Call The Midwife Series 13 Part 2

[PinkFrogss]

Or Call Saint Turner, as the show has really turned into.

It's really irritating that they try to be historically accurate and actually, quite careful and informative with the medical developments and yet the characters narratives are just unbelievable bollocks. It's such a weird juxtaposition. Either commit to it being a soap opera or commit to it being an historical drama.

Nothing about Trixie's character or storyline rings true. Lucille leaving Cyril and him still hanging around the nuns is ridiculous and Matthew buggering off to NY without considering Trixie's help and uprooting Jonty is just bonkers.

It feels as if there are two different scripts going on. Episodes are too episodic in themselves -they don't hang together because there is no consistency with characters stories (eg the beach with Mai's accident vs next scene with Violet crowing about what a success it was). Or saint Sheelagh's dismissal of the abandoned kids in the church because she had choir practice. Really?....

None of it is joined up. It's supremely rubbish.

Is that his previous spouse?

Yes. They were at her deathbed.

Last series it was important that Trixie and Matthew had afternoon tea with Fionas parents!

Choir practice I can sort of understand... she had responsibility towards the choir children, who may well have been turning up Unaccompanied given the era. Other adults were looking after the abandoned children.

yes, i thought they would have gone by ship, far more likely

I barely watched it last night tbh it was so dull.

Why would anyone have cared about Nurse Highland's failed marriage? I should imagine starting again after emigrating would be fairly common.

Trixie & Matthew storyline is stupid. I don't think there was ever a tradition of midwifery in the US so would her skills even have translated there? No discussion of any of this at all.

The two "cases of the week" just felt done by rote - normally I get a bit onion-eyed, but nothing.

And that health visitor nun is doing my head in with her gurning. She could have been a decent character but they've half arsed it.

It really is! Matthew left in a taxi, the same day that he announced he was going to New York! No planning, no discussion with Trixie - he’s just gone. What a load of nonsense.

Each episode takes place over days/weeks... he didn't leave instantly.

I liked the use of the word costermonger from violet

That’s very much how it looked. They need to brush up the editing if we were meant to have a sense of time having passed.

Nurse Highland's abusive marriage & new start after emigrating- this storyline was also in "Three Little Birds".

Did I hear Trixie say she had packed Jonty some jam sandwiches for the trip?

well nurse highland's name is not joyce highland, it is claudine warren but i hope that can be fixed!

Last night’s episode was a bit Acorn Antiques meets Eastenders.

‘The incredible tower of turnips’ followed by the subsequent banter with Mrs Turner about free turnips, plus Cyril- the only multi-skilled engineer/mechanic/social worker in Poplar- not bogged down with case paperwork, he’s free to help shovel turnips of an evening for a lighter storyline.

Violet and Fred ‘just passing by’ and listening in as the Bailiff (who was ahead of his time by geo-tracking Matthew’s car to that location) turned up.

Matthew’s leaving scene where he showed more concern about the cabby getting antsy, than he’d done the entire episode about leaving Trixie and Poplar. The prospect of eating ground mince seemed to be the final straw for him.

You did.

Highly unlikely they'd have gone by ship. By 1969, 95% of transatlantic passengers flew.

They missed a trick not getting the midwives to wave them off on the QE2 with jam sandwiches wrapped in brown paper for the trip.

Cyril annoys me. He worked hard to be a civil engineer then sees an advert in the paper and now he’s a social worker (or family welfare officer) with no exams or training, straight in - luckIly he’s able to work in Poplar.

Lucille is never mentioned, it’s like she never existed. At some point wouldn’t they need to get divorced? Especially if he starts a romance with the posh new midwife - which seems to be on the cards.

Why do CTM always brush over the racial politics of that era - my dad came to the UK in the sixties and not everyone was as welcoming!

New midwife has her own marriage to sort out. I hope she just comes clean to sr Julienne and gets shot of Sylvester McCreepy.

My parents had this in yellow and mine were pink. Definitely 1970s

Is it the last episode of the season next Sunday?

lol I guess wrong place to ask!

No, I agree. It's all part of the way all the stories now take place through a 21st century lens, cf the fostering story, single mothers have no issues despite it still being a period of forced adoptions, a boy with Down Syndrome never faces ignorant comments or cruelty.

I get that they want to portray POC in a full range of storylines , and equally to have minority characters portrayed positively and not just as experiencing prejudice, but I think it's becoming unbalanced in a way that risks ignoring the lived experience of people who's lives they're dramatising.

Jonty's jam sandwiches were because his dad said they were his favourite ones in an earlier scene!

Yes it's very unrealistic of the time frame