I’d like to say that I didn’t post my Bomb Girls review yesterday because I was still wrecked by the episode, but life got in the way, and I didn’t have a chance to post it until now. That being said, it’s an incredibly strong episode to leave us begging for more as there’s now a break until the end of March.

Michael MacLennan pens the mid-season finale from a story by Debi Drennan and Maureen Jennings, and this time around, it seems that everyone is reaching a breaking point. As such, it’s an incredible powerful episode, as those characters we hold dear to our hearts struggle on the home front to survive the Second World War.

Set against the backdrop of a bond drive and radio broadcast from Victory Munitions, this episode needed a warning beforehand that tissues would be required.

There’s Betty (Ali Liebert), oh how I adore you.

Sigh.

She has a tough time of it this week, as she and Kate (Charlotte Hegele) argue about Kate’s blossoming romance with Ivan (Michael Seater) as well as Betty’s feelings for her. It’s tough watching Kate deny her own feelings for Betty. It pushes Kate to her breaking point, and she walks away from Betty, and it looks like an end to their friendship, not to mention anything else.  Leon (Jim Codrington) counsels Kate, suggesting that perhaps if she can’t love Betty as she wants, love her as she can.

Betty meets an officer, Theresa (Rachel Wilson), who is working the bond drive, and there’s something to their relationship right from the off, so much so that Ali brings Theresa home from the Jewel Box. They have a wonderfully tender scene, as Theresa convinces Betty she’s waited long enough. They spend a night together, and we learn that it’s Betty’s first time, at least the first time that it was caring, and loving and made her feel safe. Poor Betty. Pushed away from the woman she loves, she deserves some happiness as well as tenderness, and it brought me to tears seeing that she finally gets it.

As the folks at Vic Mu plan their bond drive, Mr. Aikens (Richard Fitzpatrick) asks Vera (Anastasia Phillips) to come up with something spectacular for the night. Vera in turn goes to Marco (Antonion Cupo) for aid. He procures some fireworks, for the evening, and it seems as the night progresses, that there may be something there. They happily come through the episode relatively unscathed.

Lorna Corbett (Meg Tilly), Bob (Peter Outerbridge), Gladys (Jodi Balfour) and Eugene (Brett Dier) break the remaining pieces of our hearts, as Eugene begins to fall apart. He is suffering from visions, blows up at Lorna when he learns she is so worried about him that she’s gone to his superiors about the possibility of having him discharged. In a wonderful pair of moments, as Bob and Lorna talk at the news stand (which seems to be doing alright), there’s a tenderness returning to their relationship, and it’s good to see. Lorna asks Bob to talk to Gene, to try to connect, not only as father and son, but as fellow soldiers.

When Eugene arrives, Bob shakes his hand, but as they sit, he doesn’t let it go, he holds it as he shares one of his most horrific memories of the Great War. He tries to get Eugene to open up and share the experiences that seem to be ruining him.

Eugene denies it, proclaiming him an ace and a war hero, and walk away.

Gladys, regretting the assignation she had with him, but still caring for him, attempts to talk to him as well, when he comes to see her at the hotel.

It seems though, that Gladys’ father (James McGowan) has been footing the bill for her room, and not her fiancée James (Sebastian Pigott), and he’s stopped paying. As she packs to leave, Eugene shows up, she denies him, but still tries to help him.

Their story comes to its climax at the factory during the fireworks display. Eugene find his way to the roof, the fireworks blurring in his mind to become flak rising up to hit his plane.

It’s up to Lorna to talk him down, and in the end, despite the fact that she knows, and we know, that it’s not the best thing for him to do, she agrees that he can go back, because that’s what he thinks he needs.

She’s losing her son whether she wants to or not. The choice is taken away from her. Both she and Eugene have reached their breaking points…

But the worst of it is yet to come in the final few moments of the episode, just when you think you’ve made it through mostly unscathed…

Lorna comes to visit Gladys, as she’s working with some eggs in her new place, the girls’ home, to thank her for her help with Eugene, and much more troubling… to deliver a telegram from the War Office.

She can’t read it.

We don’t want her to read it.

We don’t want her to hear it.

We don’t want to hear it.

But Lorna pushes Gladys right to the edge, and in the most heartbreaking scene in an episode packed with them… Lorna informs Gladys that James was killed in action.

Watching it settle on Gladys, Jodi does an amazing piece of work here, she’s not denying it, but she tries to find something else to occupy her mind with, to keep it at arm’s length while she tries to process it, but it’s too much, Gladys breaks, and Lorna holds her as she falls apart.

What a brilliant piece of mid-season work. We’re left to try to nurse our broken and bleeding hearts for the next few weeks until the series resumes on March 25 on Global.

Enough time to patch up my heart before they come back? I guess we’ll see…