Tinderbox (30/12/23)

I did end up waking up super early (on accident) and watching this episode but I decided not to post my review until after it had been on TV. I've really got to start getting into writing my essays now cause I have less than two weeks even with the deadline extension but I can manage to spend 12 straight hours thinking about writing it (rotating Casualty in my microwave brain) and not even realise I've done it until my mum's alarm goes off.

Well, it was an episode, wasn't it? Sometimes Casualty gives us masterpieces of television (cough Switzerland) and sometimes Casualty gives us "what the fuck was that?" (cough Too Much, Too Young - that was a very mixed Saturday) and Tinderbox was, at least for me, pretty much in the middle. I guess I wasn't as invested as I could've been cause there wasn’t much of my faves, I'd probably be more positive if we had more of them.

Pretty busy and all over the place episode but that’s to be expected at the start of a miniseries, I guess.

Stevie my beloved, she was great in this one. Elinor Lawless is very talented!! This has got me looking forward to her own storyline even more.

I know Ryan was unpopular but I loved him as a problematic little bitch character. Shows like this sometimes need a Ryan to cause problems for everyone and he served his purpose. Like, he is terrible but it was amusing to have a terrible member of the predominantly very sweet baby nurse quartet. I’ll miss him, honestly. I don’t imagine he’ll come back since there’s a new new (I still think of the baby nurses as new) nurse joining next week.

I made this last night, he didn’t actually die but I still think it’s funny:

I really liked that final shot of Jodie, Rida and Cam together but, to quote my mum as it happened, “I feel like all three of them have wanted Ryan to get beaten up at least once before”.

I love a good family storyline, especially when the family has multiple members in the main cast cause I think it allows for more development of the relationship (gestures wildly at Jan and Teddy), and Max and Jodie were great today. Loved all their interactions. Especially loved their conversation about Max’s kidney failure and especially “I wouldn’t allow it, even if you wanted to.” “Which I don’t.” “Well at least we agree on one thing” and “I’m sorry I’m not what you expected” (!!!!!!!!!!). I think they’re more similar than either of them realises, and I love that kind of dynamic - in both my ‘main fandoms’ my favourite characters are girls whose relationships with their fathers could be described as “I’m nothing like my dad (I’m just acting exactly like him)”. There’s definitely examples of that in this episode but back in Driving Force I remember a scene where Dylan tells them that neither of them should be treating Max’s mum and they both stand there looking at him with the same expression.

I expected that knowing the Teddy infidelity arc will happen would affect how I watch the show and when Paige and Jodie were treating the same patient I was 👁️👁️ the whole time. Whatever, I’ll get over it (hhhhhhh).

Sah was in this but so barely that the credits didn’t actually include Arin, which is weird to me.

I will say I think Casualty has been on weird pacing recently. I’d blame the miniseries format but it feels like there has been some storylines that are too long-running without saying anything new (FAITH) and other ones that get dropped too quickly without enough time to actually go into the ideas they implied were happening.

I think it was a good start to the new series but I would’ve liked them to cut the Faith stuff and have something actually happening with the paramedics instead.

Yes, I know complaining about Faith is beating a dead horse. However, in continuing to write her and this storyline, the writers have invented a dead horse beating machine to keep beating the dead horse perpetually. It goes on endlessly and has absolutely nothing new to say. And while some storylines have been getting these rushed and incomplete conclusions, Casualty had an opportunity to give the Faith storyline a conclusion with her going to rehab and staying there and then they didn’t. Tired of it. Also, not to be mean to the presumably overwhelmed Holby HR department but why would they ask Faith of Drug Theft Fame to come back??? This is why your hospital is like this, your hiring practices are terrible.

LOUIS FAIRHEAD IS ALIVE AND WELL

EVERYBODY CLAP

Holby-Verse Plotline Tournament!

hello! ive been wanting to do a poll for ages, and i haven't seen any casualty ones so i thought why not make one!! this tournament is a showdown of plotlines from the shows to find the best/most important/favourite! see bottom of this post for the submission form!

rules:

plotlines can be from any holby-verse show, be it holby city, casualty, and any of the spin offs or cross-overs!

the plotlines can be as long or short, popular or obscure as you like, affecting just one, or multiple characters. i think shows like holby and casualty are very plotline driven so most things would fit, but i think for this, a plotline would need to be at least 1 episode long (or the subject of an entire episode), with one or more of the regular or semi-regular characters (for that era of the show) involved.

plotlines can be submitted based on how much you like them, how important you think they were, the impact they had on characters, etc.

please don't spam the form with the same plotline! the same plotline can be submitted by different people, and the same person can submit multiple plotlines, but not the same plotline by the same person please!

i think there will be 128 entries, but we'll see how it goes!

entries will be selected by whichever submissions make it in before i close the form

propaganda will be allowed once the tournament starts but please be nice!

these rules may change a bit and more may be added once i figure out how running a tournament works, but i will try to keep any changes reasonable, and will try to post them to see what people think before changing them

once polls start, ill figure out a tag system that can be used to track polls, results, propaganda, and miscellaneous things which, when created can be found here.

submission form:

Honestly this episode was such a letdown after last week...the resolution of the different storylines (especially just having a throwaway comment about Harry dying offscreen) felt underwhelming...and Stevie being the little girl felt meh too.. or am I just cynical?

obsessed with the implication that being on the pill means you’re sleeping with a man???

It's my 9 year anniversary on Tumblr 🥳

WHAT!?

I can't believe I started CasualtyFandom 9 years ago!! That's actual madness!

I've done lots of things online in that time; writing books, starting and re-starting blogs, poetry, videos, freelancing - but this little fandom has remained a constant and are always so welcoming and so sweet!

THANKYOU ALL for the follows, likes, reblogs, weekly interactions!! I wouldn't still be running this blog without you ALL!!

💚❤️💙💚❤️💙💚❤️💙

p.s - 10 years next year, how Do We CeLEbrate!?!

Thoughts on the first ep:

- Oh man I despise Faith. Dunno if it’s because her accent bounces up and down the UK like nothing else or because I’ve encountered shitty people like her but ugh. Glad they didn’t pair her with Dylan in the end.

- I don’t like the name Jonty. It creeps me out.

- Also Paul creeps me out. No amount of gerbil hijinks will distract me from the fact he needs his harddrives checked.

- David on morphine and him sassily flicking the monitor off his finger? Yes.

- This ep really highlighted how much Dylan values David 😭 I just love their dynamic.

- Dylan hugging (well, partially hugging) David melted my cold, dead heart.

- Dylan and that gerbil ☠️

- But what even was that gerbil plot?? Why were there so many side plots crammed in?? What was up with the Mika music video extras and their dumb honeymoon?? Give me Dylvid angst god dammit.

- The Iain scene was very sweet and powerful. Two head cannons: either Dylan asked him to do it (aww) or Iain respects David enough to go and do it himself (also aww).

- I always had a random head cannon that David can play a bit of piano. Like he’s still learning and a beginner but he’s getting there. Maybe he started learning when he was signed off work pre-holby. Anyways the piano in his living room makes this canon to me.

- Final note: Dylan and David just need to become platonic (…or gay) life partners. Reconnect with Sanosi. Snuggle with Dervla. Bicker like an old married couple. Maybe get married. I’d like that.

As someone who's family have the BRCA2 gene, who may also have that gene and who is nonbinary....

The casualty syoryline has made me want to start watching the show again.

There are differences between a mastectomy and top surgery, one being that there's still some bits left behind for the top surgery but they need to get everything for the mastectomy when it comes to breadt cancer.

But both are life saving surgeries and nothing will change my mind on that

I don't know if anyone remembers this, or even cares anymore. But after many, many years. I've tied up the ends of my Angsty Riain fic and I thought I might as well give it a share!

Just caught up on Casualty and what the fuck was going on in that writers' room that made them try to parallel the MND patient with Paige when Ethan was right there??? It doesn't even make sense as a Paige parallel because it's absolutely nothing even remotely like her situation at all like is this a fucking joke????

Tinderbox, Red Flags and Take the Strain have been added to Casualty’s scripts on the BBC website.

Part of me is very annoyed that Barriers isn’t on there. It’s my favourite AHOV episode and, more importantly, I am so interested in how self-aware the writers are about Sah and Teddy. Do they know how what they wrote there comes across? Or is the tension accidental? I really wanna see the action elements for that one.

Anyway, I’m not the biggest fan of Take the Strain (on the Teddy-related side of things there were some ideas that could’ve been good but they were quite terribly executed) but I was having a look at it anyway because there are differences between the scripts and the episodes we got, and look at what Jan says to Teddy in this version of their final scene:

I’m specifically talking about “I didn’t know I raised such a coward!” which became “I didn’t know you were a coward” in the actual episode. Raised. In a better episode, that would be too on the nose for me and I would agree with the change. Peak Jan and Teddy episodes are mostly subtle with the ‘not-mother and not-son’ stuff. But this episode wasn’t exactly Switzerland in terms of quality - by the end, I just wanted anything substantial for Jan and Teddy from it, so I probably wouldn’t have minded that line.

One thing about the monster fighting team in Demons (2009) is that they're all very horny and yet none of them fuck. They're all desperate for it and none of them are getting it. This really adds to the dynamic I think.

Listen to Dylan Max and take a break, not least because you're doing two-handed adult CPR on a small kid

really hope this doesn't come across as rude because I honestly mean this in the best way possible. I'm continuously delighted by the lore behind your blog.

that being said, I actually love that you, hellsite hall of fame, seem so oblivious to like 90% of tumblr culture. It kinda feels like running into Van Gogh in the craft aisle at a supermarket as he looks at a watercolor set all bewildered and repeatedly whispers "what the fuck is this" to himself.

it doesn’t come across as rude at all, and honestly I too am constantly amazed by my own uncultured-ness when it comes to this stuff

also that is an incredibly wonderful comparison that I absolutely love lmao

(literally me coming across the loss meme- “what the fuck is this”)

I think, if I were to summarise my feelings on Ollie’s plotline, I’m realising that part of it is the fact that we’ve not been able to feel sad about him

His final act was such a huge, shocking, horrific thing that it’s hard to talk about anything in his character from before the shooting. He didn’t really build into this. All his characterisation from before the incident is sort of reduced down into him now being Ollie, school shooter. It makes it really difficult to be sad that a character you like died, because in his final moments he transformed into a character you can’t like.

And I think, even if I don’t necessarily like that they chose Ollie to do it, that is exactly what they’re trying to explore. How do you mourn someone who’s done something irredeemable? When someone you love very much does something that you can’t defend. David’s guilt, sadness and grief all reflects that very well.

I've been on this hellsite a long time, which means that I have seen many a ship immortalized in a gifset featuring the iconic line from Annelyse Gelman's "The Pillowcase":

I burned so long so quiet you must have wondered if I loved you back. I did, I did, I do.

And all I'm saying is what were all those tender gazes for in Endgame and TFATWS if not for Sam/Bucky to get the same treatment?