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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 443837" data-attributes="member: 23">The Agoraphobic / Sons and LoversThis pairing of episodes feels like a slight departure from the format up to this point. It’s the first time that there hasn’t been a main story running over two episodes. Instead, we’ve had two different stories which follow one after another instead of running simultaneously.Indeed, the episode title reflects this. The DVD menu lists these as two different stories:  Part I called The Agoraphobic, and Part II called Sons and Lovers. IMDb and Wikipedia list the episodes as Agoraphobic Sons and Lovers Parts I and II. I’m not clear which is official (and perhaps that’s changed over time), but the separate titles makes most sense to me as there isn’t an agoraphobe in Part II, and Part I doesn’t have a focus on lovers. Still, both episodes have a focus on sexual and reproductive health, and the main cohesion comes from the running thread of the industrial action, with non-medical staff at the hospital being on strike, which means Molly and Vicky are stepping in to help (this would have been the perfect time to bring back young Jacko, but never mind). Our most familiar face in the first part is Ray Meagher. Once again, ACP plays refreshingly against the image. I think at this point he was mainly playing heavies and rogues. As in Suffer Little Children, his wife is frail and nervous, having panic attacks each time she tries to leave the house. The obvious thing would be to have her being bullied by her husband, and it initially appears this way with him showing frustration at her behaviour. Then, also like Suffer Little Children, it subverts expectations.The woman is hiding a pregnancy and wants an abortion because their first son was Down’s Syndrome (she speaks about the son as though he was a monster, and wails that when he died, “I was glad”. She goes on to say that she was glad for him, but still… one senses this isn’t a mother equipped to offer the love that a Down’s child needs or to receive the love the child would give her). For all her wailing and lashing out, it’s Meagher’s character and his quiet composure that really impacts as he cries at her hospital bedside after she’s tried to induce an abortion at home. He tells her that it’s all about her worries and her feelings, and kind of quietly taps her on the metaphorical shoulder to remind him that he is there. There’s a fair degree of medical enlightenment for early Eighties viewers. Terence explains agoraphobia (he mischaracterises it as a fear of being in public places (or something like that), rather than it being a fear of being unable to escape from or get help in certain situations. Probably understandable for even a medic at this time. Even today, most people probably still have a tendency to misunderstand agoraphobia as simply a fear of open spaces. It’s also an opportunity to share some news about medical progress, with tests of the embryonic fluid available to diagnose whether or not the child will be Down’s. Since it was a fairly heavy storyline all round, it’s probably to be expected that the child is shown to be healthy, and it is. It would have been more of a feat for a couple to learn some acceptance around raising a child with Down’s rather than the issue simply going away, but perhaps that’s a story for another day. I was a little surprised by Terence’s reaction to the abortion. He was absolutely right to insist that she couldn’t make the decision unilaterally when her husband had a right to be involved, but it seemed to go further and deeper than that. Terence seemed to be trying to convince her not to have an abortion, and I found myself wondering if it’s because he’s so good at his job that he knew she didn’t want it deep down, or simply because of his own pro life convictions. It’s not answered with any certainty, which added a degree of ambiguity to the denouement where Terence told them with a warm smile that the test had also determined the baby’s sex and they were having a little girl. And yes, there’s still much we don’t know about the characters. In the second of these episodes, Terence takes a phone call in front of Vicky and remarks offhandedly “That was my wife in Sydney.” And we and Vicky are left to wonder about that relationship (particularly given his romance of the lorry driving chanteuse). The significance of it in this moment, though, is that Vicky seems to have a one-episode crush on Terence, which is dashed enough by this comment that she decides to make do with Simon. The relationship between Vicky and Simon is strange. He seems very keen to give her the daily injections in the buttocks for the bacteria she’s picked up from giving cows internal examinations, and plays the “I’m a doctor” card when she protests about the inappropriateness given their relationship. He complains about small towns, and I suppose he has a point. Terence also has a friendship with Vicky, and Shirley also seems party to the weirdness, since she reminds Simon that she could give Vicky the shots herself, but chooses to let him have his fun. And if these two examples of stories in the second episode seem soapy, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The Sons and Lovers name is appropriate for an outbreak of gonorrhoea in the town which seems to expose that everyone is connected in some way. Of course, none of our characters are tainted with such a questionable infection, so we have a few new faces to get to know. There’s the 15 year old girl from the strict family who is initially believe to have appendicitis until they operate and realise the cause. Then there’s her boyfriend who is a player. The schoolboy having sex with his friend’s mother (yes, really), and her son with whom there’s some Oedipal thing going on (although it turns out he really just wanted a mother, instead of a middle aged slapper who styles herself to try and fit in with the kids and insists on he and them calling her by her first name). And when the 15 year old girl’s brother was also found to have the clap, I had to wonder. It’s another nice story with lots of twists and turns, and another issue that seems potentially NSFA (afternoons, that is). I especially enjoyed seeing Marta’s stronger side here, working out who the girl’s infected boyfriend was, and working it so that he saw Simon instead of visiting his girlfriend. The way she told Simon about it in shorthand, without actually using the words and while the boyfriend stood alongside them both was nothing short of masterful.</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?