Tadhg Ó Direáin in "Operation: Destroy Mo"

Season 21, Episode 37

First aired 10 January 2017

Another day begins at the pub, where Tadhg is still ranting to Bobbi-Lee about how that witch Mo is going to pay for what she’s done, and we get the impression it’s been going on without interruption since the final scene of last episode, possibly with a break for a Bobbi-Lee costume change. Mo arrives, a few minutes late, so Tadhg sends Bobbi-Lee off to have a cup of coffee and read the latest issue of Jackie while Mo mucks out the toilets, which are especially bad today because last night the pub hosted the local chapter of Horses With Dysentery’s monthly meeting. Mo is annoyed as she trudges off to put on her hazmat suit, and Bobbi-Lee and Tadhg look pleased with themselves. Those two being on the same side of any issue may be even more alarming than Bobbi-Lee and Berni agree agreeing about something.

Frosty the SnowDee and Mopey Mack arrive home from their honeymoon, which has clearly been as pleasant as eating a beehive, to be greeted by Gráinne and Pádraig springing up from behind the counter shouting “Surprise!” One wonders how long they’ve been waiting there. Pádraig welcomes them home in Italian, so apparently they’ve honeymooned at Pizza Hut. As the happy couple, i.e., Pádraig and Gráinne, pop open a bottle of champagne, Dee is passive-aggressive while Mack looks terrified and confused, which is clearly going to be the theme of their marriage.

Back at the pub, Bobbi-Lee is struggling with a children’s crossword puzzle while Mo hilariously says she’s got a five-letter word for her: O-B-A-I-R, which she suggests Bobbi-Lee try doing sometime. Snerk. Tadhg makes a production of tracking mud across the floor Mo’s just mopped, and Bobbi-Lee tells her that whatever she’s done, Tadhg sure has it in for her. Mo, this is why you should always remain neutral when a battle breaks out between Tadhg and Peatsaí, and by “remain neutral” I mean “flee to Switzerland.”

Gráinne and Pádraig are still obliviously drinking bubbly and asking about the honeymoon, while Dee looks like she’s just eaten a lemon and Mack looks like he’s just eaten a hand grenade and can’t remember whether he pulled out the pin first. It seems the happy couple inflicted themselves upon Florence, which I hear is now recovering with the help of the Red Cross and a charity visit from Geri Halliwell. Pádraig and Gráinne brightly ask for confirmation of the things they know about Italy, such as that it is a country in Europe and that they have shops there that sell things, and it looks like Dee is about three minutes away from killing everyone in the house and then going in search of Katy.

Over at the B&B, which I am not sure is actually a B&B anymore, Colm, Laoise, and Aunt Or Cousin Sally are enjoying a cup of tea while discussing compost, as one does. Laoise says she and Colm had better get back to work, especially since Sally has a hot lunch date with Peatsaí to get ready for, and then there is creepy talk of how much Peatsaí would enjoy it if Sally served him a hot piece of steak, which I am terrified is a euphemism. This gets Laoise hot and bothered, so she starts flirting with Colm, which: ewwww. It’s unclear whether he’s flirting back since his default demeanor is “vaguely lecherous,” but either way, it seems he has some ideas of things he could do with Laoise, which I fear involve a shovel and a one-way ticket to Portugal.

Peatsaí arrives at the pub for a leisurely drink before his hot date with Sally, because it’s always good to keep hos waiting and so on, and then Tadhg gives an Oscar-worthy performance of tripping over the mop bucket and then yells at Mo for leaving it all over the place and being useless and then damns her to hell. Bobbi-Lee relates that she heard Tadhg fuming earlier that Mo “isn’t going to get away with it,” so Mo angrily hisses at Peatsaí that Tadhg knows about their shenanigans with An Teaghlach and that’s why he’s been so mean to her. Peatsaí tells her to leave Tadhg to him, so it seems the slow, muttering war between those two is entering a new phase.

And now we cut to Sally and Peatsaí’s lunch date, which involves a lot of long, lingering shots of tea being poured erotically into cups and her clutching her pearls suggestively, and then we’re back to Dee and Mack’s, where Gráinne and Pádraig are finally bogging off, but not before revealing that they’ve covered their bed with rose petals. Fortunately we only hear about this rather than having to go look at it, because there was only money in the budget for one new set, and that’s Dee’s kitchen, which I have to say is bright and lovely and not that pukey shade of puce all the other interior walls in town are. Dee and Mack instantly turn on each other the second they’re alone, and Mack breaks a photo mug of the two of them in half in a very symbolic way (groan), and we discover that Dee spent the honeymoon in the lovely hotel while Mack spent it across town sharing a room with twenty Norwegian backpackers in a seedy youth hostel beneath a train station and above a fish factory. He complains that it was a terrible ten days, because he caught ringworm off his pillow and found a hypodermic needle in his calzone, and she snaps that it wasn’t a dream for her, either, because the executive lounge at the Conrad ran out of Diet Coke and there weren’t enough hangers in the room.

Back at the B&B, which is the exact shade of puce I was complaining about earlier, Sally walks in on Peatsaí just as he finishes a phone call that consists of scheming, presumably of a sexy nature, with some woman, presumably a floozy. She’s jealous and is all, “Give me the address of this scrubber I’ve got to go choke,” but he claims it was regarding a letter from the Co-op, and then charms his way back into her good graces by standing way too close to her face and croaking sweet, gravelly nothings into her eyeballs.

Out in the street, Colm tells Laoise he’s just gotten off the phone with the publisher, who’s sending a photographer around this afternoon to take some pics for the book, which we had forgotten about. She’s giggly, and then Máire stops by and gives her a lot of detail about how’s she stripped the sheets off Laoise’s bed and washed them, which causes Laoise to act very embarrassed because this is the 19th century and it’s scandalous for a gentleman suitor such as Colm to know that a lady such as Laoise sleeps in a bed. I can’t even with this. Tadhg arrives just in time to overhear a soliloquy from Máire that is half about her trip to the chiropodist to have her corns polished and half about the customs officers who’ve just raided the pub. He is decidedly more interested in one segment of this than the other, so he insults her pimply feet and then takes out his phone to call Mo, who is behind the bar surrounded by customs agents who are picking the pub apart looking for contraband. She is hilariously delighted to tell him all about the nice officers as he cacks himself, and then when he starts asking her to go hide the poitín like a good girl, she brightly tells him they’ve got a bad connection, and she’s got to go now anyway cos the handsome officer wants to ask her some questions, so byeee! And oh my God, just when you think you can’t love Mo any more, she does something like this.

After the break, during which we learn that new extra-strength Strepsils will incinerate the germs in your throat with their patented blast of minty-fresh uranium, we return to the awkwardness of Dee and Mack’s miserable new life. He tries to make conversation with her, but she interrupts him with her patented blast of minty-fresh hatred, and presents him with the bill for the wedding, which she says he can pay himself since he’s responsible for the whole thing turning into a sham. Well, technically she should send Katy half the bill. There’s a knock at the door, and then we add a big dollop of the one ingredient that can make any situation more uncomfortable: Berni! Dee rolls her eyes so far back in her head she can see backwards through time, and Berni, whose inability to read a room is rivaled only by Bobbi-Lee’s, makes a complete nuisance of herself by laughing endlessly about nothing and expertly lecturing them on the ins and outs of marriage as only someone whose last boyfriend tried to murder-suicide her can. Dee is like, “Well, I’d love to stay and chat, but I hate both of you,” and excuses herself to the bedroom to set Mack’s clothes on fire.

Figuring the coast is clear, Tadhg finally returns to the pub, where Mo tells him the customs officers didn’t find anything because she’d hidden the poitín. She feels he isn’t suitably grateful, so they have a debate about which of the two of them has been more of a lying, scheming bastard lately, and while Mo may have a slight edge in this week’s competition, Tadhg of course is the winner of the lifetime achievement award. They call an uneasy truce, but not before Mo gets herself excused from toilet-cleaning duty permanently, and possibly gets a pay rise as well. Mo: Agent of Badassery!

Back at the B&B, Peatsaí is raising a glass to his own cleverness over dropping Tadhg in it with Customs, which Sally is semi-interested in, and she declares that Tadhg is a “bad egg” and Peatsaí is a “charmer.” Well, she’s half right.

We return to Dee’s, where Berni is banging on about some nonsense with the café’s business model, and we get the impression it has been going on for some time, because at the other end of the sofa, Mack has turned into a skeleton covered in cobwebs. Eventually he can’t take any more and throws her out, which she chalks up to his being exhausted from sexing Dee up nonstop for the past 10 days, but she warns him that they can’t put off updating the café forever, because zzzzzzzzz.

Out in the street, a photo shoot has broken out in the general vicinity of Colm. The editor or whoever decides the shot looks “bare,” so she suggests Colm grab nearby Laoise and use her as a prop, like when you give small children blocks or cuddly toys to hold when they’re having their pictures taken at Mothercare. The editor and the photographer, who today is played by Jesus, are pleased with this pic, which is somewhat surprising given the entire background will consist of the giant Homeland advertising poster they are standing in front of, but the important thing storywise is that Colm compresses Laoise tightly into his armpit, which she very much enjoys.

At the pub, Bobbi-Lee is grilling Berni for any honeymoon details she may have extracted from Dee and Mack, and wonders whether they went to see that slanty building, the Leaning Eiffel of Liberty. Berni is stunned into silence, which makes us all hope Bobbi-Lee will demonstrate her geographic ignorance more often, and finally Berni proclaims that she’s not going to let Mack’s nonchalant stupidity hold her back anymore, and that she’s going to take matters into her own hands with the café! Sadly, before we can hear Bobbi-Lee say, “Oh, you own a café now?”, we cut to the bar, where Peatsaí has arrived for some light arguing with Tadhg, and to find out from Mo what happened with the customs officers. She confesses to him that she hid the poitín, which he is surprised by in an inert way, and then Tadhg returns to tell her that she’s earned the morning off tomorrow, and by the way, Bobbi-Lee, get your arse in here bright and early tomorrow to scrub the toilets and floors. It seems the balance of power between our two favorite barmaids has shifted again.

Outside, Máire stops by to disapprove of how cozy Laoise is getting with Colm, and also all the annoying giggling, which Laoise clearly does not give two shits about because Colm is dreamy apparently. We then return to the pub, where Tadhg is on the phone hissing to Mo that he can’t find the poitín she hid, and instructs her to come back after dark to show him exactly where it is. I would love right now to cut upstairs to Áine’s bedroom, where Barbie and Ken are drunkenly fighting in the street outside her poitín-soaked Dream Distillery.

We return Chez Dee, which I am not going to call “Chez Dee and Mack” for the time being, because it may be premature for him to start having his mail forwarded there. He’s angrily asking her how long she’s going to give him the silent treatment, so she decides that if he wants to talk, he can start by telling her all the stubbly details of the night he and Katy got together to shake their babymakers. They argue for a while, and then she says all she can think about is whether the baby is his, and then she storms off while he frowns in disbelief that she’s still carrying on about that old thing.

It’s nighttime, and Tadhg and Mo are someplace very poorly lit but apparently outdoors searching in vain for the hidden poitín with their flashlights. It seems that someone has stolen it! So we cut to the B&B for a scene of Máire doing laundry, and just as we are about to write TG4 an angry and vaguely threatening letter complaining about wasting our time on Máire’s domestic drudgery instead of the story we care about, we pan across the kitchen and see—hidden in plain sight in the middle of the floor, basically—the box of poitín! It’s quite a mystery who’s put it there given how many unsavory characters have been in and out of that place lately, but I really hope this is how we finally find out about Aunt Sally’s secret drinking problem.

NEXT TIME: Máire scolds Peatsaí for hanging around at the B&B all the time, but he shuts her up by pointing out that what she really should be worried about is the fact that Bobbi-Lee just saw him with no trousers on and is going to blab to everyone about it. I have no guesses about the sequence of events that would lead to such a thing, so if you have ideas, please write them on a postcard and send them to Ros na Recaps, USA.