#HAS JAN TOLD ROSS ABOUT GETHIN?????

[which-hospital]

just thought to go back and rewatch something after last night’s episode, and…

I! need! to! lie! down! Every so often Casualty will completely accidentally, unintentionally happen upon something with this family’s whole situation and I’ll feel physically ill about it for a week.

[which-hospital]

Not to complain about the exact thing I swore I wouldn’t keep complaining about last week but I really wish I had it in me to write fanfic because it’s not hard to find a better storyline for Teddy and Jan in all of this.

Like, the writers haven’t really unpacked either of their feelings about what happened with Gethin properly and they definitely really needed to do that. I don’t expect they will at this point and that’s annoying because they had Teddy do something pretty shocking for his character and I feel like, if they ever want to return Teddy to anything near who he was pre-Switzerland, they need to figure out exactly what was going on in his head about that (and there are totally in-character explanations for the horrible stuff he said in that scene, things canon has brushed past but not actually looked at much at all).

There’s just so many ways to make a storyline in this. They’re both grieving a man that they aren’t really expected to grieve. It’s clear people don’t understand Teddy’s grief for his aunt’s ex-husband, but I don’t imagine many people would understand Jan’s grief for an ex-husband who was (according to the Ross storylines) terrible to her when they were actually married either. That’s already isolating.

You can tie that into Teddy putting the final nails into the coffins of his already doomed relationships with Sah and Paige after Gethin’s death. It seems like he’s got Jan’s tendency to try and turn to just their family, shutting out other people who love him, when faced with something like this. They don’t expect their other loved ones to understand (and they often don’t) so they shut them out. Jan also did it to Ffion in the Ross stuff. Gaynor shut everyone, Jan included, out from Teddy during his series 36 storyline. Teddy kinda did it to Sah in the aftermath of the Jan stuff in Thin Green Line. This is a pattern they’re trying to fall back into, they always pick their family above all else. Jan’s not got Ffion anymore. Teddy’s not got Sah and Paige anymore.

But they also don’t have the family they’re trying to turn to, each other, anymore. They’re completely isolated (yeah, I am ignoring the Jodie stuff, this is a universe where that hasn’t happened) from the person who’s most likely to understand what they’re feeling and that’s a hard situation to be grieving in.

It just feels like the end of Switzerland pointed to a glaringly obvious storyline about grief that could also deal with some of the Jenning Family Issues™ and the writers drove right past it and crashed into about five million love triangles.

Also, there’s a lot of unfried fish in the room. The biggest one being Ross. Last time we saw him, Jan told him she wouldn’t visit him in prison and that she didn’t think it was good for either of them if she was involved in his life. However, in Switzerland she tells Gethin that she will tell Ross the truth about his dad’s death. Has she gone and done that? I just don’t imagine that I would respond brilliantly if the first time I saw my mum in almost three years it was because she needed to tell me that 1.) my dad is back, 2.) my dad is dying, 3.) my dad is a better person now than he ever was when I was little, 4.) my dad is great with my cousin, 5.) my dad is dead. Just something I’d at least like an update on from Casualty.