Badger

Someone on the "Call The Midwife" tag on Tumblr posted a few days ago that apparently the US DVDs of Season 9 only have the Christmas special, and episodes 1-2 as the complete UK episode. Episodes 3-8 are the PBS edit. Has anyone else noticed this?

They did a similar thing in an earlier episode. A young working class man had gotten a scholarship to Oxford and had aspirations of working for the BBC. However, his girlfriend got pregnant so everyone decided they had to get married and he had to get a job. The girl had mixed feelings because she hated that he had to give up his dream for her but at the same time she had been worrying that if he went up to Oxford, he'd forget about her. The young man was so distraught by the situation that he attempted suicide. Then the girlfriend had a miscarriage and in the end, he went off to Oxford but they remained a couple.

I don't remember that at all. There is a scene they cut where some of the midwives were trying to teach Kevin to dance so they could send him to the discotheque for junior doctors. You see a record player playing a 45 of Petula Clark's "I Know a Place" while Sr. Hilda dances with Kevin urging him to swing his arms but he's not sure in what direction. Sr. Monica Joan is standing holding a diagram of dance steps. Nurse Crane looks up from her knitting and asks if maybe his oxfords are too stiff and maybe plimsolls might be better. Sr. Hilda thinks that they'd give him more bounce on the ball of his foot. Trixie points out that they don't wear plimsolls at a discotheque. Meanwhile Kevin has started really getting into the dancing and he's bopping away happy as a pig in slop when Lucille comes in and tells Kevin that the men's shelter called that someone has died and he will have to certify the death. Some of the other scenes they cut: There's a bit of cut dialogue in the scene with Violet and the mother and her daughter. When the daughter goes outside, the mother says she is nervous and Violet assures her that she won't be the first and she certainly won't be the last which is no doubt a reference to her daughter's pregnancy. There's a bit of an extension to the scene where Val's Gran comes back to her flat. Auntie Flo drops by and says all their relatives want to see her, but Elsie says the only person she wants in her flat is Val. There's a scene with Sisters Frances and Hilda along with Lucille on their bikes ready to get signatures from their home visit patients. When that's done, Sister Hilda says they'll knock on doors. There's a montage of scenes of Val with Elsie, Eddie with Bonnie and then Eddie with Petra. Then there's a scene of a woman signing the midwives' petition. This is all done while Andy Williams' "More" plays.

Actually, The Duke and Duchess of York were on a 6 month tour of Australia then.

Regarding May and Angela, the girl who plays May is a child model. The girl who plays Angela is the daughter of one of the worker bees on the show. I don't remember if she works in the makeup or costume department but I'm pretty sure it's one of those. I'm not certain that she is still attached to the show though.

Sister Julienne was eating a choc ice which I think is like a British version of a Klondike bar. Another theory I've seen about Dr. McNulty is that he was having withdrawal symptoms and that he wanted Yvonne's baby born as soon as possible so he could get his fix. Many years ago, I worked with a woman who had been recently diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Anyway, she said that one thing her doctor stressed to her was the importance of "learning to be handicapped." Not in the sense of being dependent but being willing to ask for and accept help when you need it.

He took most of it. That's why he wanted to do an epistiotomy. It would have made the process of labor shorter but it was a risk. Neither Yvonne nor Sister Frances realized that he hadn't given her enough pain medication. They just thought he was your typical egotistical male doctor who thinks he knows everything and doesn't take responsibility when he messes up.

There is a scene of Stewart, Marion and Trixie juxtaposed with one of Beryl. Stewart is shown cradling Rosemary in one arm and making a bottle with his free hand. Then Trixie is teaching Marion to change the baby's nappy, but Marion accidentally sticks her with the pin and draws a little blood. Beryl is shown in her bathroom with a box of birth control pills. They show her taking one out and swallowing it. Another scene has Yvonne Smith being angry with Dr. McNulty because he took so long with that reluctant male patient. He sees she's pregnant and tells her she needs to go to the antenatal clinic. She tells him she's ill and needs a doctor, if that is what he is.

I noticed another deleted scene. Sister Hilda is talking to Nurse Crane and explaining why she thinks it's important to allow fathers into the delivery room. She says when she was a child, she didn't have much of a relationship with her father and that he spent all his time with her brothers while she was with Nanny. Anyway, she wonders that maybe things might have been different if he had been present at her birth.

She is also in the "Upstairs Downstairs" reboot which came out about 10 years ago. Eileen Atkins is also in it.

I'm not sure that the family Esther works for knew about her addiction. That's the thing about her telling them she had a child. They'd want to know exactly why May was not with her and sooner or later the truth would come out.

There's a British soap opera called "Coronation Street" that had a storyline earlier this year where a pregnant woman miscarried after getting rubella when she came into contact with another baby who had the disease. It turned out his father was supposed to get the baby vaccinated but didn't because he was worried that the shot would be too painful for him.

I noticed 4 scenes that were in the original UK broadcast, but were cut out of the PBS one: Shelagh and Patrick discussing whether they should tell Angela she is adopted. Shelagh is afraid it could upset her, but then Patrick says she knows what it means for May and besides, they do like to be alike. Shelagh and Tim are talking in the garden the day the Turners are to meet with May's mother. It's early morning because Tim is in pajamas and he has no product in his hair. He tells Shelagh he wishes they weren't going to see May's mother. Shelagh tells him the situation isn't easy for Miss Tang either and then she shows him the pictures she is going to show her. She worries that if the pictures depict May as being too happy, that it will seem insensitive and that the whole situation is complicated. Tim says I like that our family is complicated. Reggie and Fred come in after a visit to the pub and Violet scolds Fred a bit for being tipsy. He says that they have gotten some good ideas for the horticultural show and that he and Reggie are going to build a "Hanging Gardens of Babylon" to display them. Dr. Turner, Dr. McNulty and Nurse Anderson are at the Bryants. Dr. Turner and Mr. Bryant talk about how he hates to leave for work because he doesn't know what he'll find when he comes home. Dr. Turner, holding Baby Warren, says that he can tell he is being well cared for and that he doesn't think his condition will change yet. As they are leaving the Bryants, Dr. Turner tells Dr. McNulty that he did very well and Dr. McNulty sighs. Dr. Turner tells him he'll learn to hold that in. Dr. McNulty asks if it gets any easier and Dr. Turner tells him no, but you learn to hide it. "Even when someone is going to lose a child?" Dr. Turner says "No."

No one cared that Mei's mother was Chinese. The problem was that she was a drug addict who had a history of deserting Mei and/or abusing her. She would put her in the orphanage and then take her out and then put her back again and then take her out and then put her back in over and over. And although she appears to have straightened herself out and gotten a good job, there's no guarantee she would keep that job if her employers found out she had a child of her own.

I think they cut out a couple of scenes with Timothy. In one, he's with Shelagh and the little girls who are a bit tired out from their trip to see an escalator. He tells Shelagh to go ahead and that he'll watch Angela and Mai. The other scene, he and the girls are in Violet's shop and the girls win the tickets to see "The Sound of Music."

There is a scene where Shelagh tells Patrick they need to sign Mei's adoption papers but he is tired so she says that they can do it in the morning. Other scenes that were cut: In the scene where Sister Julienne scolds the doctors, Lucille tells them she hopes they are ashamed of themselves. There is also a scene of Trixie at an AA meeting which is basically her telling how long it's been since she had a drink.

Jennifer Kirby who plays Val is currently in the US and she tweeted that she didn't realize they cut so much out of the show here. She mentioned that Val and her cousin made up and a scene of Dr. Turner petting a rabbit. I noticed three other things that got cut. There was a montage of photos of Val, Lucille and Trixie sitting on the steps in their uniforms and dark hose showing a little leg and a hand choosing one of the photos. There was a cute scene with Shelagh cleaning Tim's old school blazer and she tells the girls to feed Genevieve. They run outside and then you hear shrieking. Shelagh and Patrick rush out and Shelagh looks in the rabbit cage and notices 2 baby bunnies which she says look like animated giblets which was why the little girls were so traumatized. And Dr. Turner says he thought Flopsy was a girl. Also, in the scene where Val, Lucille and Trixie are going through the hose they won, after Lucille remarks about one pair being fuschia, Val picks up another pair and notes that they are turquoise fishnets. Nurse Crane says, "If you think you're wearing those to work, I beg to differ."

Here's a blog from simple justice which is almost always very sympathetic to the idea of young black men being the victims of police brutality. He's siding with Linda Fairstein on this one.

FWIW, the UK version of the show was filmed in 8 days. Has anyone ever said how long it took for the US version of the show to be filmed? Also, was that Jon Heder playing one of the "advisors" in Banana's video?

Yeah, I couldn't recall if they were even alive or not.

Could Frog be one of the guys from Kriss Kross? There was a reference to "Jump" which was their big hit

No, he died in 1972. His younger brother, The Duke of Gloucester died in 1974.

I looked it up, and Prudence Strong was an actual British "poetess." I gather she was kind of like Helen Steiner Rice.

Tony Joe White sang "Poke Salad Annie." I believe he wrote it too. I think Elvis covered it.

The people I know who have been following him and his music since last season say his genre is something called "swamp rock." I checked it out on Wikipedia since I wasn't familiar with that term, and they give Creedence Clearwater Revival as an example.