Loveday Writing

The job of a season premiere is to establish the season’s story arcs and pick up on any arcs that were started or left behind at the end of the previous season. This pilot did its job, but not perfectly.

The episode makes it clear from the beginning that a year has passed and shows Eliza tending to patients with Taylor and Chaya. Eliza gives Taylor an ultrasound, as she had been complaining of back pain and headaches due to inheriting polycystic kidney disease from her mother. Eliza is then seen checking a pee stick that Taylor completed and asking her about her periods. They then hear another patient, Barry, screaming that his stomach is killing him. The team take him on the plane and contemplate whether he has contracted botulism from eating tinned stew, only for him to, let’s say, release a large amount of gas on the plane.

Later, the team is seen together at the park, waiting on presumably Pete to arrive so they can play a social footy game, however it’s revealed that they are waiting on Eliza’s boyfriend, Ryan. Eliza tells Taylor that her creatine level is elevated and that she is six weeks pregnant.

Meanwhile, it’s revealed that Pete is back working as an RFDS nurse as his suspension is over, but in Adelaide instead of Broken Hill with the rest of the team and hasn’t spoken to them for quite some time. He is on his way back to base via a bus, as the plane got a flat tyre. At a rest stop, he notices the bus driver taking pills and rushing everyone back on the bus. During the ride, Pete overhears siblings, Joe and Poppy, talking, as Poppy needs to vomit. Joe asks the driver to stop and he refuses, Pete steps in and asks himself as it would prevent any mess and the driver reluctantly agrees. When Joe calls the driver grumpy, they get into an argument, which leads to the driver losing focus, drifting off the road, and the bus crashing on its side.

When Pete, who has hurt his arm, sees that Joe is ostensibly alright, he gives him his phone and asks him to walk back to the rest stop to get reception and call for help. He tells him to call the two people listed on the back of his phone for help. Joe calls Eliza first, however seeing that Pete has called, she doesn’t answer. Joe then gets a hold of Wayne, after he almost ignores the call, as Pete hasn’t called him in months. Both Eliza and Ryan then get the call to help at the crash site, as it’s revealed that Ryan is the Leading Station Officer at the Central Region Fire and Rescue.

Eliza takes charge of the operation and gives everyone a pep talk as they fly out to the crash site. It’s revealed that when she and Wayne are looking for Pete that she hasn’t spoken to him since the hearing. Eliza and Pete find each other, and Pete meets Ryan, and there is tension between the two men immediately. When Pete eventually finds Poppy, he discovers that her leg is pinned under the bus. When Eliza tends to her and asks her about her and her family’s medical history, Poppy reveals that her mother and Jo have an Immunoglobulin A deficiency, however she doesn’t know if she does as she never got tested for it. When Joe and Poppy’s mother, Anna, arrives she tells the team that Joe called her but he stopped talking to her and sounded confused. Taylor, Pete, Anna, and other responders go to look for Joe.

Hours pass and day turns into night, Ryan and the Fire and Rescue team try to lift the bus off of Poppy to no avail. Due to this and the severe blood loss Poppy is experiencing, and the risks that Fresh Frozen Plasma (FFP) have on someone who possibly has an Immunoglobulin A deficiency (i.e. anaphylaxis), Eliza and Chaya have no choice but to amputate Poppy’s lower leg. Poppy begs her not to, as she is a runner and running is all she cares about, but Eliza administers the ketamine and starts the amputation.

Meanwhile, Anna and Pete eventually find Joe unconscious, and Pete discovers that he has a head injury with a potential extradural haemorrhage. He asks Wayne for help over the radio and he comes over. He asks Pete if he noticed the head injury before and he tells him no. Taylor, Wayne, Pete and the Fire and Rescue team walk Joe back to the crash site, but on their way there, Taylor drops her part of the stretcher due to her back pain, and she ends up helping from the side. When they get to the crash site, Taylor collapses and Eliza ultrasounds her kidney after finding a bruise, and tells her that she needs surgery and is losing blood. Taylor asks what this would do to the baby, which Pete overhears.

With Taylor needing surgery and limited space on the plane, with a back-up plane not due to arrive for another hour, Eliza needs to make a call on who stays behind, as the bus driver is also critical. Eliza makes the call to take Poppy, Taylor and the driver, as Joe’s head injury is catastrophic. Anna begs them not to and is pulled away. Eliza gives Joe CPR, mainly for Anna’s benefit, but ultimately stops and declares Joe’s time of death.

Meanwhile on the plane, Pete and Wayne have to give Poppy FFP as the limited blood they have is unable to help her. Wayne has dirty adrenaline ready to go, but ultimately Poppy’s condition improves without an anaphylactic reaction, confirming that she doesn’t have the Immunoglobulin A deficiency. She then asks them where Joe is.

At the hospital in Adelaide, Pete and Wayne briefly chat where Pete tells Wayne that Taylor is still in surgery and that she’ll most likely lose her kidney, but he is unsure about the baby. The tension between them is clear but they part civilly. Pete then asks a doctor to tend to what he suspects is his broken arm.

The episode ends with Eliza on the plane accompanying the last of the crash victims back to Broken Hill. She goes through one of her packs and finds Joe’s necklace, which she removed from his neck earlier as he was being treated. She holds onto the necklace, looks out the window, and cries.

Overall, I felt that this was a solid start to the season. I appreciated that the focus was on one mass casualty event, rather than multiple medical dramas, as it was simultaneously easy to follow and compelling to watch. Eliza has come a long way from season one, going from inexperienced and naïve about the Australian outback, to leading and commanding the RFDS team. It will be interesting to see what further consequences lay ahead for her and the team with Joe’s death and the choice to amputate Poppy’s leg, which was essentially for nothing as it turned out that she doesn’t have an Immunoglobulin A deficiency. It will also be interesting to see if there are consequences for the driver who unintentionally caused the crash but was seen swallowing pills of some kind by Pete.

There were a lot of unanswered questions in the premiere that I hope the rest of the season answers, first and foremost, why Pete chose to transfer to Adelaide after his suspension ended instead of working with the team in Broken Hill? And secondly, why he drifted apart from them? He did mention needing time to sort himself out at the end of the previous season, but I wasn’t expecting this. Adding on this, are Chaya and Pete still a couple? Will Mira come back to work eventually? Will Leonie and Graham get together? And, when did Eliza and Ryan meet and how long have they been together (due to their jobs, I can guess the how). Also, are Cameron and Taylor together, since Chaya makes it clear he is the only possibility as her baby’s father? It will also be interesting to see whether Taylor’s baby survived and if she continues with the pregnancy, or can, if she loses a kidney.

I did find myself wondering throughout the episode if both Joe and Poppy would die, especially as this is the outcome that the episode seemed to going towards. However, I appreciate that the writers had Poppy live, and as I mentioned above, whether the consequences of this event, specifically Eliza’s choices, will be explored further. I also wondered whether Taylor’s pain was from an ectopic pregnancy, but appreciated that again, the writers didn’t go down that route, instead making it the polycystic kidney disease. One nitpick I have is that I don’t remember any reference in previous seasons to her or her mother ever having the disease (feel free to correct me if I’m wrong). For such a serious disease and the affects that it, combined with a pregnancy, will have on her, as well as what she has been through in past seasons, this should have been written as part of her character earlier.

I’m pleased to see that Chaya is still part of the cast and I hope she is used more, as I felt that she was underused in the previous season. On another note, I appreciated the camera work and portrayal of Eliza amputating Poppy’s leg, showing how laborious that task would be, without getting too gory (although I’d understand if there was gore being a medical drama). On a smaller note, I really hope the writers don’t go down the love triangle route with Eliza, Pete and Ryan, as it would be cliché, it would take away focus from the show’s premise, and is a little immature for characters of their age and professional stature.

I’m looking forward to watching and reviewing the rest of the third season and seeing where it takes us.

Funnily enough, today marks two years since I wrote and posted my review of the previous season’s finale.