caitmcg

Buncha TC alums nominated for James Beard Awards

Apparently, they're riding high on profits thanks to all those new subscribers and are bargaining on people eating the higher price so they can keep going. It's a bit of an ouroboros, given that not so long ago, they shed a lot of subscribers and had to make a bunch of cutbacks.

Netflix is raising prices again. (Gift link) Increase of $1/month for ad-supported and $2/month for ad-free plans. Apparently, all because it added nearly 20 million new subscribers last quarter. This article doesn't seem to think others streamers will follow suit, at least.

That more or less tracks with the actors' actual ages; according to IMDB, Stephen McGann was born in 1963 and Laura Main was born in 1981.

They wrote her off because she declined to return after Season 12. They did it somewhat poorly in terms of the character and accommodating Cyril's ongoing role, but at least it wasn't as abrupt as Valerie's exit.

Freeform is basic cable (the channel that was originally ABC Family). I don't know whether the episodes will stream on its website after airing or not.

I think you misunderstood or misread my post. Planned Parenthood was certainly open to everyone and dispensed the pill to teens and everyone else without judgment when I was in high school in the early-mid '80s. My original reference was to my mother's experience in 1964. Things did, obviously, change a lot within the next several years.

I am well aware, but the discussion here has reached back to earlier times, both on and off the show, and that was the origin of a whole sequence of posts — including debraran responding to my saying that my mother wore a ring to Planned Parenthood to avoid any issues because my parents weren't yet married, that it wasn't an issue in the late '70s. My point in differentiating is simply that a lot changed (obviously) between the early-mid '60s and the late '60s. As far as Planned Parenthood goes, certainly this was common during my adolescence just a decade after yours, and I imagine it's remained the case.

Sure, but that was the late ‘70s, not 1964.

Sure. I don't think these variations have changed in decades since. Certainly in my own experiences adjacent to Catholic hospital issues, they were on the conservative end in that regard, and did not perform tubal ligations, terminations in exigent circumstances, or prescribe contraceptives or dispense them to inpatients. (This led to controversy when the smaller community hospital in the California city where I lived in the early '90s was going to merge with the larger Catholic hospital, meaning that the only full-service hospital in town would offer none of those services.)

I guess it stands to reason that if there are two plots too many in an hourlong episode, there are four plots too many in a double-length episode. All in all, this one did feel pretty much just like a supersized regular episode, albeit set at the holidays, compareed with many past Christmas specials that were more thematic, whether set at home in Poplar or away somewhere. It was clumsily written, but I thought the point was that in both cases, the new mothers had fallen through the cracks, in that they had given birth in the hospital, but were not getting the usual postnatal visits from Nonnatus staff (the first because they weren't notified of her discharge, the second because they didn't know where she was living since their caravan traveled with the fun fair). And as far as all the home births and those in Dr. Turner's maternity home, all of those were automatically followed up with home visits. Even now, the NHS offers 10 days of postnatal followup, including home visits, with a nurse or midwife, so a very different model than the US. I think especially this has to do with the fact that in the US, most religiously affiliated medical providers have been Catholic, and Catholic hospitals provide a lot of charity care but of course don't provide any contraception, tubal ligations, or abortion care. Incidentally, there's some interesting history around Protestant denominations' approach to choice, with some advocating for abortion rights prior to Roe v. Wade, and a concerted political effort to change that after. As far as limiting prescription of the pill, that pretty much mirrored affairs in the US, where for some time after its introduction in 1960, it was limited to married women for moralizing reasons. I remember my mother telling me that during the year or so before my parents married, she put a ring on her left ring finger when she went to Planned Parenthood in NYC because she was afraid they wouldn't prescribe her the pill if she were not (yet) married.

I believe the xmas special is the one episode that's not edited down.

There is a separate thread for the Christmas episode...

Interesting. Usually, the Christmas specials are 90 minutes, so I wonder if they decided to do two one-hour episodes for the BBC broadcast instead.

The CtM social media accounts have confirmed that there will be a two-part Christmas special this year, with the first episode broadcast on Christmas as usual, and the second on Boxing Day, December 26. I presume PBS will also have part two the next day, so make sure your DVRs are primed.