All Creatures Great & Small (S03)

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Clearly, I remembered to toss a post up for series/season 3.

(This year I'm just adding episode remarks in the comments on this one post, especially with the season nearly being over. Contextual note: For the first two seasons on PF, I tried to have a separate post for each episode as my family watched the show each week. In this archival process, I might follow suit with season 3 and have a bunch of comments on just one post per season.)

Originally posted on Pillowfort on 15 February 2023.

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S03E05: Edward

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Recap.

Who is Edward? He's that estranged son of Mrs Hall's, the no show for Christmas [S01E07]. A fair bit of this episode is focused on Mrs Hall going to a train station to wait for him - I mean he's very late and we're led to think he didn't show up again Wait - because he's on leave before heading out on H.M.S. Repulse with the Navy.

Mr Hall gets brought up, and this is where we learn - or my family was reminded - that he's alive. (Alcoholic. Probably not faring well from the PTSD of serving in the Great War. Definitely out of the picture.) Edward has a line something along the lines of: "War destroyed him. Does it destroy everyone?"

I mean, of course the character who's his mum will lie, but I have a bad feeling Edward's going to die after sorta making up to Mrs Hall. Spoilers for history or whatever: H.M.S. Repulse will sink around 10 December 1941. That's a bit over two years from this episode, so it's entirely possible that Edward won't die in that specific event, but I cannot say I'm feeling confident about his odds of surviving.

Other things in this episode:

Jenny's 14 now, and she's made the decision that she's not going to keep going to school because she wants to take care of the farm. Considering that an earlier episode this season dealt with an adult farmer who couldn't read, there's very much a sense that Jenny thinks she's had enough schooling. Helen isn't enthusiastic, but she does wind up accepting Jenny's decision. [*]

Siegfried apparently agreed to let a 12-ish year old boy shadow him for a day. Andrew's not horrible or anything, but it is clear that Tristan is a bit jealous of how much Siegfried is encouraging him when he wasn't encouraged the same way. (They talk about this after Andrew leaves.)

Since Mrs Hall is wherever that train station is almost all day, Tristan is delegated to taking care of the cooking and cleaning. He wears one of her aprons, and I must admit that I was afraid there might be joking about it. Tris can possibly not cook his potatoes long enough for the casserole or cook entirely way too many potatoes for dinner or accidentally burn himself while making Mrs Hall's shepherd's pie, but I cannot stress how much of an initial relief it was that no one made any jokes about him cooking, cleaning, or wearing an apron [especially] in front of new male characters.


[*] I would guess this episode is some point in August, but I don't know if that's "my country's school system is still affected by children needing to help in the fields decades ago" stuff that's not applicable to Britain (or England in 1939). I did do a quick search, and 14 was the age of being able to leave school at that time. I was sort of expecting to feel more strongly about this plot point, but it doesn't really feel unexpected. Some of my relatives two or three generations back didn't go to school longer than necessary [making it to 8th grade is right about leaving at 14].

Originally commented on 16 February 2023.