Millie

Compare and contrast:

Max Carter in Bail Me Out (S25 E14) Righteous Kill - Part 1 (S25 E12), Righteous Kill - Part 2 (S25 E13) Country Cowboy (S24 E38) Trust Me (S25 E54) Backlash (S25 E55)

to

Max Carter in That Type Of Cop (S26 E18), Walk On My Grave (S26 E20), Ultimatum (S26 E21), Who Dares Wins (S26 E26) Balance Of Power (S26 E27)

It's like he's a completely different character and almost painful as a Max fan :( Yes, there's the cocaine thing but given ITV shitting on the show it was handled incredibly poorly and there's no way he'd be as heavily addicted (or as stupid as to literally bring out a wrap in his hand in front of another officer) in such a short amount of time.

He was always a little bit cocky with a swagger and a bit of arrogance and the ability to twist the rules in the favour of 'right' even if getting to the 'right' wasn't strictly done in the 'right' way but he listened to his team, he took their suggestions, he backed off in favour of other officers doing interviews because it was right for the case. He was a bit brusque and not politically correct but he wasn't an out and out arsehole who actively took obvious pleasure in winding up his colleagues (The Max spreading rumours and gossip about Grace and Neil was like a whole other character!)

Even in Smash and Grab he messed up with Millie (who lost her crush there and then in those eps!) and he tried to apologise. In Beth Undercover he was very sweet with Beth even if initially against her being sent in and he did take her for a drink after to make sure she was ok after a 'friend' she'd made whilst undercover got shot. In Righteous Kill he's adorable with Honeysuckle Week's character and her kid. Yes he may have shot her husband whilst in SO19 but we don't mention that. He was naughty.

They might have been buried deep down but he did have feelings and a brain and did engage it! He was in no way perfect and he really did some dickish things in S24 and 25 but they REALLY amped it up for S26 and changed him. Reeeeeally hate what they did to him with the reboot.

I also really wish we'd been told what the storyline projections would have been if they were allowed to continue for each character. I mean they'd have had the plotting meeting many months beforehand, most likely back in mid 09. It would have been plotted out for S26, it'd be interesting to see where a lot of them were heading A lot was set up and quickly edited to come to a quick conclusion, forgotten, completely abandoned or a mix of all the above.

ETA: On The Streets (Last ep of S25) - he rushes to help Grace with heavy boxes!

The Bill » 26x27 - Balance of Power

i analyse max carter’s behaviour a lot of the time, and one thing i’ve noticed is his “lying tendencies”. i have 2 examples of this, both from 2009; righteous kill parts 1&2 (25x13, 25x14) and backlash (25x55).

in righteous kill, max tells sam nixon that he does not regret the shooting of thomas jankowski. he tells her this in both part 1 and 2; however between these events, during part 2 max is talking to jankowski’s wife (julie) and he tells her that he’s always felt sorry, and has clear remorse. yet he seems to have a genuine guilt towards that.

in backlash, when talking to 12 yea old noah morris, who’s mum is in hospital and they don’t know why, he tells noah his own parents divorced when he was 9 and he was raised thereafter by a single mother. shortly afterwards, jo masters says she didn’t know his parents were divorced (which i don’t really see as something he would want to bring up so that’s a slightly interesting comment in itself) and he ever so casually brushes her off and says “they’re not; ruby anniversary in june” (however there’s no specification as to whether that mean the june juts gone (2009) or the next june (2010)). but that seems ever so much more easier for him than when he was telling noah his parents were divorced.

i can’t honestly work out whether there’s a connection here. there’s the element that i’m mostly positive about; max is terrified to confront his own feelings, and because he’s never gonna see julie and not again he feels more confident in being truthful. however he sees sun hill cid daily, and he doesn’t want to look in any way vulnerable to them. so lying to them but telling the public the truth is his only option.

but it’s that case of could i be wrong? could that be max’s intentions, and there’s more manipulation under there that we can see. we know max is a dick, but is this a part of it or are these his genuine feelings. part of me believes there’s that chance that he’s telling the truth about being raised by a single mother since he was 9, but there’s that confirmed element that they don’t seem to get along well (cowboy country, 24x38 “i hope you phone your mother more than young max here”, max has the face of thunder when father panel says this to terry perkins) and there’s that chance he represses his feelings due to being told he wasn’t allowed to feel emotion or that either parent pushed the toxic masculinity onto him, not wanting him to be in any way weak.

there is also the drugs storyline (26x15-22 on and off). there’s a scene in the locker room and a scene outside the building, and both stand out to me. when terry drags him outside and confronts him, max says “what do you think i am? an addict?” and in the locker room a few episodes prior, he seems to all but have a crisis before terry comes in which stops him from taking the coke he has on him. max refuses to admit he is a cocaine addict. which is an issue in itself. addiction is a terrible thing, however what terry seems to forget is that it’s a disease. he seems more interested in locking max up and taking away his career, rather than focusing on max’s wellbeing and getting him help. yes he did offer him to go to the detective inspector, however terry’s first response was to threaten an arrest for possession. confronting an addict like that will make them more adamant that they aren’t an addict and push them further from help. terry likely made max that but worse then. i have no clue whether he was still taking in 26x26 after he returned from the leave he conned neil manson out of, but max is confident, arrogant, and want to prove his points. i personally believe he did as it gives him one up on terry. and it terry pushes it, max could give clean blood results and there then looks jealous of max as an officer, or juts all around paranoid. and that conniving side of max would love to witness that.

in the last two episodes of gun runner (series 24, 2008) max tells smithy and stevie, and neil (respectively) about loosing a colleague in co19 and seeing him mowed down by a mac10; and it’s shows us his perseverance to get them off the streets. there’s that moment of contemplation in firefight when he’s told neil, as if he’s think back to it happening, and there’s that split second where he’s just reflecting and remembering the he’s back and still as angry and frustrated at these guns being on the streets

and secondly, s26 e20, walk on my grave. grace calls him “a scared little boy, who thinks he’s not quite up to the job”. and for a moment we see that look behind the eyes; that look that is a small hint to grace hitting a nerve and going back to that toxic masculinity point of max feeling he has to show this confidence and showing slight fear is weak. i think there’s a part of him that is scared, yet he doesn’t want to admit it. but there’s also that part of him that hasn’t trained his eyes to stay stone cold and not give anything away.

the more i think about max, i feel even worse. obviously these are subjective observations and are just the way i see things. however theres the things that are canon and undeniable: max was an addict and acted as if being an addict made him weak; and he shot two people (thomas jankowski in 2003, and from the notes in max’s file in righteous kill it seems the other was 20th, 26th, 28th or 29th march 2002) and even if he claims he did his job and there’s no guilt, there is. there has to be. because if he really felt no guilty about it, we wouldn’t see that more gentle side to him in certain cases and see how he genuinely cares for the public. if he was fully guilt free, he would’ve been stone cold 24/7 and would also be a psychopath. but he’s not.

English doctor Edward Jenner noticed that milkmaids who caught cowpox, a mild illness causing small hand blisters, never got smallpox. He wondered if cowpox could protect against it.

Jenner took material from a milkmaid’s cowpox sore and inoculated an eight-year-old boy, James Phipps. The boy got mildly sick, recovered, and later resisted smallpox exposure completely.

Jenner called his method “vaccination” — from vacca, Latin for “cow.” His bold experiment laid the foundation of immunology and led to the eradication of smallpox in 1980, the only human disease ever wiped out.