The Lean, Breen Sex Machine

Season 22, Episode 51

First aired 27 February 2018

We’re back after a bit of a break, though I don’t know for how long since the TG4 player is only semi-working this week and I haven’t been able to make it show me Thursday’s episode yet. Still! Last week was full of excitement, most of which consisted of Máire discussing the sodium content of different types of flour in great detail, and also Úna and Mo having various fights about Colm, but I’m sure we won’t be hearing about that again.

As for today’s episode, it was written by Seán T. Ó Meallaigh, so we are pretty sure it will be good. It’s morning, and Maggie is living in the pub now. Because, unlike her cottage, the pub is located in the 21st century, she’s wandering around the kitchen looking befuddled by the modern technology, such as the toaster and the backsplash. She puts a slice of bread in to toast and then sighs plaintively, which we assume means she is going to start a fire and burn down the pub because she is accustomed to making her own bread on a rock by the river and then toasting it over a candle that she made on a rock by the other river.

Over at Gaudi, Frances is buying paella brownies and flan-on-a-stick for Áine, explaining to Pádraig that the poor thing deserves a treat after all she’s been through lately, and Bobbi-Lee and Caitríona are watching raptly because this purchase seems to be the most interesting thing they have seen in a while. Bobbi-Lee mentions that Maggie has moved into the pub now, which comes as news to Frances, who looks stricken. Bobbi-Lee decides that if she’s sinking in the icy waters surrounding this particular shipwreck she’s going to take everybody else down with her, so she grabs a nearby John Joe and forces him to explain to Frances that Maggie’s had to move into the pub because there’s a problem with her heat. I’m 80 percent sure that’s a euphemism. Since Frances hasn’t collapsed in a complete faint yet, Caitríona helpfully and smilingly points out that Maggie didn’t even wait for the sheets at the pub to get cold before she hopped into them, but then clarifies that she thinks that’s terrible, to remind us all what a caring person she is.

Back at the pub, as predicted, the smoke detector is going off and a black cloud is belching out of the toaster. This is why you should never leave time-traveling floozies from the mid-19th century alone in your kitchen. Maggie comes running in panicking and somehow causes the blackened toast to shoot two feet into the air, because the pub is equipped with a pneumatic toaster apparently, and Tadhg hits the smoke detector with a broom handle until it shuts off. He offers to make her some more toast, but she’s flustered by this entire ordeal and decides instead to take her horse-drawn carriage into town and relax over a nice cup of plague.

Out in the street, Berni and Evan are arguing over who’s more embarrassed by whom and which of them has seen Briain’s willy more times and so on. He asks smirkingly if she enjoyed watching him hit on her age-inappropriate friend Úna last week, and she points out that Úna and Aidan are both Gardaí and that he’s lucky he didn’t get arrested for groping without a license. She storms off in a huff and leaves him in the street looking embarrassed, which is also how we all feel for having to be a part of this.

At Radio Please Let Us Know If You Figure Out What Our Format Is Supposed To Be, Caitríona asks Amy if she’s made any progress on her investigation of the windmills, which are once again a hot topic in town in spite of their not existing. Amy says no, and looks depressed because Radio Pobail is, unbelievably, not giving her the opportunities to do hard-hitting global investigative journalism she was expecting. This is what happens when you work for a radio station whose top-rated program consists of Mack reading imaginary lottery numbers. Caitríona informs her that the latest development is that Maggie has moved into the pub, which is proof that she’s in an anti-windmill conspiracy with Tadhg, but Amy is unsure there is any kernel of a story in this nonsense, and is also busy wondering which of her terrible life choices is most responsible for leading her to this moment. Colm interrupts to announce that he’s here to record some “vox pops,” which I’m pretty sure are those sugary alcoholic beverages all the kids were binge-drinking a few years ago in flavors such as Raspberry Puke and Baby Spice Fizz. I have no idea what’s going on here. Caitríona harasses Amy that the only decent thing she’s ever done around here was the “so, are you a top or a bottom?” interview with Briain, and when Amy reminds her that none of that was even true, Caitríona sighs that she needs to stop getting bogged down in whether things are “true” or “not” and just get people clicking on the station’s website or else she’ll get the sack. Why is it people keep hiring Caitríona for things again?

There’s some toast-based stupidity over at Micheál’s involving Eric not knowing how to operate a spoon, and then Laoise wanders in and complains about Eric’s dropping in unannounced and expecting her to put her life on hold for him. If you’re saying, “But wait! Wasn’t Laoise complaining last week that Eric never comes to visit her?”, you would be correct. They bicker for a while like people who hate each other, and eventually he says he guesses he’ll just go back to Dublin then. As they say goodbye with the type of awkward kiss usually seen at open-casket funerals, she grimly tells him she’ll see him next weekend, though it’s unclear whether this is more of a promise or a threat.

Over at the café, Berni is being a snot to Tadhg, although you may recall that a couple of weeks ago they were BFFs united in their crusade against the blight of gossip and also their mutual interest in minibuses. He tells her he came in for a cup of bad coffee and a burnt salad, not to be interrogated, which is Amy’s cue to materialize and ask if he’s got time for a few questions, which goes over about as well as you’d expect. After she finishes picking her guts off the floor, she goes to the counter and tries to order a cup of coffee from Briain, who’s still annoyed about the whole “can you give us the homo perspective on soccer?” thing. He forgives her, but when she immediately starts grilling him about why a big (?) sports star (??) like him would leave Australia to come serve soup with hair in it in Ros na Rún, he tells her if it’s a story she’s after, she should Google Map her way to the nearest library. Not really, but that’s what he should’ve said.

Elsewhere, O’Shea is hilariously carrying a single stalk of broccoli around the shop and asks Vince if he has any smaller vegetables. Instead of flexing his parts and telling her he’s never had any complaints about the size of his vegetables before, he informs her that, why, yes, in fact the vegetable lady is in the back right now and he’ll see whether she has any individual broccoli florets for sale today. Of course then Laoise appears from the back, which leads to some light-to-moderate awkwardness between her and O’Shea as well as a vegetable-size discussion forum that could be Radio Pobail’s new hit show if only Colm were here with his microphone. Happily, it seems Laoise has finally decided she’s tired of fighting with O’Shea over nothing, which gives us an opportunity to wonder if we have ever seen a fresh produce aisle in the shop before this exact moment.

Over at the café, Tadhg encourages John Joe to take his time repairing the heat over at Maggie’s house, which is just as well because it’s been difficult to find parts for a coal-powered steam turbine at Keanes anyway. We then return to the shop just in time for Frances to arrive and start screaming at everyone there that she knows they’re all staring at her and talking about her and that they should take a picture instead because it’ll last longer and also AIIIEEEEEE. Of course they’re all completely confused because none of them give two shits about her and in fact were continuing to speculate about the size of Vince’s broccoli. She freaks out for a while longer and then storms out in a huff after shouting that she doesn’t want their pity. After she goes, Vince and O’Shea exchange wide-eyed looks that I like to imagine mean, “Does anybody know who that was?”, and then we pan over to Dee and Pádraig, who are talking about an access request, which I am going to go out on a limb and guess is Irish for “the access request.” It seems he’s trying to get her to file some paperwork about Sam, but as usual with Dee it turns into a discussion of barristers versus solicitors, so we will return to this later if there are future developments.

Over at Micheál’s, Réailtín is hanging out with her friend Áine, or possibly babysitting her, because we are unclear what the age difference between them is supposed to be now. Anyway, Áine whips out a bottle of vodka and says she’s going to drink her sadness away, which of course Réailtín is opposed to because there’s only room for one underage alcoholic in this town, and it’s her. She tricks Áine into giving her the bottle and then hides it in her backpack, which we genuinely think is actually an attempt to keep it away from Áine and not a sneaky plan for her to drink the whole thing on the bus and then throw up later, but since this is Réailtín, there’s no way Micheál is not going to find it and send her to a convent.

On the beach, Amy is trying to get information out of Evan about why Briain left Australia, informing us that she’s discovered that he was Southern Hemisphere Pole-Vaulting And/Or Pie Face Player Of The Year two years in a row, but then his team mysteriously didn’t renew his contract. My guess is that the ball kept getting stuck in that slammin’ cleft in his chin. Evan tells her a confusing story about how Briain was aggrieved by the fact that the Australians couldn’t pronounce his name and kept spelling it “in a funny way,” which causes a light bulb to come on over Amy’s head. Speaking of Amy’s head, she has beautiful hair, and it’s nice that after some early trial and error they’ve found a style that really accentuates it.

After the break, Frances’ Freakout Tour has made a stop in the pub kitchen, where she’s yelling at Tadhg that he’s humiliated her by moving Maggie in. He retorts that it’s his house and he can do whatever he wants, including moving in a Victorian lady who recently woke up from suspended animation and has never seen a hot plate before. Frances starts rattling off a list of Tadhg’s assorted murders and other crimes and says it’s time she told Maggie exactly what kind of man he is, but just then the unfrozen cavewoman herself strolls in with a self-satisfied look on her face and says she already knows who Tadhg is, thank you. There’s back and forthing, and eventually Frances slinks off looking defeated. Oh my God, I cannot wait for someone to wipe that smug look off Maggie’s face, or for the pub to burn down with her inside because she couldn’t operate an alarm clock.

Amy has found her way back to the radio station and is Googling Briain, which is sadly not a euphemism. She searches for his name misspelled “Breen” and, after finding a few boring things like his Fast & The Furious fan blog and his InstaSnap selfies with dog noses and bunny ears on, she suddenly stumbles across something that makes her look very pleased with herself indeed, commenting what a naughty boy Briain is. I strongly suspect Google would have asked when she searched for “Briain McDonagh” if she was actually looking for the apparently infamous “Breen McDonagh,” but I suppose the important thing is that we are finally getting somewhere with this.

Micheál arrives home and Áine immediately throws Réailtín under the bus in a most genius fashion, complaining to him that Réailtín won’t share her dictionary even though it’s RIGHT THERE IN HER BAG. Réailtín’s eyes grow enormous when she realizes what’s about to happen, but it’s too late, because Micheál looks in her bag and flies into a rage when he discovers the bottle of vodka. Poor Réailtín; Áine’s got her in checkmate when she’d thought they were playing Scrabble.

We cut briefly to the radio station, where Caitríona is, to no one’s surprise, trying to steal Amy’s story, but Amy tells her to buzz off. We then return to Micheál’s house, where we join some yelling, already in progress. Réailtín weakly tries to tell him the bottle of vodka isn’t hers, which is the first time any teenager has ever said this truthfully. When she tries to explain whom it actually belongs to, Áine pretends not to know what it is and, furthermore, says she was sitting here innocently practicing her ABCs with her dolly when Réailtín rode in on a motorcycle smoking and trying to give her a tattoo. Micheál shouts at her some more and then she replies that this is all a big load, which of course it is, but then she somehow tries to make it about the fact that her mother is dead and storms out. We were with you right up there till the end, Réalz.

Back at None FM, Amy is delighted to tell Evan she’s discovered that Briain, under the airtight alias of “Breen,” got fired from the Australian or New Zealand Twister or Monopoly Junior team due to a sex scandal! Involving the coach’s wife! Who was much older than he is! And was named Berni! That last part is implied. Evan is initially thrilled until he thinks this through and realizes it has, you know, implications, and he becomes even more alarmed when Amy reveals that there’s a sex tape she’s in the process of tracking down. At this point he hilariously starts tut-tutting that Amy is better than this, and that she really ought to be off reporting on the environment, which he’s pretty sure he heard somewhere is, like, a hard Brexit or something. It’s at blustering moments like this you wonder if Evan is secretly Labhrás’ son somehow. After Amy finishes rolling her eyes at him, she says this story is exactly the kind of trash Caitríona is looking for, and as soon as she figures out how to transmit a sex video over the radio, it’ll be gold.

It’s dinnertime upstairs at the pub, and tonight’s special is steamed gristle à là Maggie. As she serves it, she complains to Tadhg that it took twice as long to make dinner as it usually does because she’s not in her own kitchen and therefore couldn’t find a rock to beat it against. He’s too distracted to notice the Andean plane crash on his plate, though, and starts telling her that he may have done a few bad things she doesn’t know about, such as not paying his parking tickets or killing a bunch of people. She stupidly says she’s sure she knows him better than anyone, what with her having no contact with him for 40 years and all, and besides, we all do questionable things sometimes, such as telling our doctor we exercise more than we actually do or breaking up a family because of some nonsense from when we were teenagers. These two really do deserve each other.

At Gaudi, we see Evan frowning at his phone as he contemplates calling Berni to tell her the news about ol’ Breen, but he decides against it and instead starts frowning at his plate because he is pretty sure authentic Spanish gazpacho should not have hot dogs floating in it. We then pan over to O’Shea and Laoise, who are in the process of burying the hatchet, only partially in each other’s skulls. We begin with some light apologizing, then move to our main course, which is some hearty blaming and savory guilting, and then conclude with dessert, which is a cake with “I’m Not Sure About You, But I Don’t Have Any Other Friends, So Let’s Give It Another Go” written on it.

Over at the pub, Pádraig is telling Dee the sordid story of his marriage to Sonia. Of course, any story involving Sonia is automatically sordid. Dee has trouble processing all the confusion and the doing-it-in-the-alley-that-dare-not-speak-its-name, but she is also an ally to the gays, having danced to “It’s Raining Men” at a wedding one time. Pádraig confesses that he slept with another guy, who brought favors to the party Sonia could not compete with, and then there was breaking up and Will & Grace box sets being thrown out windows, and now here we are. Whatever mistakes he may have made, he says, Sonia shouldn’t be using them to keep him away from his son. Incidentally, the two of them are wearing incredible outfits in this scene, which is probably not what we should be taking away from all this, but they’re really good clothes.

We return to Gaudi, where Evan is still frowning at his phone and also his dinner, which seems to be a French-fry salad of some kind, and then we once again pan over to O’Shea and Laoise, who are reminiscing about the time they roofied U2 at Live Aid and so on. It seems they’ve made up, so Bono, the Edge, and the other two better watch out.

Evan arrives at the radio station, where Amy is waiting for the Briain sex tape to download because nobody has told her about streaming porn sites. They start watching and confirm it’s definitely Briain, because Amy recognizes his face and Evan recognizes all his other parts, even the ones that won’t stop going back and forth long enough to facilitate a positive identification. Apparently Briain gets started without the coach’s wife, but eventually she wanders into the frame, at which point Evan slams the laptop shut and says this isn’t news and Amy is above all this. We discover that she’s taking a higher journalistic road than we thought, because it seems she thinks the newsworthy part of this is that the team unlawfully fired Briain over a sex tape, but she also has to admit this is the kind of smut Caitríona has been gagging for. We’re pretty sure Caitríona’s interest in this will be less about Australian labor law and more about trying to estimate the size of Briain’s junk on the air. Evan switches his approach from guilt to begging, pleading with her not to go public with this story if their friendship means anything to her, but she says she’s sorry, but she needs this story if she wants to keep her job. Because Evan is one of the world’s foremost experts at playing “good cop, bad cop” all by himself, he now starts screaming at her to go screw herself, and she retorts that no, he can go screw himself, so there! He grabs his jacket and starts to leave, but on his way out he spits that if she runs this story, she won’t have many friends left in Ros na Rún, including him. Well, given that we never see Amy with any friends to begin with, and we’re not sure who would care about this other than Berni and Briain, who already hate her, I’m not sure this is as big a threat as Evan thinks it is, but: take that, Amy!

Do You Want to Know a Secret?

Season 22, Episode 48

First aired 15 February 2018

We open upstairs at the pub, where it seems a garbage truck has overturned and spilled its contents onto the kitchen table. Frances enters and looks horrified by the carnage, and her mood isn’t improved when Tadhg drinks the last drop of milk directly from the carton and then burps in her face. What a lucky woman Maggie is! Frances tells him this can’t continue, although he is of the opinion that it absolutely can, and when she tries to say all the noise and mess are unfair on Áine, he counters that Áine could sleep through a 747 landing in her bedroom and couldn’t care less about a mess as long as she can crawl over the half-eaten tacos and dead caribou to get to the TV. He notes that if Frances has a problem with it, she can always clean up after him, and then flounces off to go take a dump in the hall or whatever. Given that the detritus on the table suggests he’s eaten a couple of pizzas and half a lasagna since last night, there’s not going to be enough bleach in the world to clean that carpet up.

Pádraig stops by the hospital to drop off Sam’s belongings, which include a pristine soccer ball that’s never touched the ground and a backpack that’s never been used. Sonia seems muted somehow, in that she only half-heartedly tries to start a big fight with him for no reason, but then as he’s turning to leave, she asks him to wait a second, presumably so she can stagger gingerly over to him and stab him in the face with some bandage scissors.

I Don't Bring Me Flowers

Season 22, Episode 47

First aired 13 February 2018

We open in what seems to be the middle of the night with Frances, in her robe, wandering downstairs into the dark pub for some deep thought and perhaps light karaoke. “Love Shack” always cheers me up. She pours herself a Bahama Mama or similar before thinking better of it and dumping it out, and then takes this opportunity to look meaningfully at her wedding ring and then take it off even more meaningfully. It’s very considerate of her to do this down here where we can see it rather than up in her bedroom where we couldn’t. I don’t care what Tadhg says, Frances is not a complete raicleach. Only 40 percent raicleach, tops.

At Berni’s, Briain has set up a somewhat ludicrous Valentine’s breakfast, lunch, or dinner for her, and he has gone all out, serving her chocolate milk in hollowed-out watermelons and having broken all her best china into shapes approximating hearts and so on. She tells him it’s too much, especially since all she got him was a four-pack of Curly Wurlys and an ego-boosting box of XL condoms, but he says it’s the least he can do, what with all the troublemaking and home-wrecking he’s been doing. Berni assures him that Evan is the one who’s causing all the trouble, not him, and it’s a nice sentiment, but I think we can agree that there’s plenty of blame to go around. She adds that she’s not going to let Evan keep Briain off the Frisbee or Scrabble team or away from the café, and he replies that he doesn’t care about the team despite the extreme thrillingness of Tadhg’s rental bus, but that he does need his job back, especially because of all the child support he has to pay. Remember when Briain had a deep, dark secret that had driven him away from Australia that we were supposed to care about and then they dropped it? Just as Berni starts undoing his buttons with her teeth, Bobbi-Lee enters and makes a variety of snide remarks and pukey faces, setting us up for our special Valentine’s Day theme, which is that Bobbi-Lee is hard up and can’t get a man and everyone in town thinks it’s hilarious. It’s too bad none of the parcels she’s been having delivered to the pub recently contained dynamite, because I can think of a few people she would be completely justified in blowing up, starting with these two.

I Can't Help Falling in Seaweed with You

Season 22, Episode 46

First aired 8 February 2018

We’re back after a one-episode break, and unfortunately there will be no screenshots in this recap because for some reason TG4 has kindly changed their streaming technology to block them. Thanks, TG4! (If you miss the screenshots, which I often also use in my tweets to discuss and promote the show, please consider tweeting TG4 and asking them to change things back.)

It’s the morning of the big wedding, and Pádraig tells David he and Sam are on their way to the hospital to visit Sonia, but that he’ll see him at Gaudi later. He says he’s not looking forward to the inevitable tongue-lashing he’ll get from the lovely Sonia when/if she wakes up and finds that he’s been taking care of Sam all this time. Yes, as far as she’s concerned, it would have been better to put Sam into foster care like Helen suggested. Sonia really is the absolute worst. Pádraig leaves as Colm wanders in, and he’s completely hung over. You may recall from last episode that, in an elaborate scheme to keep David and Gráinne from seeing each other the day of the wedding, Colm is staying at David’s and Gráinne is staying at Mo’s. I have no idea why Gráinne couldn’t have just stayed at Mo’s with her and Colm while David stayed at home with Pádraig and Sam, but there will be a number of things this episode that don’t entirely make sense, so get used to it. Anyway, David’s going out for a walk and reminds Colm that he promised last night he’d join him, but Colm has no memory of this and argues that no court in the land would force him to honor a contract he made while he was puking vodka and Red Bull into David’s washing machine. David pressures him some more, but Colm stands firm and tells him to get out of his face and go take a long walk off a short pier.

At Mo’s, Caitríona is applying Gráinne’s makeup with a trowel while complaining that it looks like it’s going to rain, which is shocking given that Ireland is an arid desert. She points out that if Gráinne and David had taken them all to Bali for the wedding like she’s been carrying on about for the past two weeks, they wouldn’t have to worry about the rain. Right, because tropical islands like Bali are so green and lush because of the complete lack of rain. (Also, February is the rainy season in Bali.) On the other hand, if they’d taken Caitríona to Bali, maybe somebody could’ve pushed her into a volcano. Gráinne runs outside in a panic to look up at the sky and try to figure out where all that falling water is coming from, which gives Mo and Caitríona an opportunity to conspire about the surprise reception that’s been thrown together for the happy-ish couple at Tigh Thaidhg. Mo figures the place will look like crap and Gráinne will resent having been dragged there, but Caitríona is sure that party-planner Annette will have the place looking fabulous. Yes, she’ll pour glitter on the stickiest parts of the floor and then abscond with the till.

My Day in Ros Na Rún, Finale

What’s it like to actually be in Ros na Rún—or, at least, the studio complex where Ros na Rún is filmed? In this final installment of My Day in Ros na Rún, I’ll talk about what it’s like to find yourself in Tigh Thaidhg or in Berni’s living room, and a few surprises I wasn’t expecting!

Annamaria Nic Dhonnacha (Bobbi-Lee) and Marie Bheag Breathnach (Mo) gave us a tour of all the sets, and the physical layout was absolutely fascinating to me. As I mentioned earlier, it was a bit strange at first to see and meet and interact with people I know from TV (“Oh my God, it’s Mack! And he can see me! And now he’s talking to me!”), but I got over that pretty quickly when I realized, “They’re just regular people.” But seeing and walking through the sets NEVER felt “normal” to me, from the first one we saw—the community center—to the last one. Being there is just WEIRD, and—here’s that word again—surreal.

There are two types of sets at Ros na Rún, and there is probably a technical term for them, but I don’t know what it is, so I’ll call them “interior/exterior” and “interior-only.” As you’ve seen, there are “streets” in Ros na Rún that the characters walk along and drive on, and sometimes they will walk from, say, the street to the shop, open the front door, and walk into the shop. I’m calling those “interior/exterior” sets because they exist as an exterior, inside which is the actual interior set for that location. So when you walk from the street into the front door of the shop, you are actually in the shop set. The shop, the café, and the pub are all interior/exterior sets, so when you see characters enter the pub from the street, they are actually going into the pub.

On the other hand, what I’m calling “interior-only” sets don’t have an exterior at all, or they may be represented by a door on the street, but it’s a door that doesn’t go anywhere, or at least doesn’t go to the set it’s pretending to house. The residential sets are like this, but so are Gaudi, the community center, Loinnir, and the pharmacy. These sets are laid out in rows in a mazelike cluster of rooms inside a big building I can only describe as being like a big two-story warehouse. Downstairs I saw sets like the community center (including the radio station), Gaudi, and the pharmacy. A lot of the residential sets are upstairs, including Vince and Caitríona’s (which I think is the first one we saw at the top of the stairs), Berni’s (which someone in our group jokingly introduced as something like, “And here’s the house fifteen people live in”), David and Gráinne’s, and the B&B. I think the pub’s living areas are up there, too, but I may be wrong, and I also think Loinnir is upstairs. (Anyone with better knowledge than mine, please correct me.) There was one set (maybe John Joe’s kitchen?) that made either Annamaria or Marie declare, “I don’t think I’ve ever been in here!”

Most of the sets felt smaller to me than they seem on TV. Gaudi is a good example of that—it looks sprawling onscreen, but in person felt quite compact. The pub was perhaps slightly smaller than I imagined, but there is more room to move around behind the bar than I was expecting. Berni’s flat is huge, and has an entire section with a sofa and a fireplace that I had forgotten existed. I can’t remember ever seeing Berni’s fireplace! The kitchen area in Berni’s flat seems large, too, and like it would be easier for the actors to move around than some of the others such as the B&B, which feels quite small and cozy.

During the tour and throughout the day a few of the actors mentioned that some sets can be difficult to film on because the shadows are tricky—I can’t remember which, but I think the B&B is one of those problematic “shadow sets.” Of course none of these rooms have ceilings on them, or at least not where you’d expect them to be—the tops are open and when you look up there are tons of lights and wires and equipment, and then way above that is the warehouse ceiling that actually keeps the building warm and dry. The very high ceilings keep the sets from feeling too claustrophobic despite their small sizes, as does the fact that most of them only have walls on three sides.

Marie and Annamaria were so sweet leading us around, and Annamaria in particular seemed to really enjoy the looks of wonder and delight on our faces as we walked from set to set and found ourselves transported to this world we’ve spent so much time watching on TV. By the time we got upstairs we were playing a game of “Name that room,” and it was fascinating how tricky it often was to recognize a room because were looking at it from “the wrong angle”—that is, an angle from which we don’t normally see it onscreen. For example, when we first entered David and Gráinne’s from where the hallway to their bedroom would be onscreen, I didn’t recognize the place at all, but once we moved toward the middle of the room and I adjusted my angle so that the kitchen was on the left and the living room was on the right, it was obvious where we were. This happened a few times upstairs, where I didn’t recognize where we were standing even though I’ve seen it a thousand times because we weren’t standing in “the right place.”

The attention to detail in all the sets is really amazing, and a testament to the hard work of the design and set teams. These places feel real, even though they haven’t got ceilings on them and most of them are missing a wall or two! They work really hard to make the sets feel right for the characters who inhabit them. For example, Annamaria pointed out to me the different little touches and knickknacks that represent David and Gráinne’s distinct personalities in their flat. Next time you’re watching a scene that takes place there, look around and notice which of the props look “Gráinne” and which look “David.” In the B&B set, they pointed out to us that the family photos on the wall are actually of the actors who play Máire and Peadar’s real-life families, and there are photos from the various actors’ real lives scattered throughout the sets to make the place seem more real.

For me, the two most interesting sets were the shop and, of course, Tigh Thaidhg. The shop is fascinating because when you are in it, it feels uncannily like you’re in an actual shop, except with the ceiling missing and a lot of extra lights and cables running around just out of sight. The shelves are all fully stocked with real merchandise, although as Annamaria and Marie pointed out, some of it is glued down. The food in the refrigerated case is real and it’s actually refrigerated. As with many of the other sets we visited, the shop wasn’t being used that day, so the lights were dim and no one was in there, which really made it feel like we were visiting an actual shop that was closed. Being behind the till in the shop was a strange experience for many reasons, including the fact that it’s not an angle we viewers usually get to see the shop from. Marie laughed that the new coffee machine in the shop is “the world’s largest coffee machine,” and she’s right—it’s enormous! The giant plastic ice-cream cone, a staple of my recaps, had been moved inside the shop for the day, and I made sure to take a picture of it.

Tigh Thaidhg is the most iconic location in Ros na Rún, and being in there was probably the strangest of all. I got chills walking into it. Again, the lights were dimmed because it wasn’t in use that day, so it felt like we were sneaking into the pub before opening time and that Tadhg might barrel down the stairs at any moment. Being there with “Bobbi-Lee” and “Mo” made it even more surreal, of course! They invited me to go behind the bar, which was crazy, and it was fun to see what’s actually back there. (Answer: not as much as you’d think.) I was surprised to find that the beer tap actually works—Marie even pulled me a pint! Well, first she handed me a glass and suggested I pull it myself, but when it became clear I had no idea what I was doing, she volunteered to do it for me. The first thing she had to tell me was, “Well, you want to hold the glass down here, not up here where you’ve got it, because that’s where they put their mouths.” Oops. Shows how much I know! (Annamaria laughed that she also can’t pull a decent pint, which I said was appropriate since Bobbi-Lee can’t, either!) Anyway, it was a good pint! I only had a couple of sips because we had places to go and things to see, but I can now saw I’ve had a pint in Tigh Thaidhg pulled by the legendary Mo Gilmartin herself.

I wish someone at Ros na Rún would draw a map of the lot and the sets inside the buildings, because I think viewers would be very interested to know where these places actually are in relation to each other. One of the fun things is that doors don’t lead where you’d think they would, so you may go through a door that’s labeled “Leithreas” and find yourself in, say, the pharmacy, or you go through the door behind the bar at Tigh Thaidhg you’ve seen characters go in and out of a million times and find it…doesn’t really go anywhere. One of the great secrets I found out is that the “front door” of Gaudi doesn’t go anywhere—when characters come from “outside” into the restaurant, they have actually been waiting in a dark empty sliver of a room until their cue. So if you see a large number of characters enter Gaudi either all at once or over the course of a scene, it means they’ve all been crammed into that tiny space in close quarters waiting their turn! The doors to the “toilets” at Gaudi go somewhere unlikely, but now I can’t remember where, but trust me, if you go back there in search of the toilet you’ll be disappointed.

I really wish I’d done a better job taking photos of the exteriors—for example, I should’ve gone over to the famous bus stop and gotten someone to snap a picture of me there! (I can’t remember if it was Marie or Annamaria who joked, “And here’s the bus stop where no buses have ever come.”) I saw the place I call Recycle Pod Park, and the bench where Pádraig hid the mussels instigating this season’s food-poisoning hijinks, too. A few of the sets are in a different location down the road, and I meant to ask more about that, but never got back to it. Marie told me that Mo’s house and Dee and Mack’s place are both at this other location. There’s also a hospital set there, and maybe an office set or some other kind of generic set we see when needed.

Visiting the set also shows you how exact the camera operators have to be when they’re filming the show. There’s not a lot of extra room, which means if they’re even an inch off, you could see the edge of the set, or a lighting rig, or a microphone, or a bunch of cables—or even into a different room! In the exterior scene we shot, not only were there crew members standing all over the place just out of frame, but there was also a ton of equipment and cables everywhere and lights on sticks and all kinds of other things that the camera operators and other crew have to very carefully avoid, both in terms of keeping them out of frame but also to avoid running into them or tripping over them as they’re moving around. So when you see a couple of characters having a private conversation on what seems to be an empty street or the remote Martian tundra, remember that just out of frame there are 10-20 other people moving around.

And that’s all I can think of to tell you about my day in Ros na Rún! If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments below and I’ll do my best to answer them. It was truly an amazing day, and I’ll never forget it. I want to thank everyone who was so kind to us and made us feel so welcome, who put up with us asking a thousand questions and wanting to snap photos of everything, and who pretended not to notice how starstruck we were at times! And very special thanks to Annamaria Nic Dhonnacha (Bobbi-Lee) and Marie Bheag Breathnach (Mo), who made it all possible and who spent their entire day with us! GRMMA!

(If you missed them, here are the links to Part 1 and Part 2.)

Sons and Lovers

Season 22, Episode 44

First aired 1 February 2018

We open in the café with Berni desperately trying to get Evan on the phone, but he’s not answering FOR SOME REASON. She’s beside herself with worry, but Briain helpfully volunteers that he’s probably just passed out in the gutter with alcohol poisoning somewhere, as one does after one finds out one’s mother is having sex with one’s best friend. He assures her that Evan will get used to the two of them being together, and if he doesn’t, he can suck it. Berni, however, is not sure she would be comfortable with Evan sucking it, and for some reason Briain is surprised that she might not be willing to sever all ties with her son just so the two of them can keep playing hide-the-pickle. He exits and Bobbi-Lee arrives, which definitely constitutes trading up, and she tells Berni she’s just spotted Evan, and he appeared to be at least 40 percent alive. Berni’s relief turns to diarrhea, however, when she finds out that Evan was last seen coming out of the B&B, which means there’s a chance he told Máire about last night’s goings-on. Everybody run! Save yourselves! Leave the children!

In the pub kitchen, Tadhg has just screwed the knob that fell off the cabinet door last time back on, and when Frances arrives and asks what he’s doing, he explains that he wanted to “fix this door so that it closes properly,” which he demonstrates by opening and closing the door repeatedly. We will ignore the fact that the repair he has just performed has absolutely nothing to do with the proper operation of the hinges, although Frances makes it difficult by pointing out that she’s been asking him to fix that for years. She asks what’s come over him, and he eventually stammers that he’s doing it because he’s giving her half the pub, which clearly comes as a huge shock to her. If her brain were operating normally she would immediately realize that you fix up the place before putting it on the market, not before declaring that you’re now giving someone half of it in an abstract sense. She smiles, and he goes off to repair some skirting board, which, given how DIY cause-and-effect seems to work in this house, will presumably fix some problem with the dishwasher.

Bernilicious

Season 22, Episode 43

First aired 30 January 2018

We open at DavidCare, where Máire has dropped by to measure Gráinne for her wedding dress, which we imagine will be crocheted and cover her entire face and half of David’s, too. Gráinne’s out somewhere not working, however, which means Máire has to content herself with meeting Sam, who introduces himself as having just used all the toilet paper, and whom Pádraig introduces as the son of a friend from two towns over. Oh, good, children love it when their fathers deny their existence, especially while they’re standing right there and there is a history of parental abandonment. Pádraig hurries Máire out the door, declaring this press conference over with no follow-up questions allowed, and Sam gives him another heaping helping of his now-famous side-eye, because this is some stone cold BS that he will make Pádraig pay for shortly.

We have a quick scene of domestic non-bliss between Mo and Colm and then return briefly to Pádraig, who seems to have misplaced Sam. We then check back in on Colm, who’s busy doing the worst job of emptying a bin in the history of the world. His first mistake was thinking the first step of emptying an overflowing bin is to try to shove two additional giant bags of trash into it, and his second was ensuring that none of the bags were tied shut. After the bin finishes doing its inevitable impression of Mt Vesuvius, he starts digging through the rubble and finds the positive pregnancy test. I’m sure my first thought is supposed to be, “Oh my God, he’s going to think Mo is pregnant!”, but that is in fact my second thought, my first one being, “They should take out their trash more often.” I mean, come on, she peed on that stick like three weeks ago.