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.

Back at the bachelor pad, Mack, who for this scene has transformed into Joey from Friends, is spinning a ridiculous and increasingly complicated story about the ring that involves clowns and evil twins and a visit from Superman, but Dee and her increasingly complicated hair are skeptical. As the saga continues, Mack adds hand gestures and dance moves for increased believability, so it looks like he’s attempting to hula the story to her, and the whole time David is hilariously giving his angriest Barney Rubble death-stare. Just as Mack is about to get to the part of the story with a talking dog from the future, Dee gets a call from Katy, but she’s all, “I gotta call you back, there’s a hot mess evolving here and I need to see how it ends.” Then she gets more info from Katy, grabs her coat and briefcase and flies out the door, so clearly there is lawyering afoot. After she leaves, David begins the process of murdering Mack, who offers to buy the ring from him. There’s arguing, and eventually David reveals that it’s the ring he’d been planning to propose to Gráinne with, but then she ruined everything by breaking up with him. Thanks, Gráinne. Of course, this does not explain why he’s been driving around with it in the glove compartment of his truck all this time, but whatever. David insists that it would break his heart to have to see Gráinne’s ring on Dee’s finger every day, and while I might suggest that he try not looking at Dee’s finger all the time, perv, Mack instead gives back the ring and then makes his patented sad/confused/stubbly puppy face.

We cut to the community center, where Tadhg is unhappily painting scenery while exchanging the evil eye with Peatsaí, who strolls over to Frances and raves about how great she was in rehearsal today, though he’d like her to play the scene with more seriousness. She clearly did not realize she’d been playing it as a comedy, but agrees, and he offers to take her out for a drink to discuss it with her, and also possibly rub his ponytail on her. Tadhg offers to go with them, but Peatsaí says there’s no need, and besides, Tadhg needs to be around when the rest of the set gets here, and right on cue, the coffins start arriving. He and Frances exchange meaningful glances, and we have sort of forgotten what this is all about, but we will be reminded later.

And now, in the industrial tribunal portion of our show, Katy and her attorney Dee have arrived at Gaudi to threaten Jason with a variety of lawsuits because he is in violation of the “You Can’t Fire Women Just Because They’re Having Your Baby, Possibly” Act of 1927. It seems the breaking news Pádraig delivered was that Jason has hired another chef, so of course they all assumed the worst, but as he explains now, he’s just hired a backup chef to reduce the amount of time morning-sickness Katy spends throwing up in the soup and so on, and who will be prepared to step in when she goes out on maternity leave. Stop trying to confuse us with your logic, Jason, especially when Dee has clearly spent a lot of effort, like, looking stuff up on Wikipedia. There’s a great moment when Dee goes completely RuPaul’s Drag Race on Jason, waving her finger in his face and mmmm-HMM!-ing her head side to side, which just makes everyone look confused. Jason walks away, and Pádraig, sensing that the drama he put in the oven earlier is ready, shows up to ask what happened, and everyone stomps off.

Backstage at the local production of Book of Moron, Frances and Tadhg are discussing the fact that he is afraid of coffins these days, which we now kind of vaguely remember a discussion of back at Peadar’s funeral. So many people on this show have such complicated relationships with coffins that it’s hard to keep track of the details. A worried Frances notes that Tadhg will be all alone with the fake coffins when everyone leaves, but he tells her to stop molly-coddling him. She better leave before he calls her an old hag and commands her to go burn in hell. She leaves him the community center keys and reminds him to lock up on his way out, and everybody leaves, but on his way out Peatsaí takes the keys and harasses Tadhg some more, in the process leaning much closer into the camera than we really needed to see. He locks the door from the outside as he departs, hamming it up so the back row will know he’s very pleased with himself.

In our rural interlude, crazy hermit Coílí Jackie brings day laborer and teen stropbot Pól a sandwich, and Pól demonstrates that he is very hungry indeed by shoving the whole thing in his mouth at once. Pól asks Coílí Jackie why he’s always making his dog Spot bark, and CJ explains it’s to annoy the neighbors, “Bloody Peatsaí and that wagon Mo.” And I have to say, I love Mo, but “wagon” is my favorite Irish slang word, so this made me laugh hard. Also, after months of referring to him as Uncle Pest, I was having trouble calling him just plain Peatsaí, so I think I’ve found his new name. Anyway, Coílí Jackie and Pól have a good laugh about what a pain in the arse Mo is, and they’re becoming great mates, until all of a sudden they have a big fight over absolutely nothing and now hate each other, because they are both terrible human beings.

At her place, Mo is trying to work on the books before Awful Jennifer arrives, but is distracted by the barking dog, and eventually shifts into full wagon mode and throws down her pen and storms out the door to take care of the situation. She’ll have to come up with a Plan B when she realizes the dog is too big to fit up Coílí Jackie’s arse.

At Gaudi, Dee suggests to Mack that they take the ring into Galway to get it resized today, but he informs her he just got a call from the jeweler and discovered that, err, that particular ring can’t be resized because of its molecular structure, and also, umm, it was recalled by the manufacturer because it might contain toxic levels of, err, cobra venom. And some children choked on it, too. Dee is confused, but after a year with Mack she’s learned to accept a certain baseline level of confusion in her life, so she gives in, and suggests they go to Expensive-O’s Jewelers, which is obscenely pricey, but they make some lovely rings. Hopefully they also have a toilet there Mack can throw up in.

On the other side of the restaurant, Katy and Jason are arguing over who was more shocked by the pregnancy, and whose sperm impregnated whom, and while Katy seems content to fight about this for the rest of their natural lives, Jason tells her that for better or for worse, they’re having this baby, so they need to be civil to each other. Clearly Jason does not know how soap operas work. She threatens to keep him from ever seeing the baby, or better yet, to go have an abortion, and she storms out.

Tadhg tries to leave the community center and can’t find the keys, and then discovers the door is locked from the outside, and this is one of those Irish/British TV tropes I always have to suspend my American disbelief around, because in America we do not have doors that lock from the outside and cannot be unlocked from the inside. Clearly it is a deadly epidemic on the other side of the pond, though, as in the past 2 months I’ve seen it on EastEnders, Friday Night Dinner, Pobol y Cwm, and now here. It seems particularly unbelievable to me that this large multi-room community center has no other way out, and apparently not even a window he can open and yell out of, but I suppose it could be worse for him, he could be trapped in there with a bunch of coffins, and OH MY GOD THERE ARE A BUNCH OF COFFINS.

Jason is chasing Katy down the street screaming at her not to have an abortion, which is a good way of keeping a secret pregnancy secret. She yells that she’s made her decision, and he tells her it’s not her decision to make alone, so she runs into her house and slams the door behind her. He bangs on the door and yells for her to open it, and based on the previous scene, all he has to do is lock her in the house from the outside and not let her out until the baby is born.

After the break, Coílí Jackie finishes arguing with Mo about the barking dog just in time to catch Pól trying to break into the house. He tries to throw Pól off his land, and when our favorite teen nightmare is resistant, he produces a shotgun, which facilitates the process of Pól bogging off. Pól throws a tantrum on the way out, and in the process of punching the house, he unknowingly knocks a canister of poison into the dog’s bowl, which is not good news for those of us who had just started becoming invested in Spot as a character. Also, this is why you should not leave open containers of poison right by your dog’s bowl.

In her living room, Katy is on the phone with England scheduling an abortion for tomorrow morning as Jason continues to bang on the door and shout for her to let him in. I’m very pleased with myself that I know what “Oscail an doras” means, having been taught “oscailt” in the Irish lesson in which we learned about various kinds of stores being open and closed. After she hangs up, she picks up the pregnancy book from earlier in the episode and throws it across the room. Take that, book!

Outside, Jason stops banging on the door long enough to ignore a phone call from Tadhg, and then flags down a passing Frances to tell her that he needs her help because Katy is having an abortion in there!

Inside the community center full of coffins, panicky Tadhg is pleading with Frances’ voicemail in a way that makes him sound more like a murderous stalker than an imprisoned nutjob, and then his phone dies. He bangs on the door and moans for help, like an angry ghost, and you can tell he’s completely losing it at this point. Eoin may be gone, but his burning-coffin legacy remains.

Mo is on the phone being harassed by Awful Jennifer about the accounts when Coílí Jackie arrives down from the hills or wherever to bang on the door and scream for her help because Spot is sick. Couldn’t Pól have dumped poison in Jennifer’s food instead?

Dee is admiring her new engagement ring, but Mack looks like he’s passing a kidney stone, because it cost €3500. This is why I suggest to all my male friends that they marry a man instead of a woman, because there are no obscenely expensive diamond engagement rings to buy. Mack should take a note of that.

At Gaudi, Frances is trying to escape to the community center to see what Tadhg is whinging about, but Jason can’t stop worrying about the abortion Katy is apparently having next door. He should’ve known this was a risk when he found out the Daly family home is also an abortion clinic. John Joe interrupts this circular conversation to tell Frances that someone named Joe Tom has passed away, but no one can reach Tadhg because his line is busy. Frances sends him away with the community center keys while she continues trying to peel Jason off the ceiling by reasoning that Katy certainly isn’t going to have an abortion after all the money she spent on the fertility treatments. There is conjecture that Katy is making up all this drama just to manipulate Jason, which would certainly not be out of character for her, though it doesn’t seem to be what’s happening in this case.

Tadhg seems to have calmed down a lot, which is disappointing, because I’d been hoping by the time we saw him again he’d be clawing at the walls and having a conversation with a paint can he’d named Matilda. John Joe lets himself in and immediately starts banging on about coffins, but Tadhg, who is completely over coffins at this point, tells John Joe that he can do the funeral for Tom Tom or whoever himself because the undertaking business is his now.

Katy is in her bedroom frantically packing her suitcase when she runs across the pregnancy book again, which when she threw earlier apparently flew down the hall, into the bedroom, onto the bed, and under a pile of clothes. Now that's talent. Looking at the cute-stroke-deranged-looking baby on the cover makes her cry, and then experience shooting abdominal pains. That’s how I feel about children, too. She tries to stagger around the bed to reach her phone on the nightstand, but then she falls to the floor and lands quite gingerly on the carpet, which we will roll our eyes at later when we see her injuries.

Mo comes upon Coílí Jackie burying Spot beside the road or somewhere (?), and he delivers the classic line, “I told you he was sick.” He assures her that Spot won’t be bothering her anymore, and she looks sad, and wistful, and not at all like a wagon.

At the café, Mack tries to tell John Joe about the engagement, but he’s too busy bragging about being the new owner of the undertakery. They decide to go out on the town celebrating, and Mack decides to test the waters by jokingly-but-not-jokingly referring to John Joe as his father-in-law. This goes over like a poo in a swimming pool, so it seems this will be drama for another day.

Meanwhile, Katy is still lying on the floor in her bedroom unconscious and possibly dead or something! Hopefully she’ll wake up in time to catch her flight to England, because her ticket is almost certainly non-refundable and Aer Lingus are total sticklers about the rules.

Next time: Mo is stuck in the middle of an altercation between Bloody Peatsaí and Coílí Jackie, and whatever dreams she had for herself as a child, I suspect they did not involve this.