Bomb Girls – Maybe we can still win this.

Bomb Girls: 2x07 Party Line.

“I meant to write about death, only life came breaking in as usual” 

Virginia Woolf, Diary, 17 February 1922.

Party Line, starting six weeks after the last episode left off, is set during the aftermath of the failed Dieppe Raid in August 1942 that cost the lives of thousands of Canadian soldiers. The people back home depend entirely on the news reports to try and figure out how the attack went, but the episode also portrays the changing nature of media, and the way the perception of war at the home front is starting to shift. Radio – now even portable and even more inescapable, ending the idea of an entire family huddled in front of it in the living room - and newspapers are the primary source for news, but as we find out from Lorna’s quest in the episode, more and more households are also equipped with telephone lines that provide a more direct connection to the soldiers away from home, and possibly stories from the front lines that aren’t filtered and provide a more immediate picture of the reality of war. The promise of it – of having this connection to the outer world, but also joining into something – makes Lorna giddy and excited (she lunges at it, squealing, once it’s installed, almost pushing Bob aside, and then talks softly to it as if it were a beloved pet – a long and two short!). 

Vera: It’s a world away
Bob: Not if you got a telephone

There are hourly news reports, and as the days progress, it becomes increasingly obvious, especially to Bob, from the wording and the tone, that the raid was a failure (his interpretation of it, after Lorna asks him to be honest – “If it was really a victory, they’d be singing a different tune. All this talk about soldiers’ bravery, nobody’s saying a word about achieved objectives, and that’s bad. It means they’re dampening our expectations, it means they are gearing us down before a steep drop ahead.”) Once they realize the seriousness of the situation, and the fact that their son Stanley who is in the infantry was most likely involved in the raid – and even more so once Stanley is listed as missing – the telephone almost becomes an instrument of torture. The immediate connection to the outer world is no longer exciting or hopeful, it bears the potential of bad news delivered instantly, after a painfully loud ring (and anyone who has ever gotten such a call knows how terrible phones can be). The situation is made even more unbearable by the fact that it’s a party line, so not only is there the possibility of bad news at any time, but the phone also keeps ringing for other people, slowly eating away at Lorna’s sanity. 

New technology is a blessing and a curse. It changes the way that the people back home participate in the war, it changes how the war is communicated, it makes victories and defeats more immediate, including the terrifying lists of names, missing and dead, read aloud – but it also brings joy. Stanley finally calls, ending all of their worries, at least for the moment. 

Party Line is also an episode about food (and vegetation in general, things that grow and nurture). That makes for a rather beautiful contrast to the brutal (and mechanical/technological) nature of war, but the relationship between the two are more complex. Food is precarious in times of war: it’s not scarce yet, but the characters have been dealing with limited choices for a while, leading to compromises like Lorna’s beef tongue and the pig ears that Bob would rather not eat in this episode. It’s interesting that the two characters most connected to food (in terms of preparing it and consuming it) are Lorna and Marco – Lorna is the one character who literally feeds a family, both by earning the money to buy food and by cooking it, and for Marco, the different food that he eats is a connection to his Italian heritage. It’s a heritage that has been a burden for the past years, but when it comes to food, it’s always been portrayed as one of the more joyful aspects of being Marco – while Bob and Lorna despair over their ersatz food, he gets secret deliveries of olive oil, while the other workers at VicMu are suspicious that their beef stew comes with a dampening dose of saltpetre (an actual urban legend), he shares his cheese and olives with Vera on the roof of the factory.  In general, it’s often how he makes meaningful connections with people, from Lorna having dinner with him and his mother, to the way it’s always been something he’s shared with Vera. Food is also a business: last season, Gladys struggled for Rollie to accept the fact that he had a responsibility to provide quality rations to the soldiers, that the business of government contracts isn’t just about profit margins – and she knows that soldiers on the front obsess about food (and now it’s a blooming business for the Withams, corporately branded with Gladys’ face). The relationship between citizens and food has patriotic connotations as well; economizing the use of food helps the war effort, planting victory gardens is one of the ways that people on the home front can participate in the struggle for victory. On a more personal level, characters share food – Lorna successfully seduces the telephone installer into connecting them after all her previous applications have been turned down with the promise of a home-cooked meal (“Juicy… chops… on the pan… tonight.”), Kate and Ivan go for pancakes (off-screen) at the beginning of the episode, strawberries serve both as an instrument of seduction and a metaphor for the growing relationship between Teresa and Betty (and as a great contrast, a basket of victory garden vegetables is Kate’s and Betty’s complicated and imbalanced relationship made visible), Lorna and Bob go for a proper romantic dinner after worrying about their son and finding out that he is alive. Finally – and this is the most beautiful way these two motifs could have come together – Bob decides to make the literal move from the newsstand (as a provider of news) to helping his brother with the harvest. 

Finally, Party Line is an episode about death in war – it starts with James’ funeral in Massachusetts, where Gladys gets a cold reception from James’ mother, who blames her for his decision to join the military (“Yes, he loved her. He enlisted to impress her. And to think we could have kept him out of this war.”) Adele is reminded of the death of her own son (“With every death, you brother’s passing comes crushing down on her.”, explains her husband, and we see several instances of Adele’s emotional struggle over the episode). Gladys grieves his passing and blames herself for his death, both because of his physical presence in harm’s way during the phone call and because of what she still considers her betrayal of him, since she intended to break up with him. Gladys’ life has stopped, she’s a cooped up in the Witham mansion as her mother has been since her brother’s death, stuck in constantly remembering every detail of their relationship, holding on to the only thing she still has of him. Adele warns her that she will become like her if she never forgives herself (now that he can no longer forgive her). For her life to continue she has to come to terms with his death, and her guilt – and because Bomb Girls is always about friendships, about companionship, about people sticking together in trying times, it’s Vera and Kate who basically drag her out of the house and back to the factory (“You’re walking out or we’re moving in”). She successfully distracts herself from her own problems by going back to her well-established detective skills, and helps Vera investigate the curious case of the missing TNT. 

Gladys: Last time I spoke to James, I was ready to end it.
Vera: That’s not why he died, Gladys.
Gladys: I could hear these bombs falling. If I had not made that phone call he would never have been in the line of fire.
Vera: Do not beat yourself up. You fell out of love. It’s not supposed to happen during a war, but it does.

Vera Burr! It’s the first time that anyone has named what happened to Gladys – falling out of love with someone she still cared for, because she was changing her circumstances and growing as a person and discovering new aspects of herself. James’ friend, arrived to bring back his car to his family, gives her the advice to “find your horizon, something to look at, and you put one foot in front of the next, even if you’re limping.” – which in the most literal way she does at the end of the episode, find something to look at that both reminds her of James and stands for growth and change. It is “something to stand beyond him”. She decides she is ready to go back to the life she’s built (“I’ve never felt so alive. I’m not going back to drifting around the house all day” is what she said in the very first episode, after she started working at the factory). 

Adele: Are you sure you’re ready?
Gladys: If I stay here I will never be. You and I, we rattle around this house, we never talk about anything, we never look at what really happened.
Adele: What good would that do?
Gladys: We might finally get better. Try and get some fresh air.

This seems to be the first time that they truly connect, mother and daughter, over their shared loss and Gladys’ attempt to get better and maybe help her mother to finally escape the house (which has this strange doubling meaning for Adele Witham, she rules it, it’s her domain, but it also traps her) as well, to join the world outside.

The other death is the potential death, the possible death, of Stanley, Lorna and Bob’s son. It’s a harrowing portrayal of two people struggling with the horrors of not knowing, and not being able to do anything but wait for news, trying to read the truth in reports from Operation Jubilee and understand what really happened, what the likelihood of losing their son is. It’s remarkable how far they’ve come as a couple, after the tragedies of the past, and absolutely stunningly acted – the anxiety, the way they are glued to the telephone, unable to do anything else, Bob bearing the burden of his knowledge, his insight into what war does, Lorna finally realizing that in this case, her optimism isn’t a comfort, and she would rather hear the truth from him, to be better prepared. In another great scene, Betty overhears her conversation with Bob after Stanley is listed as missing – and they are both such private people, and so unlikely to be physically affectionate, and yet Betty has this instinct to comfort her, and they hug for a moment (if slightly awkwardly). It’s a beautiful parallel to Lorna comforting Gladys, and I think of all the girls at VicMu, Lorna feels most maternal about Betty (and still, they talk about work, because it’s who they both are, profoundly, proud and focused and reliable workers). 

Their relief when Stanley finally does call to tell them that he is okay, that he was adrift in the ocean after so much went wrong in the raid, is incredible, and again, beautifully acted. Bob breaks out in tears and hands the receiver to Lorna because he’s unable to speak. “Thank you god. We’ve been blessed. It’s okay.” 

Marco, meanwhile, has just made precarious peace with constantly being seen as an outsider in the factory, but is brutally reminded of his position when Vera’s detective work makes him into the prime suspect for the TNT theft. He himself assumes that his friend Frankie is somehow involved, and tellingly, Akins accuses both him and Leon but not Buster, who isn’t Italian or black. This is as much about Vera’s growing affection for him as it is about Marco’s relationship with the factory – she doesn’t want him to be the perpetrator, and Gladys affirms her doubts that Marco wouldn’t smuggle and steal, and has the decisive realization that Buster is the person responsible, since he – not being Italian or black – is the one who actually leaves the factory. They catch him red-handed. Later, after Marco is freed, Vera tells him how they figured it out – and they get too close, and end up kissing. 

Vera: Kaboom.
Marco: Sorry.
Vera: Just. Don’t do it again. We’re friends, right?
Marco: Friends, of course.

This almost feels like a parallel to Kate and Betty, if Kate and Betty weren’t additionally struggling with so many other things – Vera and Marco have a difficult time creating boundaries and sticking to them, and Vera very much values her friendship with him (and assumes that anything more than a friendship would be endlessly more complicated). But it’s not like you can unexplode a bomb, or turn back the clock on feelings.

And then there’s Kate and Betty, not directly confronting what happened between them six weeks ago, stuck in a strange anxious holding pattern. They harvest the vegetables in the garden together (where Kate needs to be told to pluck the tomatoes “gently”, because for some reason she’s too agitated or nervous to focus on the work), until an hourly news report reminds Kate of a date with Ivan – who, she says, would appreciate her outfit, since he “said something about wanting me looking like a farmer’s daughter.” It’s just a little remark, but more informative in the context of the episode (also, remember who actually IS a farmer’s daughter…) Ivan is in no position to understand that any references to her father are problematic. He’ll later directly address the fact that he knows so little of her family, and she will respond with as few details as possible, but he persists. He also addresses her as “Katie”, which, considering how important names are, and how she already has the split identity of Marion/Kate, seems significant, especially if he is trying (if not for any malicious reasons) to shape her according to his idea of a normal girl. A normal girl, who speaks about her family, misses her brothers, would be delighted to have them over for the weekend – and as perfect as Kate’s mask is starting to be (it barely drops once, in this episode), it’s also becoming increasingly clear that this relationship is a ticking time bomb (and Kate’s “That’s why you need distractions like this. It’s how we start feeling better” to Gladys reveals how she feels about being with him). Ivan will never meet her brothers, because they know her as Marion Rowley. Her father didn’t just have a bad fall. There are scars on her back that come with all the stories she can’t tell him. There’s only one person who already knows these stories. The only point in the episode where Kate’s façade drops visibly is when Carol refers to them as “a good team” – at least it’s more obvious than later in the scene with Teresa, it’s a shared moment because they both think about what the remark means, and how everything else happening in the episode shows that they are currently really anything but a good team. 

For example, Betty is the one initially dragging the basket of vegetables, intended as a hostess present for Adele Witham, into the boarding house, which is heavy, so Kate helps her and they do well for about five seconds, until one Sergeant Teresa appears, and Betty is so flustered that she almost drops the basket, and then resists Kate’s attempt to have them escape the situation as quickly as possible by deciding to stay with Teresa, leaving Kate to drag the basket away all by herself. Like with Kate’s performance at the fund raiser last time, Betty chooses to walk away, and it’s almost like she is telling Kate that she has every right to do so if she does the same to her for Ivan. 

Betty: Kate, you go, I’ll catch up
Kate: Betty, we promised.
Betty: Just like you and the gardening, Kate. I’ll pull my share later.

Betty stays with Teresa, who looks at her in the most endearing and adoring way possible. They exchange an awkward but promising “hi”. 

I think Betty’s “How can this happen so fast” is still with her. A year ago, with Kate, she first started to feel like buying a house and sharing it with someone she truly cared for was a possibility – but the idea of it was connected to one person – and now, with Teresa, it all seems so very feasible, but Betty isn’t sure if Teresa is the right person. Teresa is right there, in her room, on her bed, like it’s the most normal thing in the world, and Betty sits on a chair, nervously tapping her foot, thinking about walls again, and neighbours, until Teresa magically makes strawberries appear. 

Teresa: The littlest ones are the sweetest, don’t you think?
Betty: I think it’s cause we know they won’t be around too long.
Teresa: If you want I’ll ship out right now, I don’t have to….
Betty: No. Just a different kind of miracle, I guess.

It’s an ambiguous sentence, “they know they won’t be around too long” – it could mean that their season ends, they literally go away, or that they grow bigger, and less sweet, which also works as a metaphor for her relationship with Teresa: that it may become more complicated, less easy, less giggly, if it starts being more serious. And things with Teresa move at a surprisingly quick pace (and I think Teresa cares about Betty a lot, judging by the way she looks at her) – she quite literally marches into Betty’s life. They do some processing over breakfast the next day. 

Betty: It’s just more than I expected.
Teresa: I’m a soldier, Betty. I could be shipped out at any time.
Betty: So we make hay. I know the drill; every girl here’s doing it. I just never thought I would.

Teresa constantly reassures Betty that she could disappear at any moment, but I think Betty, by the end of the conversation, is looking forward to seeing if this will work – it’s her piece of the cake, doing what every other girl there is doing, “making hay” (again with the vegetation metaphors), turning the situation to her advantage, even though she’s lived all her life thinking that the world was geared against her. 

They all come together in the end. Vera told Gladys that the thing she values so much because it’s the only thing she still has of James is nothing but a hunk of metal, an inanimate car – so instead, she brings them a tree, a living growing thing, which they plant in a communal effort, to commemorate James’ death, in the victory garden. 

Random notes: 

Beautiful scene with the tree aside, I still want to know how that worked: did Gladys and the Captain randomly come upon a full-grown tree (“yes, that one”) while driving and then dig it up in broad daylight? (or more realistically, Gladys would have “coordinated” the digging up of the massive freaking tree). That maple was hardly a sapling…

Same with the strawberry hat trick. HOW DOES IT WORK?  (unless Teresa is actually magic, which I would also be absolutely fine with, explanation-wise).

Nothing greater than two people comfortable enough with each other to giggle over boner jokes.

VicMu has a really suspicious number of detective clubs, I’m starting to feel like any one of them is eventually going to breed a caped crusader, investigating crime in the streets of Toronto (It’s VERA. I’m talking about Vera. And her side-kick Frowny Frederic).

And talking about the latter, Carol had a really fantastic run this episode. From her passive-aggressive way of trying to diminish Betty and Kate’s relationship with Gladys while at the same time asking them for help (“She needs her friends. Not that I’m not her best friend, and she has plenty of friends at the tennis club and such, still… […]She’s stuck in that house with her mother with no plans to leave. She needs help. She needs you.”) to revealing that she will be performing the role of Frederic in the Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance (scandalizing Kate in the process, because of course any breaking up of strict gender roles would be problematic for her), to trying to save the tea party from gloom and doom, to the delivery of the final complimentary insult to Vera (“I’m so happy for you Vera. You need that extra dollar much more than I do.”) You’re growing on me, Carol Demers, well done.

Adele Witham is more emotionally accessible this episode, especially her loving (for once) exchange with Gladys, but she’s also fantastically entertaining when she’s drunk – WHAT SPLENDID GOURDS! And she came armed! With vodka!

There’s always that double meaning of “our boys”, which is a good way to think of the war – as both a greater political struggle that involved the entire country, and a very personal one for the families and friends of the soldiers fighting it. 

Bob:  I’m doing this for myself. Some time apart could be good for both of us. I’m playing the long game here, Lor. I’m hoping that we maybe, maybe we can still win this.

Another example – the “we” is both the country as a whole, and the extremely intimate “we” of them as a couple that has survived a lot and still loves each other very much and is constantly figuring out how to be happy. 

I really like the contrast between the Withams house having this connotation of a prison, almost, containing severely emotionally damaged people hiding from the world, and the Corbett’s apartment, now even more open and connected to the world with the new telephone. 

ELLIE, TELL YOUR FRIENDS TO STOP CALLING SO BLOODY EARLY!!

During the conversation about family between Ivan and Kate, it almost seems like about halfway through they start being out of synch with the other dancers, and regardless of whether that was intentional or not, it works fantastically with the dialogue. Once Ivan starts pushing Kate to reveal more about herself, and stumbles on all the things she can’t tell him (and doesn’t trust him to know), she starts losing her footing. 

Also, of ALL THE POSSIBLE PET NAMES, to go with Ivy. Oh Kate.

I’m still giggling over the “morning after” scene – Betty discovering that all the girls are wearing their best dresses and hats for the “army boys” only to discover an army of women, led by Sergeant Hill. A thrill and a half indeed…

Also Lorna’s struggle with correctly addressing Teresa as “Sergeant” and accepting that these women really are soldiers. Times are changing.

The visual quote of that famous picture in the last scene is brilliant, but it’s also interesting to think about the fact that it ISN’T a flag, but a living tree, something that will grow bigger and stronger if it’s properly cared for.