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shallowness) wrote2024-07-23 08:13 am
shallowness) wrote2024-07-23 08:13 am
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A bespectacled take
Cardiac Arrest - 3.2 Open and Shut
This felt slightly more medical soap territory as faces from series 1 and 2 reappeared, adding even more continuing storylines to the ones that carried over from the previous episodes. Also, there were even more women’s names in the credits, and some attempts at feminism to go along with it, with Sister Julie’s anger as three of her colleagues gleefully started dismissing a female patient (who was a friend of hers) for being hysterical. (Spoiler: she wasn’t.) Even Liz got mad at a patronising patient, but she had been inept at taking his blood. In fact, apart from being inept and lazy, she was vain enough not to want to put her glasses on after sleeping in her contacts that she managed to get a tube stuck in one patient, which meant she had to be operated on. The patient did show some gallows humour about never overdosing again. (I have zero tolerance for people not wearing glasses when they really should.)
So, when Phil returned to the hospital, thanks to Docherty, with the (unfair) reputation of manslaughter, Liz was making him look rather competent.
The main storylines continued to be Scissors’ feelings for Julie, which got him to take on the case of her friend who had general abdominal pain, or it could have been Munchausen’s if you believed Phil because of course an inexperienced male doctor trumps a female patient…until Julie scolded Scissors into doing an exploratory operation and they found she had mild anaemia in preparation. And then, when he cut her open, it turned out to be cancer. Scissors rather blithely used the adverb ‘definitely’ before gone, the more experienced Docherty preferred ‘hopefully’. The haematology department confirmed that the cancer had spread. Scissors had to cop to having tried to impress Julie, who was pulled into a brutal ‘telling the husband AND son’ that mummy was going to die, probably in days scenario. You’d hope they’d be less brutal nowadays. Julie had kept turning down offers to go for a drink with him, but gave Scissors a kiss (hey, he’s hot even though his hair is ridiculous, but her hairstyle hasn’t aged well either) and told him ‘not now’ on the relationship front, which seemed wise.
I did also remember that she has a son of her own.
Throughout this, Scissors kept being teased by James and Phil who were both putting on fake brave faces and using booze as a coping mechanism for different reasons. Phil was back for his first day at the new job, and rightly angry at Turner because it was his reputation on the line, although it had been Turner’s fault. James was also getting grief from DeVries, now kind of playing (evil) hospital manager as a side gig, because they had to tell patients and test them for HIV. When DeVries was being a surgeon, he was treating James as a pariah and ignoring his professional qualifications. We saw glimpses of James the Lad, but the return of the nurse who’d slept with him in season 1 and who had also tested HIV positive, with neither of them clear who’d given it to whom was yet another downer, as James admitted on a phone call to his mum (on one of those small landlines you used to put coins in, which dated the show as much as ‘Never Met A Girl Like You Before’ playing in the background did.)
That plotline would tie into the third, where Andrew was picking up some of Liz’s slack, but not enough for Turner’s liking because of what Phil was accused of/Turner’s version of a guilty conscience. Apart from her dangerous vanity, Liz freaked Andrew out by being astute enough to notice there was something going on with him and Caroline. We had some very weird bedroom talk between Caroline and Andrew, but the main point was that she said he didn’t have to wear a condom just this once, which is why her ex (yes, the guy who’d also slept with James) told her about his status the next morning. (And, dude, I know your diagnosis was a lot to be dealing with, and you were conveniently abroad for a year. But while not wanting to tell partners your status anonymously, via letter or a phone call, might have seemed noble, sooner rather than later would have been good, yeah? I am a bit vague on where we were at with the prognosis with AIDS at this point in time, as I was wondering when they referenced Factor 8 if it was still being sourced from American prisoners with HIV and hepatitis.) I don’t know whether this was all planned from Jed Mercurio or not, because on the one hand that’s a three-series plotline, if a somewhat cliched one.
Not in the episode: Claire or Raj.
This felt slightly more medical soap territory as faces from series 1 and 2 reappeared, adding even more continuing storylines to the ones that carried over from the previous episodes. Also, there were even more women’s names in the credits, and some attempts at feminism to go along with it, with Sister Julie’s anger as three of her colleagues gleefully started dismissing a female patient (who was a friend of hers) for being hysterical. (Spoiler: she wasn’t.) Even Liz got mad at a patronising patient, but she had been inept at taking his blood. In fact, apart from being inept and lazy, she was vain enough not to want to put her glasses on after sleeping in her contacts that she managed to get a tube stuck in one patient, which meant she had to be operated on. The patient did show some gallows humour about never overdosing again. (I have zero tolerance for people not wearing glasses when they really should.)
So, when Phil returned to the hospital, thanks to Docherty, with the (unfair) reputation of manslaughter, Liz was making him look rather competent.
The main storylines continued to be Scissors’ feelings for Julie, which got him to take on the case of her friend who had general abdominal pain, or it could have been Munchausen’s if you believed Phil because of course an inexperienced male doctor trumps a female patient…until Julie scolded Scissors into doing an exploratory operation and they found she had mild anaemia in preparation. And then, when he cut her open, it turned out to be cancer. Scissors rather blithely used the adverb ‘definitely’ before gone, the more experienced Docherty preferred ‘hopefully’. The haematology department confirmed that the cancer had spread. Scissors had to cop to having tried to impress Julie, who was pulled into a brutal ‘telling the husband AND son’ that mummy was going to die, probably in days scenario. You’d hope they’d be less brutal nowadays. Julie had kept turning down offers to go for a drink with him, but gave Scissors a kiss (hey, he’s hot even though his hair is ridiculous, but her hairstyle hasn’t aged well either) and told him ‘not now’ on the relationship front, which seemed wise.
I did also remember that she has a son of her own.
Throughout this, Scissors kept being teased by James and Phil who were both putting on fake brave faces and using booze as a coping mechanism for different reasons. Phil was back for his first day at the new job, and rightly angry at Turner because it was his reputation on the line, although it had been Turner’s fault. James was also getting grief from DeVries, now kind of playing (evil) hospital manager as a side gig, because they had to tell patients and test them for HIV. When DeVries was being a surgeon, he was treating James as a pariah and ignoring his professional qualifications. We saw glimpses of James the Lad, but the return of the nurse who’d slept with him in season 1 and who had also tested HIV positive, with neither of them clear who’d given it to whom was yet another downer, as James admitted on a phone call to his mum (on one of those small landlines you used to put coins in, which dated the show as much as ‘Never Met A Girl Like You Before’ playing in the background did.)
That plotline would tie into the third, where Andrew was picking up some of Liz’s slack, but not enough for Turner’s liking because of what Phil was accused of/Turner’s version of a guilty conscience. Apart from her dangerous vanity, Liz freaked Andrew out by being astute enough to notice there was something going on with him and Caroline. We had some very weird bedroom talk between Caroline and Andrew, but the main point was that she said he didn’t have to wear a condom just this once, which is why her ex (yes, the guy who’d also slept with James) told her about his status the next morning. (And, dude, I know your diagnosis was a lot to be dealing with, and you were conveniently abroad for a year. But while not wanting to tell partners your status anonymously, via letter or a phone call, might have seemed noble, sooner rather than later would have been good, yeah? I am a bit vague on where we were at with the prognosis with AIDS at this point in time, as I was wondering when they referenced Factor 8 if it was still being sourced from American prisoners with HIV and hepatitis.) I don’t know whether this was all planned from Jed Mercurio or not, because on the one hand that’s a three-series plotline, if a somewhat cliched one.
Not in the episode: Claire or Raj.