#than a simple *good v bad* description bc that isnt even the arguement in the first place its whether it is intriguing whether or not it is

[bonnissance]

critical ranting about holby under the cut (bc I am also sick of long holby text posts bc reading is hard)  

But I have Thoughts(tm) I need to air because there are many things that really really get my goat about Serena’s current story and almost all of it is due to the fact that her entire narrative arc has been constructed to give Jasmine Burrows a storyline.

To begin, I hold that this narrative arc is an example of poor storytelling. As I’ve vague discussed before, I think Elinor’s introduction+exit=the fall out of her death was very poorly constructed and executed. The pacing is wrong, the rhythm of progression is beyond clunky, and the “you fill in the blanks” between the plot points the writers are handing to the audience are too large and frequent to be of any benefit to the narrative.

They reintroduced Elinor far too briefly for anyone to actually care that the character die, because, of course, the point wasn’t that Elinor died: it was that Serena Campbell’s daughter died. Following that, they left out crucial and oh so very important scenes in Serena’s story. For instance, discussing Elinor’s condition with the Doctors and Edward, their decision to turn of the ventilator, and preparing for the funeral. Nevertheless, those plot points were left out of Serena’s narrative as a deliberate decision.

So too was the choice to leave out any depiction of Serena’s grief at home. Which in itself, I shall concede, is understandable given Holby is a medial drama situated in a work place hospital and generally only includes out of hospital scenes when large concentrations of hospital employees are there at the same time such as Albie’s and work functions, etc.

However, there are exceptions to this rule, such as the trio’s house and now Dom and Issac’s domesticity. Those scenes are included because they are essential to the story those characters are telling at the time. Zosia’s early story is inherently connected to her personal life. As is Dom and Issac’s storyline necessitates the blurring of profession and personal and how Issac’s abuse alters depending on the situation. Thus, Holby has a history of included non-work place related scenes when it furthers the story they have chosen to tell.

Yet the deliberately decided against including allowing Serena to grieve in the safety and comfort of her own home, just as the arguably essential scenes above mentioned scenes were left out of scripts. In fact, that entire section of Serena’s storyline was barely even acknowledged. Now, we all know that Russell would have knocked those scenes out of the park. So leaving them out wasn’t the writers factoring in to a lack of ability on behalf of their performer. Nor do I believe they left them out because the writers were unable to write the content. On the contrary, I think Holby’s writer’s room to be more than capable of producing that type of content and doing it rather well.

It then follows that the writers made a deliberate decision to they breezed over what ought to have been a significant point of character development in favour of inserting her straight back onto the ward. To ensure that her grief and every unhealthy coping mechanism she uses to get through the day would be on full display to her colleagues, and to the audience. The writers forced Serena back onto the ward, to the same physical location of her daughter’s death, in order to deliberately blur the lines of the character’s personal tragedy with her professional existence.

They explicated unhealthy coping techniques that directly affected Serena’s behaviour towards her colleagues, and they did it without providing her with an adequate support network. 

They created an unhealthy inter-generational dynamic between Serena and Jasmine that, at times, epitomises the ‘old queers are predatory and dangerous to young women’ trope. They glazed over Serena’s panic attacks and fugue states in favour implying she’s drinking on the job. They justified the narrative shaming of Serena reaching out to the one person in the world who understood what it meant to lose their daughter: Elinor Campbell, without bothering to make it clear that problem was never Serena wanting emotional support from Edward. The problem was that she continued to try and engage with him after he made it clear he was in no way prepared to provide Serena with the care she was requesting. Once again leaving Serena without a support network as well as implying her desire for the support was unreasonable. 

They continued pushing the mentor/mentee dynamic between Jasmine and Serena to unprofessional and unhealthy levels. Now, while there is certainly examples of emotionally abusive behaviour between Serena and Jasmine, I avoid using the term “abusive” to describe their entire relationship. I don’t believe the mistreatment occurring has been sustained long enough to warrant the term. (It bears mentioning that this classification is based on my own personal experiences with emotional abuse and that I have little interest in expanding on this reasoning should anyone take issue with this statement.) Instead, I would classify this situation as incidental grooming between two people who have positioned another in an unhealthy and toxic position in their live. 

Granted, they both agreed to a mentor/mentee dynamic. However, Jasmine in no way deserves to be belittled and bullied in the work place, to have Serena use her as a project to help process her grief, or to become the focal point of Serena’s need to make sure what happened with Elinor never happens to anyone else. But nor does Serena deserve to become the source of Jasmine’s validation, to overcompensates for Jasmine’s already developed sense of unworthiness, or become a maternal care provider which Jasmine so clearly wants her to be. Both of them are using the other in horridly unhealthy ways and desperately need counselling to process their own emotional traumas. 

But once again, the writers don’t bother to make clear the actual issues in these exchanges, nor handle the fall out of these situations with the degree of seriousness issues such as these actually require. Instead, they continue to escalate things between Serena and Jasmine, which we know cumulates into Serena telling Jasmine she wishes Jasmine were dead, because this was their intention all along.

Despite the fact that Elinor was Serena’s daughter, the point of killing off her off was not to give Serena a storyline. Elinor’s death and the resulting grief, which has irrevocably changed the character at the very core, was not about Serena at all, because this entire narrative was constructed to give Jasmine Burrows a storyline.

And that fact makes me furious. 

Because Holby gave us the story of a middle aged woman discovering her same-sex attraction in a situation where her desire was mutual and returned. They gave us a story in which that character was about to embark on a healthy, fulfilling, sustainable relationship that satisfied her emotional, physical, romantic and sexual wants. They implied the character was going integrate that romantic relationship with her other filial bonds and, for the first time in possibly her whole life, have her emotional needs actually met.

Then they took that character, who in universe was finally finally about to be happy, and decided to add to the other numerous instances of suffering the writers have already put her through by killing of her daughter. Killing off her daughter in her place of work only to cut short her grieving and send her right back there to suffer in the public eye.  

And they did it to give a new and barely formed character a storyline. The fact remains that Jasmine had literally millions of plausible storylines they could have gone with; so many options that would have ended with substantial character growth. She could have stopped drinking and studied harder, she could have taken up running, gotten a boyfriend or a puppy, learnt tact and become an actual decent doctor, and the character would have grown. 

Christ, she could have stubbed her toe on the edge of a bed, sworn on the ward, and gotten a dressing down from her boss about appropriate workplace vocabulary that character growth would have carried the same weight as the storyline she’s now had to endure.

They writers have irrevocably written Serena into a corner, because that character will never be the same again and there is very little they can do with her now, without actually letting the audience see the some of the most important narrative points. Moreover, they have also cut off almost all of Jasmine’s further storylines, because unless they give her a surprise pregnant with Ollie’s baby and then she miscarries after deciding to keep it (which I wouldn’t put it past them tbqh) there’s not a lot the writers can do with her that will have the same intensity and significance as what they’ve already put her through. 

In short, the Holby writers took a queer mentally ill abuse survivor and guttered her from the inside out for the sake of another character with barely touched potential. They treated that character with a level of disrespect and disregard I’m not sure I’ve seen since The L Word drowned Jenny Schecter in her neighbour’s pool and nobody really cared. Because they gave us Serena Campbell, implied that she (along with and everyone she represents) deserves to be happy, only to turn around and burn her beyond recognition for daring to hope. And they did it because they wanted to.