As the 7th episode of Wakefield begins, Nik Katira (Rudi Dharmalingam) walks to the edge of the cliff while we see flashbacks of him tapdancing. Nik imagines himself stepping off the cliff and falling to the ground below before waking up in his bathtub. When he checks his watch, he realizes it is three in the morning. After that, we join Baz (Colin Friels) who yells at his neighbor for feeding the birds and trying to get him to stop. He gets upset and grabs the hedge trimmer. He returns to his neighbor and tries to attack him with the trimmer. Then, he finds himself at Wakefield telling Pete Seaman (Sam Simmons) that he is the captain of the new order. Pete explains Nik is their captain. When Baz asks if they’re going to have a problem with that, Nik hopes they’ll be able to work together. Linda Crowley (Mandy McElhinney) listens as Baz claims he shouldn’t even be there and Nik admits he isn’t the only one to say that.

Baz waits for his session with Rohan (Pacharo Mzembe) who doesn’t show up. He spots Nik in the hallway and stops him to ask how long it’ll be. Since Nik doesn’t know, he recommends going to art therapy although Baz wants no part of that. Baz gets upset that they believe it is okay for the doctor to waste his time. Dr. Kareena Wells (Geraldine Hakewill) opens her window before Nik enters and tells her about Rohan being an hour later. Nik has texted him although he hasn’t answered. Since Kareena has a full schedule, she won’t be able to see Baz. Nik makes it clear he isn’t going to cover for Rohan like Linda did when she had the job, but Kareena doesn’t believe anyone covered for him. They argue about it for a bit until Cath (Victoria Haralabidou) enters for her therapy session with Dr. Wells. Next, Linda listens as Nik calls Rohan and gives the phone to Baz. As they talk on the phone, Linda asks Nik if he thinks that is a good idea. He does.

Once the call ends, Baz says he has an appointment with Rohan first thing in the morning. He likes that Rohan decided to make an appointment with him and not the other way around. Nik admits he doesn’t disagree with him. Baz returns to his room to get his notebook and bothers Trevor (Harry Greenwood) who is trying to sleep in the bed next to him. He writes something down while Trevor tells him to turn off the light. Then, he goes to Pete and gives him proof he shouldn’t be there. Baz believes the doctor is going to say that his captivity has been a massive injustice. He joins Mr. Invisible (Guy Simon) outside of Rohan’s office and tells him about his poetry. When Rohan arrives, he takes Invisible boy in first and that angers Baz. Nik arrives as Baz tells Invisible he’ll be sorry if he takes his place, but he does anyway. Baz only gets angrier so Nik takes him outside and encourages him to get it out by writing poetry or drawing something.

When Baz asks for a word, Nik puts Trevor in charge and leaves. Trevor is bouncing a ball so he decides to use bounce as the word. Baz hears a bird in the distance and it distracts him, but Trevor keeps him on track. When he tries to visit the doctor, Cath tells him where Rohan went and at what time he did so. Baz punches a door and breaks it. In private, Nik warns Baz that this isn’t going to help his case since Rohan will think he is dangerous now. Baz doesn’t seem to care and agrees he is indeed dangerous. Nik reveals the door had termites making it easier to destroy. He encourages Baz to be calm when he sits down with Rohan. Next, Baz sits down with Rohan who suggests his behavior indicates he needs to be in there until they can stabilize his mood. Baz insists he doesn’t like being disrespected before saying Rohan should’ve had the decency to show up for the appointment.

He gets up and angrily tells Rohan he knows where he lives and he’ll regret the day his mother gave birth to him. Later, Collette (Felicity Ward) tries to give Baz his medication although he suspects they’re only keeping him there to turn a profit. He refuses to take the medication. Nik approaches with police officers to ask Baz whether he used Roman Achebe’s phone. Once they go inside and join Rohan, Baz is asked if he used the phone to threaten his neighbor. Baz complains that his neighbor was still feeding those birds while Rohan worries he changed the settings on his phone. Nik encourages Rohan to focus on the patient who he believes isn’t ready to leave.

As they continue bickering, Nik decides to solve the problem by banning mobile phones from his ward and forcing shrinks to make appointments with patients. Baz likes those ideas and gives Nik a high-five to celebrate. He heads outside and sings his poetry while Trevor plays guitar. Once he goes back inside, he runs up to Nik in hopes of telling him more about his poem. When he notices the red paint on Nik’s forehead, he tells him it looks like he was shot. Nik gets upset and immediately tells him to screw off. The pest control man watches everything. Baz goes outside and listens to the birds. Nik joins in and apologizes for snapping at him while blaming stuff going on outside. He hears people insulting him so Nik tries to convince him that it is in his mind. Nik insists they’re not talking to him and his head is just making it seem that way.

He believes they can help get the voices under control. Later, he meets with Baz again to tell him he has arranged a meeting with Dr. Wells to talk about the new symptoms. When Nik suggests she will be able to help stop the voices, Baz tells him he is going to write a poem about him. He promises to make it a good one before we begin seeing things from Kareena’s perspective. She goes for a run while remembering Nik leading her to him and asking if she was going to get out. Kareena asks James (Dan Wyllie) about restarting the puzzle with Tessa (Bessie Holland). She asks him about Plan B and whether he intends to commit suicide. Kareena says he is going to leave soon and wonders whether he can do so without her. James says Tessa saved his life and he doesn’t want to leave until he does the same for her. Once the meeting ends, Kareena tells Nik about their relationship and the fact they’re becoming codependent on one another.

Nik says codependency is okay if it keeps both alive. Nik notices a Henna tattoo on her foot and learns that she went to Reni’s ceremony and got the tattoo there. She explains that she asked her to come and she had never been to one before. Before she leaves, she claims James and Tessa need proper exit strategies. At home, Kareena complains about her smart car to David (Henry Nixon) because it locks the driver inside. David tells her she is a smart woman who needs to take control of the car. Once they get into bed together, Kareena researches the video and wants nothing to do with David. At work, she warns Tessa that her relationship with James could lead to problems. Tessa doesn’t believe it because they’re only doing a puzzle together. She claims that people like Kareena keep others on a string and when it snaps, they find themselves on their own. Moments later, Nik tries to get Tessa to open her door so he can talk to her, but she only tells him to screw off.

Linda and Kareena join him. Then, Tessa complains to James that they want to split them up although Nik denies that. James explains they have a spare room at their place so Tessa can come stay with them for a bit. Kareena says they’re not trying to take away her relationship. Instead, they want her to have relationships with more people because you can’t always hang onto the people you bond with. In private, Kareena tells James that Tessa is not his responsibility and they’ll make sure she is properly set up. She encourages James not to make Tessa his purpose because he is eventually going to return to his family and work. However, he believes his career is over since people will always know he tried to kill himself. People might be able to overlook that in Kareena’s world but not James’s world. She wants him to make a new world where they will.

When Kareena leaves for the day, she finds that she locked her keys in her car. David makes fun of her for leaving the car running all day and calls her technologically challenged. He offers to take her out to give her a break from cooking that night, but she isn’t interested. She says she wants to be alone so she goes outside and thinks about hanging out with Nik’s sister and getting the tattoo. The next day, the pest control man tells her that the termites have been tunneling so the door is almost hollow. He mentions Nik and suggests the lunatics are running the asylum. Linda stops her to say they have a problem. Then, Kareena goes to Nik to ask about the mobile phone ban. He also confirms he is going to make the shrinks schedule appointments with the patients. Nik says he is tired of seeing the patients wait for them and miss activities that could help them. He tells Kareena that one meeting is their chance to feel like someone is going to help them out of this eternal hell hole.

They get into an argument about Nik being a nurse instead of a shrink and his current crusade against them. He suggests him doing nursing was never going to be good enough for her and that is why they split up. Kareena replies they split up because he slept with someone else. Dr. Wells goes for a run and ends up getting lost. She ends up calling the pest control guy in hopes he’ll take her back. He wonders whether she actually wanted to get lost although she denies that. She says her mind wandered and she couldn’t find her way back. He gives her advice for avoiding such problems in the future. Once she returns to her car, she takes it to David and they return it to the dealership. Since they can’t simplify the car, she wants her old vehicle back. They get into her old car and David immediately asks Kareena if she took the job for Nik. She denies it and says the job was a promotion.

He tells her to practice what she preaches and stop diluting herself. When she says she isn’t, he asks why she is taking the pill again. She insists nothing is going on so he suggests she wishes something was. He believes she wanted to see if there was anything between her and Nik before she moved forward with their relationship. He wants to take her on vacation because he believes that is the best way to save their marriage. Next, we begin seeing things from Rohan’s perspective. He plays video games at home before getting the call from Nik who wants him to talk to Baz. When he goes to work and takes Mr. Invisible in first, Baz gets angry at him. He begins freaking out and goes to the bathroom to calm down. When Baz punches down the room, he imagines he is playing a video game. Nik finds him playing games in his car and tries to convince him to talk to his patient. Rohan wants to send Baz to Ward H although Nik doesn’t think he should be there.

Nik accuses Rohan of dicking him around and that is why he has been upset. Rohan goes to Kareena in hopes of convincing her to transfer Baz to a different ward, but she doesn’t agree with him. She tells him she can’t keep rescuing him and says this stops now. When he sits down with Baz, he places his hand near his radio so he can quickly call for help. Baz ridicules him and tells him he knows where he lives and he’ll make him regret being born. Rohan never pushes the emergency button. Rohan threatens to send him to ward H. Baz leaves after Rohan tells him they’ll talk about it once he has calmed down. Rohan looks down and we see that he has urinated on himself. After that, we return to Baz and Nik talking about being captain. When Nik begins working on the employee schedule, Collette gives him pointers. Nik notices Pete has three shifts in a roll as Linda offers assistance.

Nik ignores her until she walks away before admitting he doesn’t know why she withdrew her application. Then, Nik goes to the paralyzed patient and tells him he has to get better because he needs that. We see a flashback of Nik’s childhood. Nik continues working on the schedule and Collette makes it harder by saying she can’t do Saturdays although she can work nights. He tells her to make a wish list and he’ll do what he can. Collette urges him not to get stressed out because he’ll figure it out. Pete tells Nik his sister’s wedding is bad timing. He warns Nik he shouldn’t go to his sister’s wedding because something bad is going to happen. Pete claims he has never been wrong. If Nik leaves the house that day, something seriously bad is going to happen.

Since Nik is the best man for the wedding, he is going regardless. Later, he hangs out with Reni and tries to write his speech for her wedding. When he asks why she decided to invite Kareena, she says she ran into her and realized how much she missed her. She makes it clear Kareena and David won’t be coming to the funeral though. Once she leaves, he spends the rest of his time trying to write his speech. It doesn’t go well. He has flashbacks of his childhood and his mother leaving home. He remembers what Pete said about something bad happening. At work, Collette asks Linda how things are going at therapy. She insists things are going well and she is going over there now. Nik interrupts to ask one of them to take a patient for a blood test. Instead of going to therapy, Linda has sex with a man in the back of his van.

The pest control man confirms they have an infestation and tells Nik he’ll come back. As he prepares to leave, he tapdances. Later that evening, Nik attends a ceremony for his sister. Renuka (Monica Kumar) gets painted with a yellow substance while Nik watches. As the women begin dancing, Nik imagines himself throwing the yellow powder into the air and everyone collapsing to the ground. The following day, Nik approaches his mother during the event. She tells everyone that she raised Nik to be a good husband. He listens as she says she wanted all of them to receive the gift of Jesus into their lives. When she begins talking about the difficulty of the wedding for her, Nik tries to get her to calm down. She admits it is hard for her to listen to them talk about false idols. She shows them a picture of Nik before his baptism and claims he was happy at the time. Nik reveals he wanted the pastor to hold his head underwater until he drowned.

As he tries to leave, his sister stops him and says he isn’t allowed to be over her this close to the wedding. He doesn’t say whether he’ll come back for dinner that evening. He remembers the police being at his house when he was little as Baz tells him it looks like someone shot him. Then, he argues with Kareena who reminds him they split because he decided to sleep with someone else. He follows her to the car and suggests she wanted out because he was never going to be good enough. She claims he was never really in it to begin with. Nik says what happened to them nearly killed him. She says he went to a dark corner where she could never reach him. Once she turns off the car alarm, Nik leans into the car, kisses her, and says it isn’t over between them. Kareena says she is worried about him because he seems unhinged although he says he has never been saner in his life.

Inside Wakefield Hospital, Collette asks Pete about his premonition about the wedding and something bad happening to Nik. Pete denies everything and insists he never had a premonition in his life. Later, Nik’s sister agrees to let their mother stay at her place. He tells her that Dilshan would’ve been 28 if he was still here. He says he was thinking about their dad getting the call, picking them up from school, and taking them to it. His sister reveals that he didn’t go to school that day because he had been sick. He had asthma from the fire and nobody told him. A flashback shows his mother crying with Dilshan in her arms. His sister encourages him to leave the past behind. In a flashback, Nik sees his mother with Dilshan on the other side of the river.

 

Wakefield Review

When compared to other shows I’ve been watching in recent months, Wakefield is pretty good. However, it has a lot of problems that prevent it from being great. One of the biggest problems is the fact that we’re 7 episodes in and they’re still adding characters. While Baz was interesting, there are too many characters already and it has been impossible to develop any relationship with them.

The series is constantly jumping around and back and forth. We really needed to focus on a few primary characters so we could get to know them and really sympathize with their struggles. I am indifferent to Nik and whatever he is going through because of the ineffective way they decided to showcase his mental issues. It is equally disappointing to realize there is only one episode left and a whole lot of topics to cover, but I doubt it will.

I need to know what is going to happen to every single character at Wakefield, including James, Tessa, Trevor, Baz, and Genevieve. While the episode wasn’t bad, it felt like the purpose was missing and never reached its peak. With an interesting, unique story and great cast, Wakefield could’ve been tremendously better. Unfortunately, it has been jumbled together with constant time warps and flashbacks.

I sincerely hope the finale pulls everything together and makes the series worthwhile, but I doubt it will because it is not good when Nik and his issues are the primary focus. The 7th episode scores a 7 out of 10. All Wakefield recaps will be available on Reel Mockery here.