How Long Has This Been Going On?

I watch the show because of Doc Martin, and whenever he is on screen, it's bearable. Sort of unbelievable that he can diagnose the most obscure ailments by looking in a patient's eyes of listening to them breathe (or whisper "99.")

Many long running shows seem to suffer from not allowing minor characters much to do, showcasing only the three or four headliners in most episodes. This (and the previous Season Ten shows) goes to the opposite extreme.

The whole survivalist plot was tedious and Penhale acted like a complete twit (Al behaved maturely, though.) And I think the trope of Sally Tishell still wearing that neck brace had run its course many seasons ago. Missed Eileen Atkins in some episodes, but please stop with the peripheral characters who are mostly annoying. Other than that, fun to watch.

This episode fails to draw on the strength of the cast. Martin is back in full swing, but he is gentler and less brutal with people than in the past. There are a couple men who are in serious need of his services as well as the woman who took Louisa's place at the school. The weakness in this plot is Stewart's survivalist training. Stewart is the forest ranger from the first season. Penhale and Al go with this nut (who thinks he is visited by a giant red squirrel) and are supposedly being taught skills. Penhale is all in on it but as time goes by, Al can see just how potentially dangerous this guy can be. The man is mentally ill and even Doc is a bit frightened of him. At one point he jumps at the doc, dressed as a sheep. This is just an over the top episode that doesn't work. The whole running around in the woods thing has been done a couple times before.

Two stars for the brief time we saw Martin and Louisa. The show is at its strongest when it concentrates on the main characters. Once again it veered off into the weeds with Penhale, Joe, and squirrel crazy Stewart who may or may not have lost his mind again. Most of the episode had the three lads traipsing about in the woods, a theme we've seen before. Martin shows up to save the day and has hs own misadventures.

Something that has changed is Martin's personality. I don't know if the writers intend to show Martin's willingness to change or have forgotten that he is a curmudgeon who would never talk gently to his patients. That is a HUGE flaw in this final season.

In a few of the early episodes of "Doc Martin", Ben Miller played Stewart James, a ranger who took care of the forests nearby. I know this because I read it...not because I could remember him or his character. So, although I've seen all the episodes, these never really stood out for me. And, after seeing "How Long Has This Been Going On?", I can see why I couldn't remember him.

Ranger Stewart returns and he wants the town thickie, Penhale, to help him work out his new survival course. Al Large also comes along, which in hindsight is a great thing, as something called Q Fever has made Stewart begin to hallucinate once they are in the woods. As you'd expect, Penhale is no use whatsoever. Ultimately, Doc Martin arrives to help untangle the mess.

An additional plot involvesa strange infection of the soil at the local school and its effect on the head mistress as well as many of the kids.

Overall, this is a very weak episode following a couple very good ones for season 10. The plots weren't all that interesting and Doc Martin seems like the only adult in the show. Skippable.

"How Long Has This Been Going On?" At least since near the end of Series Two, specifically, the seventh episode "Out of the Woods," which marked the return of park ranger Stewart James (Ben Miller), first seen in Series One's fourth episode "The Portwenn Effect," and who returns for his third and final appearance in this tired, predictable, uninvolving time-filler written by Kevin Cecil in his only script for "Doc Martin."

Cecil also reprises the backwoods melodrama of "Out of the Woods," this time with Stewart teaching a survival course that seems fairly normal until he flips out since that is his function, and once "Doc Martin" assigns you a function, you just keep repeating it, but if you keep doing it hoping for a different result, that's the definition of insanity, which is Stewart's stock in trade.

Scripted by series creator Dominic Minghella, Series One's "The Portwenn Effect" delivered a terrific misdirection: Forced to go in-country to make a house call on Stewart, and having been warned about his behavioral health issues, Martin instead encounters a calm, articulate army veteran whose wicked insights into the gormless, disease- and injury-prone denizens of Portwenn tickle Martin with their similarities to his own, perhaps encouraging him to think that they had been wrong about Stewart and that he might have found a kindred spirit.

At least until Anthony the imaginary six-foot-tall squirrel arrives in a winking nod to the delightful 1950 comedy "Harvey," in which James Stewart's Elwood P. Dowd believes he has an invisible friend in the titular invisible rabbit. (And in case you hadn't noticed, "Stewart James" is the reverse of James Stewart.)

Miller gets less screen time in his second appearance, "Out of the Woods"--although he is no less loopy--but Cecil repurposes its roughing it in the woods for "How Long Has This Been Going On?" as Al Large, pushed into it by wife Morwenna Newcross, and PC Joe Penhale are volunteered to be Stewart's guinea pigs for the survivalist course held on the property of sheep farmer Ron Pickford (James Puddephatt), irritable at feeling ill while his ewes are lambing when Martin comes out on a house call.

That illness is later revealed to be Q fever, which can travel from sheep to humans including Stewart, as his increasingly erratic behavior indicates, particularly when he takes Penhale, who had seemed to be quite adept at survival skills, hostage after he realizes that Al has disappeared with his mobile phone that Stewart had confiscated.

Meanwhile, Portwenn School headmistress Pippa Woodley (Buffy Davis) is feeling the pressure from the upcoming "Portwenn People" presentation (in other words Career Day) for her grade-school kids despite her pride in the new garden she has created at the school even if it seems to be giving her a rash. Naturally, Martin diagnoses it as resulting from the garden's contaminated soil and orders her to close the garden. Naturally, Pippa doesn't, and are you surprised that half the school gets the same rash she does?

At least pharmacist (or chemist) Sally Tishell manages to keep her head at the school, but not only do the regulars all seem to be going through the motions, those motions seems to be going through the motions in this thoroughly ordinary, unexciting rehash of situations and ramifications we've seen time and again on "Doc Martin." "How Long Has This Been Going On?" Far too long as this installment is truly a dog in sheep's clothing.

POINT TO PONDER: Confirmation bias is the tendency to accept only facts and opinions you agree with. It is extremely difficult to avoid. Are reviews "helpful" only if they validate your confirmation bias? Are they "not helpful" if they contradict it? Thus, a simple thumbs-up or thumbs-down is essentially useless as an indicator of whether a review is or isn't "helpful."