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moandkatelive · 7 years

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Ok so you all knew it was coming. Yes Campwolfe Fandom Nan™ just has to weigh in on the shenanigans and current angst-fest unfolding on Holby City for our Goddess Serena Campbell oh her anguish someone hold me intrepid couple Serena and Bernie. Many things I will say have likely already been said. Some perhaps not. As per usual, I shall pop it under a read more because I am wordy as shit to save y’all’s dash.

Buckle up

Now that I have had some time and distance from yesterday’s episode I feel as though I may be able to talk about it with a) some objectivity and b) without collapsing on the carpet in a heap of tears.

First of all:

Slow-clapping it out plus a raising a glass of the finest single malt to both Catherine Russell and Jemma Redgrave who killed it knocked it OUT OF THE PARK last night. What those women are able to do with every fibre of their being is incredible and just watching them is a master-class in acting. Like I said in a previous post, Serena’s anguished moan on her out-breath as she collapsed, against Bernie and then her restrained keening will haunt me to my grave. I had nightmares about it last night -that’s how deeply I was affected send help.

Right off the bat can we please quell the fearful speculation that this intense, dramatic tragedy is going to be the downfall of Campwolfe? I mean I suppose if you want to worry about that on top of worrying about how Serena is going to get through the next few weeks fly at it but personally I don’t feel the need to spend energy on something that is 100% not going to happen. Couples on Holby are ALL given difficulty or tragedy to work with. It is thrown at them. Instead of the writers creating drama and angst between Serena and Bernie in an endless cycle of ‘will they or won’t they’ or having them break up and get back together - this couple is on the receiving end of something catastrophic that will highlight bringing them closer. There may be some bumps in the road - I can’t imagine that Serena won’t get through this without falling into depression and pushing the people in her life that she loves the most away for a bit. Why? Because that is what happens in these types of situations and for that NOT to happen would not allow the show to highlight a very real and true to life consequence of the loss of a child. But this is a goldmine opportunity for the writers to show not tell in terms of giving Bernie Wolfe a growth arc. Bernie the emotional dumpster fire that she has been queen of the ‘let’s do a runner’ - let’s be honest sticking around and comfort and care, especially physical comfort and care are not her wheelhouse. To watch her last night, a symphony of restrained agony, helplessness and aching love for Serena was one of the most beautiful and moving things I have seen on television in a long time. She didn’t just hold it together in Theatre (which is her wheelhouse) but she was there for Serena every step of the way - very much the tender partner, very much physically there. I believe that we are going to see incredible amounts of emotional growth as she hangs in and loves on Serena, despite even perhaps being pushed away, instead of just packing it in and heading for the hills because things are rough. I’ve have longed to see this in her and I am very excited to see more - even if it is in small doses. At the end of this arc I believe that Serena and Bernie will come through this stronger than ever.

Is it a horrible, awful, terrible plot twist that Elinor, Serena’s only daughter is brain dead? Yes. It’s utterly devestating - but from the bottom of my heart I don’t think it falls anywhere close to the ‘lesbian death trope’. Serena and Bernie are being for the most part treated exactly the same way that any straight couple/characters would be on Holby City. They’re getting their fair share of a truckload of tragedy. None of the characters escape that. None. Do I wish Elinor wasn’t dead? Yes. I do because I adore Serena Campbell with every fibre of my being I was awake last worrying about her and then had to slap myself upside the head and remind myself that Serena is a British pretend bi-doctor and not a real person and that I was being a giant twit and I don’t want her to suffer. But that isn’t how life works. Tragedy does befall us and this just happens to be what is coming at Serena. Just because she identifies as wlw or lesbian or bi or as Jason says just plain complicated does that mean that she and Bernie should be swaddled gently in bubble wrap and nothing awful ever befalls them? There has to be skin in the game to make things interesting and what a gorgeous way for us, and for the broader audience to see a non-traditional couple working through these issues and supporting one another with unconditional love.

By the same token people could be furious that Dom is saddled with Issac the manipulative, abusive sociopath - why cant he have nice things I’m actually on a mission to push Issac off the roof but that’s another story, but in the harsh reality of life domestic abuse happens within gay relationships too and by highlighting this hopefully it will actually help someone who is gay or lesbian to make positive changes in their lives as Dom struggles to do this. They can look to him and say “if he can do it I can do it.”

I truly believe the same can be said for this storyline with Serena and by extension, Bernie. I’ve seen some opinions in this tag that somehow this story is simply a riff on the “Lesbians as Tragedy” story because it is highlighted that neither Serena nor Bernie are good mothers. I am all for people having their own opinions and fly at it. For me - that is not the read I get at all from the way these characters have been written and what they are portraying. How I see these characters positioned as parents, especially Serena in this case, is that they have loving and difficult and wondorous and challenging relationships with their early adult children. In the same was as the straight parents on this show are often portrayed. Serena and Bernie are shown as flawed mothers, as human mothers. Because that is what it IS to be a parent. Parenting whether you are an at-home parent full time or a surgeon or co-parenting or demonstrative or more reserved is the most fucking difficult job on the planet. There is no manual, no rulebook and despite the best of intentions parents and children often end up at odds. That’s simply a fact. Just because Elinor called her father, which she is want to do when she’s in trouble with the law because she’s learned from experience that her father will bail her out and her mother is going to call her on the carpet - who is the better parent there you have to ask - again a topic for a different meta, ended up reaching Liberty and asked Liberty to come be with her in no way negates Serena’s parenting abilities. Liberty is legitimately a part of Elinor’s life. She functioned, in some ways, as a step-parent. She would have had a way in to talk to Elinor that Serena wouldn’t have had precisely because she was NOT Elinor’s mother. This is the beauty of a step-parent. We don’t have to like Liberty but she did come when she was asked. She did sit with Elinor. She does love her in her own way and even if she’s a bit daft I believe her when she said that she was not trying to replace Serena. And she left when she was asked to leave without kicking up a fuss. There is a certain kind of class in that and you can’t convince me otherwise.

Fletch is a straight man the Flaf shippers notwithstanding and he has been shown time and again to be a good father, a struggling father, a father who falls short, a father who wins, a human father. Jac Naylor. Does anyone really believe that she has been nor will continue to be painted ‘mother of the year’ because she is straight? No. She’s the head of Darwin who is utterly problematic and has difficulty allowing people in or showing her feelings. This will affect her parenting. But she’s struggling through. Trying. She’s a human mother. Serena is a human mother. Bernie is a human mother and I just can’t see the Holby writers slanting it in the direction that they’re anything but human women trying to figure out how to get through the day, save lives and love their families.

I think, lastly, it’s been difficult for some of us to stomach the full throttle tragedy storyline for Bernie and Serena because there were so few touches of them as they were blossoming into and settling into being a romantic couple. Honestly - I wish we’d had a bit more fluff and happiness maybe a scene or two in the Peace Garden or drinks at Albies, bantering over a patient, wrangling about diagnoses before they were handed a dumptruck’s worth of angst but that is not how it played out. For a number of reasons, potentially, Jemma’s vacation time, the fact that Catherine hasn’t had a real holiday in, well, forever, the way that Holby tends to gloss over the happiness of its characters and focus on drama and/or angst. This trifecta of reasons after The Kill List and let’s face it the hiatus where we all almost expired from lack of Bernie/Campwolfe has made it more difficult, I believe, to sit easily, without worry, through this storyline. As I have said before, we are not going to love every last piece of minutiae on how the writers keep crafting Bernie and Serena’s melody line within the symphony. But the one thing I think that we can come back to is that they, and Simon and Catherine and Jemma are committed to creating, as best they know how, as best they are able all their unconscious missteps about wlw relationships notwithstanding a beautiful, complicated, human story that encompasses two women in a relationship dealing with the slings and arrows that life throws at them.

Like the fact that life isn’t perfect, no human is perfect, no mother is perfect - I believe there is some kind of middle ground. Melanie Klein said that there was no such thing as the ‘perfect mother/mothering’ but that for optimum psychological health a child doesn’t need ‘perfect mothering’ she needs ‘good enough mothering’. I think that applies here. I don’t need Serena and Bernie to be the ‘perfect’ representation of wlw relationship. I don’t need their story to be perfect or one made from fanfiction. What I need is it to be ‘good enough’. I need it to be raw, to surprise me, to shake me up. I need their story to make me laugh and to make my cry. I need it to pierce me to my core.

Last night’s episode certainly did that. It pierced me to my very soul. It chewed me up and it spit me back out again. It made me think. It made me ache. In it I saw humanity - the humanity of pain, of fear, of love and loss. That is what we face every day in life. And I for one am so beyond thrilled I can watch these emotions and this turmoil played out between two characters that in some way resemble who I am.

As Serena Campbell says “Life isn’t fair. You don’t get second chances. One knock and all that potential is just gone, wasted.” That is the hard bone truth of it. Sometimes there isn’t a second chance. Somehow we have to figure out how to keep putting one foot in front of the other through loss and grief and a pain so utter it feels as though our entire being is an immolation.

And the other side of that are the people who come and stand next to us and walk with us and hold us up during those times, and into the calm times after. I’m thinking specifically of Essie’s line “Home isn’t about the past. It’s simply a place you’re needed the most.”

I’m thinking about that hug that Bernie showers on Serena. How they both sink into it, breathe one another in. Bury their faces in one another. However this goes I believe that the strength of their home, that they are one another’s true home, will shine through, will be the beautiful gift from this trial by fire.

This love, this fire, this pain, this ultimate home - these are the reasons that I am spellbound and will continue to watch. These are the reasons this episode, this story, is good.

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