'All Creatures Great and Small' Recap: Season 6 Episode 5

All Creatures Great and Small airs Sundays at 8:00 pm on WTTW and is available to stream. Recap the previous and following episodes and seasons.
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James and Jimmy are staying at Skeldale while Helen is in London helping Jenny settle into nursing college. Both Mrs. Hall and Siegfried are delighted to have them there; Siegfried wishes the whole family would just move back to Skeldale. The time saved commuting has given James a chance to look at the veterinary practice’s books, and he has realized that they’re very short on money. So he wants to respond to a call for a veterinarian at a dog racetrack.

Siegfried warns him against it, saying that the races might come before the dogs’ health. But James says they can’t refuse a chance at more money, and that he can stand up for himself. 

He’s surprised when Mr. Coker, the track owner, immediately accepts him for the job and asks him to judge a race that’s about to happen, even though James doesn’t have his equipment. Wille Stockwell’s dog seems uncomfortable, so James wants to pull him from the race. But Willie begs James to let the dog race; he’s a veteran who lost part of an arm in the war, and the dogs are his pride and joy. James reluctantly allows it.

When a tall man in a suit asks James how Willie’s dog looks, James says he wouldn’t have passed him if he wasn’t fit to race. The man shakes James’ hand, transferring a coin to him in the process. 

So James is suspicious when Willie’s dog comes last in the race. The dog is supposed to be a winner. James wants to re-examine the dog for its own health, but Willie refuses to let him and Coker pulls him away to treat an “emergency”: a drunk has fallen and skinned his knee. Later, James sees the tall man seemingly bribe Coker with a coin as well.

Back at Skeldale, James tells Mrs. Hall and Tristan about the experience. Owners will over-feed their dog so that it runs slow and loses, thus raising its odds and generating a bigger profit when it competes at the next race on a normal stomach. But the shady tactic can harm a dog.

Mrs. Hall doesn’t think James should go back to the track – and says Helen would agree with her. But James is insistent, so Mrs. Hall suggests that Siegfried accompany him. Siegfried refuses; he didn’t hear James explain what’s going on at the track, but he has made his feelings clear that James shouldn’t have taken the job.

Tristan is busy keeping a parrot under close observation. The Ainsley family’s George is ornery, picking at his feathers, and not really eating. He could have a disease that is also contagious to humans, so Tristan brings him to Skeldale for quarantine and sends a sample to a lab for testing. He doesn’t tell the Ainsleys that the disease is fatal. 

Siegfried also refuses to help Tristan, telling him George is his responsibility, even though it means Tristan has to cancel a date with Charlotte. She suggests that she come to Skeldale so they can still see each other, but Tristan hesitates to introduce her to everyone, to her disappointment.

Siegfried is also obstinate – surprise, surprise – to Mrs. Hall when she suggests that they go to the Drovers pub for darts instead of their typical cribbage, a game of which she has grown tired. The Drovers’ Maggie – whose husband Arthur is still in Burma, not sharing much news – is hosting a darts game as a fundraiser for the continuing war in the Pacific. Mrs. Hall has grown to be quite skilled at darts, having taken it up while living with her son, and Maggie has urged her to come. 

While Siegfried is left alone with little work, Jimmy tells him that he wishes his family lived at Skeldale, but Helen doesn’t want them to because Siegfried is “a shellfish.” Siegfried is stunned to learn people think he’s selfish; when he asks Mrs. Hal about it, she doesn’t disagree, pointing out that he wouldn’t help James. So he decides to set off to support James at the dog track – but he’s many Scotches deep, so Mrs. Hall drives him.

James has demanded a room in which to treat dogs at the racetrack, and has appealed to Willie’s sense of pride in his dogs to pull his dog from the race. The dog has suffered bloat from running on a full stomach, and is in bad shape. But the tall, bribing man steps in to prevent James from pulling Willie’s dog, who is now supposed to win the race at high odds. 

Siegfried tells Mrs. Hall to wait in the car and arrives as the tall man objects to James. Siegfried distracts him and James flees with Willie’s dog. Willie trips the tall man as Siegfried and James flee to Mrs. Hall in the waiting car and drive away, dog in tow. But the dog is in bad shape, so they stop on the side of the road to treat it. In the uproar, James has left his medical bag at the racetrack, but Siegfried gives him a tire pin to reduce the dog’s bloat. They then rush him to Skeldale for full treatment.

After the dog is stabilized, Siegfried relents and tells Mrs. Hall that they can go to the Drovers for darts. James admits that Siegfried was right about the dog track, and Siegfried tells James that he will write to Helen to apologize for his behavior. He hopes that someday Helen will think of Skeldale as her home. 

Tristan has determined that George doesn’t have any disease, but rather is suffering because parrots are social animals. George was first removed from his flock, and then his longtime owner died recently – that’s why the Ainsleys now have him. Tristan tells George that he also has suffered loss, in the form of comrades in the war. Tristan cries while admitting this.

He returns George to the Ainsleys and tells them that the parrot will need some time to recover psychologically. He then apologizes to Charlotte and asks her to come meet everyone at Skeldale. He and she arrive there just as Mrs. Hall returns after seeing Maggie through a window crying over a letter. Mrs. Hall puts on a smile to engage in some lighthearted tomfoolery with Charlotte, Jimmy, James, Tristan, and Siegfried.