Call the Midwife's tense Matthew and Trixie fight could tease the end
Call the Midwife season 13 episode four spoilers follow.
Rumours have been circulating for months about the possible exit of Helen George and Olly Rix's Matthew and Trixie.
While it has been confirmed that George's Trixie will remain on the show beyond season 13, the same, unfortunately, can not be said for Matthew, whose future is still up in the air.
Sadly, reports do heavily lean towards Rix leaving and if they turn out to be true we may have just seen the first indication of how such an exit could come about.
The latest episode of Call the Midwife saw Trixie struggle with the age-old question 'Can women have it all?', a tiresome struggle made fresh through the Call the Midwife lens as the nurse and midwife struggled to find the balance between home life and work.
The usually supportive Matthew buckled under the pressure of his own work strains and began to question Trixie's commitment to her new family, initiating the first cracks in their marriage.
The friction arose when Trixie didn't abandon a labouring mother to support Matthew, who was juggling work and a migraine while caring for an unsettled Jonty (Archie O'Callaghan).
While Trixie initially stood her ground and refused to leave she did ultimately shirk her work responsibilities.
Instead of carrying out a thorough examination of the mother post-birth, she rushed home, leaving trainee nurse Joyce Highland (Renee Bailey) with deep reservations about the state of the afterbirth.
When her patient's health deteriorated rapidly, becoming 'critical but stable', Trixie was forced to make some tough choices.
She decided to stay at Nonnatus three times a week so she could dedicate herself fully to her vocation while there and fully to Matthew and Jonty when not.
Matthew digested this news about as well as Trixie did when he suggested she pack in her life's work to volunteer for meals on wheels instead.
Not even a Rennies could ease the bubbling acid between the two.
Though Trixie's solution was meant to reduce the tension between the two, Matthew responded:
"Are you a wife or a midwife?"
"Can't I be both?" Trixie asked, (she's clearly not ready for lashings of Atrixo just yet) to which Matthew said: "Darling, only you can answer that."
Falling from grace, Matthew. You might want to pick yourself up.
Despite his disappointing, tepid response the show answered Trixie in a much kinder way through Fred (Cliff Parisi) and Violet's interaction.
Earlier on in the episode Fred confided in Sister Monica Joan (Judy Parfitt) about his fear that Violet had taken on too much in becoming mayor and received some valuable insight.
"What if she can't manage?" Fred fretted and the always wise, always underestimated Sister Monica Joan replied: "Then you will help her manage, you are a team."
It was a small, obvious sliver of advice that often gets forgotten, but she was right, they were a team and Fred took this forward.
Towards the end of the episode the still recovering Fred went to lift a stack of newspapers, causing Violet (Annabelle Apsion) to come rushing out to tell him off and do it for him.
She then struggled to manage the weight, leading Fred to snip the ties binding the newspapers so that they could split the stack and share the load.
It's a masterstroke by Call the Midwife, not signposting the parallels between both marriages but layering them in the story.
Both Matthew and Fred have career-oriented wives but it is how they are supported by their loved ones and their spouses that makes a difference in how they show up at home and in work.
Trixie struggles in a way that she never has before because Matthew's expectations appear to have changed and his level of understanding has diminished.
Once again Call the Midwife explores another social experience in exploring how relationships change after marriage.
However, with Rix rumoured to be leaving it's possible this hiccup in their relationship may develop into something more problematic, possibly leading to a split.
It has been teased that the creative team intend to leave the door open for Rix's return should he in fact leave, so while we would be devastated to see their marriage crumble after such a beautiful run, there's hope of reconciliation later on down the line.
Of course this is just purely speculative. We still have our fingers crossed for Rix to stay and in turn for Trixie and Matthew to seek marriage advice from Fred and Violet.
Call the Midwife season 13 airs on Sunday at 8pm on BBC One, and streams on BBC iPlayer.
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