and three of his medical students investigate not only the murder, but also a doctor addicted to drugs, a baby-selling ring, and a sloppy doctor’s carelessness with an elderly patient’s health. In the end, of course, Mark solves the murder and McCabe makes an appearance at the arrest.
Overall, it is a fun, fast-paced pilot episode. It isn’t like some pilot episodes where you sit there and say, “No wonder this wasn’t picked up by a network”. Dick Van Dyke takes his very eccentric character seriously so that he isn’t a joke throughout the whole episode, although Dr. Mark Sloan obviously has a funny bone (ha ha). His supporting medical students do a good job with their parts as well, and there are no overdone characters who make watching the episode hard. Even if you were disappointed because of the lack of Jake and J.L., you could still probably get interested enough to watch the episode unfold.
Fun Stuff!
– The roller skates were kept as part of Mark Sloan’s character throughout the Diagnosis Murder series.
– Mark continued to teach residents and students in the Diagnosis Murder series as well.
– Mark tells Dr. Morgan that he and his wife had no children, however this changed because in Diagnosis Murder he has two children, Steve and Carol.
– Dick Van Dyke was 66 (and roller skating!) at the time of this episode.
Where Have I Seen You Before?
James Cromwell (Russell Havilland): Our murder victim was farmer Hoggett in the 1995 movie about a pig named Babe.
Steven Eckholdt: Mark’s (apparently) financially well-off student is also the casual, artsy brother Jake in the romantic/family movie Just in Time (1997), co-starring with Mark Moses. You might remember him from F.R.I.E.N.D.S as Mark Robinson, one-time date of Rachel and focus of Ross’ hatred.
Sam Hennings: The drug-addicted doctor was Captain Huddleston in a few episodes of JAG, but I mainly know him from various B movies such as Behind the Waterfall (1995) and On Our Own (1988).
Ally Walker: She has starred in multiple shows (that I have never watched), including Santa Barbara, True Blue, Moon Over Miami, and Profiler.
Gregory Itzin: You can find him in the MacGyver episode Final Approach, various Matlock episodes, and Diagnosis Murder (again!) X-Marks the Murder 1 and 2, although he isn’t playing a doctor that is concerned with his golf game, he’s playing a crooked lawyer.
Kristoff St. John: St. John appears in two more Diagnosis Murder episodes, one of them being “Death in the Daytime” where he appears as himself on the set of The Young and The Restless, which is what he is most known for.
Mark L. Taylor: He plays Don Forrester in Honey I Shrunk the Kids (1989), is in Slam Dunk Dead of Diagnosis Murder, and was Dr. Louis Visconti of Melrose Place, but since that is a show I’ve never watched I can’t say whether that doctor is also an OB-GYN.
Quotes:
- (J.L to Jake)
“I told him I’d send my best man. And that was a compliment.”
“Couldn’t be; you gave me one last summer.”
- “Uh, well, I just leaned up against the door with a hairpin and it popped open.”-Josie
- “I suppose you would dedicate yourself to squandering your parent’s fortune.”-Mark Sloan
- (J.L to Mark)“Do I take out appendices? Of course not. Do I remove tonsils? Of course not. Do you know why?”
“You don’t know where they are.”
Retro Returns 