Loveday Writing

Later at the mine, Pete, Wayne and Eliza treat two brothers, Hayden and Jesse, who were in the fuel truck that caused the explosion. Hayden has burns to his back, and while Jesse seems to have gotten away relatively unscathed, Pete discovers he has inhalation burns, which could cause his airway to close. Eliza sedates Jesse so they can intubate him so he can breathe. Pete and Wayne take Hayden on Mira’s plane, whilst Eliza gets on Matty and Graham’s plane to take Jesse and Hayden respectively to Adelaide.

On the flight, Hayden starts hallucinating. When Eliza calls Wayne for advice on what the cause could possibly be, she asks Matty how much ketamine he gave Hayden and to check his syringes. Matty checks his syringes and realises he has his mLs and not his mgs syringes, which means he overdosed Hayden. Eliza tries to solve the issue, only for Hayden and Jesse’s mum to finally call her back, and she has to tell her to go to Adelaide and bring someone with her as they may not survive.

Meanwhile, Taylor goes to the base and finds Leonie laying on the floor of the pilots’ room meditating and crying. Leonie tells her that the RFDS fundraising ball is coming up and she’s crying as Rhiannon usually helped her organise it and was so capable at everything. Leonie asks Taylor to say a few words, but she’s unsure. Leonie then shows her a rose bush that Rhiannon planted that came from Wyama, and asks her how she feels about the Wyama sale. Taylor tells her that she feels lighter, emptier and that doing up the property gave her something to focus on. Leonie tells her that sooner or later you have to face your grief head on. Darren comes over and tells Taylor that he saw the clearing sale listed in the paper.

Darren takes Taylor to Wyama so she can truly say goodbye. While they’re sitting by a fire, Taylor tells Darren that she knows that Nate deliberately drove the car into the tree and tried to kill them, and that everyone around her knows this too. Darren tells her that Nate wasn’t well.

Pete, Eliza, Wayne, Matty, Mira and Graham eventually come back to the base. Pete gives Eliza a lift home, while Matty is putting the equipment away, kicking himself for his mistake. When Graham walks over, he tells Matty that mistakes are hard to live with but he’ll learn from it, telling him about his own mistake whilst flying. Pete tells Eliza that their connection means something and she agrees, she sits with him for a while before going into her apartment. When Eliza goes inside, she goes to see Henry in his room. Eliza asks Henry if he wanted to come to Australia, he tells her he wanted to do what she needed to do. She then asks him if he wants to go back to London and he says yes.

When Wayne goes home, he finds Timmy asleep in his bed and Darren not home. The next morning, he goes to Pete’s house to pick him up, so he can say goodbye to Wyama. Back at Wyama, when Darren and Taylor are walking around the property, they notice Wayne’s car. Pete and Wayne have a heart-to-heart where Wayne reveals he’s having second thoughts about the job he has accepted in Melbourne. Darren and Taylor then come to ask Wayne and Pete for food.

Wayne talks to Darren and asks him what he wants to do. Darren tells him that he wants to do an engineering apprenticeship at the base, whilst Wayne admits he doesn’t know what to do. While Pete admits to Taylor that he could never stand the silence of Wyama and he needs to be around people, but Taylor admits she loves the silence.

The episode ends with Eliza waking up the next morning to find Ed sitting out on the balcony. When Ed asks her how work was and reminds her of the kind of person she used to be, she starts crying.

Overall I felt that this was the weakest episode of the season. Usually the penultimate episode of a season is the springboard for the finale, providing hints of what’s in store. We get these hints with Wayne and Eliza having doubts over their career, but we don’t really get any others.

While the necessary medical subplots were present and interesting, there wasn’t enough of a focus on them. For a mine explosion, I expected the episode to provide a large focus on the injuries an incident like that would cause, that being said I understand that there is only so much you can focus on in a 45-minute episode. While the focus on the two seriously injured brothers was good, it was slightly undermined by the writers’ choice to leave their fate ambiguous, we never found out whether both or one of them lived or died. We also never found out what was wrong with the young woman Matty treated.

I was also disappointed in the lack of focus on the Eliza-Ed subplot. Ed only briefly appeared at the beginning and end of the episode and had little to no dialogue, whilst the ending of the episode showing Eliza starting to breakdown in tears over her work, showing her doubts, was unexpected and a little disappointing. I know as a writer you should show and not tell, but for the ending of an episode, showing without a little bit of telling wasn’t the best way to go, considering where we are in the season.

I’m looking forward to reviewing next week’s finale.