The Heart Guy

    The third season of The Heart Guy (Doctor Doctor) is the best season so far.  Pretty much all the characters have improved to some extent.  All of them have gone through difficult situations and made important decisions in their lives.  This season is also more serious than previous ones, but there is humor too.  All this together is what makes season three the best so far.

    The Knight family will never be the same.  Watching the stars with his wife Meryl (Tina Bursill), Jim Knight (Steve Bisley) has a heart attack and dies.  Meryl is filled with grief and guilt because she could not save him.  The only glimmer of comfort she has is when her heart surgeon son, Hugh (Rodger Corser), tells her even he would not have been able to save his father.

    With Jim’s death, Hugh inherits the farm, along with the debt.  Hugh has no interest in the farm.  He has plans to leave the town of Whyhope, move back to Sydney, and continue his life there.  His brother, Matt (Ryan Johnson), who has been running the farm for years, wants to make changes now Jim is not around to tell him he can’t.  The problem is he’s running up against Ajax (Matt Castley), the youngest brother who is also actually Hugh’s son.  Ajax, who was very close to his father, wants to keep everything the way Jim did.  He even goes to the extreme of undoing everything Matt does.  When Hugh refuses to take care of the Ajax problem, Matt decides to stop working on the farm.  He turns his full attention to the bar he runs.      

    Once Matt leaves, Hugh does try to take on the farming tasks himself.  His skills are in the medical field, though.  Not with farming.  It is a field he is eager to get back to in Sydney, now that his probation for bad behavior is over.  It is only the situation with his family keeping him in Whyhope.

    Hugh being in town does not sit well with hospital administrator, Penny Cartwright (Hayley McElhinney).  She and Hugh have acted on their strong feelings for each other.  As much as she wants to be with Hugh, Penny finds she can’t.  This is something Hugh does not understand, which is why it would be best if they weren’t near each other.

    The reason Penny cannot be with Hugh is because his ex-wife Harriet (Genevieve Hegney) is pregnant with his child. 

    At first, after receiving some self-serving advice, Hugh decides he will have nothing to do with the child.  Penny will not have anything to do with someone who could abandon their child in that way.  Then, when Hugh changes his mind and agrees to co-parent, Penny still will not be with him.  He is too involved with Harriet, to the point it makes Penny uncomfortable.  But not uncomfortable enough, as their relationship does have a few restarts.     

    Between the awkwardness with Penny, Harriet’s pressure to move to Sydney, the farm debts, and his own desire to get back to his old life, Hugh eventually breaks.  He puts the farm up for sale without consulting any of his family.  This does not go well.

    Unbeknownst to Hugh, his family has been coming up with ideas to save the farm.  One is to turn part of the farm into a cemetery.  But, no matter what the idea is, Hugh refuses to listen.  He sells the farm to someone Meryl despises, driving Meryl to kill the deal any way she can.

    While not happy about the sale at first, Matt comes to accept it once his wife, Charlie (Nicole da Silva), leaves him.  Charlie has finally revealed she does not want children, something Matt greatly wants.  Yet, she is willing to become the guardian of Ivy (Anabel Wolfe), the teenage girl her father left behind during his visit.  Matt cannot understand how Charlie could want to take charge of a girl abandoned by her mother and her mother’s boyfriend (Charlie’s father), and not want a child of her own.  This conversation is what makes Charlies see how badly Matt wants a child.  She decides to separate from him so Matt can find the life he wants.

    The separation devastates Matt, but he soon finds himself in a relationship with an old friend, April (Miranda Tapsell).  Matt is torn between his love for Charlie and his feelings for April.  Charlie is in Bali, taking Ivy back to her mother.  Matt wants to go there to talk things out with her, expect things keep preventing him from doing so.

    While Hugh’s child is yet to be born (and is being kept a secret from most), another baby is being welcomed into the family.  Ajax and his wife, Hayley (Chloe Bayliss), are young parents to begin with.  They are even younger when the child is born prematurely.  Hayley was having severe health problems and the baby had to be delivered immediately.  Hayley believes the difficulty with the pregnancy and the delivery was God’s way of punishing her for being pregnant before her wedding day.

    There is so much to talk about with this season.  I haven’t even gotten to hospital receptionist Betty Bell (Belinda Bromilow) and her relationship with police office Darren Ngata (Uli Latukefu).  Or all hospital manager Ken Liu (Charles Wu) and nurse Mia Holston (Brittany Scott Clark) get up to.  There is so much going on at all times.

    As I said, pretty much all the characters improved this season.  Ajax not so much at first.  He would exhibit really bad behavior when he was upset or grieving.  Other than that, he was a good character.

    Meryl was drastically different.  With the death of her husband, a lot of her conniving ways were put on hold as she was in deep grief.  The conniving did, sadly, reappear by the end of the season.

    Hugh was off and on.  He could be a really good, caring man one minute, then turn back to his old selfish ways the next.  It depended on what was going on.  His behavior was not helped by the fact people kept interrupting him during surgery.  I felt badly for the people who had their procedures disturbed by Hugh’s family and personal life.

    Matt I wanted to hug and tell him somehow it was all going to be okay.  He never wins!  Matt seems to be an overall good, caring man, yet he keeps getting kicked, figuratively.  Charlie still does not seem to actually like her husband.  It isn’t until she lets Matt go that it appears she cares anything about him.       

    With so much happening in this season, I have to wonder what is going to be packed into the fourth.  There weren’t any direct cliffhangers, but there are some things left unresolved.  Things that could go in all sorts of directions.  It just depends on where the writers want to take them.

A Roll of the Dice/Artwork by Kate Dorsey