No recaps for 11/1 or 11/3 episodes

Hi readers! Unfortunately there will be no recaps for the Nov 1 or Nov 3 episodes, because the English subtitles have been consistently not working on the TG4 iOS app, Chrome, or Safari. Because recapping the show is something I do in my spare time for fun, it can be tricky enough keeping up with the flow of new episodes, having a job, and having a life, but with the CC issue this week, I'm just not going to be able to catch up -- it's Sunday afternoon, so it's almost time for a new episode, and I haven't been able to even start on last week's yet.

Hopefully I'll be back with recaps for this coming week's new episodes! Thanks for reading!

Turn Your Head and Coffin

Season 21, Episode 16

First aired 27 October 2016

We open Chez Daly, where Noreen has just arrived for the first time this season, and she’s giving Katy far more detail than she ever wanted about the bus ride over. Katy keeps trying to tell her she’s pregnant, but Noreen keeps interrupting, and finally Katy blurts it out, and about two seconds later, Dee bursts in and announces that she was able to book the hotel for a Christmas wedding. Oh, Dee, “shock pregnancy” trumps “wedding venue” every time. Noreen is overcome by emotion and tries to hug and kiss Katy, but she’s too busy freaking out that Dee would dare schedule her wedding for Christmas, because Katy will be as big as a house. Well, your sister-whom-you-don’t-get-along-with’s pregnancy certainly seems like something you would want to completely base your wedding plans around. Of course, Noreen learned to ignore her daughters’ pointless and constant arguing decades ago, so she brightly proclaims that she’s got to go congratulate Jason, and Katy’s like, “Err, about that….”

Over at the pub, Bloody Peatsaí has assembled the cast and crew of the play to announce the great news that they will be performing the play at an arts festival in Westport! And I do not know what or where that is, but the group seems moderately excited. Peatsaí sorry-not-sorry apologizes that unfortunately Tadhg will not be able to join them for vague and specious insurance reasons, and stops himself only about half a step before announcing that therefore he and Frances can share a hotel room. Bloody Peatsaí tells the group they can continue rehearsing at his house just as Mo appears, so she lightly hassles him about this thing he calls “my house,” and then Tadhg calls her aside to ask when she’s going to be getting rid of “Peatsaí Ponytail.” Snerk. He continues that he’s known Bloody Peatsaí since they were young assholes in short pants, and that Mo better get rid of him ASAP, because keeping Peatsaí around always turns out badly in the end. Obviously he’s standing right there listening to all this, which I’m sure won’t come back to bite Tadhg in the butt repeatedly throughout this episode.

Katy has told her mother that she and Jason are on a wee break, and Noreen proclaims that he better get his act together and un-break because he has responsibilities now. John Joe arrives for pointless grandfather talk, and Noreen proclaims this is a miracle. Yes, an Im-Mack-ulate Conception.

Fake It Till You Bake It

Season 21, Episode 15

First aired 25 October 2016

We begin upstairs at the pub, where Tadhg has spent the day uninstalling the booby traps set by Áine, who is trying to Home Alone Pól, Andy, and any other “bold men” who might invade. He facetiously instructs her that you’ve really got to hide the rope better if you’re going to trip and/or garrote someone in a doorway, and she amusingly complains that she would if she were provided with better rope. You can’t argue with that. He asks her if she wants Mommy and Daddy to get hurt in one of her traps, and she’s basically like, “What’s the Irish word for ‘collateral damage?’” He then asks if there are any other traps around the house, and just as she says “Níl,” we hear a series of crashes and a yelp and Frances screaming “Áine!” off in the distance. Hee.

At the café, Mack is on the phone with someone about buying a minibus in a color I might generously call “space-vomit green” when David shows up, and they have a discussion about how David’s ring, which is on the table for some inexplicable reason, seems to have brought Mack more luck than it ever did David. Off in London somewhere, Gráinne is feeling an odd cosmic shiver emanating from her close-call escape from Hurricane David. He muses on how expensive weddings are, but Mack assures him that theirs will just be a meal in a hotel with family and a few friends and nothing more. David is skeptical, because women be crazy and so on, but Mack assures him that Dee is extremely sensible and does not at all be crazy. Cut to the newsagents, where we see the first issue of Dee’s Wedding, a new weekly 400-page glossy magazine that costs €25.

Ponytail of New York

Season 21, Episode 14

First aired 20 October 2016

We begin with Katy struggling to get up off her bedroom floor, and see that the head injury she sustained when she slowly and gingerly fell onto the plush rug has been enhanced with a bullet wound, apparently, because there is a lot more blood than one might expect. Ahem. Eventually she manages to stagger across the room to her phone despite being bent double by the shooting baby-itis pains, and she calls someone. Pizza delivery?

Pól awakens after a night of sleeping rough in a shed somewhere, and digs through his rucksack for a morsel of food, which he devours hungrily. He really has transformed into Oliver Twist, but with a mobile phone. He calls someone and rudely orders a breakfast delivery, and his charm and attitude really make you want to help him. No, wait, I mean “smack him.”

In the street, Dee is admiring how sparkly her new ring is, and Mack pretends to be interested while actually calculating how many Japanese tourists he’ll need to cart around to earn the €3500 it cost. You’ll recall this is the same Mack who last season had to get Mo to pay for his hernia surgery or lobotomy or whatever it was. Ahh, love. Dee can guess that Mack didn’t discuss their engagement with John Joe when they went out last night, given that Mack still reeks of alcohol and desperation. He asks if she really thinks her dad will be upset when he finds out, and Dee is basically like, “Well, he’s a complete dick, as you know, so probably.” Mack suggests that Dee tell him instead, given that John Joe will be at least 20% less likely to murder her, but she insists it has to be him, because she’s old-fashioned that way. Her phone rings a fraction of a second behind schedule, resulting in a moment of “standing around waiting for the phone to ring” acting, and it’s Katy, who rudely doesn’t want to listen to Dee carrying on about her ring, and instead is all “I’m lying on the floor bleeding out, waaah” in typical “me, me, me” Katy fashion.

Mo Dogs Allowed

Season 21, Episode 13

First aired 18 October 2016

We open with Dee flitting around the bachelor pad admiring her new engagement ring. Mack, of course, is trying to talk her into swapping it for a different one, i.e., one that doesn’t belong to someone else, but she’s in love with this one and will not be dissuaded. She might change her tune when she finds out that she may technically be engaged to David. Speaking of Father Karate, he arrives, asking for the whereabouts of his ring, and meanwhile Dee is trying to show him said ring, and despite Mack’s best efforts to change the subject, talking about scones and coffee and James Joyce and so on, Dee steamrolls over him and shows David the ring. David yells that it’s his, and glares at Mack, which causes Dee to glare at Mack, and Mack understandably gets a sudden case of imminent-diarrhea-face.

Katy is sitting in her bedroom reading her So You Got Knocked Up pregnancy book, which has become a supporting character on the show lately, when Pádraig bursts in in a complete tizzy and insists she needs to stop being pregnant for a minute and run over to Gaudi. She weakly protests that it’s her day off, but he and his crazy eyes and aggressive beard won’t take no for an answer. I hope it’s that he’s holding that possibly-fictitious Frances Brennan guy from last season captive in the cellar until he agrees to put Gaudi on his TV show.

Otherwise Engaged

Season 21, Episode 12

First aired 13 October 2016

We open with more of David vs Pól with Rónán in the middle, which: ugh. We are outside the button factory or wherever Micheál works, where Pól is lounging on a bag of fertilizer while Rónán is lugging things around as part of some type of work-like arrangement. I don’t even know. David angrily tells Pól to scram and leave Rónán alone, but Pól is of course defiant and smirky, and you just want to smack him. He tells David that he and Rónán have been thinking about how the Gardaí knew where to find them and have concluded that David must’ve grassed them up, but given that Rónán has an expression on his face that suggests if you could see inside his head there’d be a cartoon pig dancing and playing an accordion, I suspect Pól is doing most of the thinking. David denies these allegations, and now Rónán is being defiant and awful, too, and even David seems tired of this storyline.

At the pub, Frances and Peatsai are discussing the play, about which she is excited and optimistic, and he is creepy and lecherous. He puts on a show for Tadhg of complimenting and cozying up to Frances and saying things to her that are semi-gross, and then smirks at him, and you can tell by the expression on Tadhg’s face that he is clearly imagining various ways to liquefy Peatsai.

The Kids Aren't Alright, or, Teenage Pricks

Season 21, Episode 11

First aired 11 October 2016

We begin this somewhat slow episode at the B&B, where Laoise is sadly polishing Peadar’s watch. Berni arrives and they marvel that it still keeps perfect time an entire month after his death. I guess Peadar had a reputation for buying tat that we didn’t know about. Laoise is obviously very attached to it as a memento of her late father, so Berni naturally snatches it out of her hands and says she’s been meaning to give it to Evan. Well, at least she’s clueless and self-absorbed about it rather than malicious, but this does not bring Laoise comfort for some reason. Cousin Sally or whoever she is arrives so she and Berni can work together to exclude Laoise more efficiently, and they disappear upstairs to go comfort Máire, leaving poor Laoise there with lots of quiet solitude to reflect on what an outcast she is.

Tadhg interrupts Mo and David’s lunch at Gaudi to ask him every li’l thing about Andy’s attack, including how he found David and whether he seemed to be, you know, dead. David is evasive and Mo tells Tadhg to buzz off, which he eventually does, after David admits he didn’t see Andy’s face but magically knew it was him, which causes Mo to raise an eyebrow or two. Micheál drops by to tell David that Pól, the exhausting hooligan we’ve been trying to ignore for the past few weeks, can work a few hours at the dry cleaners or whatever kind of business Micheál owns, and Mo thinks this is a terrible idea, what with everyone in the village wanting to push Pól off a series of cliffs or possibly in front of a caravan of buses.

Chez Odd Couple, Bobbi-Lee is meditating while sitting cross-legged on the coffee table, as one does, but eventually her mantra-chanting and chakra-bleaching are interrupted by a high-pitched, annoying sound, which turns out to be Berni’s voice. Berni scolds her for leaving the door open and also existing, and Bobbi-Lee complains that Berni interrupted her visualization exercises, which presumably involve her visualizing Berni bursting into flames. They argue for a bit, and Berni rolls her eyes so far up in her head she can see her brain as Bobbi-Lee shoots daggers at her. I’m glad things are back to normal with them after last week, because when they’re being nice to each other I feel very unnerved, as if an asteroid is about to crash into the earth or something.