As the second episode of Wakefield begins, we see a young Nik Katira (Rudi Dharmalingam) running through a field. Once it gets dark, the girls come looking for him. When they find him cowering nearby, it is an adult Nik. Then, we watch as a man and woman have intercourse and she tells him to eat her. Trevor (Harry Greenwood) opens a closet door and finds them having sex. Genevieve (Harriet Dyer) pleads with the man not to stop but he runs off and her husband Raff (Ryan Corr) shows up. Rohan Achebe (Pacharo Mzembe) takes Gene back to her room and keeps her there. She asks to see Dr. Wells before Raff comes in and takes over for Rohan. He tries to get Genevieve dressed but she has other interests. When he refuses to have sex with her, she calls him boring. Next, Nik finds Kareena Wells (Geraldine Hakewill) trying to kill a bug. He interrupts and asks her to check on Genevieve because Rohan is scared of her and terrible at his job.

Kareena refutes that and Nik pleads with her to at least review Gene’s medications. As soon as she visits Gene, she is bombarded with questions about male genitalia. Genevieve doesn’t think anything is going to help because there is no cure for love. Moments later, Raff talks to Nik outside about Gene’s condition. He admits he can sense it coming and she wants sex all day. Besides sex, Genevieve is also hungry for music which she plays really loud. She also likes eating and plants since she is a landscape gardener. Linda Crowley (Mandy McElhinney) interrupts and asks Raff to come with her. They enter a private room before Linda explains the cleaner has been sacked so Raff won’t need to worry about that. Raff says it wasn’t his fault. Linda insists Gene will need watching 24 hours a day so they’ve assigned her to special care and Nik will be her nurse. Nik finishes a phone call and attends to Genevieve.

It doesn’t take long before she strips her pants off and Nik has to force her to put them back on. Later, he tells Collette he thinks Linda knows he is applying for the job. He suspects Linda assigned him to special Genevieve for that reason and asks if they can swap responsibilities. She agrees and he takes over handing out medications. Paul tries to tell Pete (Sam Simmons) he wrote Black Sabbath’s first album before he is sent away. Pete tells them about the patient with the biggest unit so Collette is ordered to keep Gene away from him. Raff returns to Genevieve with $3,000 worth of lingerie he found in the back of the cupboard. He reminds her she agreed to check everything with him before using the credit card. Collette agrees to try to get the items returned. Next, Gene asks Raff why he wouldn’t let her be someone she admires. He is confident she won’t admire it later and will likely regret it.

She is concerned she’ll be there forever but Rohan and Kareena suggest otherwise. She begins rambling about the well she saw and says she is love. Trevor and another patient play with the lingerie while Colette tries to get the store to take the items back. Then, Kareena talks to Raff about the difficulty of the situation. He admits this is the easy part and it only gets harder when Gene crashes. Dr. Wells says she ordered records from the hospitals Gene has been to recently so they can look for patterns and prevent a relapse. Raff admits he is staying around because he loves her. Collette lets Raff know the store has agreed to take the items back and he immediately thanks her. Gene calls Collette her lady in waiting. Once Raff and Gene walk away, Nik encourages Collette to ask Raff if he has a brother. She already has and he doesn’t. Raff tells Gene to behave before he leaves the hospital. She immediately finds a man with his hand down his pants and begins unbuttoning her shirt.

Her crazy vision comes to an abrupt end when Collette screams for Nik to grab the sheet. Nik believes he can distract Gene by taking her outside and letting her play in the garden. Once outside, Nik and Collette help her plant a small fern of sorts. Gene goes to a weird place in her mind and ends up grabbing Nik’s crotch. Raff arrives in time to watch before walking in the opposite direction. When Nik steps inside, he finds Raff crying in the closet. He confronts him and Raff says this isn’t Genevieve. He tells Nik about Genevieve’s good traits. Then, we see Kareena who says she cannot come and we begin to see things from her perspective. We watch her run while she talks to the doctor about the problem. She admits she has never had a problem with orgasms before and David thinks it has something to do with him. They’ve tried different things but nothing has worked. She can’t even get there on her own.

She finishes the course with a new record. Moments later, Nik walks in as her app crashes and she can’t sync her fitness data. He learns she has been racing against other peoples’ times and now they’ll never know about her record-setting run. Nik warns her that Tessa (Bessie Holland) has been refusing to see her mother. Kareena goes to Tessa’s room and finds Belle (Heather Mitchell) trying to get in. She sends Belle upstairs before trying to find out why Tessa won’t see her mother. Tessa complains that her mother wants to sign paperwork and get rid of her stuff. She explains she needs her mother to leave her stuff alone and the stuff in her head to stop. Dr. Wells believes it will stop since it has stopped before. James (Dan Wyllie) interrupts to ask Tessa if she wants to work on the puzzle more but she doesn’t. Tessa tells Kareena she’ll never speak to her mother again if she does anything to her stuff. Kareena goes to her mother and tells her she isn’t ready to give permission yet.

Belle doesn’t want to do this anymore. She used to want her daughter to get a job and get married but now she just wants her to leave the house and talk to someone. When she is told about Tessa doing the puzzles she brought in with another patient, she says they must be very sick. She claims her daughter isn’t a good person and she doesn’t feel anything for her anymore. When Kareena leaves, she learns from Collette that Nik is dealing with song stickage. Dr. Wells admits she is at a stalemate with Tessa and her mother. Collette tries to find ways to help Nik deal with his problem so Nik and Kareena both say he is afraid of heights at the same time. Then, she tries to deal with Genevieve. Gene tells her she came in sane and will leave insane. When Kareena leaves, she talks to Rohan about Gene’s irritability. She tells Rohan he needs to seem confident and capable for his patients and their families. She encourages him to be work on his body language.

When she returns to her office, she manages to get the data uploaded. When she returns home, she finds Vince (Wayne Blair) outside waiting for her. They go inside and he tries to find out why she has cockroaches. He blames cardboard and the boxes in her cupboard. He tells her what she’ll need to throw away while Kareena tells him about having kids and building a house. She listens to a voicemail from David (Henry Nixon) who says his flight has been canceled and he won’t be home. She tells Vince it is their anniversary before he says there is only one restaurant around here that is free of roaches. They end up sharing a drink and Kareena listens to some of Vince’s clients. She promises to get rid of the boxes and keep them in the bin. He believes she couldn’t have committed many sins but she says she has no sense of direction. When he says that isn’t a sin, Kareena admits she got lost, couldn’t get to a patient in time, and she gave up.

Vince isn’t sure the patient topped themselves because Kareena got lost. He gives her advice before leaving. In the morning, Kareena steps outside and finds dead cockroaches everywhere. She goes to work and learns from Nik that Belle is back there to see her. Belle wonders what will happen if she doesn’t want Tessa back. She admits she lost Tessa’s father because of her. Kareena says they can get help from housing services so Tessa will have somewhere to go. Belle shows Dr. Wells a picture of Tessa’s stuff strewn throughout her home while admitting she wants her house back. She confesses she doesn’t even like Tessa anymore. Then, Kareena finds out that Collette is using a tapping technique now. Rohan loses his phone and Kareena learns the jaguar beat her running record. She decides to go for a run while Collette and Nik go digging with Genevieve. As Kareena runs, she remembers everything she has heard during the past few days.

She stops and thinks about Genevieve grabbing Nik’s crotch while playing with herself. Kareena thinks about her being in bed with Nik before reaching her climax. As she returns, she runs into Nik who is trying to scare himself by standing on the edge of the cliff. She claims she fell into the waterfall. She tells Nik not to fall off before leaving. Later, she checks her purse and pulls out contraceptive pills. She takes one. Seconds later, Collette wakes up Nik to tell him he has an interview for the NUM position. They agree to keep it quiet but Nik is worried he won’t have a chance if he doesn’t get some sleep. Nik pushes Omar (Richie Miller) and asks him about his fears.

When Nik returns, he finds James working on the puzzle with Tessa. The puzzle reminds Nik of something before we see the flashback of him running through the fields. Nik has to stop Genevieve from grabbing another patient’s crotch. Later, Linda confronts him about not specialing Gene but he says he asked Collette to do it. She doesn’t like that. Linda tells Nik he is a good nurse but he isn’t management material. She recommends working as a team. Nik meets with his father and learns his sister is going on a rampage because of the wedding. He learns that his father’s soul is troubled because he is alone. He tells his father he’ll send him some links to dating websites so he can find a date. His father wants to do it together but Nik says he is too tired right now. Then, we see a group in white gowns singing and walking down to the water.

A young Nik is baptized. Nik struggles to go to sleep so he tosses himself around in his bed. At work, Nik pushes Omar to Linda who tells Omar he needs to come back because his family misses him. They argue briefly about who gets to take Omar to physio before Nik wins and pushes him away. Then, Nik goes to the cliff’s edge and looks over. Kareena surprises him and he tells her what he was doing. Nik returns home and helps his father create a profile on a dating website. As his father goes on about being outdoorsy and sensual, Nik gets irritated and admits he needs sleep. His father learns he is trying to get the head job of his unit at the funny farm but he warns his son denying his potential will destroy him. We return to Wakefield and Nik learns from Collette that James has been working on the puzzle all night without asking for his phone. She takes over so he can go to the interview. He runs into Kareena who asks if scaring himself worked and he admits he believes it did.

The interview begins before we see that James has gotten a phone. He returns to the puzzle and finds that someone has pieced together a kitty’s face. We lean that Nik completed 5 of 6 years of a medical degree but switched to nursing so he could work more directly with patients. He finds out that Kareena has given him a good recommendation. Tessa checks the puzzle box and says someone is going to die. Nik gets a message while the interviewer tells him about the importance of the job. He tells her he is going to have to go because there is a problem on the ward. He apologizes before returning and finding Tessa angrily trying to find out who is responsible for messing with their puzzle. James admits he worked on it last night because he is leaving today. Trevor blames the new patient so Tessa tries to attack her. Jade admits Linda told her she could do it and she wanted to do the kitty puzzle. Tessa charges at Linda and nearly hits her but Nik diverts her. Linda checks on him later and hopes for a speedy recovery. Linda admits she had to file a report on the use of undue force on a patient but Nik helped her and she’ll give him her full support.

Tessa has a sprained shoulder. Nik checks on her to make sure she is okay. She apologizes before confirming that James has left Wakefield. When Nik asks what is going on behind her glasses, she says she wants to die. He tells her the world won’t be the same without her in it and he knows because he lost someone himself. Later, Nik’s father serves him dinner in bed through a straw. He wants his son to continue helping him with the dating profile. In a flashback, we hear Jeshna telling Nik to stop tap dancing but his father tells her to leave the boy alone. Jeshna (Nadie Kammallaweera) eventually breaks down, storms into the room, and unloads slaps on Nik.

 

Wakefield Review

Deep and emotional, Wakefield is ultimately hindered by constant time jumps and warps. At times, it shows moments of emotional excellence giving me hope that the journey will be worthwhile. For this episode, my biggest complaint is that I cringed more often than I wanted to. The show’s take on nymphomania didn’t seem authentic in the least and felt silly honestly.

Mainly, I still find myself disappointed with having to relive the same scenes multiple times for no good reason. Had Wakefield taken itself a little more seriously it likely could’ve been so much more heart-wrenching and captivating. It still isn’t bad but it is hard to ignore how great this show could’ve been without the artsy nonsense. The episode scores a 7 out of 10. Previous and future recaps of Wakefield will be available on Reel Mockery here.