The One Where Everybody Was On A Break

Season 20, Episode 73

First aired 5 May 2016

It’s the morning after the night before, and a disheveled Katy is hiding from Mo, which consists of semi-crouching in the middle of the room and hoping for the best. It works, and as Mo wanders away, Katy grabs her shoes and giant fur-lined anorak and dashes out the door.

Bobbi-Lee is kissing up to Berni with croissants and tea and naked Hugh Jackman on a platter, thanks her for not throwing her out, and promises to pay back every cent of the money she stole, but Berni interrupts her to bitch and moan and criticize, and it’s going to be a long day for Bobbi-Lee. Berni spits that she saw Bobbi-Lee in the street with Andy, and therefore Bobbi-Lee is no longer welcome in her house. Scram, blondie!

Mack and his hangover are staggering around the house when Mo bursts in, shouting for headache-inducing effect, and assumes Mack was up all night drinking with Dee. He doesn’t correct her, but during his archaeological dig of the living room he finds his mobile and sees that he has a missed call from Jason. Maybe he’s calling to ask if Mack will do him a big favor and fertilize Katy’s eggs for him.

At the café, Berni is providing her typical excellent service, i.e., standing at the counter staring into space and ignoring the customers. Peadar arrives, and she tells him that Andy has returned to Ros na Rún, which causes him great distress. He’s afraid that Máire will be scared to death given “what that scumbag did to her before,” and I have no idea what that was, but I’m assuming it wasn’t “threw her a lovely surprise party.” Berni also decides to throw Bobbi-Lee under the bus, saying that Andy has won her over with his charm and crutch, and when Peadar expresses concern for her, Berni triumphantly announces that she’s taken care of that by tossing her out on the street. He can’t believe she’s done this, and worries that Bobbi-Lee’s only option now will be to go back to Andy, so Berni snots that she can go nail herself into a burning coffin for all she cares, because Bobbi-Lee is old enough to know better. Peadar, who is performing the role of Jiminy Cricket today, reminds her that she hasn’t had the best judgment when it comes to men over the years, including Andy, and that perhaps she could try being less of a bitter hypocritical stuck-up cow. I may be paraphrasing slightly. Berni looks thoughtful, and as usual with her, it’s impossible to tell whether she’s feeling a twinge of empathy for another human being or trying to decide where she’s going to bury Peadar’s body.

At the holiday house, Bobbi-Lee is wearing a lovely blue plaid shirt that looks gorgeous on her, and the costume team should make a note of it. Oh yes, she’s also lecturing Andy on what a stupid idea it was for him to venture into town last episode after all the damage he’s caused over the years. As has become the pattern when things get emotionally tricky with Bobbi-Lee, he responds by trying to stand up and nearly falling over, so she has to help him back to the couch and fetch his pills. He thanks her for having always been so good to him over the years, and then vows to make amends with Berni one way or another, and his many years away seem to have caused him to forget that Berni doesn’t know the meaning of the word “amends,” but she does know the meaning of the words “cutting your brake lines.”

Mack arrives at Gaudi to see Katy, who is pretending to work, and she has to really fumble around with nothing to kill time while she waits for him to cross the set and hit his mark. He’s panicky and stubbly about how the eff last night happened, and she’s remarkably blasé about it, narrating that they drank too much and slept together, that’s all. He asks what they’re going to do about Dee and Jason, whom Katy suggests can go frig themselves, or drink poison. Either way. She says she and Mack are both single now and therefore did nothing wrong, and that he can go tell non-egg-fertilizing Jason all about it for all she cares, and then tosses him out because she’s got imaginary work to pretend to do.

Out in the street, David is trying to schedule Pádraig’s next driving lesson, in which he is going to let him look at drawings of various objects and point to the ones that are cars. Pádraig tells him that won’t be necessary, and just then new driving instructor Frances appears and says they can go out at 2:00 today. David is hurt, and clearly Pádraig has forgotten the fact that Frances can’t give him karate driving lessons like David can, but his mind is made up. Just then a woman gets out of a car and heads into Gaudi, and Pádraig is sure he’s seen her face somewhere, so brace yourself for this episode’s comedy relief.

Berni returns home to find Bobbi-Lee and Andy sitting at her kitchen table, and you can imagine how well this goes over. She tries to throw them out, and when they refuse to go, she grabs her phone and tries to call the Gardaí. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if she went to get her phone and discovered that Bobbi-Lee had “borrowed” it and racked up €5000 in long-distance calls to Nashville? Bobbi-Lee pleads for her to stop, because Andy is sick, and this may be Berni’s last chance to see him.

Jason arrives at Gaudi and apologizes to Katy for being so cranky yesterday, and explains it was because it was his and Lee’s anniversary. I think his behavior might’ve crossed the border from “cranky” to “jackass,” but let’s play along. She looks guilty and stricken as she realizes that perhaps she shouldn’t have had revenge sex with Mack after all, but they make up and she suggests they both forget yesterday ever happened, especially the part where I am sure she GOT MIRACULOUSLY PREGNANT BY MACK. Just then, Jason gets a text from our favorite hackney driver himself, who says they need to talk about something urgent, so he dashes off, and Katy poops in fear a little. Pádraig comes over and tries to engage her in the B-story about the familiar woman, which is really more of the F- or G-story, but she has no time for his nonsense, and disappears pregnantly into the kitchen to leave Mack a desperate “call me!” voicemail.

Bobbi-Lee is trying to make nice with Berni, which is always a losing battle. She scoffs when Bobbi-Lee reveals that Andy has been back for weeks, and then accuses her of stealing the money to give to Andy, but she’s quickly like, “No, no, I stole it for myself, I promise!” This whole time they’re talking about him as if he’s not there, and he’s just sitting there watching them go back and forth with a confused look on his face as if he doesn’t speak Irish. Berni eventually realizes she has enough rage for two, so she broadens her assault on Bobbi-Lee to include Andy as well, and spits various insults at them through clenched teeth and pursed lips. It makes me feel bad about my terrible Irish, because Berni speaks it beautifully without ever opening her mouth, whereas my pronunciation is incomprehensible even when I use my whole face. Andy apologizes and swears he wants to make things right before he dies, and she rolls her eyes and checks her watch and then invites him to get the hell out of her house. There might be an evite for that.

Katy runs into Mack in the street and has changed her tune, now pleading with him to keep shtum about the whole revenge sex thing. It would be difficult for anyone to follow her rapid shifts in logic, so you can imagine how poor Mack is struggling. Eventually he tells her he can’t lie to Jason, because they’ve been friends for 20 years and he owes him the truth, and then says he’s going to use the “we were on a break” defense, which we all know worked out really well for Ross and Rachel on Friends.

After an online Nicorette ad, Pádraig is laying it on thick with the mystery woman at the restaurant, babbling about how their fish is freshly caught in the loo every morning and the vegetables are flown in from Chernobyl wrapped in high-quality asbestos, but she just looks confused and orders the spaghetti, with the cook’s hair on the side. He goes to the bar and tells David she’s a famous food critic, and that this is his chance to change his life by impressing her. Well, I can’t imagine how this is going to turn out!

Katy is sitting in the café and hasn’t taken off her humongous Arctic-expedition parka yet because she is always freezing, which makes me think she needs to go to Bobbi-Lee’s boyfriend Dr Sexy for a malaria test. It seems she has summoned Dee, who arrives in a strop, as usual, and is unmoved by Katy’s suggestion that she make up with Mack. Katy tries to be concerned and empathetic, so Dee instantly knows she’s up to something. There is the usual back and forthing, and Dee’s moods swing from “suspiciously annoyed” to “wide-eyed manga superheroine” because she doesn’t know what’s going on.

Back at Berni’s, Bobbi-Lee is folding and packing her leather hot pants and plastic bustiers and other accoutrements from the “Sandy at the end of Grease” collection when Berni walks in and, in a moment of humanity, asks her if she’s got someplace to stay. It’s like in the X-Men, when Dark Phoenix regains her sanity briefly and asks them to kill her, and then she snaps again and destroys the planet of the broccoli people. Bobbi-Lee says she’s staying with Andy, and Berni reacts as you’d expect, reminding her that this is the same man who made up a story about being abused by a priest, not to mention all the horrors he put Bobbi-Lee herself through. Bobbi-Lee reminds her that Andy is her brother, and is dying, and that if she can forgive him after all he’s done, Berni can, too. Berni eventually relents and agrees to speak to him, which delights Bobbi-Lee, because she doesn’t realize that when Berni says “speak to,” she means “stab repeatedly.”

Dee finds Mack at the café and says Katy told her about what happened last night. He, of course, interprets this to mean Katy told her about the revenge sex, and it looks like we’re going to have one of those accidental confession scenes, but then she pulls back, and the crisis is averted. She tells him he’s got to let her have her career, but that she never wants them to fight like that again, and it seems they’ve made up.

Katy and Jason are at home making dinner when he remembers he forgot to track down Mack. She encourages him that it can wait till later, for example never, but he insists that if it were anyone else he’d drop it, but since it’s Mack, he’s got to go find him. I didn’t realize they were that close, but OK. He leaves, and she looks panicky, because she completely reasonably has no confidence that Mack will be able to keep his mouth shut.

Back at the restaurant, Pádraig has bribed David to make a big production about how amazing the food is in front of the alleged restaurant critic, which of course David overdoes, marveling at their use of sophisticated and exotic ingredients such as salt. Eventually, as we expected, it turns out the woman isn’t the critic, and Pádraig is annoyed and curt with her, because of course it’s her fault that he’s an idiot.

Jason finds Mack in the café and asks what he wanted so urgently (current answer: “Nothing!”), and then we cut to Berni, who has brought her particular brand of sunshine to the holiday house. Andy stops loading up his pillbox and lets her in, which is his first mistake. She takes a swipe at Bobbi-Lee, who isn’t even there, and then hands him an envelope stuffed with cash. She’s offering him €5000 to take his crutch and his African Hydraulic Fever and leave Ros na Rún forever. I bet she’ll throw in another thousand if he takes Bobbi-Lee with him. She spits that she’s not falling for his pretense because he is a known lying liar who lies, and bats the money at him as if it’s a pile of poo, and hisses at him to disappear and leave Bobbi-Lee alone. Part of me is surprised that Berni cares what happens to her at this point, but then I remember that it’s because she wants to kill Bobbi-Lee herself, preferably on CCTV so she can watch it over and over again.

Jason returns home and reports that Mack and Dee have made up, and then asks Katy to explain the embryo fertilization process to him, and we all know it’s moot at this point since she is totally pregnant now. He tells her he’s not making any promises, but he’s not completely opposed to the idea, and says that after yesterday, he realizes how much she means to him, and promises to be 100% honest with her from now on. She promises the same thing, but then looks pained, because she knows it’s going to be hard to explain why her miracle baby is born with perma-stubble and a hackney license.

Next time: Katy is going to squabble … with Mack! I suppose Pádraig deserves a day off every now and then.