call the midwife

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nomansbosom
replied to your post “Some thoughts on recent fictional deaths”

I’ve read the books and I cannot think of a single story they changed the ending of? I think Barbara died because the actor who plays Tom didnt want to leave and the only way that would make sense for Tom to stay and Barbara to leave would be death or divorce.

There were quite a few. The basic concept of these women’s stories stayed the same, but the ending (and sometimes names) were changed.

Like, take the story of Julia Masterson in 2×06. She reconnects with her dying father, has a baby and inherits her dad’s pub. That’s (thankfully) where the story ends. But the real Julia:

…has the child (in reality a girl) and it dies and she’s left all alone.

Then there’s Kathy (spelt “Cathy” in the series it seems) who appears in 1×06. She gives birth to triplets, and the last we see of her she’s walking happily down the street with the sailor who came back to marry her. Ohhh so depressingly not the case in reality:

Kirsten from 2×01 (”Kirsty” in the book) is another one who we never find out what happened to. Her story in the book is flat-out one of the most horrible things I’ve ever read, and it was toned down (thank god) a lot in the show. In the show, Kirsten makes her own decision to return to Sweden with her baby. The real woman never got a choice at all:

And chances are high she probably died.

I’ve always thought there was something good in the way Heidi Thomas and co looked at the book and planned out the series, kinda like they went “Okay, these real women suffered terribly, let’s give their fictional counterparts better endings.” I know not everyone’s gonna agree, but I guess it struck me as a kind thing to do? And I definitely don’t resent the showrunners for killing off Barbara, honestly I don’t, with all the various stuff going on with the cast it probably was the most pragmatic option. (Though Jack Ashton might not be sticking around either.) I guess I just feel sad about because, well, the book CTM was based on already told us how nasty and cruel and short life can be.

Some thoughts on recent fictional deaths

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(contains spoilers for Call the Midwife and also a few of spoilers for slightly older stuff which I’m pretty sure everyone has already seen or heard about)

Ultimately I feel like Barbara’s death last CTM episode was a mistake, not a show-killing one but a mistake nonetheless. Partly because it was depressing, but mostly because it was pointless: she returns to the show all happy with her whole life ahead of her, immediately gets struck down by an illness and dies. And I know, I knowwwwwww, that when that happens in fiction the sheer pointlessness of it is the point, that hey! sometimes life is cruel and people die for no reason.

But… that’s not why I watch TV. Because that’s not a lesson that needs to be taught, y’know? Obviously sometimes life is cruel and people die for no reason. And it’s just basically a storytelling trope I’m really sick of and it’s everywhere. I was so close to finally sitting down and bingewatching The Walking Dead, because my husband loves it, but as soon as it became clear that the selling point for last week’s episode was “Watch A Teenage Boy, Whom We Built Up As Kinda The Personification Of Hope In This Show, Suffer And Die Over The Course Of An Hour” I noped out of there so fast. And I’m still kinda annoyed/depressed because I was finally gonna watch it, dammit, and then you go and do that. I do watch Game of Thrones, but it suffers from the same problem – pointless death after pointless death after pointless, sadistic death – and I only really care about a small handful of the characters now, because why should I bother liking anyone if they’re gonna be snatched away for the sake of a “gotcha”?

This isn’t to say that Barbara’s death is a “gotcha”, especially not knowing that Heidi Thomas herself suffered from the same disease that Barbara died of on-screen. I can see why she’d want to write about it. And I know that Charlotte Ritchie wanted off the show as well. So yeah, I totally get why they killed her from a meta standpoint. I definitely don’t resent them for that, honestly. It’s just…

When I read the original memoirs that Call the Midwife was based on, they were really, truly, thoroughly depressing and most terrible of all they were true. The stuff written in that book is mind-boggingly awful, but… when it made it on to TV, suddenly it wasn’t so awful? Lots of the real-life people who died in the memoir were given happy endings in the show. The women (and there were lots of them) who had terrible things happen to them, they didn’t suffer through those things when their stories made it to the screen. I know that to some people that sounds like lying, or trying to rewrite history or whatnot, but it always struck me as being primarily a hopeful thing, giving people the happiness in fiction that they were denied in real life. Maybe it’s just me?

But I guess I just really want to see more of that, and less “hey! Death is cruel and random!” on the TV. At least right now. I guess what it really comes down to is, we have so many reminders in reality about how hopeless stuff can get, so it’d be… reassuring?… to not have them in fiction as well.

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Honestly though has there ever been a more profoundly depressing Call the Midwife series than this? Trixie returned to drinking. A whole family got ripped apart by a horrible disease. Lucille had to face constant racism. Madga gave herself an abortion. A pregnant woman lost her husband and then her house. BARBARA WHO WE’VE KNOWN FOR THREE YEARS IS DEAD. God, show. What is happening?

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I can’t work out if Barbara’s death counts as a pointless shock-value death, because christ on a bike am I sick of those. It kind of feels like it is though? Barbara had already basically left the show, why bring her back just to kill her? It was well-acted and everything, but… why

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