#oliver hide

So. Seriously. The transphobia stuff with Sah. The revealing of their deadname and assigned gender. WHAT was that about? What did it add to the episode? Scott made it clear by the end of the episode that he didn’t really mean it and was just looking for something to weaponise against Sah - so he could’ve said anything. Scott’s mum didn’t need to make transphobic comments either. We could’ve had the bullying storyline without all that.

I am just so fucking tired of this thing where if trans characters need a problem to come up against, it HAS to involve transphobia. We’re whole entire people and frankly I see enough transphobia on social media on a daily fucking basis, I don’t really want to hear it and get triggered by it on my escapism show just because the writers think they’re sending a ~message~.

It feels like the show just wanted an excuse to hand over Sah’s given name and assigned gender and go “Here you go, cis viewers! Now you can misgender them! :)”. What the fuck. Like, Holby making Louis’s story all about transphobia was frustrating and I’m tired of trans characters’ deadnames always being revealed in general (especially when their deadname and their real name turn out to be really similar: Lily to Louis, Sarah to Sah... look, I’m one to talk here, because I also picked my name based off my deadname, but it is not nearly as common as TV show writers seem to think it is). But at least Louis’s story was a coming out one. Sah turned up already out to everyone they know. Revealing their deadname and assigned gender adds NOTHING to their story. Having people be transphobic to them adds NOTHING to their story. It really only serves to trigger trans viewers.

The worst part is, while Casualty has failed with queer rep in other ways (see: Lev), they HAVE shown an understanding that not every queer character’s story needs to be about queerness... when it comes to cis gay characters. You don’t see Jan and Ffion getting their every story turned into a story about homophobia, now do you?

But somehow they can’t do that for a trans character. Sigh. Sah is still better than Louis because at least Sah actually has a personality, but I hoped Casualty would do better than Holby in the “having a trans character whose stories aren’t all about being trans” department too. But alas.

Other than that, the Sah stuff was alright. It was a bit awkwardly written though. One little talk and suddenly Scott is fully reformed? I get the “hurt people hurt people” idea (and I’m glad Casualty get it too, since Holby didn’t... in fact, Holby felt the need to retcon the entire Henrik and Sahira relationship instead of acknowledging that Henrik treated her the way he did because of his own trauma), but one conversation does not suddenly fix that.

I am glad they’ve actually given Sah flaws, though. The stuff about their anger issues is really interesting.

I did love the little scene at the end with everyone gathering to celebrate Sah’s birthday. That was really sweet. The Holby reference was cute too - although really I think I was just glad to hear Casualty mention Albie’s, because it’s always been so weird to me that not only do the Casualty characters and Holby characters visit totally different pubs (understandable because Holby was filmed so far away from Casualty), they straight up acted like the pubs each other’s characters went to didn’t exist.

Bit annoyed that Fletch had to be the Holby character who was referenced though. We get it, Casualty, you created him a decade ago. But Holby did have other characters and this feels a bit much when we just had a Fletch appearance recently - Jan could have mentioned a comment that, say, Sacha made about her karaoke instead. It’s not a big deal but I still do think it’s strange.

So where’s this Ollie storyline going then? I’m VERY intrigued now. The writing for it tonight was a lot better than last week and so was the acting (from the lad playing Ollie’s up-to-something “friend”, that is, he’s much better than last week’s cartoon bullies - obviously Harry Collett himself, and Jason Durr for that matter, have not failed me yet).

I’m still thinking it’s most likely to be a mental health story of some sort. Possibly even Ollie having inherited his dad’s bipolar, which could make for a brilliant storyline.

But I’ve seen people speculating, given the amount of emphasis placed on repeating the “I’ve never been with a girl before” line during the last scene, that Ollie could be struggling with his sexuality and turn out to be gay and that would be really interesting too. (Possibly a combination of both? Mental health effects of being closeted/facing homophobia?) Or maybe he’s aro/ace? If it’s a sexuality thing I really hope the writers remember that David himself is bi. (Also, Kian Anon predicted the idea of Ollie coming out to David ages ago, so if that’s where this goes... everybody give it up for Kian Anon!) The thing that really gives this theory credence to me, too, is that Sah’s bullying story was obviously being paralleled with Ollie’s bullying story, and Sah did give a whole speech about how they were scared to come out because of the bullying...

Casualty Episode Stills 2230/ ∞