Watching “Call The Midwife” Ruined By Gross, Realistic Birth Scenes
Your show would be more suitably titled “Placenta-Splatter-the-Freshly-Starched-Uniform-of the Midwife”
Dear BBC,
I hope this letter finds you well. I, on the other hand, am very unwell. You see, I was in need of a new series, so I began watching what I thought was about nuns and young nurses providing midwifery services in 1950s London. I spent the first thirty minutes in complete ease as your characters sipped tea, contemplated the morality of allowing television within the convent, and referenced sex strictly through euphemism.
I was not prepared for the horrors that occurred next.
For reasons I cannot fathom, the screen was usurped by a torrent of vaginal liquid. It became clear that a birth scene was happening — BUT WHY? Shift to a gratuitous shot of uterine goo-covered babes — OH, LORD! My eyes were then accosted with a montage of the midwife cutting a bleach-boiled Slim-Jim substituting as an umbilical cord — JFC!
Compliments are due to your props department, they have done terrifyingly well. But, MY GOD, I may not survive another viewing of what I swear was a milk-logged octopus tentacle.
I expected this show to follow BBC’s signature of quaint, heart-warming entertainment, NOT an extension of that GRAPHIC “Miracle of Life” video I was forced to watch in my 8th grade health sciences class!
Therefore, I propose the plot for each episode should be as follows: frantic husband telephones the convent, cheery midwife greets expectant mum with a piping hot cuppa tea, cut to them discussing the weather. Then a blurry shot of mum (who is NOT ON THE BRINK OF DEATH) holding her freshly bathed (and NOT SLUG SLIME-COVERED) newborn is permitted for half a second. Once a swift and dignified birth scene is over and done with, audiences could resume the ancillary (yet more appealing) storyline of, say: the “rebel” nun thinks about eating cake during Lent, but doesn’t; the nurses unanimously agree that tea without milk is absolutely barbaric; the convent travels internationally to provide emergency aid to a destitute country — Scotland.
Without extreme alterations, your show should be re-categorized as horror. Psychological thriller might also work. Anyways, then at least people could mentally prepare themselves for watching a talcum faced mum who’s yet to fully recover from the undernourishment of wartime rations almost die from blood loss, quickly followed by a close-up of the infant being strangled by a Formaldehyde-poached fettuccine noodle i.e., the DISGUSTING and UNNECESSARY umbilical cord that gets too much screen time in EVERY EPISODE.
I’ll take this opportunity to point out the operative word in your show title is “call.” Say it with me — “Call the Midwife.” Not “Listen-to-the-Torturous-Gritty-Tendon-Crunch-as-the-Umbilical-Cord-is-Snipped-By the Midwife.” Not “Unmarried-Woman-Dies-of-Infection-Due-to-Unmentionable-Back-Alley-Procedure-Despite-Medicines-Administered-By the Midwife.” And yet, from what I have observed, your show would be more suitably titled “Placenta-Splatter-the-Freshly-Starched-Uniform-of the Midwife.” Maybe the BBC needs to consider entering the Med Kink genre.
I truly believe “Call the Midwife” has the potential to be a non-nauseating show once this bloody (literaly!) “miracle of life” agenda is terminated. The only miracle I’ve witnessed thus far is that I haven’t died from excessive vomiting.
BBC, I beg thee — sit down, have a cuppa, and ask yourselves: does this FICTIONAL show about midwifery actually need these REALISTIC and REVOLTING birth scenes? If improvements are not made, I will have no other choice but to switch my viewership to PBS!
Have mercy,
An American In Peril
