Doogie Howser, M.D.

Doogie Howser M.D.
The Cast of Doogie Howser, M.D.
Format	Comedy-Drama
Created by	Steven Bochco David E. Kelley
Starring	Neil Patrick Harris Max Casella Lisa Dean Ryan James Sikking Belinda Montgomery Lawrence Pressman Lucy Boryer Mitchell Anderson Markus Redmond Robyn Lively Kathryn Layng
Country of origin	United States
No. of seasons	4
No. of episodes	97 (List of episodes)
Production
Running time	24 minutes
Production company(s)	Steven Bochco Productions In Association With 20th Century Fox Television
Broadcast
Original channel	ABC
Original run	19 September 1989 – 24 March 1993

Doogie Howser, M.D. is a television comedy-drama starring Neil Patrick Harris as a brilliant doctor who also faces the problems of being a normal teenager. ABC aired the show from September 1989 to March 1993 for four seasons totaling 97 episodes.

Plot

Dr. Douglas "Doogie" Howser (Harris) is the son of David (Sikking) and Katherine Howser (Montgomery). As a child, he twice survived early-stage pediatric leukemia, "first when I was four and then...again when I was six",^[1] after his father—a family physician—discovered suspicious bruising. The experience fueled Howser's desire to also enter medicine.

Possessing a genius intellect and an eidetic memory,^[2] Howser got a perfect score on the SAT at the age of six. He completed high school in nine weeks, graduated from Princeton University at age 10, and finished medical school four years later. At age 14, Howser was the youngest licensed doctor in the country.

The series begins on Howser's 16th birthday; the cold open of the pilot episode shows him stopping his field test for his driver's license to help an injured person at the scene of a traffic accident. Howser is a resident surgeon^[3] at Eastman Medical Center in Los Angeles, and still lives at home^[4] with his parents. His best friend and neighbor, Vinnie Delpino (Casella), is a more typical teenager—climbing through Howser's bedroom window to visit—and keeps him grounded in life outside his profession. Howser keeps a diary on his computer; all of the episodes typically end with him making an entry in it.

The teen doctor seeks acceptance by both others his age and his professional colleagues. Many episodes also deal with wider social problems; AIDS awareness, racism, sexism, homophobia, gang violence, access to quality medical care, and losing one's virginity are topics, along with aging, body issues, and friendship.

Howser initially has a girlfriend, Wanda Plenn (Ryan), but they break up in the course of the series; he also begins a trauma surgery fellowship and moves into his own apartment. Bochco intended to end the show with a "season-long story arc for Doogie where he becomes disaffected with the practice of medicine and . . . quits medicine to become a writer."^[5] ABC abruptly canceled the show due to low ratings, preventing Bochco and the show's writers from implementing the storyline.

Production

The weekly, half-hour comedy-drama was created by Steven Bochco and David E. Kelley. The soundtrack of the series is by Mike Post and uses Post's trademark mid to late 1980s Yamaha DX-7 synthesizer.

Cast

• Neil Patrick Harris as Dr. Douglas "Doogie" Howser
• Max Casella as Vincent "Vinnie" Delpino
• James Sikking as Dr. David Howser
• Belinda Montgomery as Katherine Howser
• Lisa Dean Ryan as Wanda Plenn
• Lucy Boryer as Janine Stewart
• Lawrence Pressman as Dr. Benjamin Canfield
• Mitchell Anderson as Dr. Jack McGuire
• Kathryn Layng as Nurse Mary Margaret "Curly" Spaulding
• Markus Redmond as Raymond Alexander
• Robyn Lively as Nurse Michele Faber

Ratings

The first two seasons were successful and were in the top 30.

• Season 1: #30, 14.5^[6]
• Season 2: #24, 14.7^[7]

DVD releases

Anchor Bay Entertainment has released all 4 seasons of the TV series on DVD in Region 1.

Cultural Influence

• Smart mice obtained by genetic engineering have been named "Doogie mice" in honor of Harris' character.^[8][9]
• Harris has satirized his years playing a teenage medical doctor several times.
  • Barney Stinson (also played by Harris) writes in his computerized diary at the end of the How I Met Your Mother episode "The Bracket" while the Doogie Howser theme music plays.^[10] In The Stinsons he also comments "Call me crazy but child actors were better in the 80s".
  • In the 2004 comedy Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle, Harris—playing a fictionalized version of himself—claims to have "humped every piece of ass ever on that show" (except the hot nurse, who he expresses regret over). Harris is referred to as "Doogie Howser" while stealing Harold's car from the convenience store.
  • In 2008, Harris appeared in commercials for Old Spice deodorant, claiming to be an expert because he "used to be a doctor for pretends."
  • On the 10 January 2009 episode of Saturday Night Live, the SNL Digital Short featured guest host Harris leading a full orchestra version of the Doogie Howser theme. When the song concludes, he turns toward the camera and sheds a tear.
  • In an episode of Roseanne, Roseanne has a dream after having undergone breast reduction surgery. She goes to the mirror and realizes that she has comically larger breasts than before. Doogie Howser (Harris) comes in and asks an upset Roseanne if they were supposed to be bigger than they are in the dream. Roseanne screams but then is woken up by her husband Dan. To make sure she was dreaming, she looks under her bedsheet, sees the surgery went as planned, and sighs "Way to go, Doogie!"

See also

• Balamurali Ambati, who in 1995 became the world's youngest doctor at the age of 17.
• Akrit Jaswal
• Sho Yano, who matriculated in the University of Chicago's Medical Scientist Training Program (M.D./Ph.D.) at the age of 12

References

External links

• Doogie Howser, M.D. at the Internet Movie Database
• Doogie Howser M.D. at TV.com
• Saturday Night Live Skit at NBC.com