"The Pain Of It All"- All Saints (26/6/07)
July 7th 2007 11:07
In the aftermath of Sean’s death, Zoë is struggling to cope with work and life in general. Erica must deal with the fallout from Bart’s declaration of love towards her, and the ED face a possible Ebola outbreak- An average episode.
This was an average episode, in my opinion. It certainly wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t a standout episode, either. Some of the storylines had a lot of potential to them, but they seemed to be either cut off short or not followed through on properly. The best example of this was the aftermath of Sean’s death: Zoë seemed to be the only one grieving for him (Which makes sense, given that she was Sean’s partner). But everyone else seemed a little too chirpy in my opinion, given that their colleague and friend had just died. I thought that the mood could have been a little more sombre and that the staff’s reactions to their patients could have been a little more relevant to what went on during the previous week’s episode. I mean, we had Charlotte and Vincent chatting away happily at the ex-ray machine and Jack, Dan and Bart downing drinks at the end of their shift. I didn’t even really think that Zoë’s grief was addressed properly. Sure, she seemed down in the dumps, but she was coping enough to work. I was expecting her to burst into tears, shout at someone or to have some kind of reaction to the injustice of the situation, but no. Even her being angry at Mike for not telling her the truth about how serious Sean’s injuries were, didn’t amount to much. In future episodes I would like to hope that there would at least be a little continuation on what’s happening with the characters in the aftermath of Sean’s death: What’s going to become of the hoons who ran him down and took off? With the police capture them? Will they be brought to justice or get away with it? And what will be the lasting effects for Zoë? Alison Cratchley put in a top performance the week before, so we all know what she is capable of doing. Now it’s up to the writers to expand on her character with this storyline.
An archaeologist named Tim comes into All Saints. He has recently returned from Africa and is convinced that he has brought back a strain of Ebola with him and that he and the rest of the public are about to die from it. Zoë, who is treating the man, isn’t convinced that it is Ebola, but as the symptoms match up, Frank isn’t going to take any risks. Procedures are put into place to prevent a possible outbreak and Zoë and Dan are the only ones allowed to come into contact with Tim, since they are the ones who are treating him. Along the way, we learn that Tim’s wife had been killed whilst the two of them were honeymooning in Africa and that he is still grieving over the death of her. This case was more or less just used as a catalyst for Zoë’s own grief over Sean and as I stated above, the case didn’t amount to much. Another Ebola outbreak would have been exciting and interesting to watch, but it turned out to be something far less serious. The fact that I can’t remember exactly what was up with him just goes to show how uneventful this storyline really was and how much it fell short.
Nathan Phillips, a twenty year old man, is rushed to emergency having just attempted to remove the cast on his broken leg himself with a chainsaw, to impress his girlfriend. I honestly thought that this storyline went nowhere. There didn’t seem to be any point to it: The team worked on his leg, patched him up and that was that. It wasn’t like we got to know the patient any better and there really wasn’t much of a storyline to go along with it.
Poor Bart is having a hard time recently. He always seems to get the patient who is hell-bent on committing suicide rather than face an agonizing future because of a medical problem. This week is no different: A young woman named Mia is brought in by the ambos, suffering from acute stomach pain. Mia is at her wit’s end. She has been suffering from stomach pain for most of her life and just the simply tasks of eating and moving around causes her intense pain. This latest attack is the worst of all. When several tests that Bart does don’t show up anything, Mia attempts to kill herself outside in the hospital grounds by slashing her wrists. In the long run, it’s a good thing that she doesn’t succeed because Bart makes a break through in thinking that the soft drinks that she drinks to settle her stomach are actually making the pain worse, rather than better. It’s not a cure, but it at least gives Mia some hope.
Bart’s personal life, meanwhile, isn’t going so well. After his declaration of love to Erica last week, she no longer knows what to say or how to behave around him. Eventually she has no option left but to admit the truth to him: She doesn’t feel the same way about Bart as he does about her. She only likes him as a friend. Even though they part as friends, Bart is evidently crushed. We see him at the end of his shift, getting drunk at Dan and Jack’s place. In a softer moment, Bart admits to the two guys that this isn’t the first time that he’s lost out in love. When he was in high school, he was in love with a girl named Tara, who also only liked him as a friend, and now he feels like history is repeating itself.
As I’ve already stated, this was an average episode. The storylines didn’t really seem to go anywhere and the character development was minimal. It wasn’t a terrible episode, but there wasn’t really anything fantastic about it either. I only hope that we get more continuation with Sean’s death and how Zoë is coping during next week’s instalment, because there really wasn’t much in that respect during this week’s one.
(3 Stars)
An archaeologist named Tim comes into All Saints. He has recently returned from Africa and is convinced that he has brought back a strain of Ebola with him and that he and the rest of the public are about to die from it. Zoë, who is treating the man, isn’t convinced that it is Ebola, but as the symptoms match up, Frank isn’t going to take any risks. Procedures are put into place to prevent a possible outbreak and Zoë and Dan are the only ones allowed to come into contact with Tim, since they are the ones who are treating him. Along the way, we learn that Tim’s wife had been killed whilst the two of them were honeymooning in Africa and that he is still grieving over the death of her. This case was more or less just used as a catalyst for Zoë’s own grief over Sean and as I stated above, the case didn’t amount to much. Another Ebola outbreak would have been exciting and interesting to watch, but it turned out to be something far less serious. The fact that I can’t remember exactly what was up with him just goes to show how uneventful this storyline really was and how much it fell short.
Nathan Phillips, a twenty year old man, is rushed to emergency having just attempted to remove the cast on his broken leg himself with a chainsaw, to impress his girlfriend. I honestly thought that this storyline went nowhere. There didn’t seem to be any point to it: The team worked on his leg, patched him up and that was that. It wasn’t like we got to know the patient any better and there really wasn’t much of a storyline to go along with it.
Poor Bart is having a hard time recently. He always seems to get the patient who is hell-bent on committing suicide rather than face an agonizing future because of a medical problem. This week is no different: A young woman named Mia is brought in by the ambos, suffering from acute stomach pain. Mia is at her wit’s end. She has been suffering from stomach pain for most of her life and just the simply tasks of eating and moving around causes her intense pain. This latest attack is the worst of all. When several tests that Bart does don’t show up anything, Mia attempts to kill herself outside in the hospital grounds by slashing her wrists. In the long run, it’s a good thing that she doesn’t succeed because Bart makes a break through in thinking that the soft drinks that she drinks to settle her stomach are actually making the pain worse, rather than better. It’s not a cure, but it at least gives Mia some hope.
Bart’s personal life, meanwhile, isn’t going so well. After his declaration of love to Erica last week, she no longer knows what to say or how to behave around him. Eventually she has no option left but to admit the truth to him: She doesn’t feel the same way about Bart as he does about her. She only likes him as a friend. Even though they part as friends, Bart is evidently crushed. We see him at the end of his shift, getting drunk at Dan and Jack’s place. In a softer moment, Bart admits to the two guys that this isn’t the first time that he’s lost out in love. When he was in high school, he was in love with a girl named Tara, who also only liked him as a friend, and now he feels like history is repeating itself.
As I’ve already stated, this was an average episode. The storylines didn’t really seem to go anywhere and the character development was minimal. It wasn’t a terrible episode, but there wasn’t really anything fantastic about it either. I only hope that we get more continuation with Sean’s death and how Zoë is coping during next week’s instalment, because there really wasn’t much in that respect during this week’s one.
(3 Stars)
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