Holby City: The three unluckiest men in Holby

(Series 17, ep.21) This was the episode when Dr Harry Tressler-Posh finally realised that he was in love with the radiant Mary-Claire Carter, and decided to tell her. It was either that or watch her swan off into the Australian sunset with Helicopter Tom. Mary-Claire assured Harry that Australia was only a work arrangement and she and H-Tom weren’t an item. Anyway, “You’re the one who told me I deserved the best,” she reasoned. “Yes,” he reasoned back. “I meant me.” Bless him – modesty still intact even in the face of imminent heartbreak. Mind you, if he’d known how the day was going to turn out, he might have agreed to accept “imminent heartbreak” as a less painful alternative. 

What happened instead was that a patient’s boyfriend, getting cross at the amount of time it was taking for a Darwin doctor to pop down to AAU to have a look at his girlfriend, decided it was time for a Dramatic Gesture. Breaking with years of Holby tradition, he didn’t immediately make his way to the basement. He didn’t even bother with the roof. Instead he ended up on one of those window cleaning platform thingies and, because no Holby relative/friend is safe from the Curse, became ill himself. Harry overcame his fear of heights (briefly mentioned last week in response to H-Tom’s offer of a chopper ride) and climbed out of a window to the rescue. What happened next was both inevitable (this is Holby, after all, and I’d seen the spring preview) and dramatic – I actually emitted an involuntary sound something like “Eeep!” when Harry fell.

Thanks to the surgical skills of Serena and the never-give-upness of Raf (no former love rival is going to die on his watch!), it looks like Harry is going to live – but will he ever be the same? His liver is mashed, his brain may have been starved of oxygen for too long, and there’s been damage to his precious, pretty face. Surely Mary-Claire won’t be able to go to Australia and leave him in that state?

On Darwin it was all about the repercussions of the death of Julie Kale last week. Ric Griffin, achieving something of a record by appearing in three episodes running, was Selfie’s “objective ear” as the staff were grilled by the charm-free CEO in an attempt to find out what happened. Selfie was fairly satisfied that Jonny was at fault, despite Jac rather marvellously sticking up for him (“He is a brilliant nurse and a good man”), and when Jonny was discovered fishing the missing battery out of a bin, it seemed he’d been caught red-handed. He’s now helping the police with their enquiries – a mere year(ish) after Bonnie’s death, as well. If Harry Posh hadn’t fallen off a window cleaning platform and smashed his face and his liver, you’d have to call Jonny Mac the Unluckiest Man in Holby.

Compared to all this, Digby could only rank as Third Unluckiest Man in Holby. Marine Maria apparently dumped him after their breakfast last week, proving that she must be a bit of an idiot, because he’s lovely. What Digby really didn’t want was the support/sympathy/smirks of his two housemates, but Dominic and Zosia had other ideas. Sacha was relieved about this, as it distracted Dominic from his attempts to revamp Sacha’s wardrobe.

Sue H