"Everything?! About The Euthanasia, Too?!"

Season 21, Episode 51

First aired 28 February 2017

We open with David and Gráinne strolling down the street arm in arm as she complains about what a terrible mentor Caitríona is, and we get the impression this has been going on for some time. The complaining, I mean, not necessarily the strolling down the street, because we’re not sure how long the set’s fake street is. She wishes she enjoyed her job like David does, but he tells her that his job isn’t always great. For example, it’s kind of a downer when he’s getting fired from it. He’s about to tell her he’s gotten the sack, but Tadhg interrupts him mid-sentence to harass him, and offers to sell him his recently purchased building so he can turn it back into a kids’ prison. Gráinne invites him to shut up in several ways, and they stomp off just as Caitríona arrives to spread her patented brand of sunshine. Vince has told her that Tadhg’s not going ahead with his wine shop idea, so she’s in full gloating mode, so Tadhg plants a seed of doubt in her mind about possibly-shady dealings between him and Vince, which gives her instant diarrhea face, or as she would call it, “world-famous journalist with diarrhea” face.

At Gaudi, Father Éamonn tells David he’s heard he got the sack over Tomás’ little near-death experience. David is still beating himself up over it, but the father tells him it’s not his fault because Tomás stole the poitín out of his car, plus nobody likes Tomás anyway and there are so many hooligans in town that one less won’t make any difference. That last part is implied. Éamonn is more upset about the fact that David had poitín and didn’t give him any, but David isn’t in the mood for his whimsical alcoholic nonsense right now, and instead asks him not to mention any of this to Gráinne, because she doesn’t know about it. Conveniently, Father Éamonn knows about a social worker job that’s available right now, and is friends with the chairperson, in the sense that the chairperson has confessed a bunch of murders to him and he’s hardly tweeted or instagrammed about them at all.

Taking advantage of the sunny day, we have another scene out in the street, as Tadhg accosts Vince and demands reassurance that his recorded confession about Andy isn’t going to surface. There’s back-and-forthing, and warning each other, and angry finger-pointing and posturing, and it’s the kind of scene where you keep waiting for them to either start punching each other or making out. Of course Caitríona wanders up and asks them what they’re talking about, and rather than telling her it’s none of her damn business as we want them to, they stammer and act guilty and suspicious, and she’s clearly not buying what they’re selling. She reminds them that she’s a journalist and will uncover the truth sooner or later. Remember that all the top journalists spend their days sweeping up hair in a salon. She wanders away, and Tadhg and Vince are panicky, because they know that she’s not going to let this go, which will cause problems for them if she finds out the truth. Now that they’ve perfected the art of killing someone annoying and disposing of the body, I nominate Caitríona to be their next victim, thereby solving all our problems.

In the café, Máire asks Micheál if he’s found someone to take care of Réailtín if he dies, and he says he’s been thinking about it, but that he can’t talk to Réailtín about anything right now because she won’t stop banging on about that stupid concert she just went to. I guess that means that story has come and gone, which is disappointing because I was hoping Laoise and Réailtín would end up in jail for kidnapping the band and stealing a police car. He thinks he’s going to have to tell Réailtín about her mother soon, though, because she’s started asking questions about her he can’t avoid forever, such as, “Would Mom have liked Drugteen SexZone?” Máire is worried and thinks this is all a bad idea, and I really need to create a macro to save myself some typing, e.g., Ctrl+F7 = “Máire is worried and thinks this is all a bad idea.”

Back at Gaudi, David has finished his phone call about the job, and Father Éamonn has finished his lunch, having eaten everything off his plate except for what appears to be a whole lemon (?). I guess this is Katy’s signature dish, “lettuce sandwich with whole lemon.” David tells him the social work people are very interested in him and want him to come in for an interview, which Father Éamonn assures him is just a formality, so he exits to go polish up his CV to make it look more appealing, i.e., lie a lot. Did you know David was the European Minister of Social Work and Karate from 2006-2010?

At the pub, Dee asks Mack if he’s finished burning that CD he’s been promising her, because she wants to listen to it in the car. Apparently she is going on a road trip to 2002. He tells her he’s almost done and will finish it today, which is of course a lie because those of us who are old enough to remember burning CDs know it’s not the kind of thing you gradually work on over the course of several days. Dee is appeased and bogs off, and of course Mo is immediately like, “You forgot all about it, didn’t you?” To be fair, Mack probably has intermittent amnesia from the repeated head injuries Dee has been giving him the past few months. He tells Tadhg he heard the wine shop is a no-go, which comes as news to a nearby Frances, so she drags Tadhg aside and complains that she’s getting sick of finding out all these things about her life from other people. He lets her rant about it for a bit, and then tells her he thinks it’ll be better if they rent the space to some other business, because not only will it mean guaranteed rent, but also the tenants will have to pay for the renovations it needs, such as putting out the small fires that are still burning in some of the rooms.

Gráinne has just finished giving Berni a seaweed enema or whatever over at the salon, and she tells Caitríona, who as usual is standing around doing nothing, about all the opportunities Berni has been giving Sorcha over at the café, such as selling her jam and stealing the till. She shares an idea she’s had about giving seaweed treatments to local athletes, which sounds a lot like an excuse to spend a lot of time rubbing oil on muscle-y hunks. I bet she could subcontract some of that work out to Pádraig. Caitríona responds by being a passive-aggressive nightmare, or as I call it, “pulling a Caitríona.” Berni leaves, and Caitríona’s passive-aggressive smiles turn into aggressive-aggressive sneers, and she yells at Gráinne for a while, as we’ve seen the past several episodes, and it’s very tiresome. I have to say, though, that Caitríona makes me insane, but her Irish is very lovely to listen to, at least to my untrained ears.

At the community center, Réailtín is carrying on in great detail about the Drugteen SexZone concert to Áine, who is bored and totally over it. Wasn’t Áine going to the show, too? Apparently she didn’t, since Réailtín is now recapping it for her. Maybe Áine was grounded for not cleaning her room or for burning down a McDonald’s or something. Gráinne arrives and tries to tell Frances she wants a new mentor because Caitríona is a total witch, but Frances is too busy to listen right now and puts her off until later, which Áine sadly tells Gráinne is the way Frances operates these days. I mean, Áine got expelled from school four months ago but she just can’t get an appointment on Frances’ calendar to tell her, so every morning she puts on her school uniform and heads out to spend the day at the dog track, and so far has earned €17,000. David appears with his CV in hand and is unhappy to see Gráinne there, so he tells her he’s applying for a job Father Éamonn told him about just so he’ll “have options.” Yes, such as the option to have food or not. Gráinne is satisfied with this explanation and tells him she may be looking for a new job soon, too, because when Caitríona finds out she’s been complaining about her to Frances, she’ll fire her. David talks her down off the ledge with some nonsense about how she’ll be able to sell her products in the salon, which of course Caitríona is not going to let her do, but Gráinne agrees with him for some stupid reason and when Frances returns, she tells her she doesn’t need to speak to her after all. How do you say “postponing the inevitable” in Irish?

Tadhg and Vince are whispering across the bar about what a nuisance Caitríona is being, which causes her to materialize, like when you say “Beetlejuice” three times. Once again she asks them what they’re talking about, and they say “nothing” about as convincingly as when you hear giggling and a giant crash from the children’s room and shout “What’s going on in there?” and they reply, “Nothing!” She threatens to ask Frances what’s going on, which makes Vince and Tadhg wet their pants all over again, because they know the only way to make this situation worse for themselves is to bring Frances into it. Having stirred up trouble, Caitríona goes over to have a cozy drink with Colm to annoy Vince. He’s super-panicky at this point, and breathlessly tells Tadhg there’s only one solution to this problem. OH THANK GOD, VINCE IS FINALLY GOING TO KILL CAITRÍONA. Sadly, it turns out his stupid idea is to tell Caitríona the truth and hope she’ll keep it to herself, which is about as realistic as handing Bobbi-Lee €50,000 in cash and hoping she’ll invest it wisely in a balanced portfolio of stocks and global equities.

After the break, we’re back at Gaudi, where David is giving a job update to Father Éamonn, who it seems has not moved from his chair all day. David is stricken, however, when he discovers they will want references, because he has apparently never applied for a job on this planet before and doesn’t know how it works. He’s worried that he’ll never get a good recommendation, because not only did he almost kill that dumb kid, but also people have, you know, met him. Father Éamonn assures him it will be fine, and that if they call and ask him for a reference, he’ll tell them that what happened with Tomás was God’s plan and so forth. David is unconvinced, and just then Father Éamonn’s phone rings, and it’s the job people. I’m sure this will all work out for David, because the show spent all this time creating this big mess for him only to solve it in the next episode.

Tadhg and Vince are still hissing at each other at the pub, and if you’re getting the impression that this episode has a lot of the same thing over and over, you’re right. Tadhg tells him that if Caitríona finds out he’s a murderer, she’ll never speak to him again. He says that like it’s a bad thing. This is enough to persuade Vince that telling Caitríona is a bad idea, because all his stuff is already at her place and moving is a pain in the ass. Tadhg says he’s got an alternate plan, but it’ll cost Vince: he’ll have to destroy the infamous recording!

Elsewhere in the pub, Mack is in a panic because in trying to burn Dee’s CD, he’s broken her laptop, of course. I have no sympathy for Dee because we all know Mack has broken every computer he’s ever touched. Mo has just finished getting a lesson on identifying counterfeit money from a handsome policeman who it seems has been sniffing around her lately, according to Bobbi-Lee, who has been following all this very closely as an alternative to, you know, working. Mo ignores her and instead takes the laptop from Mack, explaining that fixing it will be easy. It turns out that by “fixing it” she means “breaking it even more thoroughly,” and then she explains that it’s not her fault because she doesn’t know anything about computers. Maybe you should’ve thought of that before you snatched it out of his hands and started pressing buttons, Mo. She doesn’t understand why Mack’s got his knickers in such a twist over this, and let’s all pause for a moment to consider Mack in his knickers before I tell you that he’s upset because Dee has all her “legal documents” on the computer and, as we’ve seen in the past, the Dalys do not believe in backing up their important files. I love this show unreservedly, but every time there’s a storyline involving a computer, we’re transported back to 1985 and someone has spilled coffee on the floppy disk with the only copy of his or her essay/CV/ransom note. Mack storms out and demands Mo and Bobbi-Lee have the computer fixed by the time he gets back, leaving them standing there blinking with hilarious blank looks on their faces. I know if I needed my important computer repaired, Mo and Bobbi-Lee are the ones I would go to. Bobbi-Lee takes this opportunity to ignore whatever Mack is yelling about and start teasing Mo about Tony the policeman, but Mo ignores her and goes back to looking for the crank you turn on the side of the laptop to recharge it.

Back at Gaudi, Father Éamonn sadly reports to David that the job people talked to Fidelma, who was happy to throw David under the bus once again and torpedo any chance he had of getting the job. Why Fidelma has such a hate-on for David is unclear, so I guess we’re just supposed to assume she’s a moustache-twirling villain who will be kidnapping him and tying him to the railroad tracks next. David is all dramatic and “I knew almost killing a kid I was caring for by giving him illegal alcohol would come back to haunt me when I applied for another job doing the same thing!” as if it’s some cosmic conspiracy against him. It’s very much, “I can’t believe they didn’t hire me for this job as a bus driver just because in my last job I drove a bus off a bridge because I let one of the children steer while I smoked crack!” He starts banging on melodramatically about how this is what it will be like from now on with every job he applies for, and it’s very much the “they told me it would be like this on the outside!” soliloquy from every prison movie ever.

Meanwhile, Máire arrives at the restaurant in search of Micheál, because she’s trying to keep to a very strict schedule of meddling in his business every hour on the hour. Pádraig, ever the expository device, volunteers that Micheál was in earlier, and he seemed upset because “he said he couldn’t keep putting something off any longer and that it was about time he did something about it.” OH THANK GOD, MICHEÁL IS FINALLY GOING TO KILL CAITRÍONA. Máire frets that Micheál is going to tell Réailtín everything about her mother, and Pádraig, in the most hilarious line of the episode, says these words: “Everything?! About the euthanasia, too?!” Máire says something else in a trembling, sickly voice, but we don’t hear any of it because we’re still laughing at “About the euthanasia, too?!”

Vince and Tadhg are still having a hushed conversation at the bar, so Caitríona comes over and starts buzzing around again, and they really need to wrap this nonsense up soon because we seem to be trapped in an endless loop. Gráinne comes in screaming about the seaweed, but is happy and goes away when Caitríona promises they’ll talk about it “later.” Oh, FFS. Anyway, Tadhg and Vince put us all out of our misery by doing a performance for Caitríona’s benefit of a made-up story about a poker game in which Vince wagered their apartment and Tadhg wagered the nascent wine shop, and Vince won. She falls for this story, though of course she is furious at Vince, and please let this be the end of this.

Máire bursts into the community center, where Réailtín is sitting on the couch crying as Micheál tries to soothe her. There’s a bit of confusion before we find out the important thing Micheál has told Réailtín is that if something happens to him, she’ll go live with Berni. I’d be crying over that, too. Fortunately this comes out before Máire spills the beans about euthanasia re: Pauline, which would’ve made things very exciting indeed, so instead we can relax and ponder why the hell Micheál would have this conversation with Réailtín in the middle of the community center rather than at home like a normal person.

Mack returns to the pub in a tizzy about the laptop, which we had forgotten all about, and is unhappy when he finds Mo has outsourced the work to noted criminal Colm, because he’s the only one in the village who knows how to operate those newfangled TV typewriters. Mack hisses at Mo that he doesn’t want a convict playing around on a computer with Dee’s legal documents, which of course means Mack has filled it up with porn and doesn’t want Colm to see what kind of kink he’s into.

And speaking of porn, back at the community center Berni and Réailtín are giggling about something on their phone, presumably naked selfies Mack accidentally posted on Facebook showing him in the pub bathroom flexing and clenching various muscles. Across the room, Máire is reiterating the fact that she thought Micheál was telling Réailtín about Pauline, but he assures her that’s a conversation he won’t be having for a long time. Well, that’s the end of that, I’m sure.

David grimly arrives home, upset not just about being unemployed, but also worried that Gráinne might have made pinecone soup for dinner again. She’s happy that Caitríona has promised they’ll talk about her business tomorrow, which she totally believes, because she has never met Caitríona. He starts to tell her about his job, but then chickens out, so once again we are left with Gráinne in the dark and David hoping somehow she will never find out about all this. When she comes home one day and finds they’ve been evicted for nonpayment of rent and all their stuff out on the pavement, maybe she’ll think it’s a funny game.

Mack is still freaking out at the pub, and doesn’t like Bobbi-Lee’s offer to substitute a copy of her CD for whatever Michael Bublé garbage Dee wants. Colm finishes the laptop repair and CD creation just as Dee arrives, so she’s happy, and Bobbi-Lee says some lewd single-entendre stuff about Mack’s sexual prowess that makes everyone uncomfortable. This is why we all love Bobbi-Lee. Then Colm starts doing something with Mo that may or may not be flirting, because as we’ve established before, it’s difficult to tell with him.

Over at a table, Vince makes a production out of deleting the recording off his phone for Tadhg’s benefit, and assures him he’s taken it off “the cloud thing,” too. They reach an uncomfortable détente, and after Tadhg wanders off to sack Bobbi-Lee or whatever, we see Vince un-deleting the recording, of course. Was I the only one who was hoping that somehow Tadhg’s confession would get burned onto Dee’s CD? Maybe next week!