ItCouldBeWorse

What bugs me is that he didn't immediately run to the bathroom. Or brush his teeth. I don't think he changed his clothes, either,before going out so he didn't shower. But the bathroom/teeth thing bugs me the most. On tv, whenever people are awakened from a deep sleep and served breakfast in bed, that's all I can think about, but we're dealing with 3 days of sleep here!

Yeah, but Raj has a job in Baltimore. So she dumps the kids on him to go work in the Hamptons every summer? How fair is that to the marriage? Except for a relatively short break the first summer, I don't believe medical students have summers off. And Divya would be a third year student by now. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.) I still don't get how Raj's wife would be ok with him taking the kids to Baltimore. Did she move, too? Does he have primary custody and she gets them for long holidays? There's no way the kids are going back and forth frequently.

If I were as anxious to have a baby as Evan and Paige, I would do whatever the doctor said to maximize the chance of success and minimize the chance of error (so long as it was ethical and legal). If I couldn't bear to do that, I should have worked this out with a more compliant doctor before the process began. What if being observed made the lab tech nervous and she inadvertently wasted some of the limited resources? Why would Evan pull rank and risk tainting the procedure,thereby creating non-viable embryos that would cause great emotional distress to Paige? So foolish.

Well, she was alone, and it's one of the sliding door types that takes longer to close than just pushing a regular door does. Did anyone else worry that Tulip was going to steal the bag with the church's money in it that Emily had put down before going to the bathroom?

I especially enjoyed Blossom's Cabaret spoof in the last episode:

You're right; I should have said that they both stayed in state.

I think Sanjay goes to Stanford and Alex goes to Caltech, so they both conveniently stayed local.

Yes, there's no point in waiting any longer for what might be a miracle (hope they don't go there; not realistic) given Evan's fertility issues. If they want kids now and can afford IVF, there's absolutely no reason to wait. His sperm aren't going to get any better, and her eggs won't improve with age, either. It will be tough for her for a while, but better to attempt to get the process over with while she's young and healthy.

He didn't. It wasn't obvious, but when he got to the nursing home, he first went over to a table with food, and I believe that's where he picked up the knife. I guess he would have found something else to use if the knife hadn't been there. For what it's worth, he didn't exactly "open his heart" to his mother. He opened his chest and plucked out his heart. Still, it made for a great visual.

The floral dress wasn't borrowed; she told Sister Mary Cynthia, "I brought the maternity dress from home" (i.e., Australia). And her soon-to-be mother-in-law had picked out the hat, one of those flowered swim cap type things that older women wore. Sister Mary Cynthia tried to console her by telling her how pretty the colors of the maternity dress were, but you could see the wheels spinning as she internally commiserated with Nicole over her own inability to wear a wedding dress at her "wedding" (when she took her vows), and also realized that the delivery of the wedding dresses to Nonnatus House, especially Sister Evangelina's plus-sized one, had been exceptionally fortuitous.

I took it as a joke about white people being wealthy enough to have two "meals", one right after another, while the Evans family is struggling to put "mystery meat" on the table.

But didn't Mr. Kaplan speak the truth? If Red had just left Liz alone after placing her with her adoptive father, she might have lived a completely ordinary life. Sure, she would never have met Tom, but, quite possibly, no one would have ever equated her with Masha Rostova. Because of Red's selfish need to be in Liz's life, a lot of really bad things have transpired.

Remember, Sister Mary Cynthia said basically the same thing when the other nuns were reminiscing over their wedding gowns! Not only had she dreamt when younger of marrying in the conventional way, but she had thought that she would get to wear a donated wedding gown when she took her vows. To her disappointment, the Order's customs had changed and she merely wore her habit. She completely understood Noelle's yearning to wear a beautiful white wedding gown. She got to experience her dream vicariously through Noelle.

I was thinking the hospital administrator might give a glowing review, but what if Boris got involved....?

But if you are "accusing" someone of being anti-gun, than you are likely pro-gun. So they are both pro-gun. Just seemed like an odd detail. What gets me is that it didn't seem like Divya was pushing him, but that Raj was all too willing to do that if Divya gets into the more selective medical school. Before this episode, he certainly didn't seem like that sort of dad. In reality, there are plenty of medical schools in the NY area that would probably be easier for Divya to get into than Hopkins. She likely has a science background, and her recommendations are probably great. And she has a lot more experience in the medical field than someone who graduated from college a year of two ago and has been working in a research lab before applying, which seems to be what med schools expect these days. It's also fine to have a BA instead of a BS - it might even make a candidate more interesting - it's just with all the required premed courses, it's common to major in a subject (such as bio, biochem,chem or physics) where many of the premed required 2 terms of biology, 2 of physics, 4 of chemistry and 2 of calculus will also satisfy departmental requirements. Otherwise, it's like having a second major without official recognition. I get why she wants to be accepted at Hopkins. I just don't see how she could go without majorly disrupting Raj's family.

So, we're supposed to think that it's a good thing that Paige's father (the general, the hunter) is not anti-gun? Or, since Paige says that Teri Polo's character accused him of being anti-gun, that means she is pro-gun, so, both candidates are pro-gun? It just made an impression on me since Evan mentioned it again at the end. And why would Raj even consider moving to Baltimore? Don't his twins live somewhere in the NY area? We've seen him spend a lot of time with them, as if he shares custody. I don't understand how a parent who is remarrying would be so willing to move away from his or her first children in order to start a second family. He should be insisting on remaining locally, which means that Divya, if she were to get into Hopkins, should go to Baltimore herself, (which means her new baby will live apart from its father), or choose to remain nearby and go to Stony Brook. If she loves Raj, she shouldn't want him to move away from his kids if it isn't absolutely necessary.

I was wrong and you are correct about Ruby Cottingham. Her husband was at sea, she had anxiety leading to sleeplessness, and Dr. Turner prescribed it for her before her pregnancy. She appears to have kept taking it regularly. As to Jeffrey Gallagher's Mom, Patsy said: So we write to Jeffrey Gallagher's GP, warn of the possible connection to his missing thumbs. Combined with the cut bit of dialogue from Episode 1 that I quoted above: Patsy: The trouble is, Mrs Gallagher’s quite the nervy type. She was demanding sleeping pills the moment she knew she was pregnant, it appears that Dr. Turner did prescribe thalidomide for 2 of the 3 mothers of affected children of which he is aware, but in both cases is was for anxiety/sleeplessness, and not for morning sickness, just as he recommended it for Noelle. I guess the combination of everyone's constant reassurance that the bad outcomes were not his fault, and the smoking, are keeping him stable. And possibly the knowledge he's not alone, as Dr. Jakes had prescribed the pills to Susan's aunt.

I was just reading the cut dialogue available here: https://celtic-dragon.me/2016/04/16/call-the-midwife-series-5-missing-scenes/ and found this: Sister Evangelina: I was at Lisbon buildings with Mrs. Gallagher and young Jeffrey. Sister Mary Cynthia: Is he the baby with missing thumbs? Sister Evangelina: And his mother’s no more nearer getting over it than she was six weeks ago. Patsy: The trouble is, Mrs Gallagher’s quite the nervy type. She was demanding sleeping pills the moment she knew she was pregnant. Trixie: I’d demand sleeping pills if I lived at Lisbon buildings. This is the baby referenced in the present episode. By cutting that bit from the first episode of the season, we lost that foreshadowing. Also cut from later in the episode: Sister Winifred: I just…wonder if it’s not something in the atmosphere. The father of the baby with the missing thumbs is a chemical mixer at the patchworks.

We has a short segment on thalidomide, with the show's producer.

It's possible that either of the scenes were filmed in advance of her maternity leave. In fact, all of them should have been; why should she have to leave her newborn just to film a couple of scenes for the season finale? That would have been bad planning.

It wasn't shown on PBS. I also didn't see the following scene from the recap: "Barbara visits Tom in the vestry and they're all schmoopy and cute and I still don't like Tom, okay, but I...can't help it. I'm happy for them." Finally, I'm not sure that we saw: "[h]er Sisters prepare Sister Evangelina's body for its final journey. "

Yes, it was absolutely necessary that Dr. Turner not have personally prescribed the pills for Rhoda Mullucks (Susans' mom), Mrs. Cottingham (mother of the baby who died in the hospital), or the mother of the little boy born without thumbs whose family moved to another district. Otherwise, given what we've seen of him, his guilt would have been so great that I doubt he could have come back from the breakdown he almost certainly would have suffered. (He was already on the verge of one, and seemed to have resumed smoking.) In reality, with all the women he had prescribed thalidomide too, it was very convenient that none of them seem to have had affected children.

The woman worked for Mr Kaplan and the bow tie was the signal to Tom that he should approach her to switch babies. Mr. Kaplan is a detail-oriented planner. It would not even occur to her to hinge the success of her plan on the coincidence that a young mother susceptible to Tom's charms would be in the store at just the right time and agree to switch babies with a stranger. She would have a trusted lackey for that role. From the recap: Tom's big plan to disappear from the grocery store depends upon there being another baby of roughly Agnes's age and size being at the tiny store at the same time. And also that baby's mom leaving it alone long enough for Tom to make the switcheroo. Nope, Orza is right. The bay switch was part of the plan. Not sure why the policeman didn't detain Mr. Kaplan for having a "stolen" baby, whether or not the mother wanted to press charges, but whatever. Actually, the mother should have waited longer to point out the switch, as it would have given Tom more time to get away, even if it were only a few minutes more.

Yeah, when he runs into 2013 Mick, who won't know about this conversation, it'll be weird.

Constantine, if I recall correctly. Good catch. But not “a beloved superhero from the DC canon,” with "a mysterious past and equally mysterious agenda.”