This episode must be about as downbeat as a Doctor episode could get. It has the sort of storyline about the limits of empathy more often seen in the early series of Angels. A malingering old woman in hospital doesn't want to be discharged. She persuades the naive young doctor to visit her at home. When he does visit, despite being fully fit she uses the doctor to do her housework and buy and pay for her shopping. The doctor is then surprised to discover that the old woman doesn't live on her own, but has her daughter with her, a spinster in her thirties trapped into doing her mother's bidding. Against his better judgement the doctor asks her out. When the daughter arrives at the medical student household, she's brought her cases and has left home for good...
This episode doesn't quite have the courage of its convictions. It sets up a dramatic situation that shows the potential for a greater range of stories and approaches within this series, but is too rushed and cheerful to really explore the situation. Garden & Oddie are writers of great comic ability, but one thing that they really weren't was Galton & Simpson. Pathos wasn't ever their hallmark, so that when the episode ends with a Steptoe-type situation of the daughter returning back home it doesn't leave much emotional impression - which it really ought to do to fully work as a story - and certainly no more than the final shot of the young doctors larking about as per usual. The best comic moments are found in the set-up, showing the ruses that the old lady uses to get others to do her bidding, and reversing conventional expectations of powerlessness.
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