Loveday Writing

This episode was all about life – start of life, end of life, and everything in between, and I’m going to review it character by character.

Wayne, Pete and Mira

Wayne, Pete and Mira spend the episode tending to a critically ill baby. Wayne tries to hold off telling Mira that their patient is a baby for as long as possible, and ends up having to tell her as she is deciding whether to land at the closest air strip, which is riddled with potholes, or another one half-an-hour away.

Wayne and Pete do their best to treat the baby, Aiden, at home to no avail, and have to take him back to Broken Hill, without his mother, Julie, as they can’t fly her and her other children with them. During the flight back, Wayne and Pete eventually discover he has meningococcal. After doing their best, exhausting all their medicinal resources onboard, and conducting CPR on Aiden as he flatlines multiple times, Aiden passes away before they land.

When they get back to Broken Hill, Mira wraps Aiden and holds him, as Wayne delivers the news of his death to his parents. Pete drops Mira home, and Mira worries about going inside to Kalthi and giving her meningococcal due to her holding Aiden. Eliza comes over with antibiotics and holds Kalthi up to the window for Mira to see. Eliza reassures her that the odds of her contracting meningococcal, let alone passing it on to Kalthi, are extremely low. Mira asks Eliza and Pete to take care of Kalthi if anything should happen to her and Wayne, and they both agree.  

Later, when Wayne arrives home, Mira hugs him, and he admits that he worries more than he ever has now that they have Kalthi.  

Eliza and Matty

Eliza and Matty tend to a cancer patient, Yvette Tidwell, who has a broken arm and stage 4B ovarian cancer. When they get there, Yvette tells them that she wants access to voluntary assisted dying.

As they are treating her for the broken arm, Yvette’s estranged husband, Owen, the driver from the bus crash, shows up, begging her not to go through with voluntary assisted dying and starts to hyperventilate. Eliza gives him some oxygen and asks him if he has been taking care of himself since the accident. Owen tells her that he isn’t welcome at many places, and that whilst Yvette has her bad days, asking for voluntary assisted dying isn’t her and that she’s angry with him. When Eliza asks Owen what medications he’s on, he mentions a weight loss drug, and that he used to take speed to get through long drives but he doesn’t anymore, and he hasn’t relapsed. Caleb walks up and makes a remark about the bloods not lying. He also asks Eliza and Matty if they have any spare Narcan.

We then cut to an unconscious man on the ground who has overdosed on opioids. As Matty finishes giving the man Narcan, he quickly jumps up and tries to run. As Caleb struggles to subdue him and pepper spray him, he accidentally pepper sprays Matty. Caleb eventually manages to subdue the man.

When they are back at base, Eliza looks up Owen’s medical records and discovers the weight loss drug that he has been prescribed is an amphetamine, which could possibly mean that he is not legally liable for the crash. Pete does question whether Eliza wants him to be innocent to make themselves feel better about the decisions they made after the crash.

Meanwhile, Matty and Caleb complete their paperwork over the overdose incident, and Caleb asks Matty out, revealing he is bisexual, Matty then kisses him.

Chaya

Chaya spends the episode driving Anna to Adelaide Hospital to see Poppy, after she goes to see her on her property and finds that her car has broken down. During the drive, Chaya and Anna listen to the news broadcast on the radio, which reports on Owen’s charges for the bus crash. Chaya apologises to Anna for letting the details of Owen’s positive tox screen slip, and offers to support her in the courtroom during the trial. Anna asks Chaya to pull over, Anna gets out of the car and starts screaming, as Chaya watches on and starts to experience a minor panic attack.

When they get to Adelaide, Anna thanks Chaya for driving her there and accepts her offer of support.

Towards the end of the episode, Chaya can be seen leaving a voicemail for Caleb near a pub or club of some kind, possibly implicating that she is on the verge of relapsing.

Taylor

Taylor sees Eliza at the beginning of the episode, with Eliza informing her that her remaining kidney and pregnancy are stable, however she is running out of time, in terms of making the decision of whether to continue with her pregnancy or not.

Taylor spends the rest of the episode babysitting Kalthi whilst Mira and Wayne are at work. During their time together, she takes a photo of them together on her phone and posts it, with Darren liking it. She then asks Kalthi if she would be a good aunty, revealing that Darren not Cameron is the father of her baby. Taylor reveals this to Pete after he comes back from work, having gotten pregnant after she broke up with Cameron and when she visited Darren in Dubbo for his birthday. Taylor tells Pete that she doesn’t know what to do and wishes her mum was around to help her, Pete hugs her to comfort her and tells her that he will be there for her.

Ryan, Eliza and Pete

There wasn’t much going on with the love triangle in this episode. At the beginning of the episode, Ryan suggests to Eliza that they share their location data with each other, so that they can spend more time together and he can cook dinner for her at a reasonable hour, which Eliza hesitates to agree to. Meanwhile, it’s revealed that Pete has been engaging in one-night stands and Wayne encourages him again to be honest about his feelings with Eliza, as her and Ryan are pretty much living together. Eliza walks into the room at the tail-end of their discussion, which makes Pete worry that she overheard them.

At the end of the episode, Eliza comes home and Ryan tells her to forget his suggestion about location sharing, realising it was a “bit much” and creepy.

Overall, I felt that this episode was an improvement to last week’s episode. Wayne, Mira and Pete’s subplot was incredibly tragic with stellar performances from Collins, Ricardo, and Peacocke respectively.

In regards to Eliza and Matty’s subplot, I was pleasantly surprised with the reveal of the bus driver, Owen, being connected to their patient, and the education provided by Yvette’s circumstances. I also appreciated Matty finally getting more screen time, as well as the twist of Caleb being bisexual, which has established an unexpected love triangle consisting of them and Chaya. Speaking of Chaya, the end of the episode seemed to implicate that she is on the verge of relapsing, it will be interesting to see if that is the case in the next episode.

The reveal that Darren is the father of Taylor’s baby was not that surprising and it will be interesting to see whether she continues with the pregnancy. In my opinion, I think she will, as from a writing perspective, it would be interesting to see her as a mother especially with her hereditary kidney condition, and Wayne and Mira as grandparents. I can’t wait to see Wayne and Mira’s reactions when they eventually and inevitably find out.

On the Ryan-Eliza-Pete love triangle, I’m happy for that to have as little screen time as possible. I was a little worried that Ryan’s suggestion to share location data would lead to a reveal of him being controlling and abusive, but thankfully that wasn’t the case.

I also appreciated the continued progression of the bus crash story arc with Anna agreeing to Chaya’s support during the trial, which is going to lead to inevitable conflict with the rest of the team, and the reveal that Owen’s weight loss drug would have contributed to the positive tox screen and could possibly lower his liability in Joe’s death.

It will be interesting to see where we go from here, now that we’re at the halfway point of the season.