I'm Having Somebody's Baby

Season 21, Episode 40

First aired 19 January 2017

We spend much of this medical episode on a hospital set somewhere, which I assume they didn’t construct onsite, but I wonder where it is. Perhaps it’s elaborately painted plywood, and if an extra bumped into it, it would all fall down and we’d realize we are actually in Berni’s living room. Anyway, medical-type people wheel Katy in on a gurney, which I think is called something else across the pond, but I don’t know what. Mack is in tow, which I’m sure will not cause conflict at any point during this episode, such as right now, when Jason shows up and starts shooting daggers at him from down the corridor.

At the bachelor pad, David arrives home to find that a cheery Gráinne has prepared his favorite, by which I mean least favorite, meal for dinner: Omelette à la Sad with Nettle Soup à la Disgusting. He starts preemptively throwing up, though I’m sure he’d look less stricken if he knew a hospital set is nearby. He and Katy might have to share a bed, though, since there was only room in the budget for one. Gráinne flicks through the post and is distraught that the electric bill is due, because she’s pretty sure she just paid one of those last year, and the ESB does not accept payment in magic beans or good chi. David assures her he’ll pay her share, again, but she looks pained, and not just because she’s standing within smelling distance of her soup.

Back in the corridor of doom, which we will be seeing a lot of today, Jason is trying to throw Mack out of the hospital, but he’s not going anywhere, because he has fond memories of this place from when Mo paid for his lobotomy here last year. Dee, Noreen, and John Joe arrive in a panic, and are unhappy to see Mack there, but everyone quickly turns their ire on Dee when they learn that although she was there when Katy’s uterus started shooting flames and then her head popped off, instead of calling for help she rolled her eyes and left in a huff because, and I quote, “You know how she is! I thought she was making a big deal of nothing.” She is probably remembering the time Katy willed herself to have a prolapsed prostate to get out of a math test. Someone appears who may be a doctor, but it’s hard to tell because she’s wearing a Persian rug instead of a white coat, and after some confusion about which of the assembled mob is the father/husband/whatever, she announces that they’re going to have to keep Katy until she has the baby because she’s got pre-eclampsia. She explains that if the placenta keeps flying out they may have to induce early labor, which Noreen recognizes is frightening because Katy is only 7 months along, and 7 is less than 9.

It’s a sunny morning out in the street, and Peatsaí and Máire are struggling to unlock an exterior door to, well, I have no idea. Pádraig stops by to harass Máire about the party they’re supposed to be catering on Saturday, which may or may not be that whole Co-op event they competed with Berni and the box of rat poision for. I’ll admit that I have only been semi-paying attention to the ins and outs of their business venture, but I’m pretty sure it involves a mobile karaoke van. The important thing here is that Máire has completely forgotten about it, because she’s freaking out over some sort of religious do she’s having at the B&B and she can only be in one tizzy at a time. Pádraig is very cross, because this cake Máire is supposed to be baking is his entire world right now, which makes us tremendously sad, so if you have an idea for a storyline we could give him, write it on a postcard and send it to Pádraig Needs A Life, c/o Ireland.

Back at the hospital, Jason grimly reports to the Dalys that Katy is out of her head and talking gibberish, and to her credit, Dee refrains from saying, “What else is new?” John Joe optimistically notes that the doctors don’t seem too concerned about it, and Jason mutters that the doctors don’t seem concerned about Katy at all, only the baby. Mack arrives with a flotilla of coffee and a mobile salad bar, but everybody starts yelling at him to go home, and it really looks like there is no way for this situation to get worse, so of course then Tadhg and Frances show up. She tries to be bright and cheery and bubbly, which goes over like a dead mouse in a punchbowl, so she dials it back a bit and volunteers that she stopped by the flat and picked up a few things Katy might need, such as moisturizer and the Body Shop’s new Pre-Eclampsia-B-Gon spray. It smells like jasmine! Noreen is the only one who bothers to try to act gracious, while Dee snots that she certainly isn’t taking any frigging moisturizer to frigging Katy and Jason shoots nuclear daggers at Mack.

At the café, Micheál and Berni discuss the business-venture-funding competition thing with Gráinne, who is busy eating a hemlock sandwich and brewing goat tea. She muses that she sure could use the money, but she’s not sure she has any business ideas, plus David is a dud. That last part is implied. Pádraig appears and offers to help her brainstorm about business ventures if she’ll go help him clean the B&B, because Máire is bonkers and annoying everyone, but she replies that she’s too busy looking for a proper job. She does point out that she might be able start a business with her soup, which she says “isn’t bad.” Well, it seems like she’s got her advertising slogan right there.

David is over at the pub drinking coffee in an attempt to get the taste of Gráinne’s dandelion-root sludge out of his mouth. Laoise makes fun of how kooky Gráinne is and departs with a “Hah!” that’s totally Mrs. Krabappel from The Simpsons, and then David confides to Mo that Gráinne’s nettle soup and amoeba tikka masala are disgusting, and he can’t take much more of it. Pádraig arrives for some reason, but then Bobbi-Lee hijacks the scene by squealing into the phone and then jumping up and down and screaming that she’s going to be famous, and then she puts Mo in a loving chokehold that is very much like when you have to tell your overexcited toddler to be gentle with the baby bunny.

Back at the hospital, Tadhg is being as comforting as he knows how to be, which basically consists of telling Jason that sure, Katy might die, but he hears hell is lovely this time of year. Dr Ní Dhochtúir returns to say that everything is as we’d want it to be with the baby, to everyone but Jason’s relief. He’s like, “What about Katy?”, and the doctor is all, “Oh, yeah, her. She’s fine, probably.” Mack tries to comfort Dee, but she pushes him away and sneers that she wants to be with her family right now. Ouch.

Mo and Pádraig have arrived at the B&B to help Máire clean up for the stations or exorcism or Easter-egg hunt, but Máire doesn’t trust Mo to mop a floor, because she’d clearly just bollocks it up. It’s going to be a long day for Mo.

Back at the café, Micheál has gotten Gráinne excited about her Not Too Bad Soup business concept. David arrives with a takeaway menu and brightly tells her they’ll order in something tonight, but she tells him there’s no need to waste the money, because there’s plenty of terrible soup left. You can actually see his bowels clench and seize up when she says it. She tells him they won’t have to scrimp and save much longer, though, because she’s come up with a brilliant idea that’s going to have the money rolling in. David tries to be supportive and encouraging, but because he is David, does it in a way that actually makes things ten times worse, telling her he knew this roots and nettles nonsense was just a silly phase, and he had faith that she’d move on to something not completely stupid before long. “You’re too intelligent to waste your time like that,” he says, which is the boyfriend equivalent of leaving your pregnant sister convulsing on the floor because you think she’s faking it. Micheál tries to look invisible as David keeps digging himself deeper, and eventually Gráinne tells David she doesn’t need his help, gathers her things, and leaves, and whereas most of the characters would’ve stormed out in a big huff, Gráinne just looks terribly sad to the core, and it’s kind of heartbreaking.

Katy has decided to regain consciousness, once again making it all about herself, and she and Jason chat for a bit. All of a sudden alarms start beeping and medical personnel start running around in circles, and the doctor sluggishly grimly tells her that the baby’s heartbeat is dropping, and they’ve got to rush Katy to the operating room immediately!

After the break, Pádraig complains to Máire that he doesn’t think polishing the skirting boards is a good use of his time, but she sniffs that her high standards are the reason her B&B is “mentioned in the travel guides” (in the “Avoid” section, surely) and concludes that he needs to get his gay ass down there and start scrubbing.

Back in the corridor of doom, Jason is in disbelief that one minute Katy was fine, and the next, things went cuckoo bananas. Everyone else bogs off to the canteen for coffee, leaving Jason and Mack to have the argument we’ve all been waiting for. Jason says if it weren’t for Mack they wouldn’t even be there, and Mack counters that if it weren’t for him, Katy would still be lying on the floor at home. Touché. Mack says the doctors know what they’re doing and that the baby will be fine, which really sets Jason off, because he feels like he’s the only one there who cares about Katy while everybody else is only thinking about the bloody baby. Mack says that of course Katy is as important as the baby, but Jason spits that as far as he’s concerned she’s more important than the baby, because he cannot survive losing another partner and having to raise another motherless child. He grabs Mack by the collar and shoves him against the wall, which does not fall down, and looks like he’s about to punch him, but instead he collapses in tears against Mack’s chest, and Mack semi-hugs him. Straight guys are impossible.

Back at the B&B, it’s time for a lunch break, and when Mo complains that she’s exhausted, Father Éamonn helpfully snots that back in his day you worked in a sweatshop from dawn till midnight even though you had the Black Death and a dinosaur was chasing you, and you liked it. Everybody starts piling onto poor Mo, talking about what a complete wagon she is, in contrast to Pádraig, who is, according to Máire, “a nice, placid, understanding man.” Frankly, given that the only reason Mo is even there is to be nice to Máire, if I were her I’d tell them to all go eff themselves and storm out, overturning the table and possibly also Pádraig on the way out. Eventually the oldies and nice, placid Pádraig all have a laugh at the funny, funny joke Father Éamonn is playing on Mo, but we don’t cut to her again, presumably because she is busy beating Aunt Sally with the hoover.

At the pub, Gráinne leaves with the wellies and hazmat suit she’s come to borrow from Laoise, and then Laoise and Peatsaí ignore texts from Máire and Sally asking them to come help because they’re busy, well, not wanting to. Bobbi-Lee greets someone called Scott whom I have never seen before, but he seems to be her agent or something, and he’s here to tell her that somebody wants to buy the rights to her song “I Hate Vince.” He points out that young singers don’t have the kind of insight and experience conveyed in this song, and that you really have to be from the 19th century or earlier like Bobbi-Lee to understand such heartbreak. Bobbi-Lee is like, “Steady on, Scott,” and then gets even more annoyed with him when she realizes he’s proposing she give up the rights to the song outright and throw the version she recorded in the bin, and then makes “ching-ching” cash register noises. She snaps that she’ll give him ching-ching, and I really need to add “I’ll give you _____” to my list of favorite Bobbi-Lee-isms. She’s not giving her song away to “some teeny-bopper,” and fair play to her for using the word “teeny-bopper,” which has sadly fallen into disuse and should be revived.

Back in the corridor of doom, Mack offers to go across the street to get him and Jason a pizza, but the toppings Jason thinks he would like on it are “Screw you” and “Why are you still here?” Dr Ní Dhochtúir appears again and congratulates Jason: it’s a boy! Jason’s eyes glisten with tears, and of course Mack has to helpfully say, “Mac,” which, yes, I know is Irish for “son,” but still. Come on. Jason asks about Katy, and the doctor refuses to make eye contact and tells him to sit down, because Katy…is in need of a few days’ rest, because it took a lot out of her. OH MY GOD. You tell someone to sit down and brace themselves for bad news because their loved one died on the operating table, not because she’s knackered and needs a bit of a lie-in. COME ON. Apparently this doctor went to medical school at the University of Stupid.

David arrives at the café in search of Gráinne, and Micheál tells him that she went down to the shore to look for algae heads and octopus anuses for her soup. David is fed up with this nonsense, especially because he is tired of constantly vomiting from every orifice, and storms off in search of her.

And speaking of, we cut to Deserted Beach Where No One Can Hear You Scream, where it is pitch black, and Gráinne is walking along the slippery wet rocks collecting seaweed. She, of course, slips on an octopus anus and falls face-first into a rock, and starts screaming. Oh dear.

Back at the B&B, it’s the end of a long day of drudgery and everyone is putting the last touches on waxing the toilet paper and alphabetizing the cutlery. Sensing that the work is done, Laoise and Peatsaí magically appear, explaining that they too have had a long day of hard work, Laoise driving the polytunnel back and forth to France and Peatsaí scratching his arse. Everyone puts on their coats and starts to leave, but then Máire starts carrying on about how nice it was to have people around for a change, and how sad it will be to spend the evening alone, especially since she will almost certainly die tonight, just like poor Peadar. We will ignore the fact that Laoise, Sally, Fia, and Liam Óg all live there with her, so she would actually not be alone by any stretch of the imagination. There is sympathy, along with a bit of “Here we go,” and finally everyone agrees to stay and play cards for a while, which makes Máire very happy indeed, and in my family this is what we call “rewarding Mom for her bad behavior.”

 At the beach, David is walking along the rocks in a miner’s helmet calling Gráinne’s name, and eventually she starts screaming for help. She moans and carries on, eventually telling him, according to the subtitles, “I twisted my ankle but it’s only a slight sprain,” which a) is one of those sentences out of a foreign-language textbook that no one has ever said in the history of ever, and b) if it’s such a slight sprain, why didn’t you get up and limp home instead of lying there all night screaming? They argue for a bit, and eventually he picks her and her barnacle brains up and totes them home.

Jason is at Katy’s bedside, and in yet another example of her typical attention-seeking behavior, she is in a coma and also an iron lung. Tadhg arrives, having visited the baby in the NICU, and tells Jason he’s “no bigger than a bag of sugar,” which strikes me as very endearing somehow, especially coming from Tadhg. He is actually incredibly sweet and supportive, which makes us feel like we are in upside-down world, but we are also reminded that Tadhg can be very dear to little Áine, and that there is a human side to him, though he only trots it out for children who share his DNA. He encourages Jason to go down to the NICU to see his tiny new son, but Jason won’t take his eyes off Katy, and refuses to leave her bedside to go see a baby who may or may not be his, whereas he is 80% sure Katy is Katy.

NEXT TIME: There’s no preview, so we have to make something up! Gráinne wins MasterChef with her Eye-of-Jellyfish soup, but then all the judges die, so she has to give the title back. Áine hijacks a 747 and flies it to Cuba because she really doesn’t want to go to school today! And Pádraig stands around being vaguely wise in a state-the-obvious way, but at least he looks very dashing in his grey pea coat and scarf!