#(just tagging because like. i'm implicitly mentioning them by referencing the josh storyline and all that)

[lonelier-version-of-you]

Any unpopular Holby opinions?

Sorry for answering this like an hour after you sent it, I only just realised it was in my inbox because Tumblr didn't bother giving me a notification for some reason...

Okay, here we go. Here's a controversial opinion: Holby is TERRIBLE at representation, and the idea that the show shouldn't have been cancelled because it's "so diverse and progressive" is legitimately laughable.

This is a show that, just this very year, had an entire storyline depicting Middle Eastern men as paedophiles who shouldn't be allowed around children because they'd just end up abusing them. That is literally, LITERALLY alt-right propaganda rhetoric - one of the most basic tricks in their playbook, actually - what the fuck is progressive about that?

In general, the treatment of characters of colour on the show is rubbish. They get side-lined or compared unfavourably to white characters (e.g. Donna and Fletch's respective reactions to the abuse their daughters had suffered - Fletch was supposed to be reacting perfectly and to be this paragon of good parenting, and Donna was almost demonised. oh, and don't even get me started on the treatment of Max vs. the treatment of Henrik, both in regard to their competence as CEOs and the fact that the show felt the need to "punish" Max for her early transphobic remarks by making her kid trans - which, by the way, is queerphobic storytelling, queer kids do not exist as punishments! - whereas Henrik has never been punished for his long history of misogyny). When they're killed off, they tend to get more brutal, graphic deaths than the white characters do (compare the way Zav or Kian died to Essie's peaceful, bittersweet death).

Like I'm not going to go too deep into this because it's not really my area, but the racist writing on Holby is pretty blatant to anyone with common sense.

And let's not get started on the treatment of disability, shall we? This year we've had two storylines involving characters acquiring disabilities solely so the show could use them for shock drama (Dom and Lucky). We have a whole recurring autistic character (Jason) who literally only exists either to be mocked or to be portrayed as a burden, depending on the episode. One of the writers, Martin Jameson, openly harassed and bullied autistic people on Twitter and kept his job on the show afterwards (admittedly he hasn't written any episodes in a while now - but the fact that his last episode was December 2019, when this Twitter bullying was ten months earlier (February 2019), indicates he didn't lose his job over it...), all while the producer who was letting him stay on claimed that disabled representation was "important" to her.

The LGBTQ+ representation... people only think Holby's LGBTQ+ rep is good because Casualty, admittedly, has set the bar right on the floor with things like Lev's storyline. But when you look at Holby's rep on its own, all sorts of issues jump out.

Bi characters have repeatedly been portrayed as cheaters - Lofty and Serena both cheated on their partners, Lofty even cheating on his husband with a woman just to really drive home the "bi people are so greedy, they can't be satisfied with just one gender!" stereotype. Additionally, the show has a problem with not actually acknowledging that bi characters are bi - Serena was referred to as a lesbian (and not in a way that seemed to indicate the writers had put actual thought into it and decided she'd been a closeted lesbian all these years, just in a way that seemed to imply their thought process was "well, she's fallen in love with a woman, she must be a lesbian now!"), and despite the fact that Lofty was blatantly portrayed as bi (and even explicitly referred to as such at one point, albeit by Dom rather than by Lofty himself), the writers and producers always claimed he was gay.

Donna's bisexuality has been totally forgotten about and erased. The show has been endlessly queerbaiting with Jac for years. Gay and bi men of colour on the show are often portrayed as antagonistic and bad partners at best, or downright villains at worst. Then there's Bernie suffering a Bury Your Gays - I know they brought her back (and while I guess it's good that it happened, that was Holby's biggest shark-jumping moment ever lol) but they shouldn't have BYG'd her in the first place. I could go on.

Then there's Louis. Okay, he's better now than he was when he was introduced, but he still tends to come across as a token. Most of his storylines have just revolved around being trans. And his introductory episodes were terrible. As I said, he was literally brought in to "punish" Max for being transphobic in her first episodes. The idea of queer people existing as punishments for their parents... I don't think I need to explain why that's gross and harmful representation. The show literally had Ric tell Louis that he needed to be more sympathetic to Max's transphobia because it was "so hard for her to adjust" to him being trans, and I'm pretty sure we were supposed to think this was kind or mentorly somehow? Yikes.

Also, remember how the only trans woman recurring character the show has ever had AFAIK (that old friend of Louis's from earlier this year) was portrayed as antagonistic and violent? The transmisogyny of that storyline wasn't subtle.

I'm sure there's more I could go into, but I think I might drive myself mad if I think about how much Holby loves to be faux-progressive while putting no actual effort into representation.

Some more unpopular opinions, for good measure...

- Not unpopular on here, but unpopular on most other social media sites, it seems: Henrik's CSA storyline was a disgusting, offensive mess. It didn't "raise awareness" or whatever, it was just triggering and exploitative. Same for the Jeni storyline really but the Henrik one was just, like, a whole other level of offensive nonsense.

In general, Holby handles abuse storylines awfully. Like, I'm not saying Casualty always gets it right either (*cough*Faith has faced no consequences for her treatment of Lev and in fact we're still supposed to sympathise with her*cough*), but at least they get it right sometimes (the Jacob/Tina SL was excellent). I can't remember the last time an abuse storyline on Holby was handled well.

- Holby's treatment of mental health is Bad, actually. I guess Josh's storyline is pretty good so far (although the things they've been showing, it could really do with trigger warnings - it's not as graphic as it could be, as we haven't really seen anything yet, but it's still enough to deserve a warning IMO), but that's the first respectful mental health storyline since Sacha's depression SL in 2018.

And even Sacha's storyline was dragged down by the fact that it coincided with the Gaskell storyline. Gaskell was very clearly, very obviously mentally ill, we literally saw him hallucinating for Pete's sake, and we were supposed to think those traits made him scary and evil (seriously, an awful lot of "scary Gaskell" scenes are actually just him being mentally ill, only a relative few of them are him actually doing bad things). The only explanation we got for why he did the things he did was "well, he was abused and it made him crazy, so he murders people now!". How did so many people not seem to see how ableist that was?

I can't weigh in on Jac's breakdown storyline because I couldn't bring myself to watch it knowing the damage it did to Rosie Marcel's mental health, but I hear that was sensationalised to hell and back too.

Chloe's and Henrik's respective self-harm storylines were just offensive disasters that treated SH as something you can just "get over". Henrik's OCD is portrayed as a quirk 99% of the time instead of as a serious disorder. I could go on.

- Jac and Fletch had no chemistry. Henrik and Roxanna also had no chemistry. That's it, that's the opinion. I thought I'd better end this with something silly based on a matter of preference, given how serious I've been for the whole post, lol.