May We All Be So Fortunate As To Be Bereaved Around Nuns

Last week, an episode of The Good Wife found the titular Alicia allowing herself to mourn -- fully, and at long last -- a death that made her a widow of sorts. Unfortunately for Alicia, her position as both the name partner in a new and somewhat struggling law firm and the (actual) wife of a state governor constrains her ability to grieve in the way that she needs to. She still has clients who need her to represent them, and public appearances to make; for most of the time we've known her, the brave face she needs for these duties is the one we've seen her wearing the most. When she does fall apart, it's a necessary step in her healing, but one she succumbs to in private, and in shame. And I hope Alicia didn't switch from her Darkness At Noon marathon to Call The Midwife to see how different things might be for her if she'd just made the choice, instead of going to law school, to live in a convent. In England. In 1959.

Yes, there are mothers and babies again this week. Sister Winifred finally gets called to assist with a delivery, and Cynthia, able to detect her extremely obvious discomfort with the process, tries to mentor her and build her confidence: it is thus, when Cynthia brings Sister Winifred on a home visit, that they learn one of their patients is, in addition her pregnancy, dealing with the full-time care of her own mother, an agoraphobic Holocaust survivor. You know, the usual light and breezy fare!

But the baby stories fade into the background after a terrible accident: Alec, after a misunderstanding with Jenny, falls through a rickety flight of stairs in an old warehouse he's working on. Alec's colleague Clive hauls ass to bring Dr. Turner and PC Noakes to the scene, and Jenny's still in the middle of being mad about her misapprehension of Clive's suggestion that a planned weekend in Brighton with Alec would find the two of them sharing a hotel room when she's called to the hospital; there, she hears from Cynthia that while Dr. Turner managed to intervene well enough to keep Alec's shattered femur from necessitating an amputation, an even worse injury to Alec's ankle meant that he's lost his foot. Jenny has a rough night, but gets to see Alec the next day, and of course all is forgiven, because she's already been through the terror of thinking she's lost him and can now luxuriate in the relief of his recovery.

Then Alec dies.

I know I keep harping on the almost-all-female nature of the show, but (a) it's just so rare in pop culture, and (b) when the male characters are so beside the point that one of their deaths can happen offscreen, I feel like I'm supposed to notice. Alec's death is reported to Jenny secondhand in a way that -- as on The Good Wife, actually -- it feels like it might not actually be true, until we see a sheet-covered corpse in a hospital and realize that it definitely is. Unlike The Good Wife, however, this bereaved protagonist is surrounded by nurturing women who close ranks around her. Even as Jenny, like Alicia, doesn't let herself boil over with a show of tears right away, Jenny doesn't have to get back to her real life right away, and if her immediate response to Alec's death is near-catatonia, then the women in her life are going to let that take its course.

Trixie's going to bring tea and sit with her, and they don't have to talk.

Jenny's going to try to go back to work to distract herself, and Sister Julienne is going to straight-up refuse to hear of it.

And when Mrs. Rubin, agoraphobe no more, stops by -- partly to thank the midwives for their help in delivering her grandchild, partly to give Jenny her condolences, and partly to say a last farewell to Poplar before a move to Golders Green. "I have a thing about goodbyes," she says. "I didn't have the chance with so many of my own. Now I like to make sure it's done proper. So, I say: goodbye." (It doesn't look like much on the page, but the actress, Beverly Klein, underplays it nicely.) Mrs. Rubin's kindness -- after surviving horrors that dwarf Jenny's, but make her no less sympathetic -- will finally be what lets Jenny break through her own internal defenses and actually feel what she's feeling.

As Jenny sobs that she didn't get a chance to say goodbye, Mrs. Rubin shrugs off her daughter and comforts Jenny: "You will feel better than this. Maybe not yet. But you will." "Will I?" Jenny chokes. "Yes," Mrs. Rubin assures her. "You just keep living. Until you are alive again."

Last week gave Jenny a fun night with all her girls. This week, it's substitute moms getting her through a shockingly terrible time. After Mrs. Rubin has given her advice that will let her get through one more day, Sister Julienne prevails and sends her off for a few contemplative weeks at the order's Mother House (see what I mean?), and all the nuns and midwives assemble to wish her safe travels and hope she'll be happy again soon.

Getting drunk with Diane was probably a fun time for Alicia in the last Good Wife, but maybe she'd like to have access to a Mother House to unwind in too, instead of knocking herself out with over-the-counter drugs, bingeing on crime dramas, and planning all the while how she's going to manage her imminent reintegration into her life's various ugly competitions. And it's hard not to be horrified by the assemblage of pricks and boneheads in what passes for Alicia's support system when the previous hour of TV bathes us in the beatific glow cast by Jenny's circle of loving sisters and Sisters. (And since we're comparing them side by side: I would pay a lot of money to watch Sister Evangelina tell some shit to David Lee.)