User Reviews

Nicholas Ralph continued to display what a fine young actor he is, especially in the closing scene where he's just received news bearing personal disappointment. Without lines, his expressions tell a story many stone-faced actors would have to overemote verbally to attempt to express.

In the episode itself, there are two focuses. One is James' birthday, and the other is a prize cow with an abscess on its windpipe which will eventually strangle it. Tristan comes up with a new idea, and James concurs it's worth a try. The worst that could happen is it fails and the cow dies anyway. But Siegfried is against giving the farmer false hope. How will it end?

There are so many things going on here. To start with, Siegfried is very ill with some sort of flu. He can barely stand. He falls asleep and while resting, Tristan, whom he has abused, takes over, and treats a series of small animal ailments. When Siegfried wakes up, he chews Tristan out for not studying. The second, and most intense plot development, involves a cow that is choking from an abscess. Tristan finds a way to operate, even though it is risky (but the cow will die anyway if not treated). Siegfried forbids the young guys from doing surgery, even though the farmer wants something done. It is also James' birthday and when a party is thrown in his honor he and Tristan head back to do the forbidden surgery. The sad thing is that Helen has agreed to marry Hugh, devastating James. He does so much with his face as an actor. I think this is the best episode so far.

Well, we're back this week to going far afield of anything James Herriot wrote. It's interesting (but not surprising) that when James is treating the animals, most of the time, it's not just the (rather depressingly generic) farmer who's there in the barn, but his wife as well. This is unlike the situations James generally encountered where, in reality, the wife stayed up in the farmhouse which was her domain. I imagine the producers do it because they feel a need to balance the scales. They have male vets, and overwhelmingly male farmers, so they've got to shoehorn females in whenever possible. I get that. But this view unfortunately also explains the character I like to call "Superwoman," a/k/a Mrs. Hall, who really, really, REALLY is nothing like the real thing and who gets more annoyingly super every week. And who they've now got going along on calls(!) and snatching up and holding the lantern that no one else thought to do (gosh, it's nighttime, they're operating with great precision and delicacy on an animal around his carotid artery AND jugular vein, why would it occur to any of THEM to hold up the lantern?!) Unfortunately, this is not the gentle humor of James Herriot, this is the cartoonish actions of a Sponge Bob.