I have finally finished a complete revision of my article on Janet Dean, Registered Nurse. In many respects, this is a completely new article with much more information about the production, distribution and reception of the series (both critical and in terms of ratings). I’ve revised articles in the past but rarely as significantly as this revision. I wish it had not taken quite as long to complete. I began doing additional research back in 2010 but it was not until earlier this year that I had the chance to sit down and start the actual revising.
When I first wrote the article in 2007, I only had access to two episodes out of the 39 produced. One of the two ended with Ella Raines, in character as Janet Dean, addressing the audience. The other episode did not. Based on these two episodes I assumed, incorrectly, that every episode ended with a scene in which Janet Dean talked to the audience. I have seen been able to see another episode in its entirety. And the Museum of Broadcast Communications has two episodes available for viewing online. I have not watched them all the way through but I skipped to the end and neither episode featured a final scene like the one I’ve described.
So, out of five episodes only one includes a scene at the end in which Janet Dean addressed the audience. They all are roughly the same length. I think it is safe to say the episode that did feature this scene was an exception. Indeed, it was an episode in which Ella Raines did not appear, aside from this scene at the end. That could explain why the scene exists. A colleague of mind suggested that perhaps it was a legal disclaimer of sorts due to the content of the episode, which involved fee splitting between doctors, which was and is considered unethical. Perhaps the producers of Janet Dean, Registered Nurse felt that the episode required a scene in which Janet Dean stressed the fact that the medical profession did not approve of fee splitting.
I have made mistakes and errors in the past, both in articles and posts. For some reason I fairly regularly will write CBS when I mean NBC (and vice versa). But I believe this is the best example of what happens when I only have access to a handful of episodes of a television series and have to base an entire article on them. In some cases, I’ve written articles after only viewing one episode (like The New People, for example) or to be totally honest without having seen any episodes at all. That is why I do as much research as possible, pulling information from as many sources as I can, in order to have the best understanding of the series in question. But sometimes sources are wrong, be they television listings in a newspaper or an article in TV Guide or The New York Times.
So, please take a few minutes to read the revised article and hopefully over the next few months I will be able to do substantial revisions of other articles.
