Other Doctor Lives: Time: Series 2, Episode 2 (2024)

*Episode premise spoilers, including a few major spoilers from episode 1*

There was already quite a bit of drama in episode 1, and things heat up even more here. I’m curious to see how everything’s going to resolve.

First, let me go over the big spoilers from episode 1. On intake, Kelsey learns that she’s pregnant. At first, she continues to use drugs, but having her first ultrasound makes her decide she wants to get clean. While we still don’t know the exact circumstances (though there have definitely been hints,) the true nature of Abi’s crime is revealed: the person she killed was her own baby. She becomes the pariah of their wing, regularly targeted for threats and harassment. The episode ends with Orla’s release, where she tells Kelsey and Abi, “I hope I never see you again.”

All right, onto episode 2! This wouldn’t be a story about three women in prison if one of them gets out in the first episode, so of course Orla winds up back inside. During her initial sentence, her kids were placed in foster care, and in her desperation to secure a new flat so she can get them back, she steals from the till at her new job. Kelsey wants to marry her baby daddy Adam, not wanting to be “a slag of a single mum,” but she’s warned that marrying a drug dealer could jeopardize her position in the mother-and-baby unit, meaning her baby could be sent into foster care shortly after birth. After getting her face slashed by another inmate, Abi navigates choosing between revenge and forgiveness.

Kelsey is the youngest person we see in this wing of the prison, and most everyone there mothers her to some extent. It’s nice to see her lap up affection and well-meaning, although she can still make shortsighted and self-destructive choices. After touring the mother-and-baby unit, she announces, “I’m moving in there, soon as I can,” and the warden needs to remind her that placement isn’t guaranteed. When Marie-Louise, the chaplain, tries to dissuade her from marrying Adam, Kelsey lashes out, viewing it as the staff conspiring against her.

Across both these episodes, it’s affecting to see Abi’s isolation after her secret is revealed. The other women in the wing routinely ice her out, many of them call her “Baby Killer” to her face, and she locks the door to her cell at night because she’s afraid of getting attacked in her sleep. When Kelsey returns from her second ultrasound, the rest of the women celebrate with a dance party while Abi sits alone in her cell, playing dominos with herself. The exclusion is palpable, but it’s even further complicated because the party is specifically related to Kelsey’s pregnancy. That’s why it’s neat to see a few tentative steps toward connection here. Ever since she arrived, Marie-Louise has been urging Abi to open up—in this episode, Abi takes her up on her offer, but in a way Marie-Louis definitely wasn’t expecting. It leads to a really strong scene of a group talk session.

Then we’ve got Orla. As with the first episode, she’s really struggling and her circumstances are sympathetic, but she also continues to be A Problem. A second go-round in prison shows that she didn’t learn much the first time. She still thinks she can demand exceptions to the rules, without so much as a “please,” and she’s pretty awful to Abi. Even though her crime this time has escalated from “fiddling the leccy” to stealing from her boss, Orla still acts like she’s here by mistake and doesn’t really belong in prison. She cops attitude, she loses her temper, and she makes wildly poor decisions out of desperation.

Because, regardless of her own shitty behavior, Orla’s life is falling apart. Her mom is sick, her kids have been split up, and her oldest son Kyle is pulling away from her. She argues that everything she’s done is to try and provide for her kids, but Kyle thinks she’s just being stupid and selfish. Jodie Whittaker does a really nice job of letting Orla be self-centered, make things worse for herself, and struggle to cope with the most painful experience of her life. She’s not black-and-white, and I appreciate that.

Y tu Luna también: Narcos: Mexico: Season 3, Episode 8 – “Last Dance” (2021)

*Some overall season 3 arc spoilers.*

This is an odd entry: first, because it’s almost an entire season after the previous episode I reviewed, and two, because Diego Luna is barely in it. So this will be a fairly quick episode write-up, and then I’ll spend some time at the end wrapping up Narcos: Mexico.

Now that Félix is no longer in the picture, the federation has dissolved. The separate plazas are each running their own operation, and Amado is on top. Over in Colombia, Cali has made a deal with the government and will be shutting down in exchange for slap-on-the-wrist prison sentences, so Amado is focused on finding a new supplier while also thinking about how he wants his on story to end. Walt is trying to investigate the “narcosjunior,” wannabe-narco rich kids. He has one such teenager in custody, but the interrogation isn’t bearing the fruit he needs. And a new character this season, a reporter named Andrea, investigates a PRI slush fund that she thinks she can tie to the cartels.

Season 3 of Narcos: Mexico is all right, but it emphasizes for me how crucial Félix and Diego Luna’s performance were to my appreciation for the show. It doesn’t hold my attention as well when he’s not around. Still, there are some nice points of interest.

This season takes place at the same time as season 3 of Narcos, so again, we see the implications of the Cali deal on Mexico. Pacho and Amado’s relationship is interesting, and I like seeing Amado realize he has to start thinking about his own exit. “Escobar, Félix, the Cali guys… All thought they had more time,” he points out. “They were wrong.”

Andrea is an enjoyable character. The “dogged reporter will do anything in pursuit of the truth” thing is a well-worn trope, but it’s effective, and the stakes are magnified when the people she’s investigating could definitely kill her if she gets too close. She also serves as a new narrator this season.

Like I said, Diego Luna’s appearance in this episode is miniscule—he doesn’t even have any lines. We just see him in an opening flashback leading up to Amado’s first meeting with Félix. The scene is more noteworthy for what Neto tells Amado about Félix in preparation. He sums Félix up simply: “Takes shit too seriously. He’s got big ideas.” When he mentions Félix’s plan to unite the plazas, Amado is intrigued by its potential, but Neto warns, “Don’t bring it up. Once he gets started on it, he’ll never stop.”

And that’s it for Narcos: Mexico! Here are my final thoughts:

Recommend?

In General – I would, as long as you’re into gangster stuff and don’t mind a lot of violence. This is an interesting series that touched on a lot of history I didn’t know.

Diego Luna – Absolutely. This is one of my favorite performances from Luna—he’s phenomenal as Félix!

Warnings

Graphic violence (including torture,) drinking/smoking/drug use, language, sexual content, and strong thematic elements.

Joel Fry-days: Alice and Steve: Season 1, Episode 1 (2026)

*Premise spoilers*

Despite having plenty of Joel Fry’s back catalog to get through, there’s still something about new-new projects from him that excites me. This Hulu/Disney+ “wrong-com” just came out this week, so the older reviews I have on deck are on hold for the time being. New stuff takes precedent! Episode 1 has me on the fence for multiple reasons, but I’m crossing my fingers that, at minimum, there will be more/better material to come for Joel Fry.

Alice and Steve have been best friends for over 30 years. On a night out of drinking and drugs after a friend’s funeral, divorced Steve confesses to married-with-kids Alice, “I wish I was in love and…and had a baby!” Recognizing that women in their 50s can’t have babies, Alice sets out to find Steve a younger woman. Unfortunately for everyone involved, Steve finds one on his own: Alice’s 26-year-old daughter Izzy, who’s just moved back home after a tough breakup. Steve and Izzy have a drunken hookup, and in the sober light of day, both are well aware of how badly Alice would take this revelation.

So…yeah. It’s dicey from the start. The whole “let me find you a younger woman” thing already feels weird, given that Alice also immediately jumps to looking for 20-somethings. When she sends Steve to chat up a 20-something at the bar, he quickly realizes they have nothing in common. If it’s a question of fertility, there’s no reason he couldn’t have looked for someone who was 35 or 40, someone he might be more likely to share interests with. But of course, before any further search can happen, he and Izzy have their lonely drunken encounter. And if the thought of dating someone half his age seemed iffy, the thought of dating his best friend’s daughter seems even worse. He’s known Izzy all her life, and even if these sudden feelings are a newfound thing for both of them, it still feels creepy. Not to mention, there’s the obvious potential fallout to his friendship with Alice.

I do like stories about platonic relationships, although this one is clearly about to get very thorny very quickly. The episode sets up Alice and Steve’s friendship pretty well. The dynamic between Nicola Walker and Jemaine Clement feels real and lived-in—you can buy that these are two people who’ve known each other forever and have offered cheerleading, tough love, and wild fun over the years. But at the same time, we also see how they can enable each other or be codependent. The situation seems primed for an implosion, a perfect storm of these two bringing out the worst in each other. We’ll see how it goes.

Since Joel Fry is a regular on the show, we’ll go ahead and get started with characters of the week. Let’s kick things off with Nicola Walker as Alice. The first description that comes to mind with Alice is simply “a lot.” She is a lot, although to be fair, she spends a good portion of this episode drunk and/or high. But sober Alice comes in pretty hot too. In particular, she latches on hard with her affections—she asks Izzy, “Is it selfish that I’m so happy that you’re back?”, wonders if she’s allowed to kill Izzy’s ex-boyfriend, and blows up Steve’s phone when she can’t get a hold of him. Put that together with being quick to spiral, and it’s not much of a stretch to realize that Alice will turn nasty if she feels betrayed by one of “her” people.

Joel Fry plays Alice’s husband Daniel. As seems to be typical with many of his TV roles, Fry plays a pretty minor role in the pilot, but hopefully the pattern will hold of him getting a lot more to do in subsequent episodes. Here, Daniel appears in several scenes, but he’s only really featured in one of them.

After the funeral, Alice and Steve go out and get sloshed with their mutual friends. The two of them stop by Alice’s place in the middle of the night so she can grab the baggie of coke she keeps under her bed before hitting the town again. While looking for the coke, she wakes up Daniel, so our first look at them as a couple is extremely mismatched—she’s drunk, wired, and boisterous, while he’s groggy and a little confused. Daniel reminds Alice how anxious she got the last time she used coke, and when she insists, “Steve is like, he’s really upset, and I just feel like I should be there for him,” he gives her a bemused smile and says, “You’re such a good friend.” Alice crawls onto the bed at one point, straddling and kissing Daniel before distractedly pushing his face away. You get the sense that she’s an enthusiastic but irresponsible whirlwind and he’s a mild, pragmatic guy who mostly manages to roll with his wife’s chaotic energy. But again, this scene introduces us to them as a couple while Alice is exuberantly drunk and Daniel just woke up, so the contrast might not be quite as pronounced under normal circumstances.

One other scene I want to mention. Daniel doesn’t have any lines in it and spends most of his limited screentime out-of-focus, but I still enjoy it for Joel Fry’s non-verbal acting. The morning after Alice and Steve’s wild night out, Alice has a conversation with Izzy while Daniel is in the background making breakfast. At first, he’s just chopping vegetables, then hesitates a bit before going to the fridge, and his body language unmistakably conveys the sense of, What am I missing/forgetting? Hmmm… Ah, that’s it! He’s not remotely the focus of the scene—Daniel is literally a blurry figure in the background—but Fry’s physicality still tells you where his head is at, and I just love that!

Okay, first impressions on Alice and Steve:

Accent Watch

Southern British English.

Recommend?

In General – So far, it’s dubious. I haven’t been fully sucked in, and I’m guessing things are about to get pretty unpleasant. As we go on, I’ll have to see if I think the show is worth whatever ugliness is on the way.

Joel Fry – A tentative maybe. I like what we’ve seen of Daniel so far, even though we don’t get much. I’m hoping that he’ll have more to do in future episodes and this won’t end up being a thankless role for him!

Warnings

Thematic elements (including a sexual relationship with a creepy/troubling setup,) language, sexual content, and drinking/drug use.