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There was a whole selection of well written and well acted scenes throughout this episode: Rita telling Kath to "get help" and how she'd always been "too proud to ask" for help in the past; Merle and the new teacher writing on the blackboard and giggling; Rita talking to Kath in the toilet about when she stuck up for her; Rita being philosophical with Alice about "The Big C" and comparing it to doing time; and so on.
Some less impressive moments were also present unfortunately. Lisa's suddenly acquired toughness led the women into an embarrassing chant of "Get stuffed Freak!" (Rather than burst out laughing at the silliness of this, Joan surprised me by calling it "practically a riot".) And good old Mr Dwyer, not ANGRY this time, but FURIOUS. How nice of the writers to give him the chance to show a different emotion in his range.
There was some nice snappy dialogue from Rodney when he crossed words with Joan.
Joan: "I've been down before - I'll get back on top!"
Rodney: "Yeah, well none of us are as young as we used to be."
But later, Rodney's unprompted and surprisingly vicious taunts at Merle seemed a bit strange to me. Especially with his knowledge of her violent temper (perhaps he felt it wasn't a problem with all the self-defence and prisoner-restraint training officers undergo, which is so well demonstrated by the likes of, er, Joyce.) There seemed to be no clear motive for his attack (or wanting to provoke Merle into getting herself sent back to Ingleside) other than as a clumsily tacked-on scene to show Kath sticking up for Merle.
Not sure about this new teacher chap. Within no time of arriving at Wentworth, he'd got Merle moved out of a high security psychiatric hospital, got Rita interested in attacking her illness through books, started working on getting Merle and Kath back as friends, showed good skills in handling Joan and Rodney, made Merle interested in learning.. no doubt with a little more time he'll come up with a cure for Rita's cancer and acting skills for a couple of the lesser inmates. Blimey, when does he find time to teach? The programme might be trying to say something about mental health treatment at the time (dramas have been very critical in the past), but I must say I was impressed to see how Merle had made a complete recovery overnight, after nobody at the hospital realised all they had to do was stop drugging her up.
Outside the main entrance, there seemed to be something leaning against the corner of the building, which I couldn't see clearly but it looked like a brown parcel. Possibly Meg's catalogue had finally arrived. "Beautiful in Beige" or something similar. While inside, Rita was in the toilet block, vomiting to the strings of Spanish guitar. Possibly her thoughts of the background music were a tad stronger than mine. More unusual music came during the thunderstorm during the night (which seemed to be setting off disco strobe lights every so often) with a strange choice of plinky electronic music.
Finally, Rita's hospital treatment footage didn't quite seem to match the rest of the programme. Not sure if it was the way it was filmed, or the bang-bang-bang and electronic whining of the music, or the lack of dialogue. It was interesting to watch (even if I was surprised to see her spell in the big tube thing produced scan results within seconds rather than the hour or so I'd expected) but I had a definite feeling that this was somehow 'separate' from the drama sequences.
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