shallowness (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shallowness) wrote2024-04-01 04:39 pm
shallowness) wrote2024-04-01 04:39 pm
Entry tags:
Sisters and 'helpers' as heroines
Cardiac Arrest - 2.4 Bad Blood
Some of this was so clumsy, unnecessarily so, (script and execution) but it ended on quite a dun dun dun moment, suggesting there’s a serial killer on the wards (an inept one, because a young man with no underlying conditions other than what he’s going to be treated for is way more suspicious than an old lady who was on oxygen.) Still, we met Dr Condescending Turner’s wife at the ball, and she was great, almost as great as Claire at being called totty in her hearing.
I started off feeling sorry for Phil, the newly qualified posho, whose turn it was to get called from one case to another and seemed to be running on fumes. He got increasingly wound up by the nurses who were able to find time to chat either with each other or on the phone. And then it seemed like one of them had been careless over the oxygen, meaning he had to certify the death of an old lady he’d assured would be fine. No wonder he was focused on a young woman he was able to help. Actually, maybe ‘fixated’ is the right word.
The sisters were fairly impressive all episode, offering sensible advice to colleagues on their love lives and professional doings. Phil had reported what had happened with the oxygen, which ultimately led to Andrew’s Geordie ex being suspended and humiliatingly led off the premises, insisting on her innocence.
Possibly also humiliatingly, Docherty got stripped of one of his lists by the hospital manager, who was pretending to be blind to figure out how accessible the hospital was. I cringed as Docherty asked his assistant out to the hospital ball (really a Halloween party graced by the whole gamut of staff plus significant others, with some glamour being provided by pearl necklaces, some of which were probably fake.) Partly, it’s because he’s trying so hard to seem vigorous and cover his stuttery lapses, partly because the music was OTT. She seemed charmed and agreed to go on the date. No qualms about power or gender dynamics at work in the 1990s! As scripted by a man. (I am less sympathetic to all these men being useless at wooing women than I’m meant to be.)
Raj also asked PC Nas out on a date, although it was like he was a teenager all over again. She’d spend the night cataloguing his most embarrassing moments growing up, but as she said, she was still there at the end, while he was bumbling and nervous, overwhelmed by actually having feelings for her. Fortunately for him, she seemed to know what she wanted and how to get it.
James was his cartoonish Viz persona for most of the episode, but when he got left alone to be his real (tipsy) self, he copped off with a (male) bartender. So what I thought happened at the end of the first series did, and he’s deep in the closet. Oy.
Andrew was having minor irritations and a daughter telling him he wasn’t to tell her father he had cancer, but he’d already promised to give him the full results. When he did, the patient said he wasn’t to tell the daughter. Oy. He avoided the whole ball thing as he was working, but was the one to have to call Dr Yates on to the ward because of the second, way more suspicious, death.
Meanwhile, patient Joanna lured flirty/creepy Phil into a dark room…to tell him that no she wasn’t into him, she’d been playing him for drugs. (This had been telegraphed to the audience.) Oh well, it was a useful way of stopping his attentions.
After watching Claire be bored by her date and turn down the smarmy youngish surgeon (who had the beginnings of a bald spot), Scissors, who stood out like a handsome former Aussie soap star in a white jacket would, struck lucky with Claire, who even when slightly dishevelled was still glamorous. (But she loses some of her shine because of her smoking.)
Expats 1.5 Central
A different, feature-length episode. The first five minutes were overwhelming. I wondered if it was going to be a musical episode as well as giving us the POV of the Filipino helpers. In fact, it didn’t quite do that. All manner of previously peripheral characters got more attention – although the regular main characters still popped up and were the centre of the drama in those scenes. There was this whole ‘everyone is connected’ strand, but some characters were barely fleshed out (e.g. the young revolutionary and his mother, although the scene at the police station was pointed about what he had been overconfidently fighting for, as was the insulated wealthy/expat/foreign serving class POV that the protests were just an inconvenience.)
Despite the storm that became a typhoon, most of the characters thought it was a grand night to go out, not just to protest for democracy but for personal reasons. We learned more about Puri and Essie and the personal price of the way their employers blurred the professional/personal boundaries. There was a symbolic ceiling leak, one more toxic mother, and then after being on broadcast mode, Margaret snapped out of it and realised Clarke was right about what was best for their family. (DON’T BUY HER LINE THAT YOU’RE A PART OF IT, ESSIE!) Mercy seems very young (and not sure what she wants and lacking in belief that she deserves to be happy) to have a baby. David was supremely petty over his coffee machine.
Some of this was so clumsy, unnecessarily so, (script and execution) but it ended on quite a dun dun dun moment, suggesting there’s a serial killer on the wards (an inept one, because a young man with no underlying conditions other than what he’s going to be treated for is way more suspicious than an old lady who was on oxygen.) Still, we met Dr Condescending Turner’s wife at the ball, and she was great, almost as great as Claire at being called totty in her hearing.
I started off feeling sorry for Phil, the newly qualified posho, whose turn it was to get called from one case to another and seemed to be running on fumes. He got increasingly wound up by the nurses who were able to find time to chat either with each other or on the phone. And then it seemed like one of them had been careless over the oxygen, meaning he had to certify the death of an old lady he’d assured would be fine. No wonder he was focused on a young woman he was able to help. Actually, maybe ‘fixated’ is the right word.
The sisters were fairly impressive all episode, offering sensible advice to colleagues on their love lives and professional doings. Phil had reported what had happened with the oxygen, which ultimately led to Andrew’s Geordie ex being suspended and humiliatingly led off the premises, insisting on her innocence.
Possibly also humiliatingly, Docherty got stripped of one of his lists by the hospital manager, who was pretending to be blind to figure out how accessible the hospital was. I cringed as Docherty asked his assistant out to the hospital ball (really a Halloween party graced by the whole gamut of staff plus significant others, with some glamour being provided by pearl necklaces, some of which were probably fake.) Partly, it’s because he’s trying so hard to seem vigorous and cover his stuttery lapses, partly because the music was OTT. She seemed charmed and agreed to go on the date. No qualms about power or gender dynamics at work in the 1990s! As scripted by a man. (I am less sympathetic to all these men being useless at wooing women than I’m meant to be.)
Raj also asked PC Nas out on a date, although it was like he was a teenager all over again. She’d spend the night cataloguing his most embarrassing moments growing up, but as she said, she was still there at the end, while he was bumbling and nervous, overwhelmed by actually having feelings for her. Fortunately for him, she seemed to know what she wanted and how to get it.
James was his cartoonish Viz persona for most of the episode, but when he got left alone to be his real (tipsy) self, he copped off with a (male) bartender. So what I thought happened at the end of the first series did, and he’s deep in the closet. Oy.
Andrew was having minor irritations and a daughter telling him he wasn’t to tell her father he had cancer, but he’d already promised to give him the full results. When he did, the patient said he wasn’t to tell the daughter. Oy. He avoided the whole ball thing as he was working, but was the one to have to call Dr Yates on to the ward because of the second, way more suspicious, death.
Meanwhile, patient Joanna lured flirty/creepy Phil into a dark room…to tell him that no she wasn’t into him, she’d been playing him for drugs. (This had been telegraphed to the audience.) Oh well, it was a useful way of stopping his attentions.
After watching Claire be bored by her date and turn down the smarmy youngish surgeon (who had the beginnings of a bald spot), Scissors, who stood out like a handsome former Aussie soap star in a white jacket would, struck lucky with Claire, who even when slightly dishevelled was still glamorous. (But she loses some of her shine because of her smoking.)
Expats 1.5 Central
A different, feature-length episode. The first five minutes were overwhelming. I wondered if it was going to be a musical episode as well as giving us the POV of the Filipino helpers. In fact, it didn’t quite do that. All manner of previously peripheral characters got more attention – although the regular main characters still popped up and were the centre of the drama in those scenes. There was this whole ‘everyone is connected’ strand, but some characters were barely fleshed out (e.g. the young revolutionary and his mother, although the scene at the police station was pointed about what he had been overconfidently fighting for, as was the insulated wealthy/expat/foreign serving class POV that the protests were just an inconvenience.)
Despite the storm that became a typhoon, most of the characters thought it was a grand night to go out, not just to protest for democracy but for personal reasons. We learned more about Puri and Essie and the personal price of the way their employers blurred the professional/personal boundaries. There was a symbolic ceiling leak, one more toxic mother, and then after being on broadcast mode, Margaret snapped out of it and realised Clarke was right about what was best for their family. (DON’T BUY HER LINE THAT YOU’RE A PART OF IT, ESSIE!) Mercy seems very young (and not sure what she wants and lacking in belief that she deserves to be happy) to have a baby. David was supremely petty over his coffee machine.