Rash Cash Trash Smash

Season 22, Episode 73

First aired 18 May 2018

We open at the café, where Gráinne presents Mo with an envelope allegedly full of the money they raised for her medical bills at the radio auction thing. She cautions that the money hasn’t come in yet for Cóilí Jackie’s Ming vase once owned by Superman, which leads to a discussion of how he acts like a belligerent old lunatic you’d see on the corner yelling at a lamppost, but that deep down, he has a good heart. Remember this for later. Mo leaves to go thank him for his generosity, and I have no idea why everyone’s assuming he had any idea how much the vase was worth when he donated it, but I’m sure it won’t come back to bite us all in the arse later this episode.

Over at Maggie’s, which Pól and his intermittent paramour Fia are quickly transforming into Squat II: Electric Boogaloo, he’s shoving Maggie’s old tat into bin bags to be taken to the charity shop and/or thrown at cars from a highway overpass for laughs. Pól is like a box of chocolates: you never know what you’re going to get, and sometimes it turns out to be a laxative. Fia arrives from the shop, which you may recall is officially open now that Donny Osmond or similar has broken a champagne bottle over it, and she’s carrying a bag full of essentials for Squat Life, including the 3 B’s: beer, bog roll, and botulism. It’s unclear whether she’s still a vegetarian now that she and Niall are on the outs, but if so, there is probably also bok choy. There is light domestic dramedy during which they pretend to know who John Denver is, and Pól gives Fia an antique brooch she’s been admiring while he relates a story Maggie told him about the time she and Janis Joplin crashed a blimp into Woodstock while Jimi Hendrix was onstage. Fia decides they should spend the day listening to all of Maggie’s records as a tribute to her, which is sweet, and additionally a way for her to stay away from Máire and Liam Óg all day.

Back at the café, an emergency meeting of the town deadbeats and some extras has broken out because the Ireland’s Villagiest Village people have announced a surprise visit from the judges today. As usual when there is tepid community activism on display, Micheál is in charge, and I’m still not sure whether this is more or less exciting than last season’s windmills were, but then Pádraig didn’t give the entire town mass diarrhea and vomiting during the windmill storyline, so I guess I’ll give the edge to the contest. Caitríona, who has taken a break from her crime spree to be here, volunteers to give the judges a tour of the various Caitríona-related landmarks around town, pointing out that they’ve probably heard of her from that time she made Santa and all those orphans cry during the Toy Show. Micheál agrees that Caitríona giving the judges a tour is certainly an idea with a subject, a verb, and an object, but also wants to make sure people who are not Caitríona have a chance to propose ideas. For example, ANYTHING ELSE. Eventually it’s decided that since there are three judges, they will split them up because it is usually easier to murder people and steal their identities individually than in groups. Amy will take one to the community center because judges like windowless rooms full of IKEA furniture, Laoise will take one to the polytunnel because judges like to see places where David has been shot, and Caitríona will take the third judge to see Loinnir to be packed in seaweed and dug up 3000 years from now as a bog body. Micheál is satisfied with this plan because his sources tell him that so far the none of the other contenders for Ireland’s Villagiest Village have managed to keep more than one out of three judges alive till the end of the day, and besides, we’ve all forgotten what the point of this contest is anyway.

Don't Stand So Close To Me

Season 22, Episode 71

First aired 8 May 2018

We’re back after a week in which we had a very special guest star in the form of Daniel O’Donnell, and like the last very famous guest star Francis Brennan, I don’t know who he is. Unlike Frances Brennan, however, I am pretty sure Daniel O’Donnell is not Gordon Ramsay’s father. Anyway, we were treated to famous singer/actor/chef/something Daniel O’Donnell as part of the grand opening festivities of the shop, which has been open for 8 months. We won’t go into the part where Vince made up the whole thing about having a celebrity lined up, presumably figuring it would all work out because either a) the entire town would forget about it or b) a famous celebrity would happen to wander through at the desired time while carrying giant ceremonial scissors. Clearly years of living with Caitríona has started to erode Vince’s brain. More excitingly, Caitríona got arrested twice in one day, once for starting a catfight in the street with Bobbi Lee and once for being a complete wagon to Dull Tony, who unfortunately for her is a police officer.

We open at the B&B, where Niall informs Fia he has a date today and she turns various shades of purple because it’s not with her. He thinks she’s flustered by this news because she can’t imagine him dating anyone other than her mother, but of course Fia does not give two shits about Vanessa and instead has been batting her eyelashes so furiously in Niall’s direction lately he should start wearing safety goggles. To throw him off the trail, such as it is, she makes up a story about how she’s got a date today, too, with a young lad named, errr, George Glass, but she’s sure Niall doesn’t know him because he’s from, umm, two towns over. Niall isn’t sure he cares about any of this, but he tells her that any lad who’s going out with a girl—nay, woman—like Fia is a very lucky boy indeed, no matter how theoretical he may be.

The Bleakest Link

Season 22, Episode 68

First aired 26 April 2018

We’re back after a brief break that mostly consisted of Katy and Jason fighting a lot and Ferdia being an asshole all the time. Now that you’re all caught up, today’s episode opens with Katy and Jason returning from their delightful half-price holiday that famous philanthropist Ferdia gave them at a hotel that was being dynamited the following day due to its fatal levels of ambient uranium. They are, of course, greeted at the pub door by Mack, drawn here by his irresistible magnetic attraction to Katy’s uterus, and his complete obliviousness to toxic awkwardness. Katy suddenly remembers she needs to be somewhere else and Jason picks up exactly where he left off before their minibreak, i.e., glaring at the back of Mack’s head. In case you missed it, this is all because the Hello Kitty DNA app on Katy’s phone revealed there is a 0.0% chance Jason is Jay’s father and also a 94% chance Katy and Dee will not be speaking to each other by the end of the season.

Over at the NoneFM studios, Caitríona is rattling off a list of work she will take credit for after Amy does it. This includes doing a live broadcast from the cabbage-and-USB-cables aisle of the shop, supervising a group of student interns who will be surprised when they get here and discover it is not actually RTÉ Radio 1 as they were told, and, if time allows, photocopying their bottoms and mailing them to Máire. Amy starts making her usual “I have made terrible life choices” face but is interrupted by the arrival of Gráinne, who’s here to ask if they’ll make an announcement on whatever garbage show is on right now about tonight’s fundraising table quiz for Mo, Incorporated. Caitríona smiles and says yes, which means “yes, unless it requires me to exert one iota of effort,” but Amy says she’ll take care of it by having Bobbi Lee make an announcement on her show, which is the only program on this station anyone listens to.

Across the room, Tadhg arrives and starts yelling at Frances that she’s practically emptied their joint bank account and he’s not happy about it. Well, maybe you should’ve looked up the meaning of the word “joint” before now, maith an fear. She asks him to keep his voice down, because she has never met him and is under the impression he cares what anybody thinks. He screams some more, and she hisses that life is expensive, especially now that she and Áine have developed a taste for tiaras, but that if he doesn’t want all their personal business to be on the radio, perhaps he’d like to go in the other room and discuss this calmly over a nice bowl of diamond soup.

The Pest of the West

Season 22, Episode 64

First aired 12 April 2018

We open at Keane’s, where Adam takes a break from teaching gorillas sign language or whatever they do there to listen to Mack inform everyone that his buddy Niall here is babysitting Liam Óg today. I’m not sure it’s technically babysitting if it’s your own child, but OK. Laoise impatiently tsk-tsks that she already knew about this because she heard Máire complaining about it earlier, because if there’s one thing Laoise can’t stand, it’s complainers. Mack and Niall leave as Cóilí Jackie arrives, slaps €75 he may have drawn with crayons down on the counter, and demands ten more bags of yesterday’s discount fertilizer. Adam informs him that he knows he owes €100 for yesterday’s crap, and that he better pay up, or else Laoise here is going to keep sneering at him and calling him a thief. Cóilí Jackie leaves to spread his mayhem elsewhere, and Laoise takes this opportunity to get another dig in at Adam, reminding him that none of this would’ve happened if he hadn’t decided he was too good to keep using cuneiform chiseled into clay tablets like Micheál has been doing since he came here from Mount Ararat and opened a jump-rope factory or whatever this place is. Adam looks pained, and it’s worth noting that there is an identical cactus to the one from last episode on a shelf next to the mousetraps, which suggests that either Micheál is stocking multiple cacti now or that Cóilí Jackie decided the last one was an extravagance and returned it to get his money back.

At Gaudi, Pádraig asks Katy if he can have the weekend off so he can take Sam camping in Inis Oírr, which you may be interested to know has an average score of 4.9 out of 5 stars on Google Island or whatever this page is that I landed on when I was looking up how to spell “Inis Oírr.” It seems the Aran Islands as a whole got docked a tenth of a point for producing Berni. Anyway, Katy reminds him that she can’t cover for him because this is the weekend she and Jason are going to Dublin to take some nice family photos of the two of them screaming at each other in front of the Book of Kells. It’ll be a nice change from last year’s family Christmas card, which showed Katy smashing Jason’s iPhone on the ground at a bullfight. Pádraig says he understands, and then pauses for a moment before shamelessly launching into the story of how the only reason Sonia’s offered to let him keep Sam is that she’s going to a wedding in London, and that this will almost certainly be the last chance he ever has to see Sam before we all die of global warming and so on. Clearly this is all a total load, because none of us believe for one minute that anybody would invite Sonia to their wedding. Anyway, the guilt trip works and Katy says that he can go and she’ll leave the place in the capable hands of Sinéad, who as usual is just out of frame whenever she’s mentioned, but the way Katy nods in her direction tells us she’s TOTALLY a real person who is RIGHT THERE.

Ten Bags of Manure and a Comedy Cactus

Season 22, Episode 63

First aired 10 April 2018

We open with Mack chasing Fia into the shop, assuring her that he’s not here to stick his nose in her business, which she’d understand if she’d just stop and let him stick his nose in her business for a minute. She tells him to buzz off unless this is about something other than his BFF Niall, which is going to put a serious crimp in the conversation, because the only other thing Mack likes to talk about is the time he saw somebody in Aldi who he thought was Ross Kemp but it turned out wasn’t. Anyway, before Mack can fully buzz off, Niall appears outside the shop window carrying his backpack, so Fia shouts at Mack that she can’t believe he did this, although of course it’s really the only believable course of action here. Mack looks sheepish, and Fia’s going to feel bad when it turns out Mack had nothing to do with this and that Niall and his backpack are actually here because Ros na Rún is coincidentally hosting the World Boy Scout Jamboree this week.

Mo emerges from her bedroom in her robe and finds Colm and David, only one of whom is supposed to be at her kitchen table this time of day. Colm should leave immediately! David has of course stopped in on his mail rounds for a light buffet breakfast, and then stupidly decides to put his foot way up in it by joking about how it’s nice for some lazy sods like Mo who are able to sleep late and laze around in their bathrobes when they’re not busy puking up their chemo drugs. Eventually he realizes what he’s said and tries to dig himself out of it, but Mo has met him before and is therefore surprised only by the fact that he stopped himself before saying, “I wish I had cancer!” and putting his head down on the table for a sob. She lets him twist in the wind for a while before he finally throws today’s letters at her, some of which may actually be intended for her or Colm, and runs out the door. Unfortunately for her, one of them is a bill from the hospital demanding she pay €5000 for the chemo she’s had so far. Colm assures her it must be a mistake because her insurance should be paying for it all, but she looks worried. Clearly the solution is for Mo to stop opening letters from the hospital.

Home Is Where The Hate Is

Season 22, Episode 62

First aired 5 April 2018

It’s morning at the pub, and Katy apologizes to Tadhg for the fact that Jay was so noisy last night, what with his teething and trying to teach himself “Smoke on the Water” on the guitar and so on. Tadhg says Jay is just like his mother, who also never shuts up, but then tells Katy she and Jason are welcome to stay at the pub as long as they want. After all, he says, it’s Jay’s home. Cuán is on his own, I guess. She thanks him and, as she’s going out for a walk, tells him that Jason is having a lie-in, because radiating omnidirectional anger at all times is exhausting. Tadhg replies that she’s clearly spoiled Jason, causing her to look sadly into the middle distance, which is her new favorite hobby.

Across town, we have our first-ever sighting of David and Gráinne’s bedroom, which has fewer crystals and karate trophies than we would’ve imagined, but exactly as many whips and ball gags. She says maybe Pádraig has forgotten about that “swapping bedrooms” arrangement we first heard about last episode, and just as David is weakly agreeing, Pádraig arrives to wish them a happy Get The Hell Out Of My New Bedroom Day. Because he is a great humanitarian, and because he’s still busy burying Sonia’s body under the floor of his old bedroom, he gives them till the end of the week to get lost, at which point Gráinne prods David into offering an extra €50 per week, month, or year to let them keep the big bedroom. Pádraig considers this for half a millisecond before replying that naah, they’ll stick to the original agreement, and when she starts fussing that they’ll never fit all their crap in the smaller room, he brightly explains that this is a great opportunity for her to throw out all the old junk she no longer needs. It’s nice that he doesn’t add “such as David” even though we all know that’s what he means. He disappears down the hall to start taking all his Daniel Craig and David Beckham posters down, at which point Gráinne informs David that there’s no way in hell she’s moving into that small bedroom, and the look in her eyes suggests that Sonia may not be the only one buried under Pádraig’s floor by the end of this episode.

The Daly Extra

Season 22, Episode 61

First aired 3 April 2018

We’re back after a mini break during which there were a couple of unrecappable episodes. By “unrecappable,” I mean “if I had recapped them in my usual fashion, I would go to hell.” So I will just tell you that the important things that happened are that Sonia ramped up to a Level 12 Assfactory, but it turns out the man she caught Pádraig in bed with was her brother, which caused us all to laugh heartily enough to almost make up for the intense, continued misery she’s caused us for months now. Berni moped around a lot about Briain because she was really looking forward to making his Easter basket and hiding eggs in the garden for him to find, and when she finally decided to try calling him, he told her to buzz off and leave him alone. O’Shea and John Joe flirted a lot, meaning they will probably give birth to a bunch of children with hereditary bad backs, and somebody probably died, but I CAN’T SEEM TO REMEMBER WHO.

Anyway! That was then and this is now and “turn, turn, turn” and so on. I hope they replace Maggie with that giant plastic ice cream cone in the opening credits for the rest of the season.

We open with Tadhg standing outside the pub in the rain trying to sweep a puddle, which seems like a totally well adjusted thing to do, that’s for sure! Next he’ll be trying to wipe reflections off the windows. He pauses to look meaningfully at the “Ó Direáin & A Chlann” sign and then leans on his broom for a while wondering whether the picture of the chicken will go to the left or the right of it when the pub becomes a Nando’s next season.