Haulin' Oats

Season 21, Episode 46

First aired 9 February 2017

We open with Mack and Dee still arguing, which is something we never get tired of. By “never get,” I mean “are already.” This time he’s the aggrieved party, which is at least a nice change of pace. He’s still angry she stood him up last night to go out drinking with her friends, or whatever Turlough is. I might go for “parasite.” He tells her they’re going around in circles and twirls some keys around as a visual aid, because he often forgets which shape is a circle and assumes she does, too. He storms out, and we all figure this is the last of their arguing we will see this episode, ha ha.

Speaking of arguments that have been going on uninterrupted since last episode, Micheál is still quarreling with Réailtín about her trip to Galway while digging through her bag, accusing her of going into town to buy some “glad rags” to wear to the “disco.” Well, that tells us how long it’s been since Micheál went out on the town. He pulls out the thing she bought yesterday, and buíochas le Dia, it isn’t a box of tampons as we all feared, because we desperately did not want to hear Micheál attempt to have that conversation with her. It seems to be some item of clothing, but we can’t tell what it is because he’s got it all balled up. He declares it’s inappropriate and scandalous, so presumably it’s something that will show Réailtín’s ankles, like a common prostitute. She protests that “Tiffany’s mam lets her wear things like that,” which is a terrible argument, because as my best friend Tiffany says, on TV shows people named Tiffany are, and I quote, “always the drunk slut.” He exclaims that he doesn’t care what the other mothers do, and then there’s an awkward moment as he realizes what he’s said, and she exits promptly so he can’t make a big deal out of her being motherless and all.

Over at the café, we have no idea what Berni is serving, but Peatsaí laments the fact that her infamous quiche has disappeared off the menu, which you may recall I pointed out a few months ago had been “Today’s special” on the chalkboard for approximately 2 years. Surely it had turned to jerky by now. John Joe points out a newspaper advert for a €300 oven, which is clearly a quality long-term investment in the business’ future. I mean, things that are too good to be true are never too good to be true, right, Berni? Anyway, she notes that she doesn’t have €300, but that she could probably scrape it together, probably by selling Evan on eBay. She gets a text from Bobbi-Lee and hilariously notes it’s all “honey this” and “honey that.” It seems she’s gone away for a few days, and Berni sourly snots that wherever she’s gone, she’s sure not worrying about Berni or her kitchen, that’s for sure. You may recall that just last episode Bobbi-Lee organized Operation: Kitchen Rebuild for Berni, for which Berni thanked everyone except Bobbi-Lee, and now she’s saying this shit. Nice. Now I’m even more hopeful the €300 oven blows up. Mack comes in and they all get in a fight about nothing, and by the look on John Joe’s face he knows this involves Dee somehow, because all arguments lead to the Daly sisters, and since Katy is still in the hospital, it’s all fallen on Dee.

David and Gráinne, who today are playing the roles of Tweedledum and Tweedledumber, arrive at the pub to ask Tadhg if they can borrow the hearse to haul some oats around for their poitín business. Mo joins in so they too can have a four-way argument about nothing, and when Frances walks in on it, Gráinne nervously starts spinning a ridiculous story to explain why she’s been screaming about oats. There’s no reason to believe Frances heard any of this, because she’s an expert at tuning out nonsense that doesn’t involve her, but Gráinne keeps digging herself deeper, giving a Mack-worthy story about hens and porridge and spaceships and so on. Eventually the village idiots leave, and Frances is immediately like, “So, Tadhg, you’re making poitín.” Heh. He denies it, weakly, and Frances wanders away, which gives him an opportunity to hiss to Mo that they’ve got to ditch the dummies, because they’re going to ruin this operation with their priestly incompetence and seaweed. She tells him to leave her out of whatever scheme he’s planning, which of course means that the next time we see them, she will be knee-deep in the scheme.

At Gaudi, Laoise runs into Colm as he’s on his way out, and he notes that he didn’t wake her when he left this morning because it was her day off, oo-er. There is minor awkwardness involving his dodging her kiss to answer his cellphone, and after he leaves, Máire uses this as her cue to start stirring the pot and causing trouble between the lovebirds. Well, sexbirds.

Over at the swimming pool or wherever Micheál works, he’s complaining to Gráinne about bobby-soxer Réailtín’s poodle skirts and bubblegum and so on, and she’s basically like, “When I was her age I was shoplifting crack.” He continues that there’s no pleasing Réailtín—why, just the other day he tried to take her to the over-90s tea dance and she didn’t want to go! Gráinne can’t listen to any more of this, and fortunately Tadhg pulls up in the hearse and offers to help her and David haul the oats. They agree, confident in the fact that his selfless helpfulness hides no ulterior motives whatsoever, because they have never met Tadhg before.

Mack is guzzling coffee and propping up the bar at Gaudi, and I’m not sure whether he’s supposed to look especially bedraggled today, because it’s hard to tell with him. His five o’clock shadow is more like ten o’clock three days from now, anyway. John Joe arrives to harass him, accusing him of not keeping that promise he made to keep Dee happy. To be fair, I don’t recall Mack agreeing to that actually, because he knows no one in the Daly family has ever been happy for more than eleven consecutive seconds in their lives. Mack protests that he doesn’t know what to do because Dee is cranky and miserable morning, noon, and night. John Joe tells him that he’s the one to blame for that, because of course Katy had nothing to do with it, and that if he had his way, Mack would never lay eyes, or anything else, on Dee again.

Back at the house formerly known as the bachelor pad, Tadhg is explaining to David and Gráinne the extremely complicated process of wasting time, convincing them they’re going to have to go through the oats one at a time and divide them into 650 different categories based on size, color, and socioeconomic status. They are doubtful that Séamus went through all this, to which he responds that they need to shut up and get back to alphabetizing the oats.

Chez Dee, Mack tells her that he’s decided to go stay with Mo for a while, because he doesn’t have the energy to fight with her anymore. It does seem that it’s become a full-time job for both of them, and Mack already had at least three of those. In spite of the fact that she’s acted like she wanted him to leave for the past 2 months, now that he offers to do it, she doesn’t like it, and he asks her when the last time she laughed was. Well, there was that time she was watching Father Ted back in 1997, but it turned out she was choking on a peanut.

Over at the B&B, Peatsaí is teaching Sally to do a dance I might charitably call the Electric Hip-Buster. Amazingly, Máire is clapping and enjoying it, not sobbing that they have to eat in that kitchen and praying for their filthy souls. When Laoise arrives, he tells her he’ll have to teach her some of his fancy moves in preparation for the Valentine’s dance, such as the Nuclear Hernia, but she says she’s not going anymore because Valentine’s Day is just a racket. Máire sees this as an opportunity to stir up more trouble, telling Laoise that the most important thing is to have a man who treats you well and respects you, unlike some people she won't name, but who are named Colm. Laoise sadly agrees, and while I am by no means a Colm fan, unless a whole lot has been happening off-camera that we haven’t been privy to, I haven’t seen him treating her particularly badly, so I don’t know what this is all about. She’s the one who wanted this to be about sex and nothing else.

Speaking of angry sex, Turlough has arrived at Dee’s, where she is wandering around like an anime zombie. She’s pulled a sickie, so he’s come by to check on her, and since he knows her marriage is on the rocks, he’s selflessly here to offer her a shoulder to cry on, and a penis to do, you know, whatever with.

After the break, Laoise is on the warpath, and she runs into Pádraig and starts complaining about what a terrible person Colm is. I can’t even with this. Pádraig does that thing he always does where he tells someone who’s in a tizzy to calm down because the drama is just doing his head it and he can’t take it anymore, but he’s grinning madly the whole time, because the gay drama gene is powerful and all-consuming and he CAN’T GET ENOUGH. She complains that Colm is a scoundrel who couldn’t jump into her bed quickly enough. You may recall that she tried to get him into her bed for weeks before he finally ended up there, so this is all a load of total crap. The gist seems to be that she’s fallen in love with Colm but he doesn’t feel the same, which of course makes him a terrible person.

Speaking of terrible people, Turlough is on the couch trying to comfort Dee by telling her how awful Mack is while getting her drunk and sitting in her lap. She’s all like, “Maybe I should forgive Mack,” and he’s like, “Maybe you should forgive me … IN MY PANTS!” They start making out, because no woman could resist such, I guess you’d call it charm. I’m having trouble typing because I’m busy throwing up right now.

Over at the pub, Mo hands a sullen Mack the keys to her place and asks him if everything’s all right. Oh, come on, Mo. What do you think? Réailtín arrives and is snotty to Micheál, not entirely unreasonably of course, but she cheers up when he produces two tickets to the DrugTeen SexZone show she’s been banging on about! She’s excited because she can go on the bus with her friends, but her joy turns to dread when Micheál points out that he’s going with her, and he gets bus sick. Uh-oh. Over at a table, Pádraig is “helping” Laoise by telling her she should make Colm jealous by lying and saying she’s got a hot date with someone else tonight. If there’s anyone in town I’d take relationship advice from, it’s Pádraig, but only because Suzanne isn’t available right now.

David and Gráinne have spent all day putting the oats in order from smallest to largest. Mo arrives and is confused about what the hell they’re doing until they whine that she’s the one who told them they had to do this, through her messenger Tadhg, and then she realizes what’s going on. Yes, there are a lot of oats in the kitchen right now, and half of them seem to be the stuffing in David and Gráinne’s heads.

Laoise stops by Gaudi to be an arsehole to Colm, telling him that she doesn’t need him anymore, because she’s got a hot-water bottle and he’s lousy in bed anyway. I have a feeling we’re supposed to think this is a “You go, girl!” empowerment moment for Laoise, but it just makes her look petty and ridiculous, and again, I say this as someone who’d be happy for Colm to take a long walk off a short pier.

Turlough and Dee are still making out on the couch, and at this point he’s on top of her. He really is one of those people who is much more attractive from some angles than from others. Anyway, she finally decides to put a stop to these proceedings, shouting that she’s married, and when he tries to kiss her again, she slaps him. He calls her a hussy, and they shout at each other for a bit before he storms out. She starts crying and grabs her phone to call someone. Hopefully Áine, because she’s the one you ring when you need someone killed.

At the pub, Mo is berating Tadhg for making David and Gráinne waste the entire day trying to teach the oats to do flips and say “mama” and so on. To be fair, I don’t get the sense that those two really had anything better to do today. He tells her their deal was that they were going to get rid of David and Gráinne so they could get down to business without them, but she complains that he didn’t have to make fools out of them in the process. Oh, Mo, I think they’re quite capable of doing that without Tadhg’s help.

Over at a table, Micheál is complaining to Laoise and Máire that he’s spent €100 on these stupid DrugTeen SexZone tickets and now Réailitín doesn’t even want to go, just because he wants to go with her. Apparently Micheál was never a teenager but rather was born a boring male, aged 45-75. Laoise wets her knickers because DrugTeen SexZone are totes her favorite band, obvs, continuing the downward trajectory of our opinion of her this episode. She offers to take Réailitín to the show, because she was going to buy tickets anyway, and she’ll look less crazy if she’s actually with a teen girl this time. Erm. Micheál thinks this is a great idea and hands her the tickets. I’m sure Réailtín will be much less embarrassed when Laoise shows up at the teen concert bus in her DrugTeen SexZone belly shirt and leather miniskirt.

Mack comes home and Dee runs into his arms crying. He tells her to knock it off and tries to push her off him, which is kind of awesome actually, but then she collapses in his arms and really starts sobbing, at which time he spots the two empty wine glasses on the table and says, even more awesomely, “Dee, who was here with you?” We’ll know Dee’s been paying attention to the kind of excuses Mack makes when he’s guilty if she starts telling him a story about a visit from a time-traveling ghost from the future.

David and Gráinne have come to the pub to tender their resignation from Mo & Company Poitín International, a division of Union Carbide. She tries to tell them Tadhg made up all the oat nonsense, but they have clearly practiced this speech and tell her they are sadly unable to perform the duties and responsibilities of their position, like that time Miss America resigned because naked pictures of her turned up. Of course, these days you can post photos of yourself bent naked over a motorcycle while licking a handgun and still become First Lady of the United States, Melania. Tadhg regretfully accepts their resignations, although he’s very sad they won’t be back tomorrow, which was the day he was going to teach them how to shove sacks of barley up their arses for winter storage.

Back on the couch of doom, Mack slowly extracts the story of today’s hijinks from Dee, like pulling oats from a jar of treacle. Which was going to be David and Gráinne’s weekend assignment. She says, “Then for no reason, he started kissing me,” which is one interpretation of what happened, I suppose. Mack asks if Turlough hurt her, and she says no, she stopped him, so he leaps up and announces that he’s going to go kill him. She tells him to sit down because Turlough means nothing to her, and that all that matters is that Mack is back now, so they can start their fighting again! That last part is implied. Mack says this doesn’t change anything, and they look sad for a while, so eventually he says that maybe if they sleep on it, things will be clearer in the morning. Based on the light coming through the window, it’s approximately 11am. No wonder none of the other houses on this show have any windows: it makes it much easier to lie about what time of day it is. She lies down to sleep, taking his hand and asking him to promise he’ll stay. He sighs and says he will, if nothing else because he’s got to board up these troublesome windows so it can be nighttime on this set sometimes.