isn’t she a panic?

The aftermath of Delaney's attack on Mickey. It's a brutal episode, but well put together and with some wonderful performances. Chris S is the obvious standout, but Alex, Jack and Thusitha are also a great supporting cast and solid character choices for the storyline. It's a good choice to have the conflict of how to handle Mickey be between Smithy (who is uncomfortable with the subject but has known Mickey a long time) and Ramani (who is very much in her area of expertise but not been around long enough to see Mickey as a friend and so maintains professional distance), with Jack ultimately being the one to come through for him in the end.

There aren't many PM episdes in this list, and part of that is because with so many concurrent storylines stretched out over months it's hard for even the good storylines to really stand out on their own as a 'top' episode. A big part of why this episode works so well is that while the storyline does continue to have consequences going forward, the real meat of it is dealt with in this one sitting. It would have been very easy and expected of this era of the show to drag out the internal reveal that Mickey was raped and not just assaulted, but they don't do that and it works so much better, as none of the emotional momentum is lost.

We do have other stuff going on though; there's stuff with Gary's dad which is eh. Sally Johnson returns and it's good to see her even if they ultimately don't make the best use of her character's connection to Sun Hill before she leaves again.