Or, "Jesus Christ How Long Is This Episode Are They Trying To Kill Me", as it is more colloquially known.
At Mill Cottage, in light of the DRAMATIC (and so long overdue they should have carried a fine) REVELATIONS of the last episode, Rosemary tearfully tells Gray that everything she does, she does for him. Rosemary. Your name is not Bryan Adams. YOU ARE NOT GOING TO PULL THIS ONE OFF. Maybe, at a stretch, if you changed your name by deed poll, released a video of yourself running around in a forest, and spent sixteen consecutive weeks at number one, you might be able to excuse your attempted murder. But as it is at the moment? You are simply not making the effort.
Gray is, as expected, slightly outraged, and this is presumably why this is an hour-long episode: I believe the usual conversion rate is that 'several months of reaching new and exciting levels of uselessness' is equivalent to 'sixty minutes of Angry Shouting', although of course your results might vary slightly depending on whether you're working in metric of imperial.
Rosemary limply protests that she was only trying to help Perdy (that's the problem with these experimental psychiatric treatments, you see, you never know how they'll work out!) which doesn't do much to calm Gray. In fact, if I'm reading my Rage-O-Meter correctly, this is actually the exact moment when he reaches the record-breaking new level of ten indignant hand-flaps per minute!
Over at Home Farm, Matthew, who seems to have no real sense of occasion, has made Perdy some sandwiches. I suppose he'd at least be a useful person to have around in a picnic emergency. He's actually being very sweet to her, though, telling her that he thinks she's coping really well. "I suppose it's not every day that you leave your husband," replies Perdy, a woman who has clearly never read what the Daily Mail has to say about divorce statistics these days.
Meanwhile, Andy, Master of Smooth Talking, tries to coax Jo into not going out by asking her to stay and "go through the accounts" with him. In all seriousness, I really love chat-up lines which sound like they should be incredibly euphemistic, but in reality would probably only get the Director General of the HSBC into bed (and only if you offered him a good interest rate). Next time, Andy, you lovable scamp, ask her if she'll let you double-check her taxable outgoings!
Not surprisingly, Jo opts to go into Hotten.
Grayson, it seems, is still working diligently at filling his yearly Raised Voice Quota. "Tom King, was that you?" he asks. Someone forgot to set the VCR on May the 17th! Then he picks up a vase of flowers and chucks them across the room. Who knew that plants could be such a vicious weapon? We can only pray that Grayson never attends the Chelsea Flower Show -- think of the bloodbath!
In other news, Betty is temporarily headhunted by the DeSouza representative with the interesting taste in jackets, until David promptly nicks her head right back. Henry VIII's got nothing on this cleaning types!
Back at Mill Cottage, and Grayson, confident that by now he's shouted enough to at least guarantee him a nomination in one of the lesser TV awards ceremonies, has retired to a more gentle tone. "You've interfered with my life for the last time," he tells Rosemary. Yes, I'm sure the only reason no one has ever managed to stop her before is because they didn't think to ask her to! What a breakthrough.
Meanwhile, as we return to the house of "Andy can't arrange romantic surprises", Andy, in a surprising break from tradition, is having difficulty arranging a romantic surprise. You know, I never see these things coming. In the end, though, it all turns out okay (well, for now), because as Jo storms angrily out of the door, she comes face to face with... a big balloon. And I'm running a bit late here, so you're going to have to go a bit DIY at this point, I'm afraid:
Grayson, still a bit upset, chucks Rosemary out of the house, while Andy and Jo prepare to go up in the balloon.
As Andy goes back to the house to get some coats, Jack admits to Daz that he and Diane are going through a bit of a rough patch. The sort of a rough patch which has arms and legs and a criminal record and answers to the name of 'Billy Hopwood'.
While the balloon attendant (what a job! "Has it popped yet?" "No." ... "What about now?" "...No.") chats away with Jo, one of the goats, clearly upset about always being stuck in the background and never getting its own dramatic storylines, starts to nibble through the rope holding the balloon down in an act of peaceful protest. (Either that, or it just doesn't like Jo much and thought this might be a bit of a laugh).
Meanwhile, David bursts into DeSouza's office. "I have had enough of your stupid games," he tells her. Would Sir prefer a nice round of Snap?
At Mill Cottage, someone has told Gray that if he wants to aim his sights at one of the more prestigious soap awards shows, then he's going to have to cry a bit too, as well as shouting. Possibly it will be necessary to do both simultaneously. Some people just don't appreciate how relentlessly demanding this acting lark actually is! "You don't know the meaning of love," he tells Rosemary, bundling out of the door and begging her never to come back. Well, not until she's bought herself a dictionary and flicked to the 'L' section, anyway.
As the Balloon Man gets out of his balloon (thereby breaking the fundamental first rule of being a Balloon Man), the rope breaks right through and Jo is cast up, up and away! I'd feel sorry for her, I really would, if I weren't so busy laughing cruelly. Tee hee.
Over at Home Farm, there's a knock on the door, and it's Grayson, and... hang on, give me a minute to work out how to best accurately reenact my reaction to this scene textually...
And then Matthew throws himself at Gray and Gray cries a bit more (the big jessie) and Perdy (some might say foolishly) agrees to go back with him, blah blah blah, but I think you'll agree that the intended main focus of this scene is in fact OH MY GOD PHOEBE IS BACK!!!
After Jo crash lands in a field, Andy finally properly proposes to her. If only all potentially life-threatening freak accidents had such happy endings!
And Matthew advises Rosemary to get out of the village and never again darken its... communal doorstep. "Or else you'll wish I'd finished you off when I had the chance," he growls, in what he hopes is a coolly menacing tone. Rosemary smiles and bounces off. You can tell he was hoping more for a terrified cower and maybe some petrified tears, but, hey, you've got to take what you can get.
At this point, my recording of this episode gave up completely (probably in protest at its ALMIGHTY LENGTH) by rendering itself completely out-of-sync. For this reason, and also because I am a lazy beast, I'm going to have to switch to bullet points now. If you do get the chance, though, I would urge you to try watching Emmerdale with the sound coming literally five minute before the video at least once in your life: it makes the scenes where Marlon and Paddy flap about a lot even more hilarious, like a sort of surrealist post-modern silent movie. Set in a Yorkshire pub.
- Perdy and Grayson aren't quite back to normal yet (no idea why -- this is such an inconsequential trifle of a matter he's asking her to forgive and forget!). He wants to spend some time with her, she tells him she fancies a ride. This scene is notable because you can actually see the entire spectrum of emotions -- confusion, hope, eventual disappointment -- that affect Gray as he slowly realises that she means the 'horse' kind of ride.
- After she hounds him for information about why Rosemary's kipping in the B&B, Zak tells Betty: "I reckon folk shouldn't be spreading gossip about people when they don't know what they're talking about." Congratulations Zachariah: you have single-handedly toppled the touchstone on which the concept of 'soaps' was founded!
- Rosemary moves in with Paddy. It seems that, since 'millionaires' didn't really work out for her, she's setting her sights a bit lower ('skint veterinary practitioners') this time. Well, this way, at least if one of her dogs also 'mysteriously' falls out of a window, she won't have to worry about any expensive call-outs.
- Paddy is slightly disgruntled by the new living arrangements.
- Belle is still an irritating human version of one of those little computery things that spell stuff. We discover that she remembers how to spell 'necessary' by the mnemonic "one collar, two socks". I always went with "one cup, two sugars", but that one tends to fall down if you're making tea for more than one person. Or a diabetic.
- Sandy continues to boom in an oddly comforting Shakespearian manner.
- Rosemary turns up in the pub. Because, fair enough, Gray only said she was no longer welcome in his home, but failed to give any specific instructions regarding public houses! As a lawyer, you'd think he'd be more thorough. Perdy, however, is less understanding of this loophole and tells the whole pub, in no uncertain terms, exactly what Rosemary's been up to. I believe that social etiquette gives as the correct response in this sort of situation something along the lines of, "You go, girlfriend!"
- Rosemary is shocked to discover that Zak doesn't think that 'looking after your family because you are a good and decent man' and 'poisoning your family because you are a deranged and psychotic harpy' are six of the one, half a dozen of the other. These country folk and their radical ideas!
- Perdy goes away for a while to stay with 'Jonathan and Lynn', who have been good family friends for... ooh, at least five minutes.
- And Debbie decides that the cleverest way to conceal the fact that you're suddenly a lot richer than you used to be is to buy a great big expensive new car.
- You have to marvel really, don't you.
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