The BEST episodes of Quincy, M.E. season 4
Every episode of Quincy, M.E. season 4, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of Quincy, M.E. season 4!
Quincy, M.E, a man who must have been a nightmare to work with! Quincy was a crusading Medical Examiner in Los Angeles, an expert at his job he was always capable of finding something that everyone else missed. A small clue that would go against all the rest of the evidence in a case and would lead to him arguing with his boss, Asten, and/or the investigating detective, nearly always Monahan. Quincy started of as a straight forward crime series with a difference, it was a M.E. investigating not a police officer or private eye.As the series went from strength to strength the writers, probably with a little push from Klugman, started bringing in stories about social injustice rather than criminal. Most of the time this worked, in fact it is sometimes interesting to see that some of the things highlighted still have not changed even now! Sometimes it came over a little preachy but the show can never be faulted for trying to enlighten the eyes of its viewers.
#1 - Aftermath
Season 4 - Episode 16 - Aired 2/7/1979
A large passenger jet crash-lands 40 miles outside LA. Quincy and Sam are sent out to start the identification of the bodies and to make sure that the crash scene is kept intact. Once the rest of the Coroners team has arrived and the positions of the bodies have been marked out they are all taken back to LA, where an autopsy has to be completed on each and every one of them, all one hundred of them! Quincy eventually discovers that a dangerous flammable gas was being carried by the plane, not illegal but extremely dangerous. He then finds himself with two dilemmas to solve. The first being how to persuade the airlines that transporting this sort of flammable substance is not a good idea and secondly, to get an insurance company to accept that one of the unidentifiable bodies was that of a man they insured so that his wife and family can claim his life insurance.
#2 - A Night to Raise the Dead
Season 4 - Episode 9 - Aired 12/7/1978
After four nights of continuous rain a man finds a body by his car. It had been washed down the mountains and ended up in his front yard. Once Quincy has completed the autopsy he announces that the man died of typhoid, an extremely infectious disease. The man had been illegally buried in the cemetery at the top of the mountain very recently. Quincy wants the whole cemetery checked to see if there are more infectious bodies buried up there but he comes up against a barrel load of red tape trying to get this authorized.
#3 - House of No Return
Season 4 - Episode 11 - Aired 1/11/1979
Quincy investigates the death of a young man at a home for people who have comitted a crime but are considered mentally incapable and are therefore not sentenced to proper prison. His mother insists that he was forced to fight by the attendants, who run the place like prison warders, in a unofficial boxing contests against other inmates.
#4 - The Death Challenge
Season 4 - Episode 22 - Aired 3/29/1979
A world famous magician comes out of retirement to appear on a live television show after his most famous trick leads to the death of his protege. After the autopsy Quincy has to find out whether or not the first performance was a cover up for homicide or whether it was just an accident.
#5 - Walk Softly Through the Night (1)
Season 4 - Episode 14 - Aired 2/1/1979
A top children's TV star, and a friend of Quincy's, is shocked when his son dies of a drug overdose. He had no idea his son was even on drugs and is angry when he finds out that a doctor prescribed the drugs to him. Quincy and the star, Brock, go to visit the doctor and find an enormous queue of addicts waiting outside the surgery. They are all waiting with money in hand to buy a prescription from the doctor. Quincy and Brock set about trying to shut this doctor down and to help a young would be doctor in his attempts to get some sort of drug counseling support system set up in his college.
#6 - Physician, Heal Thyself
Season 4 - Episode 18 - Aired 2/22/1979
A seventeen-year old girl collapses and dies after having had an abortion. The family wants an autopsy and tells Asten that they will pay for a private one. Quincy performs it and thinks that her death was caused by the negligence of the doctor who performed the abortion. He visits the doctor and the hospital and finds out that the doctor was drunk when he operated, proving this is hard though as he faces a conspiracy of silence.
#7 - Even Odds
Season 4 - Episode 6 - Aired 11/9/1978
Quincy is gravely wounded at the scene of a crime, so it is up to Sam, Asten and Lt. Monaghan to solve the case he was working on and catch the person who shot him.
#8 - Dark Angel
Season 4 - Episode 17 - Aired 2/15/1979
Monaghan asks Quincy to push the autopsy of a young car thief to the top of his priority list. The boys' friend is claiming that a police officer chased him down and killed him after they were stopped in their stolen car. When the autopsy is completed it can only confirm that the boy, Billy Harris, died to a bone broken in his neck, and not how it could have occurred. This information is enough to get the press printing stories of police brutality and a Californians for Constitutional Rights lawyer rushing in to defend Billy's friend Steve.
#9 - The Depth of Beauty
Season 4 - Episode 13 - Aired 1/25/1979
Quincy delves into the world of cosmetic surgery after he autopsies a woman who killed herself because she hated the scars a botched operation caused. He discovers that the plastic surgeon isn't in fact a qualified plastic surgeon, only a qualified MD. The law allows anyone who has qualified as a doctor to call himself any kind of specialist he likes.
#10 - The Eye of the Needle
Season 4 - Episode 23 - Aired 4/12/1979
An ailing woman's accidental death outrages Quincy when he discovers that she had been seeing a holistic doctor and had been treated with natural medicines rather than scientific ones. His opinion about the doctor responsible though is affected by his liking for her and it gives him something to think about.
#11 - The Last Six Hours
Season 4 - Episode 1 - Aired 9/21/1978
Finally getting to spend a bit of leave time with his latest flame, Barbara, Quincy heads off away from Los Angeles. They nearly get run off the road and then witness an accident. Quincy then finds himself in a life or death race to isolate a mysterious poison, found in the woman's body, that has already claimed two lives
#12 - Dead and Alive
Season 4 - Episode 7 - Aired 11/16/1978
An apparent murder victim becomes the object of Quincy's thorough investigation and identification when his mother and sister insist that he is still alive.
#13 - Images
Season 4 - Episode 5 - Aired 11/2/1978
A fire in a small motel room causes the death of the single woman occupying it. The evidence shows that the identity of the woman is Jessica Ross, the country's top newswoman. As Quincy begins a press conference confirming her death Jessica walks in through the door, declaring that the rumours of her death are unfounded. Quincy and Asten are shocked but soon Quincy doesn't believe that this woman is Ross, and that his original findings were correct. He thinks that the body was Jessica ross and this woman is an imposter.
#14 - Promises to Keep
Season 4 - Episode 19 - Aired 3/1/1979
Quincy and Sam have to stay late, going over work that was completed by a Medical Examiner who, it turned out, wasn't qualified for the job. This makes Quincy miss yet another date with Lynne, his current girlfriend. When they do get together she proposes to him. He turns her down because he remembers how he treated Helen, his first wife. He was always working and never spending enough time with her. Later he feels guilty and decides to go and see Lynne and propose to her himself.
#15 - No Way to Treat a Body
Season 4 - Episode 8 - Aired 11/30/1978
Quincy's latest ladyfriend moves into a new apartment and accidentally discovers two mummified bodies. He finds himself up against a group of oddball residents when he tries to find out what is going on, who the bodies belong to and where they came from.
#16 - A Small Circle of Friends
Season 4 - Episode 12 - Aired 1/18/1979
A roundup of prostitutes follows the death of an athlete who contracted a drug-resistant strain of gonorrhea.
#17 - A Question of Death
Season 4 - Episode 10 - Aired 1/4/1979
The M.E.'s office is helping a hospital with their organ donation program. Quincy goes there to help declare a young man dead and he was told that his kidney would go to a man whose constantly having dialysis. Quincy and the doctor talk to the boy's parents and convince them to donate his organs for transplant. Later a lawyer upon learning of this sues the hospital for coercing the parents for gain. Quincy's in awe cause the man he was told who would receive the organ is not a man of means. He learns that the hospital director overruled the doctor and had the organ given to a wealthy man. Now the whole program is in jeopardy unless Quincy can prove to the parents that their son was brain dead at the time.
#18 - Speed Trap
Season 4 - Episode 2 - Aired 10/12/1978
After a racing car accident proves fatal for a former Grand Prix driver, Quincy's autopsy brands the crash a possible homicide.
#19 - A Test for the Living
Season 4 - Episode 3 - Aired 10/19/1978
Quincy's powers of persuasion are put to the test when he crusades for a 7-year old boys re-evaluation as an autistic child.
#20 - Death by Good Intentions
Season 4 - Episode 4 - Aired 10/26/1978
A patient dies just hours after having had a successful surgical operation. An ‘Affirmative Action' doctor is suspended because of his ‘mistake' and a friend of Quincy's decides that he will take the blame to save him, and the ‘Affirmative Action' program. Quincy soon gets involved to try and save his friends job.
#21 - An Ounce of Prevention
Season 4 - Episode 21 - Aired 3/22/1979
While completing the autopsy of a construction worker who fell to his death Quincy spots some unusual abnormalities. He gets Sam to run some further tests to see if there was anything that could have made the man fall. The results show that he was killed by a large amount of pesticides, pesticides that were covering the tomatoes he had for lunch. Follow up investigations show that a dumpsite near the town of Rosewood is leaking. The chemicals are infecting the ground in and around the dumpsite and town.
#22 - Semper-Fidelis
Season 4 - Episode 20 - Aired 3/15/1979
Quincy is asked to do an autopsy on the body of a marine who died in an accident during his training. Harry Collier, a friend of Quincy's wants him to give a second opinion, to stop the press from calling the death a cover up. What Quincy finds though is what he thinks is evidence of a murder and he goes to the base to find out what did happen to cause the young soldiers death, and if necessary who caused it.
#23 - Walk Softly Through the Night (2)
Season 4 - Episode 15 - Aired 2/1/1979
Quincy continues in his quest to get close down Dr. Colella's surgery and stop him from continuing to issue prescriptions for drug addicts. This becomes less of a problem though after Marty Herrera, the young would be doctor, is arrested for killing Dr. Colella! Quincy doesn't believe the boy did it but finds that the evidence seems to be pointing straight at him.