Call the Midwife – Series 1 Episode 5 – Recap and Review – We Are Family via Rickey.org
This week’s Call the Midwife delicately handles loneliness, in all its unfortunate fashions. Perhaps I’ll change my opinion upon a subsequent rewatch, but this was both the weakest, and yet, the strongest episode of the series thus far. It’s weak on a strictly plot-based level. There’s really only one storyline of any substantial interest. The rest is window-dressing. But there’s a lot to engage with beneath the surface that makes this an episode worth rewatching. As a treatise on loneliness, it works on just about every conceivable level, and it further develops the uniformly strong ensemble by adding further depth to the characters and their desires, their fears, and their failings. “We Are Family” is less about the business of midwifery, and more fully engaged in the emotional taxation of being a person who needs other people, on the most basic of levels.
Credit: Neal Street Productions
The primary case of the week concerns a woman named Peggy (Elizabeth Rider), a woman rescued from a workhouse by her long-separated brother Frank (Sean Baker). Immediately, the relationship struck me as odd, owing to the significantly intimate nature of the pairing. They come across more like an old married couple, and though Peggy is frequently given to fugue states of manic, tireless work, not realizing that she’s free to stop working whenever she wants, she is also very stern when she wants to be. She’s shown to be the only person Frank will actually listen to, which is a good thing when he needs to be convinced to move into hospice care when he’s diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The doctor prescribes an intensive round of radium treatment, and Frank takes to battling the illness in stride.
Unfortunately, the treatment doesn’t work. Sister Julienne (Jenny Agutter) makes it clear to Peggy that Frank is dying, but she can’t bring herself to tell him. While clearing out their cozy little home after a medical visit, Jenny (Jessica Raine) notices that there’s only one bed in the home. From this, Jenny deduces that their bond is much closer than simply that of a brother and sister. The other girls of Nonnatus House are positively scandalized by the revelation, yet all the Sisters seem to understand, refusing to cast judgment on the pair. As it becomes gradually apparent that Peggy can’t live without Frank, the outcome seems inevitable, although Jenny doesn’t see it. Nor does the audience, after a late reveal of a love note hidden in a crossword puzzle seems to give hope that Peggy will be able to live on without her brother/husband. It would be a cruel twist if it hadn’t been leavened with a certain sense of understanding about the extent of loneliness and the desire for peace through companionship. It’s very much the idea of soulmates that keeps the episode afloat in its weaker moments. The Frank/Peggy storyline is not one of those moments.
Credit: Neal Street Productions
Nor is the attempted romancing of Jenny by Jimmy (George Rainsford), although it really should be weak, since Jimmy really isn’t all that interesting a character. Much more fascinating is Jenny’s mysterious ex whom, she still can’t seem to get over (and who calls her at Nonnatus House, saying that he just needed to hear her voice. She hangs up on him without answering, more freaked out by his sudden reappearance than anything else). Jenny doesn’t appear to have any interest in bridging the gap with her ex, however, she doesn’t seem interested in overcoming her overwhelming sense of loneliness by seeking comfort in someone new, although she admits to considering the possibility, in Jimmy, who plans a group outing with Jenny and a mix of her friends and his. They go swimming beside a palatial estate, and Jenny comes perilously close to giving in and kissing him, but she can’t bring herself to go through with it. Worse, she suffers a bout of asthma almost immediately after, wrecking the day through no fault of her own. Jimmy later confesses his love to her, incapable of understanding why she would want to marry herself to her solitude. Despite the force of his pleas, she can’t reciprocate his feelings, saying that she wants the romantic ideal of love, which Jimmy doesn’t even believe is real. He argues that what they have, however, is real, and that the kind of love Jenny is after is the foolish stuff of picture shows. But nothing whatsoever can be done to change her mind. Jenny declares that she’s committed to her work more than anything else, to the people she treats, which basically proves Jimmy right in his assumption, several episodes ago, that Jenny had long given up on youthful exuberance, and had accepted the cold, clinical faculties of a workman’s life. Yet it’s not cold or clinical. Her loneliness is ameliorated, somewhat, through the patients she meets, such as the late Joe Collett, and the depth and breadth of her experience is expanded through her work. Jenny’s life is substantially richer now, and though she still has the youthful dreams of sweeping love, she’s a much more practical person now than she wants was, and that change dooms Jimmy’s romantic aspirations.
Chummy (Miranda Hart) is having a better time of romance though, owing to her dalliance with PC Peter Noakes (Ben Caplan). Noakes wants Chummy to meet his parents, and eccentric Sister Monica Joan (Judy Parfitt) procures a silk, emerald green dress for her to wear for the special occasion. Unfortunately, Chummy’s big night happens to fall on the same night that Fred’s pig, Evie, goes into labor, requiring all hands on deck. Fred (Cliff Parisi) has decided to pursue another food-related “get rich quick” scheme, intending to make his fortune through a bacon surplus. Of course, this scheme is scuttled when Fred discovers that the pig is pregnant. And so Fred’s scheme and Chummy’s evening are shot due to an ungovernable sense of duty.
There’s also a very minor subplot involving another delivery for Trixie (Helen George), who’s squeamish where fish are concerned, making the delivery particularly harsh since the patient is a fishmonger’s wife. It’s not a storyline with any teeth to it, but it does speak to Call the Midwife’s overarching themes of duty despite personal impediments and inhibitions. “We Are Family” is very much an episode about duty, as much as it is a rumination on the nature of loneliness. Next week is the season finale, and I’m not entirely sure where the narrative is headed. It’s been two episodes now since we’ve had a really substantive, episode-long pregnancy arc, in which a child is brought to term by the midwifes of Nonnatus House. Call the Midwife is a medical drama, to be sure, but it’s also a very poignant comment on the cycle of life and death. We’ve gotten a lot more of the latter, as of late, than the former, and I genuinely hope for a return to the travails of midwifery, since it’s the aspect that best separates Call the Midwife from your average, run of the mill British soap. Of course, there is a memoir that the show has to stick to, but I feel there’s a workable medical procedural narrative within that structure. That said, the character work is already strong across all fronts, so I’m already excited to see how they choose to conclude this first season. It’s been staggeringly good so far, especially if an episode like this could be considered the weakest one.
Watch Jessica Raine on Playing Jenny Lee on PBS. See more from Call the Midwife.