The 2017 Miss "Worst Person In The World" Competition

Season 21, Episode 49

First aired 21 February 2017

The episode consists mostly of Frances running around a lot, so it’s appropriate that we begin with her at Micheál’s in disbelief that he hasn’t spent his every waking moment agonizing over the mentoring nonsense with Berni, Caitríona, and Gráinne. His attitude is that Berni and Caitríona are both absolutely terrible, so it really doesn’t make any difference who they force on Gráinne. Half the time he can’t even remember which one is Berni and which one is Caitríona anyway. To make her go away, he tells her she could also just find a second person who needs mentoring, such as Sorcha and her Wagon Jam business, but Frances is reluctant given that Sorcha is the worst person in the world. She leaves, and he goes back to sorting through a box of junk, smiling wistfully at some old family photos before locating his address book, which incredibly sadly seems to have only three names in it, one of which is Mikey’s. The only way it could be more pathetic would be if the other two were pizza delivery places.

Sorcha has inflicted herself upon the café, where she plops her plate of slop down in front of Berni and pulls a long strand out of hair out of it, complaining that it’s gross and she’s not paying for it. Berni tells her to sling her hook, because the hair doesn’t belong to anyone who works there, but Sorcha protests that none of them are wearing hairnets and rolls her eyes at Bobbi-Lee, who is standing around doing nothing, and sniffs, “and her hair is all different colors.” Snerk. To make her go away, Berni agrees to only charge her for the coffee, but then she starts complaining that the milk was sour and makes a big production out of choking and barfing for the assembled diners, by which I mean one guy who looks like Captain Caveman. Sorcha laughs and leaves without paying for anything just as Frances arrives. Berni is excited to show her a business plan she’s written up for Gráinne, and you can tell it’s serious because she’s put it in a three-ring binder and put plastic over the pages. Ooh, classy. Frances’ awkwardness suggests that she had come to tell Berni she was fired, and now wants to add that she also needs to get a life, but instead she tells her that the details of the mentorship are under wraps, but that all will be revealed later today, on RTÉ News.

Tadhg has dropped by Gaudi to harass Vince and Caitríona, and after he tires of them and wanders away, Caitríona tells Vince not to worry, that Tadhg may take money from them with this wine shop, but that she’s going to get it back by getting money out of Frances. And just then, Frances arrives, because she is required to be in every scene of this episode. She and Caitríona exchange their usual passive-aggressive unpleasantries as they pass, and then Frances joins Tadhg at a table and fumes that thanks to him and his stupid wine shop, she’s stuck with Caitríona as a mentor, and now needs to find somebody else with a stupid home business to keep her busy. Perhaps David could open some kind of mobile karate van.

Back at the café, Colm ignores a booty call from someone the caller ID shows as “Chipper Chick,” which makes Mo, once again speaking on all our behalves, throw up a lot. She tells him that if he doesn’t want to see Plenty O’Ride again he’s got to tell her, but he replies that she’ll figure it out for herself eventually if he just keeps ignoring her. It’s nice that Colm does something gross every few episodes so we will remember that we dislike him. At a nearby table, Micheál is having a cup of tea and a worry with Máire, who is at her most frantic and bobble-headed. She can’t believe he’s even considering contacting Mikey, but he’s not sure he can just decide to keep Réailtín from him since he’s her stepbrother. Ooh, I hope it turns out that Mikey is now a member of that Drugteen SexZone band Réailtín keeps banging on about. Máire reminds him of the sadness and heartache Mikey has caused him in the past, because she thrives on, and has a complete index of, all the village’s sadness and heartache, much like how Pádraig keeps a diary of everyone’s petty drama and reads it out loud to himself every night before bed.

At the community center, David is helping Gráinne set up a table to do another seaweed demo, I guess because she has settled all the lawsuits with the people she poisoned and held hostage last week. Even though it’s his day off, he’s anxious that Fidelma will see him, because she is a terrible person who ruins everything. There’s a lot of that going around this episode. Gráinne rolls her eyes when Frances arrives and tells her that she’s lined up two mentors to choose from, so she’ll need to put together a five-year business plan so they can match her to the most appropriate candidate. Given that Gráinne can’t figure out not to go digging for seaweed on the slippery rocks of a remote beach at night by herself, I have trouble imagining she’s thought five years into the future of this mess, but OK. She seems to think this is a load of old bollocks, but it falls down the list of biggest nuisances in her life when Fidelma arrives, whinging to David that some yob from An Teaghlach named Tomás claims he’s supposed to be working on a boat with him today. David says he told Tomás “some day,” not “today,” but Fidelma whines that Tomás is causing holy hell down at the home. Well, then we certainly want to reward his bad behavior, don’t we? We hate Fidelma.

Back at the Fresh Hair Café, Máire is still carrying on about Mikey in her most quavering voice, telling Micheál that he’s known he’s had a sister since day one but has never bothered to meet her. Furthermore, if Réailitín meets Mikey, he’ll certainly bring up the fact that Micheál euthanized their mother, which apparently Réailtín somehow does not know. I find it hard to believe she’s never heard about any of this given that Micheál went to prison for it, but I suppose we did establish that she was living on Saturn until just recently.

Berni arrives at the community center, where Caitríona is bitching to Frances that she should get paid more for mentoring Gráinne. I think Gráinne should be getting paid for putting up with Caitríona. These two titans of industry argue over who’s more qualified to be the mentor, but they shut up briefly when Frances tells them that she’s found a second mentee, so they’re both winners, by which I mean losers. She can’t tell them who it is just yet, even after Berni brings up all the work she’s done making Gráinne that stupid binder, and Caitríona counters that she too has spent a lot of time working on a plan for Gráinne, namely this takeout menu she’s written “#1: MAKE GRANNE CLEAN SALON TOYLET’S” on the back of.

David has ventured down to the beach and is now helping this kid we’ve never seen before rub a boat with sandpaper. I’m pretty sure that will restore it to seaworthiness. Well, maybe they should add a bottom to it, too. This kid Tomás, who appears to be about 25 and looks like James Dean on his way to a Morrissey concert, goes to look for a bottle of water in the boot of David’s car, but instead discovers a giant bottle of poitín, which will hopefully result in us getting to see the hospital set again. David offers to take him to lunch to celebrate a job shoddily done, but Tomorrissey says he was planning to walk over to visit his grandmother, who lives just up the road in the Totally Not Made-Up Home For Seniors. David is reluctant until Tomás calls Fidelma an idiot, which convinces David he’s a fine upstanding young person.

At the café, Frances is trying to convince Laoise that she needs mentoring by Berni or Caitríona. Laoise thanks her for her kind offer, but tells her she’d rather saw off her own head with a rubber spatula. Frances tries to butter her up by telling her she’s got the loveliest polytunnel in all the land, and that she’s sure she’d be even more impressed if she knew what the hell a polytunnel is, but Laoise is unmoved.

At the pub, Mo and Colm are laughing at David for thinking that Tomorrissey actually went to visit his sick grandmother who’s in the hospital waiting for a prostate transplant or whatever. Colm gets another call from Sexy Ní UpForIt, so Mo snatches his phone away and tells the poor cow that Colm isn’t interested in her, and is also a player. He feebly protests that he’s not, and Mo says right, he’s not a player just like David’s stupid kid is at the old biddies’ home.

Frances’ world tour of desperation has reached rock bottom with a visit to Fia, who apparently wants to open a—wait for it—fashion business. I know, right? Right now her business is at a crucial early stage in its development, in which she looks at pictures in magazines and draws circles around all the clothes. Frances tells her that won’t be a problem, but even Fia knows this storyline is dumb and wants no part of it.

David has driven to the beach, where he finds Tomás unconscious or dead on the pavement, having drunk the entire bottle of poitín. God, Tomás, that bottle was supposed to be for everyone, which is so like you.

After the break, during which we learn that children should not eat laundry detergent, we drop by the pub, where Pádraig is telling Frances he doesn’t want to be mentored. Can we work on getting Pádraig a boyfriend before we worry about whatever his business is? He leaves, and she frets to Micheál that there’s no way around it: she’s just going to have to tell Berni that her services aren’t needed. But, but, the three-ring binder! With plastic pages! PLASTIC!

David arrives at the community center, walking gingerly as if he’s on the surface of the moon and has pooped in his spacesuit. He tells Fidelma that Tomás is going to be fine, because he threw up everything he drank, and also the hairball that was in his eggs at Berni’s this morning. He tells Fidelma that the poitín was his, so she makes it all about herself and trashes him in the most passive-aggressive way possible, moaning that she feels so guilty because if it weren’t for her, Tomás never would’ve been off getting almost murdered by David. Girl, please.

Sorcha shows up to harass Frances in the café, addressing her as “Hey! Ginger!” Well, on the plus side, Sorcha will be dead soon. She says she’s heard Ginger has been going around looking for a mentee, and that she makes great jam, and she actually seems to have a much more developed business plan than Gráinne, in the sense that she understands that you make a product, then sell it to customers for money.

Micheál is sitting on his sofa looking puzzlingly at his phone, as if he can’t figure out who this Siri woman is and how she got stuck in there. Réailtín comes home from school and he sadly tells her he wasn’t able to get in touch with Mikey. She wishes there were some way to find people other than looking in your dad’s sad old address book, such as the internet or something, but he tells her the problem is that Mikey hates him and doesn’t want anything to do with him, and that unfortunately she’s collateral damage in the feud. She’s sad, but she understands, and I’m TOTALLY SURE THIS WILL BE THE END OF THIS.

Gráinne arrives at the café and apologizes to Frances for being cranky earlier. Well, wait thirty seconds and Frances is really going to give you something to be cranky about. Gráinne brightly but nervously asks when her mentor will arrive, and so the gruesome twosome of Berni and Caitríona reveal themselves, like those ghouls on a spring that pop out of coffins at a haunted house. Then, before we can even begin cleaning up this trainwreck, another carriage plows into the back of it in the form of Sorcha. Berni tries to throw her out, but Sorcha swats her down like a fly, which makes me think that perhaps she’s not so bad after all. She hands Frances a business plan on a piece of paper she’s torn out of a notebook, which we assume is probably a drawing she’s done of assorted willies, and everyone looks awkward and confused apart from Caitríona, who as always is pleased with herself for existing.

Mack and Dee put in a cameo appearance at the community center to remind us that they are a thing, and then Fidelma and her terrifying pyramid of hair arrive. She tells an anxious David that she’s got great news: she’s not in trouble over this Tomás thing! And, oh, by the way, David, you’re suspended effective immediately. In the news business that’s known as “burying the lead.” He can’t believe it, so she snots that not only did he let a minor (??) walk home alone, but he then got illegal alcohol and died or whatever. Oh, stop being so dramatic all the time, Fidelma.

A full-on circus of mentoring has broken out at the café, where Caitríona and Berni are fighting over which of them gets to mentor Gráinne, i.e., not mentor Sorcha. Berni’s argument is that she’s a perfect match for Gráinne’s business because she has extensive experience selling people slop. Caitríona counters that she’s more qualified because she’s awesome, whereas Berni is a stupid bitch. I’m paraphrasing. It’s hilarious watching the two of them attack each other, like when the two worst girls at school start punching each other in the corridor and everyone gathers around to watch. Eventually Frances puts a stop to this nonsense by announcing that Berni will mentor Sorcha while Caitríona mentors Gráinne, and I’m not sure who looks more like she’s going to vomit, Berni or Gráinne.

Back at Micheál and Réailtín’s, which I swear is one of those fake rooms on the top floor of IKEA, he tells her that he brought home some of that lasagna from Gaudi that she likes. It’s tasty, because the hair in it is much cleaner than the hair in Berni’s lasagna. She thanks him again for trying to contact Mikey, which of course he didn’t, and tells him she’s sorry, and that if she’d known things were so bad, she never would’ve asked him to do it. Wow, that’s a nicely placed guilt-punch to the crotch right there, Réailtín! Well done.

Over at the pub, Tadhg and Vince are arguing about nothing. Tadhg asks him how much he’d charge to take photos at the grand opening of the wine shop, which is going to be a huge affair with celebrities such as the TG4 weather girls, which means TG4 exists in the show’s world, but wait, the show is on TG4, and OH MY GOD MY MIND IS BLOWN. Anyway, Vince tells him to eff himself and storms out, and then poor Bobbi-Lee volunteers that she’ll sing at the grand opening for a very reasonable rate. He spits that nobody would come to see her, and also tells her to stop being so stupid all the time. Tadhg and Bobbi-Lee really are the Bogart and Bacall of our time. At a table, Berni tells Frances she’s not sure she and Sorcha will be a good fit, because, you know, Sorcha is the worst person on earth. Frances blows a bunch of smoke up her arse by telling her that the reason she paired them up is that Berni’s saintly patience is an inspiration to the entire world, and that poor Sorcha needs some of her angelic grace in her miserable, miserable life. Of course Berni likes this, and agrees that yes, she is like Wonder Woman and Mother Teresa smashed together, and that it is now her mission in life to bravely save Sorcha from herself. Snerk.

A depressed Gráinne arrives home to find an even more depressed David grimacing in pain at the kitchen table. I think he’s sad because it appears he cut up their Twister mat to make their insane placemats and now they can’t play Twister anymore. She complains that her new mentor is Caitríona, who is awful in every way, and isn’t going to help her business at all.  David tells her he has faith in her and will help her make her business a success, and she shows her business savviness by announcing she will therefore immediately cut back on her hours at the polytunnel, which is of course now their only source of income. She gives him a hug and says they’ll soon be rich, and he sickly mutters over her shoulder that yes, everything will be fine. I hope one of Gráinne’s seaweeds is good for robbing banks.