All Creatures Great and Small Season 5 Episode 1 Recap

What are we going to do at the end of this show? I forget about it halfway through the year, and then in December I’m like, “Isn’t this just another season of All creatures does it happen? And it is! We’re on season five and I just hope we get at least five more. Preferably at least three of them will focus on the domestic bliss of the newly married Mrs. Hall and Siegfried. (It will happen one day; don’t take that away from me).

James trains pilots, I believe? Looks like he’s training pilots. But maybe also train? I don’t know military things. He flies planes and his crew is very green. He is ready to make a long-distance run to Scotland when he passes out. James has brucellosis! Yeah, that’s fine; I also forgot what it was. He was checking all the cows for this bacterial infection last season, and then they were very concerned that Helen had contracted it (but she didn’t). But it turns out James did. So now he is hospitalized in the military hospital.

Meanwhile, at home, everyone is very busy. I’m not going to lie; this felt like a scattered episode. Lots of little things happening everywhere. Jeremy Swift from Ted Lasso Of fame is Mr. Bosworth, apparently responsible for the region’s civil defense. Mr. Bosworth runs into Mrs. Pumphrey, who, thank goodness, has Tricki Woo with her, as well as Tricki’s elaborate cushion. Bosworth needs more vegetables grown and more guards for interdiction duties. Also, the first Land Girl has arrived, but we don’t see her this week. They probably decided that the episode already had enough little plot threads.

Helen and James’ baby is named Jimmy and I love him. Hi Jimmy. I don’t remember how I felt about babies before I had one, which is a shame because I’m now extremely unbearable around them. They are so cute. Jimmy has a little knit outfit and it’s the best. Siegfried is kind of in the same boat as me and adores Jimmy. Why is Siegfried the best? They can get rid of almost every character on the show or send them anywhere for a season or two, and I will weather this storm, but if Siegfried leaves, all is lost. He’s our grumpy presenter. Plus, he and Mrs. Hall are sitting next to each other in their matching chairs while she knits and they look extremely married. Thank you for this visual, show; I enjoyed it.

I’m sure we all remember Richard, Tristan’s replacement. Richard trains dogs to shake hands and sets up effective systems for the practice. You are doing a great job, Richard. Siegfried thinks so too and puts him in charge of the clinic for a day. Unfortunately, right after Siegfried talks about his faith in Richard, there is a mix-up with a not-dead cat.

Dot, who has a connection to Helen that I can’t understand, has had a hysterectomy and is recovering with no one but her cat Frisk for company. And Helen, I suppose, when she visited. But the next time we see Dot, she’s dropping off her now-dead cat at the office and asking them to get rid of it. Richard makes a note to call the slaughterhouse to pick it up. What will the slaughterhouse do with it!! A slaughterhouse is a slaughterhouse! Will his dead cat be thrown into the offal pile? Disgusting note: My hometown of Chicago has a part of the Chicago River called “Bubbly Creek” because the Union Stock Yards dumped its waste there and the gases made the water bubble. I had an ex-girlfriend who was a crew member, and they trained there, and she said if you fell in the water you had to go to the hospital.

Anyway, it’s okay because Frisk isn’t dead. He escapes from the dead cat’s box and Mrs. Hall finds him on a chair. Siegfried is very disappointed that Richard was the cause of the cat’s murder without Frisk’s successful escape, and Richard, in turn, looks like he is crying over the loss of Siegfried’s good opinion. It’s a difficult time for everyone except Frisk, who, once again, is doing quite well.

I guess we can return to James (I watch this show for the sick cows!! Not the planes!), who has been informed that he has brucellosis and his commanding officer doesn’t think James is fit to fly. James is upset because they replaced him with a bad pilot, and he feels useless now. He is told that if he is fit enough he can dig ditches, which he does! He goes off to dig ditches for a complaining farmer. Why are they digging the gap? I don’t know. Once again, I’m here for the animals. And thank goodness the complaining farmer has an upset cow. James goes to see him and helps free a stuck calf. Now he feels useful again! This is a good turnaround for James as the Bad Pilot crashed and James lost much of his crew. Wow, that sounds really harsh and it’s something I don’t want to think about in this already difficult January 2025. Let’s all look at the baby cow! Nothing bad can happen while we watch the baby cows.

James returns home to help the war effort by becoming a veterinarian. Now, as for the whole brucellosis thing, the real James Herriot left the army after having surgery for an anal fistula, but I guess the show didn’t want to talk about that. And that’s right; I’ll give them that. So James, without anal fistula, goes home and surprises everyone, including Helen, in their Helenish sweater and blazer. He is there just in time to hear how Dot’s cat appeared to be dead because it had ingested her morphine. Everyone has a good laugh.

Mrs. Hall and Mrs. Pumphrey push Mr. Bosworth to let Mrs. Hall become a blackout watchman. He doesn’t think it’s a job for women, but Mrs Hall was a Wren during the First World War, and she refuses the idea that she can’t “cycle around Darrowby and tell people to shut up their curtains.” Siegfried finds out when he sees her in her uniform and he is SO PROUD OF HER. I love them.

We end with James going up to see Helen and Jimmy and the baby is in the bed. I don’t want to get into a contentious conversation about co-sleeping in the final moments of this recap, but my sister-in-law works in a pediatric intensive care unit, and all I can think of when I see a little baby probably on the no point sleeping in a bed between two o’clock. adults are: “Agghhhhhhhhh!” » The stories I was told. But I checked, and Jimmy lives to adulthood, so it’s all good. We are all fine.