BBC Casualty: keep calm and cartilage on; it's going tibia ok

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The virus is spreading will Holby be ok?!

Just watching now; it's all a bit odd, the therapist mystic meg is she real?

Yes, Mystic Meg! That's it. She was awful.
The whole episode was weird. I thought it was a near death flashback / forward or something.

Yes, very odd.

Glossing over the Casualty-level coincidences, I actually thought that was one of the best episodes in ages. I thought Iain was very well acted and the writing wasn't as clunky as it has been recently.

The calls were over the course of a couple of weeks, so presumably there were plenty of dull ones that didn't make the "cut" so to speak.

I thought this was definitely a cut above recent episodes. If Ian is staying in the cast they needed to resolve his storyline and it would have been horrendous having him just coming back to work as if nothing had happened. This showed him turning a corner and taking the first real steps on the road to recovery.

Judging from the real-life ambulance programme, the calls he took weren't that unrealistic either, except possibly the one when he was talking to the policewoman on the bridge.

This was way better than the recent episodes. More Ian and Ruby and for the love of sweet baby Jesus less of Duffy and Charlie

I've just watched it and was gripped the whole way through. I mean obviously the 999 calls fitted in to Iain's storyline too conveniently, but then this is a TV show that's been scripted for a narrative purpose (although it doesn't often feel like it these days, tbf) and it would have been a bit pointless to have him dealing with completely random incidents which didn't resonate with him in any way.

The actor who plays Iain is superb. If we could somehow just have a show featuring him, Ruby, Jan and Dylan, we might have the perfect programme.

Anyone else enjoying the extended break from not just You Know Who, and the ridiculously pointless Blake, but Marty? Now there are three characters who need to take advantage of the one hour notice policy.

@MrsBosh it wasn't a random child??

Yes, the "random child" was the little girl who was trapped in a burning house and it turned out that her dad was hitting her. Iain talked the girl through what to do in the emergency but also made sure social services were aware of the abuse and would take action.

Not just some kid that Gem had picked up on the way through A&E...

I didn't even rate Ian's acting that much (obviously compared to Charlie etc he's an Oscar winner though). It just seemed to be lots of angsty looks and brooding with that little permafrown. 😂

I was hoping the therapist wasn't real!

I thought Ian was brilliant, best show for a while

I'm with you 100%, Soup - I was entirely unmoved by the episode.

Very weird episode. I absolutely love Ian but thought it was definitely below par - although I was glad there was no Duffy this week.
The therapist was awful, distinctly unbelievable, drinking wine during a consultation and I just felt that the birth scene was really poor.

With the twin birth - was one of the parents (the non-pregnant one - if it was a same sex couple or was it a friend/sister) suposed to not know they were expecting twins?

Some of the added extras to the stories were quite bizarre!!!

Do think casualty needs to swing the majority to being mostly about the patients and not about staff.

Well the whole episode was strange and ridiculously contrived, but it moved me to tears and that's a very rare event. DH was unusually quiet too.

I thought the pregnant one didn't know it was twins although perhaps I got that wrong! Obviously I thought that was very weird in itself!!

Christ I want less patients. The patients are invariably dull and ridiculous - they're only there to create drama for the staff! That's what Casualty is about - a crazy "how's it going to happen" accident, and a few absurd staff-based storylines punctuated by patients vomiting on them.

As for the perma-frown, it did actually lift yesterday. There was definite smiling involved...

On what planet (other than Holby) would they let a porter take a vulnerable child into the car park to meet an apparently random man? Where were social services? If they'd just had a social worker with them it would have been more believable.

I do love the programme though.

I thought that there was a woman walking alongside Gem and the little girl as they left the hospital, I assumed that she was the mother or a social worker.

I'm sure it used to be more patient focused. You'd have about three what's going to happen build ups and then something occuring with staff but that was more of a side story.

Unless that's a fake memory of mine!!

Yes, there was a woman with Gem and the little girl who presumably took her back after Gem got into the car with Iain - otherwise we're just assuming Gem ditched the 7 yr old in the car park once Iain had had his hug! 😂

I like Iain. I was baffled by his relationship with the therapist (phoning and turning up at all times of day and night - Iike no other employee assistance programme or private counsellor I've ever seen) but I like the idea it was his imagination/ subconscious and that it was at the end whenhe decided to get an appointment.

Really liked the episode.

Of course all the usual non-real-life holes, but still quite moving!