Offend It Like Beckham

Season 20, Episode 65

First aired 7 April 2016

We open in Coach Tadhg’s kitchen, where he’s kicking a football around and looking for Deep Heat, because it’ll come in handy if any of the kids get hurt. Right, the miraculous cut-healing and bone-knitting powers of Deep Heat For Kids. Frances asks him if he’s going a bit OTT, but Tadhg tells her he doesn’t have time to discuss this right now because he’s busy going OTT. He explains that he’s on his way to pick Áine up from school and run some drills with her, because as you may recall, she stinks. Frances informs him that he’s not allowed to go take Áine out of school two hours early. Well, we established last week that she’s not learning anything at that school, so why not? She reminds Tadhg that this is just supposed to be a bit of fun, but Tadhg, like Berni, doesn’t know the meaning of the word.

At the B&B, Vanessa is saying her sad goodbyes, although nobody seems particularly sad about it. I imagine there’s been a lot of encouraging her to leave extra early in case there are queues at the airport, or they run out of those giant Toblerones at duty free. As she hugs Fia goodbye, Vanessa promises she won’t say a word to Ganja about the baby when she gets back to Oz, and we see cascading face-making from Fia, then Evan, and then Peadar.

At Gaudi, Pádraig is protesting because Jason has asked him to look after Cuán while he’s out running errands. Awful Suzanne is in the foreground being awful, because as we established last episode, she’s annexed Gaudi as her office, and her interest seems overly piqued by this discussion of Cuán. Pádraig disappears into the kitchen, and when he comes back, he catches Suzanne creepily taking photos of Cuán in his stroller. He asks her what she’s doing, and then she becomes overly nonchalant and explanatory in the way guilty people do, and explains that she’s, uhh, waiting for a bus to, erm, the hospital where she does charity work with, errr, orphan nuns. She explains that she’s an old friend of Bobbi-Lee’s and that she’s heard so much about her grandson that she just had to see him for herself, but Pádraig knows shenanigans when he sees them and glares at her.

At the gym, Tadhg is explaining to the assembled children that good sportsmanship is the most important thing and that there will be absolutely no playing dirty, and rather than winning, they should concentrate on getting fresh air and helping the environment. Then the severe, clearly no-fun-whatsoever woman who’s observing steps out to take a phone call, and Tadhg immediately tells them to forget everything he just said and starts giving them tips on how to kill the other team while the refs aren’t looking. Áine encourages them with promises of crisps and orange drink if they win, and Tadhg is proud that his little girl may not know 2 + 2 or the capital of Portugal, but she’s learned the fine art of bribery. The whole time this conversation is going on there’s one little girl whose head we see jumping up and down because she’s so wired and sugared-up she can’t even stand still. The best part of the scene is when Tadhg demonstrates foot-stomping and jersey-pulling by stomping on Áine’s foot and then nearly yanking her off her feet, to her dismay.

At their place, Jason tells Katy they should go on a little holiday together without Cuán, an idea she likes until he proposes Tuesday and Wednesday, and then she suddenly hates the idea. He suggests they go to Westport and up through the mountains, but she complains that she’s from Donegal and therefore has seen mountains before. He suggests Kerry instead, but she makes barfy faces at that, too, because it’s just more mountains. Apparently Katy wants to go to the part of Ireland with palm trees and hula girls. He says they’ll go anywhere she wants to go, but she complains that she’ll have to check the rota because she probably has to work anyway. Well, you’re sleeping with the boss, so the rota is probably not carved in stone. She can’t think of other ways to change the subject, so she dashes off to work, leaving Jason looking perplexed and worried.

At the B&B, Peadar asks Evan to sit down with him for a heart-to-heart talk. There is a preamble about family togetherness and riding unicorns on a rainbow, and then he suddenly cuts to the chase and asks Evan if Niall is Nollaig’s father. Go, Peadar!

At Gaudi, Jason asks Katy why she’s crossed out Pablo’s name in the rota and written in her own for the days he wanted them to go on their luxury holiday to the polytunnel. Someone named Pablo works there? On the bright side, Jason notes, she’s still off Wednesday, so they could go away for one night. She makes a face like he’s suggested they go spend the night at the manure factory and then says she can’t go because she has an appointment in Galway. He asks questions about it, but she evades them and then flounces off.

Tadhg finds Frances at the café and is freaking out because the team’s minibus hasn’t shown up. She asks him if he’s called the driver, and he waves his phone at her and asks whether she thinks he’s carrying it around so he can take selfies with it. Hee. She says she’ll go to the community centre to check on the bus, and he looks worried.

At Gaudi, Jason is telling John Joe that he’s going to tell Katy he knows about the fertility treatments, but John Joe reminds him it’s supposed to be a secret and that his daughter will kill him if she finds out he told Jason. Jason can see pros and cons in this scenario, so John Joe tells him that if he mentions it to Katy, she’ll break up with him for interfering in her life because she’s an independent woman. It’s a lot like Fia’s “independent woman” speech from last episode, so between her and Katy, we now have two-thirds of a Destiny’s Child.

We pan over to Bobbi-Lee, who’s just arrived to talk to Suzanne about the festival and show her some ideas she’s come up with for the stage and international merchandising rights and whatnot. I suspect her first idea is that the festival’s name be changed to Bobbi-Lee Presents The Bobbi-Lee Festival, A Bobbi-Lee Jam. Sponsored by Everything’s A Pound. Suzanne doesn’t give a crap about all this and keeps steering the conversation back to Cuán. She asks Bobbi-Lee if she’s got pics of him on her phone, and when Bobbi-Lee shows her some, Suzanne notes that he doesn’t look at all like Jason, and actually looks exactly like Andy. Bobbi-Lee is furious at this suggestion, and it would probably be very exciting if I knew who Andy is. Suzanne reiterates that Andy is Cuán’s grandfather, and Bobbi-Lee insists that Tadhg is his grandfather and storms off to the toilet. Suzanne picks up Bobbi-Lee’s phone and sends a photo of Cuán to someone, and then deletes it from the “sent messages” folder. Of course Pádraig sees all this, because his scandal radar led him directly to the scene. He doesn’t say anything, and we leave Suzanne looking shady and witchy. Clearly she and Peigi went to the same school of scheming and awfulness.

At the café, Tadhg is livid when Frances tells him the minibus driver broke his hand and can’t make it. Frances says they’ll have to forfeit the match if they can’t get the team there, but Tadhg doesn’t like this idea, and you can hear the gears turning in his head.

Back at Gaudi, Bobbi-Lee returns from the loo just in time for Suzanne to announce that she has to leave. When Bobbi-Lee protests that she hasn’t even shown Suzanne her festival plans yet, Suzanne is like, “Aww, what a shame, because that sounds terrible!” Suzanne flies off on her broom and Bobbi-Lee runs after her, ignoring Pádraig’s insistence that he needs to tell her something important.

In the street, Tadhg is ignoring Frances’ protests and loading the children into the hearse. She frets that it’s unsafe because it doesn’t have seatbelts, so Tadhg is basically like, “Children, if we hit something, go limp!” Frances puts her foot down and says they’ll just have to divide the children among several cars, and while this argument is going on, Terrible Annette looks on with smug delight from behind a signpost and takes photos of the kids climbing in and out of the hearse. Between Suzanne and Annette, the Ros na Rún School For Witchy-Poo Girls is well represented in this episode.

After the break, Peadar is telling Fia that Evan told him everything about the baby, and that she might as well come clean. He tells her that she’s got to tell Ganja about the baby, and it’s a little unclear whether Evan tricked Peadar into believing a lie about Ganja or he told Peadar the truth and Peadar is trying to trick Fia. There is probably trickery afoot, is the gist of it. She shows Peadar Facebook pictures of Ganja, who does indeed look like a loser, as she explains that he’s a womanizing alcoholic drug addict. Well, this is certainly making you look good, Fia. She insists that Nollaig is better without Ganja in his life, and Peadar throws up his hands in surrender.

Jason is at his place telling Mack about Katy’s sneaky fertility treatments, and we suspect we just missed an explanation of what those are involving diagrams and hand puppets. Mack introduces a hypothetical situation in which Jason was considering getting “the snip.” Wouldn’t he do research and make sure he was making the right decision before he told anyone? That, Mack explains, is probably what Katy’s doing. This is awfully theoretical for Mack. Jason seems to think he has a point, though, and so it’s one point for Mack’s vasectomy metaphor.

Back at the gym, the children are celebrating their victory with crisps and orange drink. It’s a short-lived victory party, though, because Tadhg calls them over and tells them that they have to annihilate Spiddal in next week’s match, a prospect the children seem very excited about.

Terrible Annette whooshes into Gaudi wearing what’s probably supposed to be a power cape, but it looks more like the world’s saddest poncho. She’s used the tracking device she’s implanted in Micheál to find him and complain about how Tadhg is a monster who shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near children. She may not be entirely wrong, but it’s a bit like Dracula’s awfulness being called into question by the Bride of Frankenstein. Micheál is disinterested until she claims Tadhg threw the children into the back of a hearse (true, kind of) and told them that’s where they’d end up if they lost (false). He doesn’t believe her until she pulls out her phone and shows him the photo. Micheál doesn’t know what to do, and Annette announces “You haven’t heard the last of this!” I’m pretty sure this is Annette’s exit line in every single scene we have ever seen her in. She’s probably got it in a framed cross-stitch above the fireplace in place of “Home Sweet Home.”

At their place, Katy’s prepared a fancy dinner for Jason, explaining that since the mini-break didn’t work out, she thought they’d celebrate with a romantic night at home. He asks if she’s got anything to tell her, but of course she doesn’t.

Back at Gaudi, Pádraig is asking Bobbi-Lee if Suzanne is yucky and dangerous, or just yucky. He tells her he saw Suzanne sending something from Bobbi-Lee’s phone earlier, but since there’s nothing in her Sent folder, Bobbi-Lee suggests that Suzanne was probably just admiring all the photos of Bobbi-Lee. Because of course Bobbi-Lee has a phone full of pictures of herself. Pádraig tells her he can’t put his finger on it, mostly because he doesn’t want to put any part of his body on or near Suzanne, but that Bobbi-Lee needs to be careful around her. Trust your fairy gayfather’s instincts, Bobbi-Lee!

At the pub, Tadhg is bragging about the team’s victory when Micheál arrives to tell him there’s good news: he’s found a new coach for the team, so Tadhg doesn’t have to do it anymore! Tadhg is furious, and Micheál eventually admits that one of the parents filed a complaint about him. Tadhg and Frances immediately deduce that Annette is behind this, and they’re not happy about it.

Meanwhile, back at Love’s Young Dream, Jason is sulky and distant but Katy doesn’t seem to notice as she makes a big deal about the “lovely dessert” she cooked him: chocolate and strawberries! I think that’s less “cooking” and more “melting chocolate in the microwave and putting some strawberries in a bowl.” He brattily says he doesn’t want any, but before he can call her a stinky poo-poo head, Cuán starts crying and Jason goes to check on him, shooting A Look at Katy, who is happily eating strawberries and misses it.

At the pub, Tadhg and Frances are ranting about Terrible Annette, and Tadhg says if she were a man, he’d castrate her. There is a lot of talk of scrotums (scrota?) this week. There’s talk about Annette’s horribleness, and then Frances narrows her eyes and ominously says that Annette will keep talking … unless someone stops her. Frances, you see, may not have attended the Ros na Rún School For Witchy-Poo Girls, but she took one of their correspondence courses by mail.

It’s nighttime, and out in the street, Awful Suzanne is approached by a shadowy figure. Suzanne tells him she got the picture he wanted, and when he asks if Bobbi-Lee is suspicious, she evilly and moustache-twirlingly says no. We haven’t heard the last of this!

Next time: David has learned that the Internet is a thing, and that you can get it on phones now! And he’s used it to find out that Bobbi-Lee’s name is nowhere to be found on the festival bill! Cut to Bobbi-Lee all up in Suzanne’s face yelling that she wants her bribe back!