All Saints Season 9 Episode 22

This episode left me cold. The storylines felt flat, and they had some good stuff to start with. The mystery-illness-epidemic could have been done brilliantly, but instead it left me with a case of 'yeah, I don't care anymore'.





Frank's old friend dropping in had its moments, although most of them were lost in Frank and Mike's being at loggerheads. (Kinda cute when they decided instead of being mad at each other, they'd both be mad at Jack, prompting Jack to say 'I liked you two better when you were fighting' - but detrimental to the story, untimately.) I would have prefered to see Frank and his friend enjoy a quiet series of moments - it could have been a fabulous insight into Frank's life, but instead, we get the Frank'n'Mike show.





Poor Frank, though, if Evie's going to Europe - why won't he admit how he feels about her, already, especially given Kathleen's gone? (Hey, maybe he can join them both in Europe! Just a thought...)





And Charlotte being pregnant - ugh, what can I say about that? The writers of AS were in one of the best positions in the HISTORY of TELEVISION when it came to writing in a character's pregnancy - often, the character is known to be anti-kids, or too irresponsible, or whatever - I suspect the main reason they didn't write in Sarah Jessica Parker's pregnancy into Sex in the City. But with Charlotte, they had a fantastic backstory; a woman who, for the past two years, at least (I'm going by a comment she makes to Jack and Terri in season 7 about how much she wants a child, which prompts a rather tasteless joke from Jack about sperm donership) has made it clear she wants a child; a responsible, reliable woman, albiet one with a demanding job; a woman who is a lesbian and in her mid-thirties, and knows her time is running out to have a child. I mean, she was willing to have Jack's child, and they were pretty crap circumstances, so they had the foundation for the exploration of just how far she was willing to go for thet child.





IVF - pursuing motherhood as a single parent with a demanding job.


Rape - accepting motherhood with no idea of half the genes she's bringing into the world.


A reunion with Vincent, bringing all their baggage back into the fore.





That's three scenarios I came up with in a few seconds, all which had the potential to be risque and confronting. So what do they do? Screw with her sexuality, leave us with no doubt of who the father is, and do it in a really lame, unimaginative way to boot. It was like they TRIED to come up with the most cliched, unimaginative story they could think of, just to stick it to the brave, forward stories they COULD have done.





And they way it was tacked on there, when it's something the fans have been wanting for a while - it felt really disrespectful. There's an unknown epidemic sweeping through the hospital, Frank's old uni mate has dropped in and may be dying, and we forgot something, what did we forget? Oh yeah, Charlotte's pregnant. The whole scenario felt like they were short five minutes of show so they added it in quickly.





One quick note - I'm SURE I saw a flash on Jack's face before he put on a happy smile and congratulated Charlotte and joked about not having anything to do with it - pain or regret? I REALLY hope they explore Jack's feeling towards the pregnancy in future episodes. It's about the only thing they can do to salvage such a sorry storyline.

I did not think that this episode was up to much, to be perfectly honest. It probably had something to do with the fact that all three patients were suffering from the same ailment, meaning that there was little to no variety like there usually is. There’s also only so much time that you can listen to someone coughing and spluttering on screen before you start to get really cranky about it. The episode seemed to also cut from scene to scene a lot quicker and more often than usual- And as a consequence, I could not really settle into any of the storylines for any length of time.





Charlotte’s pregnancy seemed to come out of nowhere and was thrown in, in such a casual and slack manner, that there didn’t really seem to be any point in adding it in at all. I won’t go into the nitty-gritty of how the writers botched up the timing in this storyline, went for the most blatantly obvious choice of Father or how there was no element of surprise or intrigue at all. But I will say that the way they added it in, almost like an afterthought, made the storyline appear very sloppy and untidy- Kind of like it was thought up in five minutes flat.





Admittedly, it was great to see some further development of Frank’s character. His old uni mate comes back, and it was interesting to see him and Mike clashing paths again. (NB: They did manage to agree to disagree at the end of the episode. But only at the expense of Jack, who claims that he thinks he ‘likes them better when they were fighting.’)





Another development for Frank is whether or not he can let partner Eve go away to Europe on tour with her band. It’ll be very sad to say goodbye to her if she decides to go, especially with Frank’s ex-wife and daughter also overseas right now. It’ll also mean even less on the personal front for the characters if Eve has to go as well- And we really can’t afford to give away any personal developments for characters right now. That would mean even more work and even less play for the ED staff.





Also making another appearance in tonight’s episode was young intern, Bart. This character is cute and a bit quirky, so it was great to see him again. Bart asked Frank for some extra shifts in the ED, so quite possibly we might be seeing a bit more of him in the future, which is a positive.





The end of the episode saw the crew solving the riddle of the mystery illness (It was an infected tick carrying the disease over from an animal petting zoo at a local shopping centre), Von getting her new position within the ED and Charlotte and Sean discussing whether or not Spence will be coming back. All in all, not the usual high quality standard of episodes that All Saints usually dish out. I felt that it was more of a filler episode than anything else and that it lacked believability. Let’s hope that next week is better.

Would like to see Bart come back, as hes an interesting character. Always good to see a disease case in the ED and the new doc was good. Like House minus House.





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