So, how was binge week for you? Did you watch it all before 8am on Monday and have been suffering with the long wait to next week? Or are you watching them as they air? To be fair, our last two eps of the week (the only ones to feature Ballum) aired tonight, so for this week it didn’t make too much of a difference I suppose. So let’s talk about that content!
Screencaps for Part 1 can be found here and Part 2 can be found here.
In our very first scene of Wednesday Part 1, Callum’s sitting in the Square gardens sending a text to Whitney asking for a chat. Which, off the bat, is a bit of a shift from what I had assumed was Whitney being the one to initiate the contact (and up until now it had been portrayed that way.) But I guess now that Whitney has been established as someone Callum can talk to, someone who Callum can keep separate from his life with Ben (and therefore keep those feelings separate as well), he’s starting to lean on her more.
As he sends it, he clocks Ash walking past and approaches her on impulse – with her being a doctor and everything, she’s his best chance at hearing what’s going on at the hospital. He’s hoping that there’s a way she can pass first hand info along to him about Fitzy rather than having to wait for it to be passed down to him from elsewhere. He knows that Fitzy is having an operation that day that’s quite high risk, but he wants to know details. He tries to be casual about it, referring to Fitzy as just ‘a geezer he works with’, but he’s not fooling anyone, not even Ash. However, she tells him that even if she did happen to know anything about the op, she can only speak to family about it. It’s hard to argue with patient confidentiality laws, even though Callum calls her back again as she turns away. He admits he doesn’t want to put her in a difficult position, but Ash interrupts him to say ‘then don’t.’ He probably can’t really articulate his need to know what’s going on with Fitzy and his own struggle with self blame, but Ash doesn’t let him get that far, only able to apologise that she can’t help him, and leaves him to it.
Later on, as Callum’s waiting for Whitney in Ruby’s (which I guess is now their default meeting place despite Callum’s fears that Ben could find them there, not to mention the fact that any local could see him there and mention it to Ben for whatever reason), Ash enters instead and goes to sit opposite Callum, to his surprise. He’s so surprised that part of his face disappears! To be honest, they’ve been doing so many scenes with characters appearing close together that I nearly forgot that they were still using plate shots and split screens, so that was quite a timely reminder of the work that they continue to put in, even if a few little things slip through now and again.
I’m not sure how Ash knew that Callum would be there, but I’m choosing to imagine that she’s maybe seen him there over the last week and decided to look for him there. She’d overheard Vi in the Minute Mart telling Suki that Stuart and Rainie are worried sick over baby Abi and there’s been no news; and then Suki had taken the cynical view after she’d left that they weren’t going to get any good news. So Ash has decided to look into Fitzy for Callum so she can maybe give him a bit of good news. She tells him she spoke to the doctor that did Fitzy’s surgery (love that that’s just his name even to people who don’t know him) and can confirm that he pulled through and is stable. Callum’s very relieved and grateful, as Ash explains why she changed her mind, and then warns Callum that it stays between them as she shouldn’t really have said anything. She glances at Whitney as she turns up, just as Callum’s agreeing not to tell anyone. He thanks her, and Ash nods at Whitney in greeting as she gets up to leave.
Whitney then walks over, having seen Ash with Callum and the look on his face, and asks if everything is okay. And Callum, completely forgetting that Ash swore him to secrecy two seconds previously, bless him, tells Whitney that Fitzy is going to be okay, that he’s pulled through. Whitney’s pleased, and when she sits down she nudges Callum about telling Ben – but realises when Callum’s smile fades and he looks away that he’s still hesitant to do that. He promises her that he will as soon as he sees Fitzy for himself, and she doesn’t look convinced but lets it lie for now.
So, it looks like Whitney is genuine, and she really does think that Callum should be telling Ben about what’s going on – but Callum’s putting it off. Like we said before, it’s often hard to admit to people close to you if you’re struggling, and by talking to Whitney he can compartmentalise what he’s feeling into a separate box that he can pretend (or try to pretend) doesn’t exist when he’s at home. And I do also wonder if we’re seeing this reliance on Whitney so that it will hurt more when (I’m assuming when, anyway) the hit and run stuff comes out.
Moving onto Wednesday Part 2 – aka the last instalment of the week – Ben watches on as Phil and Kat stand outside the launderette looking pleased as punch, having just invested in it. Kat comments on how it’s their future they’re looking at – for Kat’s kids, and for Raymond as well. Ben’s taken aback to see it, probably taking it as an indication that Phil has no intentions of trying to make up with Ben and is instead moving on to focus on his other son and the surrogate ones he’s picked up through Kat. It’s Ben realising once more that he’s replaceable in Phil’s eyes. And though he might not want to admit it – it hurts.
It’s still on his mind when he returns to the flat, where Callum almost gets caught looking at Fitzy’s engagement ring. He tells Callum what he saw, and although he insists he’s fine with Phil keeping him out of his businesses, he thinks Kat’s a mug. He doesn’t elaborate on why he thinks that, but we can guess. I think he’s calling Kat a mug because she’ll soon realise that he’ll replace her, just like he seems to have replaced Ben. Ben may have chosen Callum when it came down to it, but he didn’t want to have to choose, and he’s tried to reach out to little avail. He comments on how he’s so out of it; personally as well as in a business sense. There’s no response from Callum to any of it – he seems distracted when normally he’d have been trying to make Ben feel better about things. Ben busies himself with rustling through his tote bag, but when it becomes obvious that Callum isn’t going to speak, Ben fills the silence by jokingly asking Callum if he’s on mute. Callum stands to put his backpack on and avoids the question, but informs Ben that he has to go into work – to Ben’s disappointment. He bought Callum a croissant!
Callum expands on it by explaining that there was a big raid in Millwall the night before and they’re busy at the station dealing with it. It’s too much detail – especially when Callum’s not really supposed to be talking about work, and in fact has been the one to shut down work talk when Ben digs too close to the truth (more evidence that he’s been hiding behind Ben’s request to justify not telling him about the stabbing and how it’s been affecting him) – which is generally indicative of a lie.
Ben takes him at his word though, and I’m wondering if the text from Whitney is playing on his mind at all at this point. If it is, he’s obviously decided not to ask Callum about it – and hopes Callum will be back by lunchtime, making it clear that he’s not impressed Callum’s being called away on extra shifts when they’re meant to be spending time together.
Once Callum’s gone, Ben goes to put his keys away in the top drawer and spots Callum’s police badge still sitting there. Which is probably an important thing for Callum to have if he’s on his way to the station. Ben wastes no time in running out after Callum to try and give it to him.
Ben’s little jog through the market, little smile on his face as he tries to catch up to his seemingly forgetful husband, breaks my heart. He soon stops dead, face falling as he sees Callum through the railings, approaching Whitney. Ben is extremely confused. It’s one thing Callum simply neglecting to mention he’d met up with Whitney last week – another thing entirely to tell Ben he’s going to the station for an extra shift and then clearly not.
On the other side of the garden, Whitney’s asking Callum if he’s sure Fitzy will be up for seeing both of them, and Callum reassures her that he will, since according to Ash he’s out of surgery and allowed visitors. He wants to believe Fitz will be fine with it anyway, as he doesn’t want to go alone. It’s something he thanks Whitney for when she reminds him again that she’s there for him – admitting he couldn’t have done it without her. I think it makes Whitney about as uncomfortable as it did me, as she mentions Ben again, asking if Callum’s spoken to him yet. But Callum doesn’t want to think about telling Ben, dodging the question by maintaining that it’s one thing at a time, that it’s on the list. All Whitney can really do is keep encouraging him, so she doesn’t press him and they get into the cab – Ben still watching and wondering what the heck is going on.
Thing is, there’s meeting with Whitney, and then there’s Callum lying about where he’s going, making up work shifts to meet with her and hanging out with her away from the Square entirely. Ben has never discouraged Callum from seeing Whitney, so it makes it all the more confusing for him that Callum’s hiding it from him, because that makes it look not entirely innocent. And not just hiding it, but spending time with her that has been set aside for them, like it seemed to have been with the croissant business. And with the Phil stuff earlier on in this very ep… it might feel awfully like being replaced again. With Ben not knowing why they’re meeting up, to him the secret is the fact they’re meeting up.
Later, we see Callum and Whitney arrive back in the Square, and Callum doesn’t look like he’s in a good mood after seeing Fitzy. He strides ahead of Whitney and drops his backpack, grabbing onto the railings. It’s interesting the way he doesn’t just grip onto them, it’s more of a nervous fiddling, and staring at his hands against them. I think it’s less about holding himself up and more about grounding himself by holding onto something real and solid.
Turns out that seeing Fitzy didn’t do much good for Callum as it just winded up being another unavoidable reminder that the stabbing really happened and that Fitzy’s still not in a particularly good way, hooked up to various machines. I don’t know if Fitzy’s meant to have said anything, but I’d take a guess that even if he did, the self blame still runs deep in Callum as he sees it as his fault that he’s there. I guess he wasn’t prepared to see Fitz in such a bad way.
Whitney tries to tell him that he saved him instead, but to be honest there’s no way Callum’s going to believe that when the knowledge that it was him who insisted on giving chase to the mugger weighs so heavily on him. He then admits that he can’t get the image of the stabbing out of his head, and keeps replaying it over and over – banging on the rails in frustration that he can’t get it to stop, but it also serves as a visual for what he’s going through – those flashbacks repeated and painful. It shocks Whitney, who tells him to stop before he hurts himself. Until it maybe occurs to her that that’s the point – he wants to hurt himself, because he thinks it should be him instead of Fitzy.
He goes back to gripping the railings, more firmly now as if to try and resist doing it again. Whitney tells him she’s seen him like this before, concluding that it’s his PTSD. It’s not clear exactly what she’s seen before aside from the nightmare we saw Callum wake up from once, which was really the only evidence of PTSD that Whitney’s been privy to as far as we know. I guess the self blame stuff he felt around that army situation is something he could have told Whitney about after the confession to Mick – they weren’t exactly onscreen together an awful lot back then.
Anyway, Callum sends her a look that I see as resignation – he doesn’t deny it, anyway. And Whitney goes from gently asking him if he’s spoken to Ben, to more of an assertion that he needs to, even though she knows Callum doesn’t want to. She recognises that this is something he can’t compartmentalise, much as he’d like to.
Callum is still really reluctant, not even trying to pretend anymore that it’s ‘on the list’. He says that Ben doesn’t get it. Well… of course he doesn’t, because you haven’t told him. Plus it’s not like Ben’s never felt all-consuming guilt for what’s happened to someone else. It’s all a bit of a mess in Callum’s head I imagine – he doesn’t want to tell Ben because that makes it real and unavoidable and present, as opposed to now, where he can tell Whitney who is part of his past – and maybe keep this in the past eventually, because as we then learn, he’s convinced that since he got through it once, he can do it again and no one apart from Whitney need know. Because Whitney doesn’t have the same unwavering involvement in his life that Ben has as his husband, and that makes her safer.
Whitney suggests a professional then, asking him to get some help – clearly she’s feeling a little out of her depth with it and unable to properly help him herself, and tries to bring this forward as a compromise. But Callum insists he’s fine; as long as he’s got Whitney to talk to. Which is him trying to convince himself more than anything, of course. Whitney tells him he’s always got her, but… the ‘but’ is unspoken. He’s got her, yes (when she’s not trying to kill his husband that is) but he needs proper support.
He asks her to stay with him a bit longer in response to the mention of going home. I think it’s something he’s trying to keep out of the flat as much as he can, leaning on Whitney in the hopes that he can talk it out and get through it faster maybe – and avoid talking to Ben at the same time.
Turns out that Callum stays away for quite a bit longer, as Ben’s on the phone to him back at the flat asking him where he is – must be well past lunchtime. Vi is on the sofa with a sherry, shouting at the telly. No wonder Ben’s looking for his husband.
Callum’s in his favourite spot, Ruby’s, as he tells Ben he’s just finishing work – earning a look off Whitney who’s still with him. I think she’s seeing things differently now, after the realisation that it’s PTSD-related, and that he really does need that extra support that he’s refusing.
Bit of an interesting exchange here, with some seemingly unrelated interjections from Vi, who’s yelling at someone on the TV. Except her words quite cleverly serve as Ben’s dark thoughts surrounding what he saw earlier. When he asks Callum what’s taking him so long, she shouts out “he’s been with that hussy!” and when Callum explains he’s been held up by that raid he mentioned earlier, she calls someone on the telly a liar.
Ben doesn’t let on what he’s seen, but sarcastically tells him not to overdo it. Callum pretends he’s being called away by the sarge, which Whitney rolls her eyes at. And then Vi says across the room with glee “don’t trust him, he’s been sleeping with the vicar!” Eep. I actually quite like the way it’s been presented in this way, as things Ben maybe won’t voice because it seems so ridiculous, but then who better to represent intrusive thoughts than Callum’s intrusive nan?
Callum promises he’ll be home later, and Ben doesn’t even answer, just hanging up, unable to keep up a pretence. Even though it didn’t look like Vi was even listening, let alone picking up the vibes of Ben and Callum’s conversation, she pipes up that from the racket both of them were making the night before, she thought things were going well again. So it sounds like Callum’s method of comfort from the week before is still in play, actually seeking intimacy instead of shying away from it. I guess if they’re having sex they’re not really talking, which is the thing Callum’s trying to avoid.
Vi then sticks the knife in by hitting right on Ben’s long standing insecurity about ruining Callum, telling him that Callum was such a good honest boy before Ben came along. And Ben rolls his eyes because of course – it’s nothing he doesn’t already worry about constantly. It’s also a bit of a weird thing for Vi to say out of the blue, unless maybe she has her own suspicions that Callum wasn’t really at work and those things she was yelling were only half at the telly.
Later (much later), Ben’s on the sofa, yawning and nearly nodding off to Red Right Hand by Nick Cave (aka the opening song to Peaky Blinders, a fellow BBC One show – bit of in-show advertising, that!) Callum finally appears in the doorway just as the lyrics mention a tall handsome man appearing in a gathering storm, with a dusty black coat and a red right hand. You know the saying ‘caught red handed’? Yeah.
To alert Ben to his presence, Callum switches the lights on and off, which I’d like to think is a consideration of Ben’s deafness, that they didn’t just have Callum do something like whisper his name. I did wonder if it was just because they couldn’t have a shaking of the shoulder or pat of the head – but the writer for this episode, Sophie Woolley, is a member of the Deaf community and so I am actually inclined to think it was a deliberate choice, which is fab.
Ben wakes a little disoriented until his eyes land on Callum, and he gives him a little smile as he asks how work was. Callum sets his backpack on the table to take his jacket off, and gives a vague answer about it being fine, he’s just shattered and looking a shower to sort him out. He turns down Ben’s offer to join him, saying maybe another time, which Ben accepts with a little nod and sad smile. I’d say that Callum’s maybe using the shower as a separation point, or a place to decompress and get in the zone for hiding his struggle from the person closest to him. Unfortunately, turning the offer down (and wanting a shower straight away upon coming home) doesn’t help the little brain worms in Ben’s head – the ones who know that Callum wasn’t at work, and was with Whitney instead.
Once Callum closes the bathroom door, Ben contemplates Callum’s backpack sitting on the counter for a moment, and curiosity/worry gets the better of him. He hesitates again once he’s standing in front of it, glancing back at the bathroom door, and decides he has to find out what’s going on. He checks the main compartment that seems to have a heavy textbook in it (he can leave his police badge behind but not that thing weighing him down?) It’s the front pocket where Ben stumbles upon something he certainly didn’t expect to find – an engagement ring. What the hell?! And Ben’s confused face gets the last duff duff of the week.
Why Callum didn’t give Fitzy his engagement ring back when he visited him earlier remains a mystery (beyond plot reasons of course), but now that Ben’s found it, what on earth could he be thinking? All he knows is that Callum’s been lying about extra shifts in order to go and meet with Whitney, apparently away from the Square, and there’s an engagement ring in his bag. His logical brain knows that Callum is not only gay but married to him, so couldn’t possibly be planning to propose to someone else, let alone his female ex – but there’s also no way he can guess what’s really going on, and all he has are these facts that seem very shady, and which exacerbate his existing feelings of not being good enough, for anyone. To him, Callum’s choosing to spend time with Whitney instead of him, for whatever reason.
Although I’m pretty certain it’s a case of Ben being deeply confused over what he’s found; there’s no escaping the implications, and it’s those implications that make the whole thing a bit icky for me. I guess they thought an affair implication had a sense of irony with it being Whitney, but I’m not sure, it’s verging a bit on insulting. We’ll see what happens next week.
See you on Sunday for the week ahead!
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