1 of 5 | Joyce (Wendi McLendon-Covey) reacts to Sanderson’s “Steve Little” proposal on Monday’s “St. Denis Medical” on NBC. Photo courtesy of NBC
Note: This article contains spoilers for Monday’s episode of St. Denis Medical, “A Waste of Time and Marbles.”
Monday’s episode of St. Denis Medical, the midseason finale before the holidays, concluded with a surprise for Joyce, the administrator played by Wendi McLendon-Covey. No one was more surprised than McLendon-Covey, even while she was performing it.
The episode featured the return of Joyce’s ex-boyfriend, Sanderson (Steve Little). Sanderson staged an elaborate marriage proposal, emerging from a body bay on a gurney.
In a recent Zoom interview with UPI, McLendon-Covey said she was as surprised as anyone that Joyce said yes.
“Every take we did, I was always still surprised,” McLendon-Covey said. “I can’t believe this is happening and someone wrote this, but I think there’s no other way for it to have happened with Sanderson.”
Sanderson swallowed a marble to get himself admitted to the hospital. He still lists Joyce as his emergency contact since their breakup.
Joyce passed Sanderson off to Ron (David Alan Grier) and Bruce (Josh Lawson). Ron tried to help Sanderson man up to get Joyce back, but even he didn’t expect her to accept his proposal.
“You’re with your best friend and they say, ‘Sir, do you want some pineapple?'” Grier said. “And they go, ‘Yeah, sure.’ And you’re looking at them like, ‘You hate pineapple. What are you doing?'”
The future of Joyce and Sanderson
Showrunner Eric Ledgin said he didn’t intend the proposal to be a major cliffhanger. He expects many viewers to catch up on St. Denis Medical over the holidays.
“A lot of people binge the season at the end,” Ledgin said. “The cliffhanger was less necessary as just ending with something fun to go into the holidays with.”
When St. Denis Medical returns next year, Ledgin teased wedding planning will provide stories for many upcoming episodes.
“That’s just another to-do on Joyce’s list,” Ledgin said. “She obviously has a lot going on so wedding planning is not necessarily a welcome addition to her schedule.”
While this gives McLendon-Covey an amusing storyline, she said Sanderson continues to flummox Joyce.
“The plans have to be made and oh, what plans are going to be made,” she said. “You’re not going to believe it.”
Grier said he and Ron are skeptical this will end with Joyce walking down the aisle.
“I think she said yes for now,” Grier said. “That’s what my analysis was in the moment. It’s a long way from ‘will you marry me’ to ‘I now pronounce you.’ Anything can happen, anything.”
The nurse walkout
While Sanderson was in the hospital, Joyce also faced a potential walk-out by the nurses over the hospital approving reimbursements for continuing education. Head nurse Alex (Alison Tolman) was caught in the middle of wanting to help her staff, and dealing with her boss.
“That’s peak Alex really screwing things up,” Tolman said. “It’s a trap of her own making I think that Alex is caught in.”
The nurse walkout heralded the return of nurse Rene (Nico Santos), introduced in the Season 1 episode “Salamat You Too.” The leader of the hospital’s Filipino nurses who insist on working together, Rene rallied all the nurses to hold out for more from Joyce.
Santos previously worked with Ledgin on Superstore, a comedy about retail workers. Though the nurse walkout was still played for laughs, it was important to Santos.
“We all know that the most hard working, most essential are usually the least appreciated,” Santos said. “So I’m glad that we’re really able to highlight this both with Superstore and with St. Denis because the world would fall apart without these people.”
For Ledgin, making Alex head nurse evolved her character, who began as an overachieving nurse struggling to make time for her family at home. Now that she got her promotion, she has to actually deal with the needs of those under and above her.
“It’s being stuck between the bosses and the underlings,” Ledgin said. “That’s sometimes a more complicated position to be in than people realize when they get into it.”
Joyce actually agreed to reimbursements that kick in when senior nurses have worked six years on staff. Rene accepted that because he has the requisite six years under his belt, but Santos did not see that as selling out.
“I don’t think he sold them out but definitely he’s like listen, I’m the head honcho of the Filipinos here so if anybody’s going to get it, it’s going to be Rene,” he said. “I’m looking out for everybody but wait your turn.”
Should Rene return in a future episode, Santos does not expect him to become any more tolerant of Alex as his boss. He hopes Alex can come to appreciate Rene’s value as an independent leader of his own corner of St. Denis.
“I think in the end they’re really going through the same thing,” Santos said. “They’re both underappreciated workers in this hospital. So I hope that one day they will be frenemies and not just enemies.”
Joyce is still learning, too
Joyce did get a small taste of her underappreciated employees in the episode “I Left a Woman on the Table.” Covering a nursing shift, Joyce sets the goal of discharging 50 patients.
She learned the hard way how real patients don’t fit into her theoretical box of how quickly treatment can be administered.
“Joyce was a doctor at one point, is still able to practice,” McLendon-Covey said. “So that was really interesting to be on the other side of that because I know when you are a patient, all you want to do is be told that you can go home. So playing the professional side of it was very eye opening.”
Ledgin said the comedy was inherent in putting Joyce back on the hospital floor. He said her dynamic was not exclusive to the medical industry.
“I do think that the bosses forget,” Ledgin said. “That’s true in every industry. The bosses forget what it is like to be on the ground and doing the daily grind.”
Joyce does achieve her goal at the last possible second, however she recognizes her disconnect. Patients, and insurance companies, have questions, concerns and formalities that hold up the system.
“You’re not going to go home at the end of your shift,” McLendon-Covey said. “You’re going to go home when everybody is sorted out, so bye bye personal life. Bye bye plans. All your plans have to be written in pencil.”
