Bern, Baby, Bern

Season 20, Episode 72

First aired 3 May 2016

We open at Gaudi where Berni is haughtily treating a waitress like crap because the machine keeps rejecting her card. Oh, things are finally going to go down with this storyline! Katy and Pádraig enter the dining room squabbling, because that’s what they do now. She’s insistent that Jason doesn’t want to marry her, but Pádraig, in full meddling mode, explains that Jason is clearly going to propose at any second because he’s been acting strange lately, and also talked to a priest, Q.E.D. It's airtight logic if I've ever heard it.

In the shop, Jason is wearing a knit cap pulled down past his chin, like Dumb Donald from Fat Albert, and the small part of his jaw we can see looks brooding. John Joe notices he’s carrying an enormous bouquet of flowers, because nothing gets past him, and assumes they must be a gift for Katy, so he uses this opportunity to harass a passing Mack about how he should learn to give Dee nice gifts. Well, Mack is about to give something to one of the Daly sisters, that’s for sure. He complains that he’d treat Dee nicely if he ever saw her, but that she’s so busy with her new case these days that she doesn’t have time for him. We pan over to Máire, who is tut-tutting over a newspaper, and is, as usual, stricken and aggrieved by the world, with its drugs and Kardashians and written communication. Of course, Máire tut-tuts over Garfield and the crossword puzzle, too, so this in itself is nothing new. She starts following Mack around the store trying to suck him into her vortex of misery, but he’s busy doing the thing I absolutely love in scenes at the shop, which is walking along an aisle randomly taking things off the top shelf and putting them in his basket. “Hey, isn’t it convenient that avocados, paper plates, Havarti cheese, tampons, and Smash Hits magazine are side by side on this top shelf, because those are exactly the things I came to the shop for!” She finally thrusts the paper in his face to show him the horror of some local violent crime, and because the avocado/plates/cheese/tampons/Smash Hits aisle is also the light bulb aisle, one lights up over his head and he realizes this is Dee’s new case.

In the street, Bobbi-Lee literally runs into Berni, who is in a tizzy because she’s been robbed. Bobbi-Lee assumes she means she’s been mugged or tied up with tape over her mouth while burglars ransacked the flat, and is concerned, but also a little sad that she didn’t get to see it, but Berni explains that she means someone has charged €3000 on her credit card. She asks Bobbi-Lee, who has suddenly realized that a huge iceberg is approaching on her starboard side, to call the Gardaí for her, leading to a great moment in which Bobbi-Lee pretends not to know how a phone works, and is also probably wondering if she can knock Berni out with a sucker punch and flee to Estonia before she wakes up.

Back at Gaudi, Katy tells Pádraig she has a fertility treatment this afternoon, and he says she won’t need them for much longer because once she and Jason get married, a baby will immediately follow. Because a wedding ring cures an upside-down uterus or whatever Katy has, I guess. She continues to insist he’s got the wrong end of the stick, and he winks and grins knowingly, and they are really playing to the back row here. Clap if you want Katy to get pregnant, children!

And now, a cemetery interlude, where Jason is soliloquizing to Lee’s grave that they got married two years ago today. It’s all “Alas! Poor Lee! I knew her well, Horatio,” but happily, he isn’t holding a skull, which would really give Máire something to faint about.

Back across the river Styx, Berni is looking at her credit card statement online while an increasingly panicky Bobbi-Lee pees in her pants beside her. Berni is CSI-ing the thief’s trail, and it doesn’t look good for Bobbi-Lee, because the fraudulent charges are from the Dye The Bottom Half Of Your Hair Salon, LeopardPrintForAllOccasions.com, and the My Daughter Died Last Year But I’m Slowly Getting Over It Bar & Grill. Berni’s eyes bug out on stalks when she sees that someone used the card to get €1000 out of the ATM right here in Ros na Rún, and Bobbi-Lee is clearly wishing she had one of those cyanide suicide teeth from James Bond movies.

Mack storms into the café with the newspaper he snatched out of Máire’s hands and asks John Joe if he knew that Muiris II is Dee’s new client. John Joe says no, and Mack is beginning to build to a slow, stubbly boil.

There’s a scene at the cemetery where Jason tells Lee that he still loves her, but that he’s met someone new, and then we cut to a sunny room in Andy’s holiday home we haven’t seen before, and the whole place seems nicer and less sepulchral than it did before, which is what happens when you have a builder come and knock out a non-load-bearing Suzanne. Bobbi-Lee arrives in mid-tizzy, and tells Andy that Berni’s about to find out she “borrowed” €3000 from her credit card. He realizes this means he’ll probably be at the coroner’s office soon to identify Bobbi-Lee’s body, but fortunately for her, he also has a background in credit card fraud, and assures her that the bank will just reimburse Berni for the charges. Still, he advises her to come clean about what she’s done, which she translates into developing a plan to fake her own death to get out of taking Berni to the police station later.

Jason is at home looking at photos of his wedding when Katy arrives, so he slams his laptop shut not at all suspiciously and asks how things went at the fertility clinic. It seems very few of her eggs were viable, but that they told her “it would be a great help” if the remaining ones were fertilized somehow, JASON, which seems to be news to both of them. Come on, I barely passed high school biology back in ye olden tymes when earth was young and Bananarama roamed the land, but even I don’t need to be told that an egg is more likely to turn into a baby if it’s fertilized. And also given lots of water and light. She casually asks if fertilizing her eggs is something he’d be interested in, as one does—not today or tomorrow, of course, but sometime in the future, such as the day after tomorrow. He freaks out, and insults her, and she says she saw the wedding brochures, and he tells her she’s stupid for thinking he wants to marry her, and shouts about how she keeps putting pressure on him even though he’s said he wants to take things slowly. Well, maybe you should’ve thought of that before you left wedding brochures lying around all over the house, dickwagon. She starts crying, and he yells at her to leave, and she tells him to go frig himself, and she and her giant furry anorak storm out, apparently on an expedition to the North Pole.

In the street, coincidentally right by the ATM, Berni is on the phone screaming at the bank, and she shouts that if they sent her statements like they’re supposed to this wouldn’t have happened, and they say they did, and she shouts, “Well, I didn’t get them!”, which doesn’t sound suspicious at all. She hangs up on them, and explains to a passing Micheál what’s happened. Just then, she gets a call from Bobbi-Lee, who tells her she can’t take her to the Gardaí later, because her car broke down, and also she fell down a well, but now she has to hang up, because there’s a sharknado coming. Berni asks Micheál if he’ll go to the police with her instead, and he says yes, but first he has an idea, which intrigues her, because that doesn’t happen so often.

Mack, angry-making newspaper in hand, is lying in wait to ambush Dee when she comes home. He can’t believe she’s representing another violent scumbag after the whole Muiris incident. Well, everyone needs a niche. She argues that everyone is innocent until proven guilty, and deserves a fair trial, and this is a replay of the arguing we were subjected to during the whole Muiris thing. He tells her if she takes the case, they’re finished. See, this is what happens when you talk to Máire.

After the break, Berni is at wherever Micheál works watching the footage from his CCTV, and she is totally OMG!-ing at what she sees. Run, Bobbi-Lee, run!

Back at their place, Mack and Dee are still arguing about the case, and her career, and whether the universe is actually a two-dimensional information holograph projected along a cosmological horizon. He tells her the only reason she has a career is because it helps violent monsters’ cases to have a lovely innocent young woman in the courtroom defending them, which is always a good way to express your respect and admiration for your girlfriend. She tells him she’s not going to take legal advice from a hackney driver, and there is back-and-forthing, and eventually she says there are other, non-hackney-driving fish in the sea, and she storms out.

And now, in what passes for the comedy portion of our episode, David is giving Pádraig driving lessons, which consist of him making Pádraig repeatedly coast around the block without using the gas pedal and then lecturing him extensively on mirror use. It goes on for ages, and I’m going to skip over it, which is helpful because this recap is already running long and late.

Mack is sitting in his kitchen doing shots and then gagging and heaving when Katy arrives looking for Mo, presumably for girl talk. Mo doesn’t really seem the type for this, but I suppose Katy’s other choices are Dee, Eimear, or Fia, so Mo wins by default. Mack says she’s not there, and that he’s not in the mood to talk, so Katy grabs a glass and starts drowning her sorrows with him.

Finally, the main event: Berni strolls into the pub to incinerate Bobbi-Lee with her hatred. She toys with her for a bit, like a cat playing with its prey, and then mentions that the crime-fighing duo of the police and Micheál are examining the CCTV footage, which Bobbi-Lee doesn’t like the sound of. Bobbi-Lee offers to go check on the progress of these endeavors, i.e., catch the first bus to Saturn, but Berni decides it’s time for the kill, whips out a USB drive, and calls Bobbi-Lee a thief. Look away if you’re squeamish!

There is more driving-lesson time wasting, which now doesn’t even involve a car, but instead has David putting cones out along the curb and asking Pádraig to visualize that he is a motor vehicle, or some such nonsense. David dashes off to fetch his abacus and sextant, and a passing Frances offers to rescue poor Pádraig by giving him some lessons herself. He happily exclaims that this offer is “deadly!”, which is an unfortunate word to use when discussing driving lessons, and Frances says they can start later, after she goes to comfort Jason on his wedding anniversary. He tries to call Katy to tell her ixnay with the eddingway, but she’s not picking up, and while this all appeals to his Gay Drama Gene, he is conflicted because he also doesn’t want to deal with Katy and Jason moping around the restaurant for the next 87 episodes.

Mack and Katy are half-drunk, and he’s ranting about how unreasonable Dee is. Normally there’s nothing Katy enjoys more than bitching about what a stroppy cow Dee is, of course, but right now she’s too busy bitching about Jason’s assholery to join in. Mack spits that he hopes Dee will be happy alone with her career and millions, and Katy snots that she hopes Jason will be happy alone with the memories of his wife who broke up with him and then died, and they agree that they’re better off without them, and if you didn’t see where this was going before, you do now.

Back at the storyline we really care about, Berni is eviscerating Bobbi-Lee, who apologizes and says she always intended to pay her back. Berni forces her to enumerate her list of lies, and then tries to turn her to stone with her Medusa stare, but when that doesn’t work, she commands Bobbi-Lee to get out of her sight.

Things have caught fire; if only there were a way to pour petrol on the flames! And right on cue, a cab pulls up to the curb and extrudes Andy. Bobbi-Lee, fleeing from Bernzilla, happens upon him and tries to shove him back in the cab, because she realizes that if Berni spots him, it will trigger an extinction event and then a million-year ice age. He explains that he’s come to make peace with Berni, and Bobbi-Lee desperately and hilariously tells him, “Trust me, honey, now is not a good time.” Snerk. Eventually she manages to overpower him and cram him back into the taxi, but not before Berni comes around the corner and spots them. This must be what it felt like in Pompeii five minutes before Vesuvius.

There is a scene in which Jason sits on the sofa in the dark looking at wedding pictures like a crazy person while Pádraig pounds on the door screaming Katy's name like another crazy person, and then we go next door to Mack’s, where Katy happens to be thanking him for saying she can crash there tonight. Oh, dear. He’s struggling to cram a duvet into the cover, which looks a lot like Bobbi-Lee trying to cram Andy into the taxi. A giggling, drunk Katy snatches it from him and easily completes the task in 0.3 seconds in what feels like a “Men! They’re such dopes!” moment, but it is also accurate, because I once nearly had to be committed to a mental institution after being defeated by an IKEA duvet and cover. There is more complaining about how stupid and awful Dee and Jason are, and then suddenly Katy and Mack are on the floor, of course, and then they kiss, of course. He tries to pull away, but she’s determined to sex him up, and they roll around on the floor in each other’s arms, and I blame IKEA.

Next time: Berni tells Peadar that Andy is back in town, and there is fretting, and then she goes to the holiday house and offers Andy a huge stack of cash to leave Ros na Rún and never return! Oh, please let it be cash she stole from Caitríona’s credit card.