Holby City: A rainy day in old Holby town

(Series 14, Ep.34)  There was ever such a lot of hurtling about in this episode. They used to send Jac on her motorbike to fetch emergency organs, but now they’ve got Jonny and Mo to do it and Mo’s so heavily pregnant she probably can’t fit on a motorbike at the moment, so they go by car. On this occasion they were sent to collect a heart, but arrived to find the father of the current owner of the heart wasn’t emotionally ready to let it (or his son) go. Against his better judgement and protocol, Jonny found himself taken into the confidence of this poor man and eventually the heart got the thumbs up, as it were. I found I liked Jonny more when he was being kind and sensitive and nurse-ish than I do when he’s back at Holby being a leery old Jac-magnet.

While all this was going on, the intended recipient of the heart had gone AWOL, as patients on Holby tend to do all too frequently. Tara Lo had taken rather a personal interest in this patient, and she took it upon herself to go and get her back. Young Dr Oliver Valentine took it upon himself to go with her. So off they went in the biggest downpour Holby has seen since that time there was a flood and Mark “Jesus” Williams had to deploy sandbags and his best sorrowful expression to keep the floodwaters at bay.

Someone at Holby HQ had clearly been having a think. “What could be more photogenic than Oli and Tara?” they pondered. “Gosh, I know, we’ll get them wet.” Bravo for coming up with that idea, because it really worked.

In Tara, Oli has found someone who can sort of fill the void left by The Radiantly Beautiful Dr Penny Valentine. Like Penny, Tara is intelligent, caring, a bit reckless, a little bit naive and very beautiful. And unlike Penny, she isn’t his sister, which comes in handy during those “Oops, I just fell face down on you while you were lying face up” -type moments.  

Tara is obviously harbouring A Secret Past. We’ve had a lot of secret pasts in the past (I have this way with words), what with Irish Dr Greg, Jac, FLNT and Oliver himself. Dr Luc Hemingway’s secret past is still a secret. So I’ve no idea what Tara’s is going to turn out to be, but I don’t think it’s that she used to be a man. I think we can safely rule that out. I think we can also rule out that she’s secretly married to Hanssen as well.

While all this heart stuff was going on, guest artiste James Dreyfus was playing a man who was convinced it was the end of the world. Chantelle was pragmatic. “We can’t face the end of the world without a cup  of tea in our hands,” she reasoned. “It wouldn’t be British.” Quite right, too.

It wasn’t tea that Serena’s daughter had been drinking, and she turned up at Holby somewhat the worse for wear, towing a friend who was even more worse for wear, given that she’d taken ecstasy and also had an ectopic pregnancy. It’s been ages since we had an ectopic pregnancy on Holby. There was a time when there was at least one a week. Anyway, all this gave Serena the chance to bond just a weeny bit with Ric, when he told her he’d had a problem child of his own in the form of the late lamented Leo.

There was no Hanssen at all this week, but now he’s had a week off I’m expecting an absolute mega-loom next week to compensate.

Speaking of next week: Luc and Eddi; Oli and Tara; and Dan “finds the courage to be true to himself.” Hurrah!

PS – I’m having a crisis. Am I spelling Oli right? The BBC Holby site spells it Ollie. Opinions, please.

Posted by PLA          (more Holby here)