Holby City: Facing up

(Series 19, ep. 60 ‘Hiding Places’ by Gerard Sampaio 28.11.17) They’re dropping like flies at Holby. We lost lovely Damon Ford and spooky Fredrik Johanssen last week, and this week we waved goodbye to the beautiful smile of Nina Karnik and the luscious locks of Matteo Rossini. It’s just as well some new blood is arriving soon, because Holby is just haemorrhaging staff at the moment.

It seemed certain this week that we’d lose Nina, but it was less clear what would happen to Matteo. Determined to bring her baby up in a supportive family atmosphere, Nina was planning to move to Amsterdam, where her sister and nieces and nephews would provide the family. Matteo, meanwhile, signalled his distress with what Ollie called “a slight but appreciable dip in his grooming standards.” In other words, his hair was not looking quite as luscious as usual. 

I’ve just finished reading How Not To Be A Boy by Robert Webb, which is all about how men are basically rubbish at the emotional stuff because that’s how they’ve been taught to be, rather than it being an innate character deficit. Matteo is a prime example of this (actually most of the men in Holby are prime examples. I was going to say “apart from Sacha,” but remember when he hid his depression?). It took almost losing Nina and actually losing his patient for him to finally crack. Ollie, who knows more about grief than a lot of people his age, told Matteo he had to “look loss in the eye and tell it to do its worst.” Matteo finally broke down in tears, for the loss of his little boy Nico and the almost-loss of Nina and his new baby. He apologised for describing the baby as “wiping the slate clean” – he hadn’t meant that he’d forgotten about Nico, whose scan picture he always kept in his wallet and whose memory he always kept in his heart. And this was all Nina needed to hear.

So the Rossini-Karnik family are heading to Amsterdam, leaving Darwin perilously under-staffed, because Jac had another week of avoiding surgery, having wobbly hands and being generally un-Jac-like. It seems that she’s struggling with the pressures of looking after Emma more or less alone (Jonny is away somewhere) while also proving that it’s not only men who can be crap at dealing with their emotions as she still hasn’t properly allowed herself to grieve for Jasmine.

Fletch was adorably lovely with Jac – he’s kind and understanding, he’s not scared of her, and he’s the king of fatherly advice. Indeed, Raf told Essie he thought a romance might be brewing. Long-time readers will be able to guess my thoughts on that.

On AAU Donna was being haunted by Jeremy Warren, the son of the late Mrs Warren. There’s another man who isn’t dealing with his feelings very well. He wants someone to blame for his mother’s death, and the someone he wants to blame is Ric Griffin. He spent the episode hounding Donna with a little notebook, trying to get her to give him more incriminating evidence against Ric. The glorious Sacha is firmly behind Ric and has organised a cut-price hot-shot solicitor. And when Jeremy got stroppy with Donna in Pulses, the also-glorious Jac took a moment from her own worries to use her special Jac shouty voice on Jeremy (the one she used on Serena when Serena was bullying Jasmine). Jeremy was thrown out of the hospital, but it looks like Donna and Jac (as well as Ric) have made an enemy.

Next week: Oh my good lord, you are not going to want to miss a second of next week’s two (yes, two!) episodes. Get the popcorn ready, make sure you have enough fingernails to gnaw nervously on and a comfy seat to be on the edge of – it’s going to be intense.