Waterloo Road: Meet the gang

(Series 7, Ep.21) The start of yet another half term on Waterloo Road (I seem to say that with increasing regularity. Are the terms getting shorter, or is it just old age creeping up on me?). No exploding caravan or child lost on the moors for this episode. Rather than Rochdale Gothic, WR went for Inner City Gritty and we had an episode filled with dangerous gangland violence like graffiti, knife-wielding, setting fire alarms off and pouring Sprite on the teacher’s desk.

It was Tariq who did the Sprite thing, and I think that tells us all we need to know about his bad boy credentials. He’s not really cut out for this hard man stuff. We already knew that, of course, because we were there when Trudi was telling Finn how Tariq used to cry a lot when he was in the Young Offenders Institute. Tariq had been settling down fairly nicely in Waterloo Road, give or take the odd bout of threatening behaviour, but this week he got dragged back into the world of gangland crime by one Mason Price, a school pupil who looked older than many of the teachers and who seemed to have styled his fringe with a mascara wand. In other words, he was Hard. Every Mr Big needs a right hand man, and Mason’s was Kyle Stack, who was over-compensating for his seductive body-popping in the school pantomime by being all snarly and unpleasant.

When you join a gang you have to prove yourself by doing something particularly mean, and Tariq was required to beat up, and preferably stab, Finn Sharkey.

Holby City: An operating theatre full of my admirers

(Series 14, Ep.19) Finally, finally we got a glimpse of Sahira Shah the Registrah’s invisible husband Rafi. What have we learned? (a) He’s not invisible. (b) His surname is not Shah, it’s Raza (or “Razzer,” in Irish Dr Greg-speak) and (c) he mumbles. That’s about all we’ve learned, really. “Have you met Rafi?” Sahira said to Jac, by way of introducing them. “I’ve heard almost nothing about you!” said Jac. Having met Rafi myself now (televisually speaking), I can see why he wouldn’t be a major talking point.

Irish Dr Greg was not pleased with the appearance of Dr Razzer, but at least it stopped him wandering the corridors uttering his desperate cry of “Sahira! Sahira!” Instead he was reduced to Gazing Mournfully and rescheduling people’s operations to try and avoid his beloved Registrah. Of course it all went tits-up in theatre, when an under-age patient turned out to have an allergy he hadn’t thought of mentioning to the aforementioned Dr Razzer when he did his pre-op checks. Speaking of which, isn’t it funny how, when we have a main character who’s an anaesthetist (Zubin, Annaliese) they’re always hovering around the wards and ITU. But the rest of the time, anaesthetists are confined to sitting at the head end during operations and not saying much.

Sahira had to pitch in and help save the patient, and Hanssen paid a visit to loom at everyone through the glass, so we had an operating theatre full of Sahira’s admirers. I’m not including the scrub nurse in this, but she can’t be immune to the charms of the Registrah, surely?