Keep Your Hands Off My Katy

Season 20, Episode 64

First aired 5 April 2016

We open at Gaudi, where John Joe has come to complain to Noreen about how inappropriate Jason is for Katy. Hopefully you find this topic interesting, because we’re in for a lot of it. He says Jason is an old man who’s saddled with a child, which is the last thing Katy needs, but Noreen thinks he’s a nice guy with a job and a house and that they should count their blessings and butt out. Yeah, she could hook up with Fia’s boyfriend Danny, a.k.a. Ganja, who has neck tattoos and a chainsaw bolted to his forehead and probably hepatitis A through E. Or Fia’s other boyfriend Niall, a.k.a. Fia’s mother’s boyfriend.

And on that front, over at the B&B, Máire is leading a baking class, and Fia’s face may or may not be covered in flour. It’s hard to tell. Vanessa appears and announces she’s postponed her flight back to Australia by a couple more days to give Fia time to change her mind, but Fia wants to stay in Ros na Rún because Máire and Peadar are happy to have her, RIGHT, MÁIRE AND PEADAR? Since they’re standing right there, they agree, Peadar much more enthusiastically than Máire, but Vanessa snaps at them that they shouldn’t be encouraging Fia’s idiocy by making her feel welcome. Yeah, they should toss her out in the street, and her baby after her! Máire says Fia is a young woman now and should be allowed to make her own decisions, but Vanessa accuses her of just saying that because she’d miss Fia if she left. If only we could cut to a montage now of all the times Máire has complained about having Fia around, particularly my all-time favorite, the time she made Fia go away because she was annoying. Vanessa thinks this all has something to do with Niall, but she can’t figure out what, and at the mention of his name, Fia storms out of the kitchen, forgetting all about her half-finished flour ball, which presumably will appear in a basket on someone’s doorstep tonight with a note asking them to take care of it.

At the café, Dee and Mack have run into each other, and there’s awkwardness and puppy-dog looks and stammering. She explains that she’s come into town because John Joe, who can’t keep his nose out of his daughters’ business, is freaking out over Katy and Jason, and Mack notes he’ll have to warn Jason about John Joe’s left hook. John Joe is apparently much more threatening in real life than he appears on TV. Dee laughs at Mack’s funny funny joke, because she wants his parts, and asks him to join her. He hesitates, but finally agrees that he could sit for a minute, because there’s twenty minutes before his hackney will be needed for the local prostitute shift change.

After spending the past two weeks hanging around at the B&B for no apparent reason, Evan has finally bogged off home, but now Vanessa has followed him there to ask him what’s up with Fia. She doesn’t understand why Fia hates Niall so much, to which Evan replies vaguely that he’s not sure “hate” is quite the right word. Try “is constantly getting impregnated by.” Vanessa presses him for information, but he clams up and says she needs to be having this conversation with Fia, not with him.

John Joe has arrived at Katy and Jason’s to start an argument, but sadly Jason is on his way out the door, so there’s just enough time for the lovebirds to kiss goodbye while John Joe makes pukey faces in the background. After Jason leaves, John Joe starts in on Katy about how Jason is all wrong with her, what with his being SO much older than she is, and I have no idea how old Jason is supposed to be, but based on the way John Joe is carrying on, I am going to guess 85. He accuses Katy of being naïve and falling for the first man who came along, and there’s a great moment where Katy looks like she’s about to rip his face off, and then he continues that Jason’s just after a babysitter, not a relationship. There is discussion of Jason and his baggage, which Katy is a fan of and John Joe is not, and eventually she throws him out and glares into the middle distance.

At the café, Dee and Mack are having a pleasant conversation when Caitríona shows up and invites herself to join them. Dee sneers and shoots daggers at her from under her fringe, and it’s at moments like this that you can tell she and Katy are sisters. Caitríona pretends to be there for a lovely pleasant social visit, a pretense she is of course only able to keep up for two seconds, and then she and Dee start sniping at each other, because Caitríona is apparently Mack’s protector now and she’s come to remind him what a cow Dee is. Mack tells her to lay off, and Dee is like, “If anyone’s going to call me a cow here, it’s going to be Mack, so you can take your phony smile and blunt estate-agent haircut and eff off.” I may be paraphrasing a little. Mack defends Dee by saying she was only doing her job that day in court, but Caitríona reminds him that she absolutely destroyed his reputation that day, and I think this may be a bit overdramatic given that we haven’t seen anybody treat Mack any differently post-court than they did pre-court. Mack reminds Caitríona that everybody, including her, treated him like a leper after the Ailbhe thing came out in the first place, but Caitríona explains that, well, sure, but that was only because they thought he was a disgusting perv, and anyone can make a mistake! God, I feel sorry for Vince. Caitríona and Dee argue a bit more, and finally Mack tells her to get lost, so she leaves in a huff and Mack tells Dee gently that they should get together later so they can put the past behind them. He leaves, and Dee looks delighted.

We cut to Awful Suzanne, who has obviously never been delighted by anything in her life, who’s hanging around at Gaudi treating the place like her private office. Bobbi-Lee arrives, and there is passive-aggressive arguing over her spot in the upcoming Suzanne Festival’s running order, because as you may recall, Suzanne has put her on the bill for Wednesday at 7am, between a chicken that plays the piano and the guy who hoses out the portaloos. Bobbi-Lee reminds Suzanne that she is a big star around town, and in fact is replacing Bono as the new singer of U2, probably. Suzanne is snotty, and Bobbi-Lee continues to dig herself deeper by bragging about how all her imaginary gigs are packed to the rafters, and in fact “Billie Jean” was originally called “Bobbi-Lee,” but she made Michael Jackson change it because she was too famous. When this doesn’t work, Bobbi-Lee changes tactics and starts begging, and reminds Suzanne that the two of them have been pretending to like each other for years and years, but Suzanne refuses to budge, and so does her face.

At the pub, Micheál is reminding Tadhg that the rules say he’s not allowed to be alone with the girls unless a female adult is present, and volunteers that Eva-Mai’s mother Annette is always available. Tadhg says the only way Annette is going to be anywhere near the team is as part of the “In Memoriam” slide show at the annual Ros na Rún sports banquet with a death date of about a week from now under her name. John Joe arrives to discuss the Katy-Jason scandal, which Tadhg doesn’t know anything about, so there is discussion about who seduced whom, and which one is the hussy, and which one is a money-grubbing tramp from Donegal named Katy, and it’s exactly as you’d imagine it. The only thing they agree on is that they’ve got to put a stop to it.

Back at Gaudi, Bobbi-Lee is still pestering Suzanne, who says there’s nothing she can do about the running order, mostly because it's already set, but also because she doesn’t want to. Bobbi-Lee is sad because the event is raising money for charity, and if there’s one thing Bobbi-Lee cares about, it’s herself charity. She excuses herself and on her way out asks Pádraig to keep Suzanne there till she gets back, which he makes clear will be no problem, presumably because he will give her the makeover he was planning to give Katy last episode until she so selfishly told him to get away from her.

At the pub, Mack is happily reunited with Vanessa, who tells him she’ll be needing his hackney to get back to the airport as soon as she can drug Fia and throw her into the backseat. About this time Caitríona shows up and hijacks their conversation, literally standing between the two of them with her back to Mack, and the only way this could get better would be if Berni now showed up and planted herself between Caitríona and Vanessa, like passive-aggressive Russian nesting dolls. Mack patiently waits till Vanessa leaves and then starts reading Caitríona the riot act over the earlier scene with Dee. She reminds him that she was only trying to save him from himself, and if Dee got her feelings hurt and also the brake lines of her car cut in the process, that’s Dee’s problem.

Jason storms into John Joe’s place, interrupting John Joe’s very elaborately produced sandwich from craft services, and says he’s just spoken to Tadhg and wants to know why John Joe is trying to break him and Katy up.

After the break, Fia is taking something burnt out of the oven when she gets a text from Niall asking if the baby is his. Before she can reply, Vanessa returns and they start arguing again, and while it’s nice to see Fia arguing with someone other than Evan for a change, enough already. Vanessa says she spoke to Niall, and that he wasn’t surprised Fia wasn’t coming home, so she wants to know once and for all what happened between the two of them. There is arguing, and, because Fia won the coin toss, she gets to storm out of the room and leave Vanessa standing there looking stricken.

Back at John Joe’s, the tension has eased a bit, though there is still the risk that he could throw his elaborate sandwich at Jason at any moment. Jason insists that he’d never hurt Katy, and John Joe reluctantly agrees with this, but he’s just worried that Katy’s all over the place these days, and that she’s only seeing Jason because he and Cuán will be her ready-made family in case the fertility treatments don’t work. These, of course, would be the fertility treatments that Jason didn’t know about until right now.

Over at the café, Berni looks harried, and seeing Bobbi-Lee walk in doesn’t improve her mood any. While Berni wipes off a table, Bobbi-Lee makes a big production of looking everywhere for her allegedly lost mobile, mostly in Berni’s purse, and more specifically inside Berni’s wallet. She doesn’t find her phone there, but of course she does find Berni’s ATM card, which she helps herself to while Berni isn’t looking. In for a penny—or in this case, €1942.57—in for a pound, I suppose.

Back at John Joe’s, he and Jason are discussing the IVF treatments, and they can’t imagine why Katy has been keeping it a secret from Jason, who is scrunching his face up like Grant Mitchell trying to calculate a tip. Jason concludes that he and Katy would be together even if it weren’t for Cuán, and that he’s going to go get to the bottom of things with her, but John Joe swears him to secrecy. Before Jason goes, John Joe reluctantly gives them his blessing, but not before the usual “If you hurt my little girl, I’ll put you through a wall” routine. I might’ve gone for, “If you hurt my little girl, I’ll send you on a two-week holiday to Chechnya with Suzanne and Annette.”

At Gaudi’s, Pádraig amazingly can’t get the machine to accept Suzanne’s card, and this has clearly been going on for a while. Bobbi-Lee arrives to save the day, taking care of Suzanne’s bill and then, after Pádraig disappears, producing a huge wad of cash which she hopes might make Suzanne reconsider the running order. Suzanne refuses to take it, and there is backing and forthing, and Bobbi-Lee finally leaves Suzanne with the money, saying she can’t wait to see the revised bill with her name in big flashing neon letters at the top. Suzanne looks unhappy, but then again, that’s kind of her default. Something seems to be going on, anyway.

At another table, Fia shows Evan the text from Niall, and they try to figure out what they should do. She can’t face the thought of breaking her mother’s heart by telling her the truth, and finally concludes that her only option is to stay in Ros na Rún and send Vanessa back to Oz to play happy families with Niall. She sends Niall a text saying that the baby’s father is actually Danny, a.k.a. Ganja, and puts the phone down sadly.

At the café, Dee floats in on cloud 9, beaming about seeing Mack and rekindling their romance. Her smile turns upside-down, however, when he presents her with a bin bag he’s stuffed full of things she left at his place. She’s hurt, but rather than admitting her heart is broken, she concentrates on how carelessly and crappily he tossed her things in a bin bag, and in typical Mack fashion he’s like, “No, this is actually my best luggage. I took it to Tenerife last year!” She’s furious that he shows no respect for her or her things, and announces that she’s done—DONE!—with him. On her way out, she throws back a shirt of his that “accidentally” ended up in the bag. He notes that it smells of her perfume, so she spits that he can keep it as a memento, by which she clearly means, “You can shove it up your arse sideways,” and as she leaves, we see him sniffing it sadly. Oh, Mack.

At Gaudi, Pádraig is once again in full Graham Norton mode, trying to get Katy to dish all the dirt about her and Jason, and then brightly greeting John Joe as the father of the bride when he arrives. I’ve always found it crass to say that somebody really needs to get laid, so instead I’ll say that if Grindr exists in Ireland, Pádraig totally needs to get on it. Katy sends him away to clean tables, and it’s clear that John Joe has arrived to make peace, but only after some jokey conversation about what type of gun he’ll shoot Jason with if he hurts her.

Back at the B&B, Vanessa is crunching on what appears to be the burnt thing Fia took out of the oven earlier. Hopefully she kept her Irish dental insurance when she emigrated to Australia. Fia arrives, carrying a terrifying grey Muppet-skin purse, and says she doesn’t want to fight, but they need to talk. She asks Vanessa to go back to Australia, but says she’s going to stay in Ireland to raise Nollaig with Liam’s family, and besides, she doesn’t particularly care for Niall. She says it as if he’s cilantro. Vanessa is teary and reluctant, but Fia soliloquizes about how she’s an independent woman who needs to find her own way in the world, and it’s very Mary Tyler Moore Show, or possibly Beyonce.

At their place, Katy is showing Jason something she got Cuán for teething pains. He notes that Cuán is asleep, and tries to sex her up, but she’s not in the mood because she needs to go get Cuán’s bottles ready for tomorrow. He offers to do it tomorrow so the sexing-up can commence, and reminds her that baby bottles are his job, but she brightly volunteers that it’s both their jobs and bops off to the kitchen, leaving him sitting there wondering if John Joe’s theory is right. Also horny.

Next time: It’s a lovely grandfather-and-grandson conversation at the B&B until Peadar hits Evan with the fact that he’s figured out that Niall is Nollaig’s father. POW!