I wish I could believe the show knows what to do with Jasmine but it's increasingly clear that they don't. The musical wards thing is getting a bit silly: Raf's still on Keller with no explanation and Jasmine's suddenly on AAU with no explanation. I guess the latter does make a sort of sense, since junior doctors do get moved around a lot, but the implication is that Isaac's "I fired her" last week was supposed to be him firing her from a ward that he doesn't run for something that had nothing to do with her work as a GS doctor and that's clearly ridiculous. Anyway, she managed not to mess up too much, although not mentioning that your line manager's daughter is on drugs is never going to go well if you're on television. She does at least get a fairly decent speech on the value of the NHS and how having hard-working immigrants around actually benefits moaning natives, shame it had to be delivered at such a two-dimensional strawman.

Isaac seems to be going down the "pretend nothing happened" route, except not quite. To be honest, the storyline seemed like a bunch of non-sequiturs. Isaac looks murderously at Dominic chatting with Zosia: No follow up. Sacha overhears Dominic and Isaac: No follow up. Dominic and Isaac have a fairly public spat in theatre: Next time we see them, they're having a drink in Albie's gossiping about who's going to sleep with who. Maybe I'm being simplistic. Isaac obviously cares about his image but if we're meant to believe that his tirade against Dominic was the mask slipping and him revealing how he really feels about him..? Does he like having power over him? Is he just screwed up and loves Dominic in some twisted way?

Mo was a mardy cow who seemed to be arguing for the sake of arguing, even if she did ultimately do the "honourable" thing. Matteo was good value. Essie is unprofessional again and her and Raf was rather quick.

I think it's building up to be a gay abusive storyline. Issac shows the signs of a deeply jealous, manipulative man who takes sick pleasure playing mind games. He is in the position of power and likes to use it like he is weilding a stick. Dom is a subordinate and in love with him who is unlikely to feel confident enough to tell his friends what Issac is really like.

The lack of follow-up is probably down to us seeing the s/l in part from Dom's pov and in part from the fact that no-one sees those moments when Issac is being cruel and unkind to Dom. Sacha overheard a conversation about an argument Issac and Dom had, but he isn't privvy to the actual details as we are. Dom had the opportunity to talk to Zosia about it, but he chose not to and Zosia is none the wiser. And then on top of it, from Dom's pov, he is completely confused about and baffled by Issac's extreme behaviours. As a viewer I'm just as confused by Isaac as well; I can't figure it out. Just like Dom, after that horrible, horrible confrontation last week, I thought Dom and Issac were over; it was really weird for Isaac to dismiss it all as a little tiff. My guess is Issac's behaviour probably stems back to that relationship he had with some consultant a few weeks back. Whatever happened there seems to be oozing its poison on poor Dom.

Yes and I wonder

I had presumed that she and Jonny were together and that he is the father of her unborn child.

Matteo is just boring / irritating; I look the other way.

I think the follow up was the way he dragged Dom out of the bar as soon as Zosia arrived. I think we are going to see the gradual isolation of Dom from anyone he might turn to and all his closest friends. If Issac had realised Sasha was in the toilet he would no doubt be 'working on him too'


I completely agree with your first paragraph but as a viewer I don't find Issacs dismissal of last weeks confrontation strange at all. It's clear that Issac is a nasty, manipulative bully who is playing with Doms head and Doms emotions by dismissing the incident as a tiff. He's basically making Dom relieved and grateful that Issac is being nice to him again. Dom has gone from upset to confused to grateful to letting Issac decide what they are doing. It's a power game and Issac is taking control. its a shame Dom didn't outright ask him why he smashed the medal but no doubt Issac would have laughed it off as an accident. The next time it happens Issac will probably play a different game and make Dom work harder for his forgiveness all the time isolating him from those he could turn to. It's well done and quite hard to watch.

Unborn child?

She thought she was pregnant a few weeks ago when they discovered the cyst but it turned out the hormones caused a false positive.

They told us when she returned from her deferred maternity leave last year that they had split up but we're compare ting Emma amicably and there's been various mentions of them spending time together as a family such as Xmas.

We were told in the episode Jac thought she was pregnant that they have recently started sleeping together again so yes, it would have been his baby. But she isn't pregnant, it was a false positive due to the Ovarian cyst.

They had 2 shots of ambulance vehicles bringing patients in through the main entrance, would it have killed them to use a stock shot from Casualty when referring to the ED?

I have always thought that! Even shipping across a few paramedics or porters.

Poor episode I thought with Mo and Mr T being the only saving grace.

Essie continues to go down in my estimation. Her and Raf together is just ugh.

Yeap they really are ^ hope its no more than a one night thing, and I'm another one who doesn't get why Raf is on Keller ... who is he covering for and surely he's needed on AAU?

Ah, yes, that makes sense. Thank you

It is hard to watch, you're right. Deeply uncomfortable and disturbing - an exercise of how the vulnerable are easily unknowingly and unwittingly taken advantage of. The slow drip manipulation and creepy abusive use of power feels like fingernails running down a board.

I think the Dom and Isaac storyline is really interesting but poorly written.
Isaac unravelling has been a bit of a bolt from the blue and predictable at the same time which is a bizzare paradox. I think his relationship with that consultant (which I'd forgotten until mentioned above) was the only clue we've really had.
Apart from Essie's line along the lines of "none of us really know anything about Isaac"
I guess thats a good e.g. how the audience could see it coming but that was from cues rather than Isaac's characterisation.

I don't think so I said when he was first introduced he was a psycho with knife skills. The storyline will be interesting to see how they play it out but so far at least Sasha heard what was said so he at least knows there are issues and Ric will I think look out for Dom if he gets wind of Isaacs behaviour I cannot see him believing Isaac , as will Zosia .

As for Dom after what Isaac did to Arthurs medal and what he said about Dom he should be walking away as it shows just what he is , but of course Dom will for now be taken in whilst Isaac tries to make him think everything is normal and it is all his fault. Rings a bit of the Chrissie and Stuart McElroy story

Admittedly I've only started watching Holby recently but I'm not sure I'd describe the storyline as a bolt from the blue. There's been talk on this thread for quite some time now now that Isaac had shown signs of being psychologically controlling, and I think what we're seeing now is simply confirmation of that. I think and hope this will be a long-running storyline as it has the potential to really be a powerful one.

With that said, things have moved along quite quickly in the last couple of episodes in comparison to how they were previously, but then I think abusive relationships can often be like that; an abuser will usually show very few signs initially of what they're capable of - just a few subtle things might give them away - but they will then latch onto an event that they can use as leverage. In Isaac's case, it was the situation with Lee that allowed him to show his true colours, as he knew Dom would feel guilty for Lee 'threatening' him with the knife (though I don't really believe Isaac felt all that threatened by Lee; he didn't seem a bit scared to me in the scene in the kitchen.)

I'm really finding this storyline interesting due to the psychology behind it. Dom seems quite popular on the staff team and is very outgoing but you can tell there are self esteem issues, and Isaac seems to know exactly how to play on his insecurities. Usually in domestic abuse situations on soaps you only see the abuse taking place in the home, so the fact that Dom and Isaac both live and work together means that Isaac will be working out ways to 'keep him in line' at work as well as in their personal life. To see how this plays out on screen, and whether they can maintain the believability behind on it and not rely on character assassinations or contrivances, will be the real challenge, I expect.

I thought so, thats why i was confused as it sounded like she was actually pregnant from that post

A lot of people predicted the storyline from a long way back. I don't think being able to predict a storyline and that storyline being rooted in careful and consistent characters characterisation are the same though.

I think we guessed the abuseive relationship in spite of the writing (there's not been an abusive relationship for a while, Dom is never happy for long, television tropes about gay coupled (and they're interracial!), unsubtle foreshadowing like the line from Essie)


But in terms of actual clues from the way Isaac acted, I think it's been really minimal and detracts from the storyline. I can only recall him acting oddly with his ex which was a good clue to be fair and not letting Dom go to the pub with Essie and jasmine on her first day. Apart from that, when Isaac did his horrible speech my first thought apart from what an arsehole was this does not ring true. Like what a total snob he was, he's always seemed confident but that scale of condescension and snobbery hadn't really been alluded to in my opinion.

Re the last paragraph I think issacs behaviour towards jasmine has also been rather extreme and somewhat cruel. Yes she deleted his research but the IT dept at the hospital should be able to back up her claims that it was an accident and she won't be the first person to make that kind of mistake. Yes it was stupid but to be fair to her it wasn't a deliberate mistake or even something she could control. It sounds like Issac has gone to the top about it and gone so far as to have her removed from his ward. That's pretty harsh and another example of his need to control and bully. Issac probably didn't like the fact she turned to Dom for help and Dom tried to manipulate the situation either.
In fact the whole research assistant thing seemed a way for him to set Dom and jasmine up against each other and was again cruel in the sense that he never intended to give Dom the role, yet made him think he could get it.

I think Issac dislikes that Dom and jasmine were becoming good friends and has done his best to sabotage that. I also think jasmine may end up being the one to spot Issacs treatment of Dom and to try and help, but it's likely no one will believe her.

I think Sasha, having overhead something, will help Dom in due course.



Sorry, I worded my post badly.

No problem, I knew what you were referring to and, it was only a couple of lines telling us she wasn't pregnant and why so could have easily been missed. But it seemed clear that she wasn't surprised (or upset) at a positive pregnancy resukt and Jonny would have been the Daddy.

Presumably this leads to the Serena vs Jasmine scene in the winter trailer.

'Thats not fair. LIFE isn't fair.'

Serena seemed mightily angry with little Miss accident prone!

We get a wedding next week - will we have a funeral too?

Thank you

Ok, Isaac makes my skin crawl. After overhearing that conversation in the toilets, I really do hope that Sacha works out very soon that something is badly wrong and steps in to help Dom.

Serena's daughter is an incredibly irritating, spoilt little brat.

Are we supposed to believe that Essie and Raf's arguing is sexual chemistry and not just them getting on each others' nerves?

I think that Serena could be a good mentor for Jasmine. I didn't feel anyone in Darwin or Keller was actually mentoring or supervising her, they just kind of expected her to cope without any real direction or guidance. Jasmine being Jasmine, it's not going to go smoothly of course, but the potential is there.

That all sounds very plausible ... good theory!