Date of airing: September 6, 2011 (Global)
Audience viewership information: 1.325 million viewers
It was a solid season finale with an equally solid series ending, which makes COMBAT HOSPITAL more of a rounded experience than a series that ends its first and only season on a cliffhanger because it got canceled by the network and the writers didn’t care to give the audience closure. In case some folks look for TV shows that are not like that and instead feel like a novel that has properly ended during the final pages, COMBAT HOSPITAL is the show for you, although never forget that it’s still an open-ended show. The war in Afghanistan was still going on by the time Simon boarded a plane back to London, Pedersen boarded an ambulance on its way to the airport, and Suzy’s body was on her way to be transported home to her family. For the characters in this series, the war never ends (except when they get killed in action), so the show should naturally not feel like it has been completely ended here. Plus, since the writers never went for major ongoing storylines, the finale had it even easier to round up a few stories without necessarily having to tease upcoming events that would never happen.
But the writers still did an unforgivable thing if the show had seen a second season: They killed off Suzy. What a criminal thing to do. Even though she didn’t have much screentime and her only story was connected to and led by Bobby, she was an intriguing character. Suzy was funny, she was a mouthful who never hesitated to say the things that were on her mind or do things right. All Army dramas need a soldier who can speak up and not give a damn about protocol when said protocols needed to be overlooked for the sake of doing good (especially in a war zone), and Suzy was one of those characters. On the other hand, I can understand why the writers decided to kill off a well-known character and give the audience a sense of “it can happen to you, too.” After all, this is Afghanistan, and soldiers die. Not just those who show up as guest characters and give the doctors and nurses something to fight for during an hour of airtime on Global TV, but also those characters who could be considered central characters (even if Suzy never really was one). The writers could have done a better job though, by not having Suzy break up with Bobby a few episodes ago. Without that emotional connection, Suzy’s death meant a little less to some of the characters, and all the episode had to work for was the tension between some of the doctors and the man whose life was eventually saved by Rebecca, Bobby, and Max, after he took a life in the women’s clinic.
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| Rebecca and her hand inside a human body are ready for transport. |
Suzy’s demise would have been more meaningful if she had still hung around with Bobby after their break-up, if she still had been part of his life, even if the only thing that would have meant for her was getting screentime. However, the scene during which she got shot and killed was nicely constructed. It happened quickly – an 80s or 90s TV drama would have turned to slow-motion to depict the attack. People were shot, Suzy got killed, the shooter got shot, and suddenly we were already in the aftermath of the attack. Things like that happen at a speed like this, which is why I always appreciate TV shows and movies that bring realism to terror. One second, everything was fine. Ten seconds later, everything turned to crap. In shows like these, characters must die without the audience expecting it (which seems wrong in this particular show, since the characters are expected to die every time they wake up and go to work in a warzone). It’s why this scene worked, it’s why that one particular scene late in the second season of TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES worked when a certain character said goodbye to the narrative with a bullet in their head. It’s why CHINA BEACH was never good when it comes to scenes involving Viet Cong attacks, because those were in slow-motion, and the tension was killed alongside the American characters on that show.
The aftermath of the attack was nice. It was good to see that almost all of the episode was focused on the emotional consequences, with Rebecca’s wish to have killed the shooter (and the conflict with herself about her Hippocratic Oath), with Bobby’s wish to not even try and save the man’s life, with some of the other soldiers being distraught over losing Suzy, and even with Major Hasti Samizay feeling something in the realm of guilt for the death of a Canadian soldier, when the assassin had his eyes laid on her initially. Granted, Samizay’s internal investigation of Afghan police officers came a little out of nowhere and gave the attack a reason to exist in the first place, but the writers included multiple characters in this story and kept them busy.
Besides, Samizay was finally given a bigger purpose in the show. I never really knew what she was actually doing here, save for being Vans’ aunt, running the women’s clinic (and I’m not even so sure about that), and being the in-between person between the coalition and local police officers in some cases. There was another backstory of Kandahar in development here, and I would have loved to see some of it in what could have been a second season. Especially in hindsight, when all you know about the end of the war in Afghanistan was that its military and police force fell quickly and let the Taliban take control again, mostly because those forces were corrupt, as established in this episode.
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| Paying respects to a fallen soldier, comrade, and friend. |
The emotional drama of the episode was sufficient as well. I couldn’t get much out of Simon wanting to quit and leave, just because he seemingly couldn’t handle his suicidal brother from a distance, but it allowed him to reboot his character and be a different person after his eventual return (and let’s be honest, there was no way for him to not have come back). And with Rebecca coming closer to Simon and finally making a move on him when he needed it most, it’s almost like the series closes with an episode that delivered the most character development.
The reason why I don’t get the love story between the two is that the
show doesn’t really need one. COMBAT HOSPITAL has made it to this
episode without one, and by deconstructing the stereotype of a romance
at work. Rebecca came to Kandahar and smashed her phone under her boot
because her ex was annoying her. Bobby and Suzy never had a real thing
going for themselves because it’s not the only option for their
characters’ story arcs. And even Colonel Marks and Pedersen never went
further than being extremely good friends, even though I sometimes
believed they were about to hook up. Romantic relationships were never
needed in this show, begging the question of how a Rebecca/Bobby romance
could have worked in the long run if they had decided to be more than just friends.
