“Nothing changes; nothing ever will.”
Les Miserables
Here we are again, for my second visit to Holby City’s Casualty department this summer. Such fun, as Miranda’s mother might say.
This week in Soapland, Jamie tries to save a gay asylum seeker from deportation, Tess considers her future at Holby, and new doctor Lily learns a valuable lesson about patient empathy.
All in a day’s work for the ED team. Nothing ever changes, does it? There is even the obligatory high-speed car crash which apparently happens every episode, and is clearly therefore intended as an object lesson: Don’t Drive Distracted, People of Britain! Or you will crash and die, or (which is worse) Be a Burden to Our Overworked Health Service!
The fact that Holby City ED bears absolutely no resemblance to any ED in the country is apparently irrelevant here. And that pretty much the same thing happens every week, in different guises, with the occasional explosion thrown in to shake the cast up a bit. This is true even in so-called two-parters like this one. Things change only to stay the same, which is, I suppose, the point. It is the mainstay of Saturday-night television (sadly): once you have been disappointed by Steven Moffat’s latest Doctor Who-related monstrosity, disturbed by news of bloody revolution in Egypt, and forced to turn over from The X Factor for reasons of wanting to punch Simon Cowell’s pimply face, there is always Casualty, where you know exactly what to expect. (Also you can stretch an episode out into a decent-length blog post as a last resort.)
The English Student 