Loveday Writing

This episode was all about everyone having a bad day of some kind (except for Leonie and Graham, who didn’t make an appearance), and I’m going to review it character by character.

Eliza and Pete

Eliza and Pete work together with Arthur, a man who has inserted a cylindrical propane gas tank up his bottom, and tries to keep it a secret from his wife, Linda, for as long as possible.

As Eliza and Pete are enroute to Broken Hill with Arthur and Linda on the plane, Linda reveals to Pete that Eliza and Ryan met at the Mundi Mundi Festival after a car rolled back on a kelpie’s leg, Ryan lifted the car to free the dog and Eliza stitched the dog up.

When Linda eventually learns the truth and worries about the embarrassment and gossip it will bring to their family, Eliza asks Nigel to divert the plane to Dubbo, to be attended to there, much to Pete and later Matty’s chagrin. They end up having to go to Broken Hill anyway, due to the lack of available planes when Wayne needs a plane for his patient. Arthur and Linda eventually reconcile and find humour and understanding with the situation, especially with Eliza encouraging them to find ‘safer items to play with.’

Throughout the episode, Pete is passive-aggressively questioning Eliza’s calls, which Eliza calls him out on. It’s later revealed that Pete is upset at not knowing how to handle Taylor’s needs and desires around her pregnancy and life in general, especially as Eliza is her doctor and there are certain things she can’t tell him, due to doctor-patient confidentiality. Eliza and Pete reconcile, with Pete protecting Eliza from Anna’s attempted assault of her, after Anna finds out from Chaya that the bus driver from the crash was drug affected.

Chaya and Taylor

Chaya and Taylor spend most of the episode visiting Anna and Poppy. Before they get there, they talk about Chaya’s casual hook-ups with Caleb, and Chaya tells Taylor on their plane ride to Anna’s property that due to the bus driver’s positive tox screen, his charges will be upgraded and the town’s anger will only grow, when the news of it breaks at the trial.

Anna is friendly and cordial towards Chaya and Taylor, and tells them that Poppy is already walking, as she is determined to get used to the prothesis quickly, so she can return to running. Taylor wanders the property to find Poppy and comes across Joe’s shed. When Poppy finds her and has an awkward interaction with Taylor and tries to walk away, she falls down. After Taylor calls Chaya for help, Chaya takes off the bandage at the bottom of her leg and finds that her wound is infected due to constantly wearing the prosthesis, and that she’ll need to come with them to get antibiotics. However, their trip back is slowed down due to Mira accidentally leaving the power on and draining one of the plane’s two batteries.

As Chaya, Taylor, Anna and Poppy are waiting for Mira to find a way to harness the second battery’s power to take off, Taylor comforts Anna by revealing her own accident and loss of her parents to her, and telling her that she’ll find a way to grieve and honour Joe. However, the comfort doesn’t last long as Chaya lets the bus driver’s positive tox screen slip, as she tries to stop Taylor from taking the blame for Joe’s loss.

When they get back to Broken Hill and wait for patient transport to the hospital, Anna sees Eliza on the base’s security footage, and runs out to the tarmac to yell at her for prioritising the intoxicated driver over her son, nearly assaulting her, being stopped by Pete holding her back. The episode ends with Anna composing herself and walking away.

Mira and Wayne

With Graham’s absence, Mira is returning to work, with Wayne taking the day off to care for Kalthi.

Wayne takes Kalthi to see his Aunty Sal and his cousins when Naomi, a local remote area nurse, drops by and tells him about a patient, a young man, she is treating by Carston River. When Wayne tells her that he sounds like he could have endocarditis, she goes back to treat him accordingly, telling him that she’ll be back in an hour. However, when she doesn’t return on time, he goes to see what’s going on.

When Wayne arrives, he finds Naomi is having trouble treating the man and that he is barely conscious. Wayne is forced to perform a pericardiocentesis to remove excess fluid around the man’s heart, as Mira is unable to fly to their location straight away, due to her plane’s temporary power outage.

Wayne and Naomi eventually get the man back to base for further treatment, and Mira admonishes him for letting work interfere with his parental responsibilities. When Mira gets home, she finds Wayne has cooked dinner for them as a form of an apology. Mira tells him that she loves him for wanting to help everyone, but that he can’t help everyone and that he needs to find a way to balance his responsibilities. Wayne tells her that the man he helped barely needed any sedation and may not have normal brain function if he does recover, revealing that the man has Rheumatic Heart Disease from untreated Strep A Impetigo, the latter being an infection that Kalthi is also suffering from, albeit on a minor level, highlighting the health gap in Indigenous health care in Australia.

Matty

Matty was more in the background in this episode, as he was having to manage the flight plans and routes at the base, due to Leonie’s absence.

Overall, I felt that this was a good but not great episode. I found Pete basically punishing Eliza for being Taylor’s doctor and being privy to her needs a little immature, I also felt frustration at Chaya letting the bus driver’s positive tox screen slip to Anna, and it was also a little predictable. However, I appreciated the alternating seriousness and humour in Arthur’s medical situation, and the progression of the bus crash story arc. I also appreciated Wayne and Mira’s subplot highlighting the difficulties that come with balancing parenthood and their work, especially in their unique lines of work, and the reality that comes with Indigenous health care.

I do hope that Matty gets some of the spotlight this season, especially with his promotion. I also didn’t notice that Leonie and Graham didn’t appear in the episode until after I finished watching it, although I can put two-and-two together from last week’s episode – both of them taking long service leave to go on a holiday as Graham is grounded due to his concussion – however a bit of dialogue making this clear would have been nice.

It will be interesting to see where the bus crash story arc goes from here, now that Anna is aware of the driver’s positive tox screen.

Stray Observations:

-Ryan has a daughter, Indy (most likely named India).

-Apparently, Mira micromanages when she is nervous.

-Apparently, Chaya had an awkward interaction with Caleb’s housemate as she walked into their kitchen naked, wearing his holster, with a banana in it instead of a gun.

-Wayne calls his apology Spaghetti Bolognese for Mira “apolognese.”