(Series 13 Ep.34) Chrissie, Marie-Claire, Elizabeth and the nurses who always hover in the background but never speak have been keeping Holby going, nurse-wise, since The Radiant Donna left for Liverpool. With Maria a distant memory, and Pale Thin Nurse Nicky Van Barr having been “let go,” it was about time that some new nurses appeared. This week saw the arrival of not one but two: Eddi McKee (Sarah-Jane Potts) and Chantelle Lane (Lauren Drummond).
I think it’s safe to assume that these two are not going to turn out to be bezzy mates like Donna and Maria. Chantelle is all fluffy and ditzy and a wee bit useless, though to be fair to her she can “get a cannula in anything,” a talent which instantly won her the approval of Young Dr Oliver Valentine.
She did not get the approval of Eddi, who arrived somewhat unconventionally when she accompanied a man with a penile injury. We weren’t told exactly what he and Eddi had been up to in the back of a taxi when the injury occurred, but if you’ve read The World According to Garp you may think he had a lucky escape. Anyway, as an entrance to the show it beats the usual “almost having a car crash in the car park” route. Sacha assumed Eddi was a prostitute, but he was ever so glad when it turned out that not only was she a nurse, but she was a really efficient nurse. He offered her a job on the spot (without checking that she actually had any qualifications, that she was who she said she was and not an axe-wielding murderer and other minor administrative details). Eddi and Chantelle both have the makings of excellent characters. Chantelle is all soft and smiley – her first meeting with Hanssen was hilarious – and Eddi is spiky, brusque and independent.
Talking of women who are spiky, brusque and independent, the very apogee of those qualities, the divinity that is Jac Naylor, was a woman on a mission this week, the mission being to oust Plastic Bhatti and his little friend Michael Spence off her CT ward for good. Trying to reason with Hanssen wasn’t getting anywhere, apart from an educational little 
foray into Swedish culture. Had she heard of surströmming, he wondered. This was a dish of fish “fermented to the point if putrefaction.” And, like sharing an operating theatre with the plastics people, it was “an acquired taste – but one I suggest you acquire sooner rather than later.” I don’t think they serve it at the coffee bar on the ground floor, though.
Jac thought she’d found the ammunition she needed when she unpacked one of Spence & Bhatti’s parcels of breast implants to discover they’d come from Mrs Plastic Bhatti’s plastic booby factory. Corruption! Treachery! And surely enough of a weapon to take to Hanssen and get the gruesome twosome ejected from Darwin, if not the entire hospital. “I heart today!” a 
triumphant Jac told Michael, as she confronted him in the lift. But he was holding a trump card, or rather a trump file, which outlined management plans to move cardiothoracics to the dreaded St James’s. But there just might be room at Holby for one CT consultant, he told her, and if Jac keeps shtum about the bogus boobs then that person could be her. Though would a one-woman CT department be enough of an empire for Jac? Surely what she wants in life is what Darwin was always supposed to be, a state-of-the-art facility renowned throughout Holby and, heck, even the whole of the UK.
Meanwhile, we gained further insights into why Funny Little Nurse Tate always looks worried, when her mother turned up. Not a mentally well woman, Ma Tate. A bit of a handful, in fact, and she is now a burden that Elizabeth feels she has to bear. Her perma-frown is soon going to be so deep that no amount of botox will shift it.
Next time: Some interesting job opportunities for Jac, a hangover for Eddi and post-snog embarrassment makes Dan even more useless than usual when he has to work with Malick.
Posted by PLA (more Holby posts here)
HOLBY CITY BEHIND THE SCREEN
pauseliveaction 
I for one would like to see this St James’ hospital. it must be brilliant and very large considering it now does all of Ric’s GI stuff and now will have the only CT department in the village.
loved Jac calling the plastic guys Ant and Dec!! and her little boob puppets she made. I heart Jac!
It can’t be that good or the Booby Brothers would be eyeing it up as a good place for their plastics unit.
I heart Jac, too.
I heart Jac too!
*beams*
Sorry just had to get that in there. 🙂
Love the new nurses, especially the spiky one with the Twenties flapper girl hair cut. Holby City must be the only hospital where someone can get a job on the spot without a lengthy CRB check, references or a gruelling interview/presentation process. Recent appointees to Casualty are proof of this ie Dylan and lipgloss Linda.
A full on episode plot wise, even for Holby standards. It wasnt to much the lack of car-crashes or interesting patient stories this week, it was proper, staff based drama. Lovely!
Dippy Nurse Chantelle is going to annoy me. I can just tell. I’m sure shes lovely (and Young Dr V seems to have noticed this fact all too quickly, that boy I swear is a magnet to blonde hair) but you know me PLA, Im much more a brusque snarky clipped-tone type. Jac, case in point. Which is maybe why I liked Eddi too, though I cant work out if her name is Eeeeeedy or Eddy or whatever it is … but she has the makings of a friend for Jac right there. Theyre both top of their game, know their stuff and dont mince their words when stepping on other people. And dont appreciate Sacha hugs all that much. I reckon, the two of them on a ward, intsantly formidable. The place would run like … dare I say it, clockwork! Patients might be a wee bit lacking in bedside manners but they’d have their medical problems sorted wouldnt they!
Speaking of Jac, she both made me in stitches of laughter and gasping in fear in equal portions. Playing with Plastic Bhatti’s boobs, my god I thought I was gonna fall off the sofa. The house is now filled with endless Jac-likes-boobs witty retorts from fellow housemates. And then she drew faces on them! Blue Peter would be proud. I do heart her. As she hearts taking down opponents and building her empire. If only I could get a job in Holby. My career would be sorted! *sigh*
I dont quite understand how Michael has the power to make sure Jacs the lone CT-ranger though. Hes obviously got his hands on the Document of Doom from somehwere, dont ask me where considering his secretary friend with frizzy hair dumped his ass months ago, and anyway, if its so confidential, whats she doing reading it ina coffee shop?! (which I think was either a new angle, or a new coffee shop set. Interesting.) Is Michael even on the Board anymore? Hes no DoS, Hanssen is. So how can Michael swing her the job? Part of me is secretly hoping she’ll be ringing Connie in a panic, who’ll fly back from her two days in Brussels and swoop in, give the Board a Beauchamp style talking to, and sort everything out for us. God I miss her.
FLNT is getting more and more funny by the day. Has anyone else noticed how, Ric is like her only friend? She doesnt talk to, or associate with anyone really, Chrissie tried but she pushed it back in her face, and Rics doing his Big Daddy thing like shes a surrogate Donna. I want to be bothered by her storyline, which is obviously harrowing and upsetting and rather deep, but theyre not giving it the impact it should have. I dunno.
Maybe I’m just too engrossed in the Darwin side of things. anyway. Great review as always PLA and looking forward to next weeks. Job oppurtunities for Jac? This has me worried. She better not leave. *clings*
Dippy Nurse Chantelle could be irritating, but I like the way she seems to be one of those people who doesn’t censor themselves before speaking. Her first meeting with Frieda is going to be interesting!
I’m afraid I didn’t give the scene with Jac playing with the boobs proper attention because PLA Jr was rabbiting on about something or other and I got distracted. Very unprofessional of me, I know!
Agree with all you’ve said about Michael and the Document of Doom. Though I do have a vague recollection of Hanssen discussing with him how having the plastics department could mean the end of CT at Holby. We all gasped in horror at the mere idea and we will continue to gasp until it’s all sorted. Holby without heart surgery is unthinkable.
I can’t really motivate myself to care about FLNT. I think perhaps her storyline has come too late, in that we’d all written her off as a wet blanket (apart from a glimmer of hope that she might be a psycho bunny boiler over Donna and Kieran). Good point about Ric taking her under his wing like a substitute Donna (who herself was a substitute Jess).
And don’t worry about Jac. As John Stape said on Corrie last week, “All will be well. Ish.”
Hello Pause
Sorry I’m late again. But rather courageously, I think, it’s substantially more than 45 minutes so.
It’s all been a bit nursey this week, hasn’t it? Let’s start with the tried and trusted: Funny Little Nurse Tate; her mad mum; and some bloke who’d been beaten up by a gang of girly-girls. Mr Griffin pinned FLNT with some forensically irritable questions as to the chap’s prognosis:
RG – What is your professional assessment of this man?
NT – Ummm, he’s a bit jumpy and he really doesn’t want to see his son.
RG – Anything else?
NT – Ummm. He really, REALLY doesn’t want to see his son.
Now I don’t know about you, Pause, but I think that’s a professional assessment of the first water. Okay, it’s not as medical as one might wish but she was actually paid to say it which must count for something. Besides, Ric was satisfied and that should be good enough for anyone.
Still on Little Nurse Tate, there are those who accuse her of having only one expression. Now I’m not having that, she has three:
Eyes up – Please sir, I want some more.
Ahead, right or left – Ohhh.
Down – Bum. Another puppy dead.
It’s all about potential y’see. Just think how broad will be the Tate range when she starts raising her eyebrows. Before you know it she’ll be wrinkling her nose and other advanced actory stuff. I’m told that a smile is pencilled in for early 2012 (yay!). Sadly, the same source says that there are no plans for her to unfold her arms anytime soon. Still, baby steps and all that. Also having seen what Jac gets up to with a felt-tip and some fun bags these days, I think I’d be protecting myself too.
Whoops, did I forget to talk about her mad mum? No. I just couldn’t be bothered. If the NHS had a pound for every old friend or relative who pitches up at Holby then it would be a well-funded service indeed (at the very least it would pay all the agency staff needed to cover for all the time lost to these plot-driving idiots).
Onto the new nurses, then. First up the delightfully dizzy/irritating* (delete according to taste) Ms Lane. I’m looking forward to your coining of a superior PLA handle for her, though this may prove a challenge as her official HC name, Chantelle, captures the character rather perfectly don’t you think? Jolly good on the script-writers part there. Perhaps, as the weeks pass & the mistakes mount, and with the inevitably besotted Not-Dr Valentine covering-up heroically, I may venture a “Chantelle Won’telle.” Then again I probably won’t because PLA’s professional assessment would most likely be a withering: “that’s a bit crap even for you, isn’t it CL?” And this assessment – though not strictly medical etc – would be deserved.
In the meantime, and with your permission, I shall be backing Dizzy Miss Ditz with the slogan: “Yes we cannula” in the hope that her first term of office will be a soaring success and the deaths on her shift only ever being the most wanted terrorist masterminds of the day.
And then we have Thoroughly Modern Eddi. Now call me a stylist but it can’t be right that all these Bobs are coming over here and taking our jobs. My conscience is clear on this because one of my best friends is Bob and I’ve known him since we were in the Cubs together. Yes, since you ask, we did earn a pretty penny during bob-a-job week.
So “Bob” Eddi is to me; and I say “Bob” with full lip-curling Blackadder relish. Bob (sorry) it seems, is smug but edgy, competent and yet comes with a side order of self-loathing. That’s quite a lot to project in your first outing and it showed. By way of comparison, the radiant Donna contented herself with competence and had an occasional dollop of self-loafing (hah!) but that was rarely in the same episode and you never saw the joins on account of all that radiance.
At the moment I think I’m going to find Thoroughly Modern Bob plain annoying although I do hope that we sort out whether she’s a cab driver who likes a ride in the back for money; or a nurse with the self-esteem of a cab driver who rides in the back for money. All I can say for certain is that her tax return must be a nightmare and one day she’ll need two licenses at least to ply those trades. Or different wigs.
Overall this was a bit of a nonentity of an episode for me but then it’s been pretty good for a few weeks now, so a duff one is allowed, I guess.
A perfect assessment of the FLNT expressive range. She’s holding back “Eyes closed – dead” for when the scriptwriters have finally had enough of trying to make her interesting.
“Yes we cannula” – darn – wish I’d thought of that.
As to Eddi/Bob, her current hairstyle is the most normal she’s sported in some time. In a previous Casualty incarnation as Abs’ love interest, she had a hairstyle modelled on that worn by Derek Jacobi in ‘I Claudius.’ During her stint in Waterloo Road as everyone’s favourite lesbian French teacher, her ‘do was what I liked to call “lopsided,” on account of it being lopsided. Also she wore her cardigans back-to-front. As an actress, she is clearly unafraid to take risks.
New nurses are are a welcome addition. Was begining to think withe the exit of so many of the brilliant cast Burns, Donna, and Connie that it needed an injection of some new fresh characters. Some of the stroy lines are a bit soapish of how quickly Malik noticed that Dan was talking to his friend on the phone and Chrissy noticed something was a miss with Dan.
Did you see this interview at the weekend with Myar Craig-Brown, the Holby series producer? Sounds like there’s a lot of good stuff planned, with the new nurses involved in a lot of it.
Interesting interview with some good storylines coming up.
Chantelle Lane is very irritating. Her borderline retarded maniacal perma-grin is reminicent of the Joker from Batman. The sight of her gurning her way through each episode is torture – such a person should never be present in the real NHS
Oh, Timmy! How can you fail to love the Sunniest Nurse In The NHS If Not The Whole World? She’s adorable!
Oh please… tonights episode for example – every single thing this woman says is wrapped around a gurning gaping smile. It’s too much, no one is like this in real life. All for cheerful friendly people but this is intolerable. If I was confronted with a nurse like that, I’d think there was something wrong with her.