It’s been a quiet, pleasant week here, provided we pay no attention to geopolitical events, the price of petrol, or the state of politics locally or internationally. Today I am going out to have lunch with friends at a restaurant which only serves steak frites, ice cream and cocktails, and I am excited. It will even be warm, which is unexpected given how quickly autumn has come on, but not unwelcome.

This week, I’ve watched a British limited series called Gone, and new episodes of Paradise and The Pitt. I miss my best friend, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.

My refrain watching the first three episodes of Gone: “Blonde Eve Myles isn’t real and can’t hurt you.”

My refrain watching the final three episodes of Gone: “I think the reviews wildly overstated the quality of this show.”

It’s not Blonde Eve Myles’s fault, and honestly I did get used to the hair colour after a while, even though it makes her look uncannily like Jodie Whittaker from some angles. Nor is it David Morrissey’s fault; he gives a great performance as an uptight school headmaster whose wife has gone missing.

In fact, I blame myself. I have a standing policy of always getting a second opinion on a TV review in The Guardian, but I was swayed by this one. I was lured in by words like “shrewd” and “taut” and “engrossing”.

Let me give you some alternative words: “flabby”. “Standard-issue British mystery”. “It’s not sexism, the heroine is just bad at her job”. “Missed potential”. “A solid waste of three nights and some excellent actors”.

“How many episodes are left?” my flatmate wondered, and I confidently told her, “Ten.”

An alternative, more correct answer, would be eight. In two weeks’ time, I assume, we will have identified Alex and figured out what sort of time travel business is at play here.

I mean. “Alex” is the entity using AIM, pagers and ICQ to send Don messages about tiny baby Jane right around the time she’s being born. That seems like a whole thing.

Now, I know she has killed a lot of people and caused a lot of mayhem, but I am here to say: Jane has done nothing wrong. I mean, nothing serious. We did not need those presidents, and we definitely did not need Billy Pace. And okay, she attacked that dude in his house, cut his dick off and presented it to her mentor in a gift bag with tissue paper, but sometimes, when you’re a smol bean with autism, you can be a bit too literal, and then everyone is mad at you. For some reason.

If this was a better show, I would be ALL IN on Jane. As it is, I merely enjoy her a lot. I simply cannot go ALL IN on Paradise, for it is not a clever show.

But at least it’s fun to watch — or, well, I enjoyed the bits where Robinson (Krys Marshall, my beloved) punches people, and Jane’s glee at being gifted a Nintendo Switch, even as her relationship with Sinatra goes a bit The Talented Mr Ripley. And we end with Xavier being reunited with Teri! Although their reunion comes as the train people confront him for sort of trying to blow them up, so they have a lot to talk about even before we get to the detail that each of them have separately adopted a new child.

So a few weeks back, Pitt showrunner John Wells (you may remember him from such network dramas as ER and The West Wing) mentioned in an interview that an upcoming subplot involving ICE was rewritten to be fairer to the agency that’s responsible for terrorising people throughout the United States.

Now that episode is here, and as far as I can tell, the only thing that was cut was the scene where Noah Wyle looks directly into the camera, reaches out to tenderly cup the viewer’s face, and sensuously whispers, “Fuck ICE. Dismantle the carceral state. We need open borders, Medicare for all and universal basic income.”

‘Cos, uh. This episode sees two ICE agents bring in a detainee who was injured in a raid on her workplace (stampeded by her colleagues as they attempted to escape, they claim). Their presence sees vulnerable patients and staff make hasty exits, and their refusal to allow the detained woman to have a sling leads to a conflict that ends with Nurse Jesse (He’s Played By A Real Nurse, You Know) being hauled off in handcuffs while Dr Robby calls for the hospital’s lawyers. At no point do the ICE agents seem like anything more than ignorant thugs. It’s realistic and harrowing, and I assume right wing chuds are crying about it as we speak.

A lot of other things happen this week. First, multiple people remark that they only have two hours left on their shifts, and guys, I do not know how to tell you this, but it’s a fifteen-episode season. You are inviting A Curse.

Second, Langdon finally persons up and apologises to Santos. Who does not accept it (and is not obligated to), and who also points out what no one else has bothered to mention — certainly not Langdon himself: he was stealing drugs from the hospital and diluting doses meant for patients. Only she, Robbie and Garcia know the truth, and the other two have decided to keep it to themselves for some reason. And that does not sit well with Santos.

It doesn’t sit well with me, either. Twelve months ago on Friday, I had ankle stabilisation surgery, which required a lot of pain relief in the first 24 hours. If someone treating me had diverted those drugs, I would have been in terrible pain and not in a position to advocate for myself effectively.

Langdon is lucky that no one suffered significant consequences as a result of inaccurate doses and his misleading charts. (Someone, and I think it was Louie, had a seizure, but Langdon was on hand and knew what had really happened.)

I don’t know what fair yet meaningful consequences would look like for him, but I’m not convinced that letting him return to the same workplace is the correct approach.

Fortunately, Dr Al-Hashimi overheard their whole exchange. I feel like she has low-key become the hero of the season, if only because she is the least traumatised adult in the room. I can’t believe I’m saying that about the character who was introduced making bad management choices and pushing for AI, but her approach has steadily improved through the day, while Robby’s has declined.

Standout patient of the week

First, let’s check in on our previous winners.

Howard? Out of surgery! He made it!

Roxie? Passed away peacefully this week, out of pain and on her own terms. Imagine waking up thinking it’s just another day of having cancer (or another day of your wife or mother having cancer), and one seizure and a broken leg later, you’re in hospital preparing for the very end.

English teacher? Uhhhh, it’s not looking good. I predicted that Ogilvie would make a serious and humbling mistake, but the real error is Samira’s, in failing to interrogate his understanding of the scans. (I am interested that Robby is being unpleasant to Mohan, while championing Javadi. He clearly has favourites, and a general bias in favour of white men, but he also favours Victoria and Trinity over Cassie and Samira. And I do think part of it is that Cassie and Samira remind him of himself, and vulnerabilities that he’s avoiding.)

This week, I should clarify that “standout” doesn’t necessarily mean “good” or even “awake most of the time” for this category. It just refers to the patient who holds my attention, and who I’m still thinking about after the credits roll.

All of which is to say, my standout patient of the week is Aggressive Golfer Guy, who has just a few seconds of consciousness on screen, and uses them to put Nurse Emma in a headlock. I am concern! I am very concern!

Here’s a great interview with some of the actors who have played patients this season:

The Pitt, as told by its patients

Standout doctor of the week

Giving it to Cassie, not just for her doctoring, but her excellent work in mentoring Ogilvie. He clearly needs a lot of supervision and support, and Cassie provides both, while also calling him out in ways which are necessary but not belittling. (Robby could stand to relearn this skill.)

“Dickhead whisperer” is a thankless job, but we saw last season that Cassie is good at talking to unpleasant young men in a way that is direct but not unnecessarily cruel, and it comes to the fore again when she interacts with Ogilvie.

Runner-up, but not for her professionalism: Mel. I’ve been saying since season 1 that Mel needs to have a meaningful character flaw, and it has been right under our noses all along. She has put too much of her identity into being Becca’s Sister and not developed personal resources or a support network of her own, which means she reacts poorly when she realises that Becca has a separate social life.

Is it good that she reacts by attempting to be controlling, nosy and finally self-pitying? Absolutely not. But Becca handles it really well, and I think this is a very necessary and interesting development in Mel’s characterisation.

(It also advances my Mel Is Asexual, Just As Tyler Dearden Said Last Season campaign — there are a lot of layers to Mel’s reaction, but one is, “I forgot that sex is a thing that other people enjoy and are interested in, and I assumed my sister was like me — here’s another way I’m the outlier.” I’ve never seen that in media before!)

Standout nurse of the week

Obviously it goes to Nurse Jesse (He’s Played By A Real Nurse, You Know).

The Dr Michael “Robby” Robinovitch Award For Achievements In Petty Bitchiness

I hate repeating myself, but I have to give it to last week’s winners: Doctors Robby and Shamsi. They know what they did.

…okay FINE, Robby: for how he spoke to Mohan, both about her anxiety issues and her mistake with Ogilvie’s patient, and then for how he spoke to Cassie about treating the unhoused patient with the gnarly leg issue that I have chosen not to google.

But then he redeems himself, somewhat, for defending Javadi to Shamsi, who assumes off the bat that Ogilvie’s mistake is hers. It’s an interesting twist on the nepo baby dynamic: Victoria would do anything to not be known as her parents’ child, while her mother sees Victoria’s failures as a reflection on her, and humiliates her publicly for them.