Call the Midwife, season 4
Oct. 19th, 2018 08:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI’ve been casting around for a new TV show where all or most of the episodes are directed by women. This is surprisingly hard to Google, so it took me a while to realize that I didn’t need to find a new show at all, but to go back to an old one: all of the seasons of Call the Midwife so far have had female directors for 50% or more of the episodes.
I loved the first two seasons of the show, but I felt the quality slipped in season three - and while I enjoyed season four more than season three, I think that’s because my expectations were lower, not because the quality recovered. The first two seasons were heavily based on Jennifer Worth’s memoir, Call the Midwife: A True Story of the East End in the 1950s, which gives the cases a specificity and weirdness and bite that wholly fictional stories rarely match.
The episodes in the later seasons tend to be more generic: Call the Midwife Does Racism, or Down’s Syndrome, or Cystic Fibrosis, or Gay People.
This last one is the one that really annoyed me in season 4, for reasons that are
So in season 4, we learn that midwife Patsy is a lesbian. The narrative jumps directly from “Patsy has fish and chips with Delia the cute nurse” to “Patsy sneaks into Delia’s room to snuggle after hours,” which, okay, I feel that this is skipping over an important developmental step in their relationship, but whatever.
Things progress! Patsy and Delia get a flat together! The very morning after they rent the place, Delia rides gaily off to work! (Pun absolutely intended.) At which point she gets HIT BY A TRUCK. Which gives her TOTAL AMNESIA.
Oh come on. Come on! I can see from Wikipedia that Delia comes back in later seasons, so I guess at least this is not just their way of writing her off the show, but it still feels cheap and I dislike it.
I’m also not thrilled by Trixie’s Descent into Alcoholism. Why can’t she just be a girl who likes a good time and a drink, and drinks a completely normal amount given that it’s the 1950s and everyone drinks like a fish? Girls who have fun and don’t suffer for it! Not an overrepresented demographic on television!
So on the one hand season four is a disappointment compared to seasons one and two. Buuuut on the other hand, I’m probably going to keep watching, because there just aren’t that many shows on TV with a mainly female ensemble cast that foreground the female experience in this way… and also season 4 ends with a character cheerfully promising to recommend the new anti-nausea wonder drug thalidomide to all her friends - an ominous cliffhanger for the knowing viewer. How can I quit right when we’ve just hit thalidomide?
I loved the first two seasons of the show, but I felt the quality slipped in season three - and while I enjoyed season four more than season three, I think that’s because my expectations were lower, not because the quality recovered. The first two seasons were heavily based on Jennifer Worth’s memoir, Call the Midwife: A True Story of the East End in the 1950s, which gives the cases a specificity and weirdness and bite that wholly fictional stories rarely match.
The episodes in the later seasons tend to be more generic: Call the Midwife Does Racism, or Down’s Syndrome, or Cystic Fibrosis, or Gay People.
This last one is the one that really annoyed me in season 4, for reasons that are
So in season 4, we learn that midwife Patsy is a lesbian. The narrative jumps directly from “Patsy has fish and chips with Delia the cute nurse” to “Patsy sneaks into Delia’s room to snuggle after hours,” which, okay, I feel that this is skipping over an important developmental step in their relationship, but whatever.
Things progress! Patsy and Delia get a flat together! The very morning after they rent the place, Delia rides gaily off to work! (Pun absolutely intended.) At which point she gets HIT BY A TRUCK. Which gives her TOTAL AMNESIA.
Oh come on. Come on! I can see from Wikipedia that Delia comes back in later seasons, so I guess at least this is not just their way of writing her off the show, but it still feels cheap and I dislike it.
I’m also not thrilled by Trixie’s Descent into Alcoholism. Why can’t she just be a girl who likes a good time and a drink, and drinks a completely normal amount given that it’s the 1950s and everyone drinks like a fish? Girls who have fun and don’t suffer for it! Not an overrepresented demographic on television!
So on the one hand season four is a disappointment compared to seasons one and two. Buuuut on the other hand, I’m probably going to keep watching, because there just aren’t that many shows on TV with a mainly female ensemble cast that foreground the female experience in this way… and also season 4 ends with a character cheerfully promising to recommend the new anti-nausea wonder drug thalidomide to all her friends - an ominous cliffhanger for the knowing viewer. How can I quit right when we’ve just hit thalidomide?
