You Just Haven't Earned It Yet, Katy

Season 21, Episode 7

First aired 27 September 2016

Dia duit! We’re back, after a long summer of waiting with baited breath to find out if Bobbi-Lee survived Andy’s attack (she did!) and if Andy survived Frances’ impromptu ride on the Dodgems (it seems he did not). Unfortunately I was sidetracked from the recapping business by a detached retina on the day of the season 21 premiere and was banned by the doctor from using a computer until just now, so sadly the first six episodes of this season will be lost to the mists of unrecapped time. I’m sure Dr. Tiarnán would’ve found a way to get me up and running again sooner, which is only about 80% a euphemism.

So! We have a new title sequence this year! My favorite bit, Bobbi-Lee holding up the baby cowboy outfit, is gone, but we do have new scenes of sulky Katy punching a sofa cushion and Uncle Pest in a Hawaiian shirt, which you have to admit are pretty representative of them.

We open at Katy and Jason’s, where he’s late for a meeting and turning the place upside-down looking for his laptop, but it does not seem to be in any of the likely places in which he’s looking, such as under a teacup or inside the sugar dish. Katy, of course, is not interested in this, this time because she’s busy sniffing the milk and proclaiming it’s gone off. Jason argues that it was fine this morning when he had some in his tea, so there must be something wrong with her nose. I am familiar with how this discussion goes, because whenever I throw out the milk because it’s gone gelatinous and radioactive, my husband insists it was fine when he had it in his coffee earlier. He had to scoop it out of the carton with a spoon, but still. Anyway, Jason tells her he thinks she’s still sick, and his expert medical opinion is that it’s not food poisoning as she claims, but side effects from the fertility treatments. God willing, he muses, she won’t have to endure those much longer. Well, Mack willing, anyway. Fortunately for Katy, and the world of big-business computing, Jason finds his laptop, which amazingly was in his laptop case, and then zooms off, leaving Katy sitting there all impregnated and whatnot.

At the B&B, Máire is sitting at the kitchen table in a trance while Uncle Pest and Sally, the older woman who seems to be Máire’s friend or sister or social worker or something, are buzzing around the room. Uncle Pest has come over to change some lightbulbs, and Sally, who is doing some last-minute meddling before she catches the bus back to wherever she came from, strictly instructs Máire to let Uncle Pest do all the climbing up ladders and roofs and rerouting gas pipelines and such now that Peadar is gone. Yes, now that the oldest man in the village has died, it seems logical that hazardous household tasks should fall to the second-oldest man in the village. Can’t that dumb kid Rónán from last year do it? He’s probably just sitting at home playing his Atari and talking on the Snapchat and drinking his alcopops. Bah, the youth of today! Sally and Uncle Pest finally bog off, and Máire is left on her own, looking very sad and lonely indeed.

Over at Gaudi, which seems to have not been shut down by the health inspector over the summer, David is in search of a birthday cake for some tearaway at An Teaghlach we’ve never heard of, but Pádraig apologizes that Jason and Katy are both out and all he’s got are muffins. You keep your muffins away from that eighteen-year-old lad, Pádraig! The two of them and Bobbi-Lee, who is hanging around for some reason, agree that the only thing sadder than not getting a cake on your birthday is getting muffins on your birthday, but Bobbi-Lee helpfully volunteers that 18-year-olds don’t care about cake anyway, they only care about sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll, and possibly also Hollyoaks. This begins a philosophical debate in which David soliloquizes that 18 is a very important time in a young person’s life, and starts to quote from Bishop Augustine of Hippo in the original Aramaic and whatnot, and Bobbi-Lee counters with a story about how on her 18th birthday, she woke up and found herself dancing the can-can onstage at Madison Square Garden with the Rockettes, three of the guys from U2, and the Portuguese Coast Guard. David ignores this story because it makes him feel funny in several of his parts and asks Bobbi-Lee if she’ll bake a cake for him, which goes about as well as you’d expect it to. This begins a discussion of which would be less suicide-inducing, getting a birthday muffin from Pádraig or getting a birthday sponge from Vince. (Oo-er!) By now Bobbi-Lee’s patience for this nonsense has officially expired, so she suggests David just stick a candle in a muffin, or up his arse, and get on with it. Oh, how I missed Bobbi-Lee over the summer.

At the café, which is of course where everyone in the village goes to buy a cake all the time except today for some reason, John Joe is telling Katy that she should have a paternity test done after the baby’s born. She doesn’t see any reason to do this, and would rather live with the secret than risk losing Jason by telling him about Mack. This is a great plan until the baby is born with two days’ stubble and driving a hackney. Just then Mack and Dee walk in and try to join them, and Katy demonstrates the age-old, unbreakable bond between sisters by giving Dee a look like she’s just taken a poo on a nun. Katy tells them to go away, so they wander off, confused, and Katy hisses to John Joe that he better not tell anyone about the baby, especially Dee. Take that, Dee!

Back at the flat, Jason is doing a bit of tidying up, and when he opens the lid of the bin, he discovers an array of pregnancy test boxes and positive wee-sticks RIGHT ON TOP, because apparently Katy is stupid now. Maybe the baby is pressing on her brain.

Máire has arrived at the pub to pay the funeral bill. Sympathetic Frances is all, “Ahh, sure and you don’t need to worry yourself about that now, we can talk about it later,” while Tadhg is all, “We accept cash, Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, and Tesco gift cards with a 10% service fee.” Máire wanders off, as she does, and Tadhg and Frances turn their attention to the conversation Mack and Uncle Pest are having about the CERN supercollider and EU policy towards Crimea. No, wait, Mack is complaining that the hackney business is down and Uncle Pest is volunteering that he was the #1 business expert in America and owned a chain of pubs and, like, an airline. And a unicorn. Uncle Pest is Donald Trump, basically. Tadhg wants him to shut his cakehole, but Frances is intrigued, so he tells her all the secrets of his pub success: drama clubs, karaoke, “find the dead mouse in the kitchen” contests, etc. This seems to have given her something to think about, I mean other than running over Andy with her car, but Tadhg thinks Uncle Pest is full of crap because it’s Tadhg and, well, Uncle Pest.

Katy comes home to find Jason sitting silently in profile in the foreground like he’s in an Ibsen play, and he starts playing cat and mouse with her, eventually delivering the classic soap opera “Admit it! YOU’RE PREGNANT!” coup de grace by suggesting Katy drink some wine. Of course she says she can’t, because of, uhh, the drugs she’s taking, and also, erm, her religion forbids it, and, umm, she’s got to go because she left the oven on in her car, so bye!

At the shop, Máire is fretting to whoever is within earshot that she misses Peadar, but unfortunately for her, it’s only Caitríona, who tries to look sympathetic, but cannot find that file on her emotion circuit board. She clearly doesn’t think this is going to fit into her next book at all, unless she can accuse someone of murdering Peadar. I vote for Fia.

Back at the pub, Uncle Pest is literally lecturing Mack about the intricacies of rural economics in EU Ireland, and I just hope he doesn’t mention the Celtic Tiger, because Mack will announce he’s never seen a real live tiger before and get out his camera. Uncle Pest starts explaining to Mack and Tadhg how if he owned the pub, it would be a nice place, unlike the complete piss-poor shithole it is now, and he and Tadhg start bickering, and eventually Tadhg tells Uncle Pest that he’s barred! Hopefully that includes his Hawaiian shirts, too.

Jason is at home getting ready to go to the restaurant when Katy comes into the room and discovers that, oops, all her positive pregnancy tests are lying on the table! She’s shocked, and squawks “Jason!” in an anguished voice, and I think it’s not just because he’s taken something she’s weed on out of the dirty garbage and put it where they have to eat.

At the restaurant, David and the cast of Grange Hill are gathered around the incredibly sad birthday muffins, and the birthday boy Pól, who I guess is going to be this year’s stroppy teen we don’t care about, is being a total asshole about everything and making everyone uncomfortable. Since he’s 18 now, he can’t live at An Teaghlach anymore, and I can already tell this is an annoying storyline about troubled yoof that will meander for a while before he eventually dies or is revealed to have a heart of gold or both, so let’s agree to skip over it until we have to care about it again later, OK?

Meanwhile, Katy has arrived at Gaudi in search of Jason, but Pádraig says he’s not there. John Joe appears and Katy tells him that Jason discovered the pregnancy tests, which apparently sat on top of the garbage since last week with no new garbage added on top, and John Joe tells her she’s got to tell Jason the truth about everything. Clearly John Joe does not know how soap opera pregnancy storylines work.

At the B&B, Máire is being comforted by Bobbi-Lee and Caitríona, because apparently Tadhg and that asshole teenager from the last scene weren’t available. As you’d expect, Bobbi-Lee and Caitríona ignore Máire and squabble for a bit about which of the two of them has suffered more, and the best part is when Máire, whom you’ll recall they are there to comfort, gets up and wanders away to wash the dishes and whatnot while the two of them continue arguing. Bobbi-Lee slips and suggests that Andy is dead, which sends Caitríona into full eye-squinting Murder, She Wrote mode, so Bobbi-Lee leaves in a hurry before things get real and she has to get Frances to kill Caitríona, too.

Tadhg is at the bar working on the books when Frances asks him if he’s given any more thought to going to counseling. He says he’s fine, but she says he’s clearly upset and taking it out on the customers. Actually I’d say the last few episodes have been the most pleasant I’ve ever seen Tadhg. I don’t think he’s insulted anyone’s personal appearance, or their mother’s personal appearance, or told them to go eff themselves in hell. She says that throwing Uncle Pest out was uncalled for, which makes me wonder if she has ever met Uncle Pest, but Tadhg says he’s not going to a counselor and that’s the end of it.

At their flat, Jason is accusing Katy of trying to trap him by getting pregnant and not telling him, and she counters that she hadn’t told him because she was in shock. He didn’t want a baby right now, neither did she, he doesn’t believe her, he says she did it on purpose, she says she didn’t, etc. There is back and forthing, and he tells her she’s selfish, and she looks stricken, and I’m trying to remember if they’ve been happy a single time since they got together.

At the pub, Mack and Uncle Pest, who has been un-barred by Frances, have stumbled onto a scheme involving a bus tour for Japanese tourists. Well, that explains why this scene opened with Uncle Pest confusingly speaking Japanese and bowing to Dee. Of course I have complete confidence that Mack and Uncle Pest will not create an international incident over this, but perhaps we should go ahead and send a nice fruit basket to the Japanese ambassador just in case.

Teen tearaway Pól is a douchewagon to David some more, and then we see a crying Katy on the phone with her dad, asking if she can come home. It seems she and Jason have broken up and she’s moving out, and while I’ve been annoyed by aspects of this storyline, Brídín Ní Mhaoldomhnaigh is really good in this scene, and we feel very sorry for Katy even though we wanted to shake her earlier.

Máire is in her bedroom alone, and picks up one of Peadar’s shirts and sniffs it, and then lies on the giant empty bed and cries, and it’s really heartbreaking.

Jason has returned to the flat for one last fight before Katy leaves. He wants to know when she found out about the pregnancy, but she refuses to tell him, and then he says it doesn’t matter because she’d just lie anyway. She leaves, and he looks sad and angry, and we haven’t even gotten to the part where Mack is the father yet!

Next time: Dee feels bad for Katy and thinks that what this situation needs is some good old-fashioned meddling, but Mack thinks they should stay out of it, and besides, he’s very busy with his drinking and eating. Dee tells him there’s always time to help one’s friends! Yes, and there’s especially always time to help one’s friends by getting one’s friend pregnant while she is on a 24-hour breakup from one’s other friend, Mack.