The Day Mo Yelled At Everyone

Season 21, Episode 45

First aired 7 February 2017

I would like to know where they got the clips of Caitríona being smiley and happy that are in the title sequence. Can anyone remember the last time Caitríona was happy about anything? She must be smiling and laughing at someone who is falling down or being run over by a car just off-camera.

Anyway, we open with Mo out on a casual morning stroll that’s brought her to Séamus’ poitín shed. You may recall that last episode the shed was miles and miles from civilization through the deserted Arctic tundra, but this episode it’s a leisurely stroll from wherever Mo started. It’s like Suzanne’s Holiday House of Horrors last season, which sometimes was at the end of the block and other times was in Albania. Anyway, Mo runs into David, who nervously explains to her that he doesn’t know why he’s there or what he’s doing, but it’s not suspicious, that’s for sure. She wants to go into the shed to reminisce about old times, but he blocks the doorway and waves her away, all, “You might not want to go in there right now,” as if it’s a smelly toilet that needs to air out. Of course Mo immediately realizes he’s up to something, because she’s spent her entire adult life around Mack and Peatsaí and therefore knows ridiculous nonsense when she hears it.

At Teen Strop Headquarters, Réailtín is applying makeup with a trowel, as tween girls and drag queens do, and panics when she hears her dad approaching. He immediately asks her what’s on her mouth, and because he thinks she is 6, assumes she’s been eating sweets. By the look of her she’s been rubbing them on her cheeks and eyelids as well. She’s got the radio on and he tells her to turn down that racket, because he is 150 years old, but she protests that there’s about to be an interview with Westzone One, who we assume are the Two Ali G’s we saw on the poster in the pub last week. I am pretty sure they are fictitious, like that Francis Brennan guy from last season, but because I am also 150 years old, I am not positive. Anyway, it seems they’re having a concert in Dublin soon and she really wants to go, but he hilariously snots that they’re living in Ros na Rún like she wanted, and isn’t that enough excitement for her? In his defense, they do have a café without a kitchen and a polytunnel, so I don’t know what else a teenaged girl could want. INGRATE. She whines that Frances and Tadhg are letting Áine go, and Áine is just a child somewhere between ages 4 and 10, but he reminds her that Frances and Tadhg are awful parents and terrible human beings, and that no daughter of his is going to “a place like that.” Yes, how dare a tween girl want to go to a show for tween girls! Next I suppose she’ll be wanting to have her period just to annoy him.

Mack has prepared breakfast for Dee, but she explains that she’s busy with a case, and is cold and distant. Of course, this being Dee, there’s no way to know whether she’s being cold and distant because she’s still mad about the Katy thing or because it’s just the way she is all the time about everything. He suggests they go out to dinner tonight, and she protests for a bit, but eventually agrees, and he looks very happy, because she can’t yell at him if her mouth is full of food. Smirky arsehole Turlough stops by to collect Dee, and on the way out the door he notices someone’s been sleeping on the sofa and he is intrigued. Well, I’m sure there’s no way this is going to end with someone being punched or slapped.

John Joe stops by Berni’s, and she tells him it better not be so he can say “I told you so” again. It turns out that’s only one of the reasons he’s there, the other being to tell her she needs to put her clothes on and go down to the café to see something. If this gives you the mental image that John Joe is talking to Berni while she’s standing stark naked in the middle of her flat, you’re wrong, but it’s amusing to imagine, isn’t it?

Back at the shed, Mo is very cross at David, because he’s completely effed the poitín equipment up. It seems that if he didn’t know what a particular part of the still did, he just took it off, which means the still is in a thousand pieces scattered everywhere and partially on fire. As she’s shouting that he’s making poison and the still is going to blow up in his face, Gráinne arrives, which gives Mo twice as many people to yell at. She dumps out two bottles of poitín and angrily tells them that if they don’t stop this nonsense and clear out by the end of the day, she’s calling the Gardaí on them. I expect the local guards have got a special radio code for David-related trouble by now, just to save themselves time. “We’ve got a code D out at the old shed.” “Right, if we leave now, we’ll be there by sundown, or in two minutes, depending on where the shed is right now.”

Berni and John Joe arrive at the café, where the local townsfolk have collected her old kitchen fittings from various skips and roadside ditches and shooed away the raccoons and venomous spiders that had built homes in them. The good Samaritans have reassembled the café, sort of, to its former glory, such as it was. You may recall the episode of The Simpsons where the locals pitch in to rebuild Ned Flanders’ house after it’s destroyed by a hurricane and they do an incredibly crappy job, which is very much what’s happening here, except in this case Berni rang up the hurricane and invited it over. Anyway, it seems Bobbi-Lee is the one who organized all this, because she is really a lovely person at heart, and cares for Berni in a Stockholm syndrome kind of way, but also because she knows it’ll be a lot harder to “borrow” money from Berni if she doesn’t have any. Berni is touched, and it really is very sweet, even though we suspect that the next time we see the café, it will be simultaneously on fire and underwater. Just then Micheál gets a phone call that Réailtín has been spotted someplace she’s not supposed to be, which I am hoping will turn out to be dancing on a table in Temple Bar, or possibly on a flying trapeze with a traveling Romanian circus.

Peatsaí runs into Laoise on the street and asks if she’s gotten her tickets to the Valentine’s dance yet, because apparently they are in high school. She says no, because she doesn’t think Colm would want to go to such a thing, and besides, she’s got a big algebra test the next day to study for. Peatsaí meddles for a bit, and discusses how he’s going to be there dancing until his clothes fly off, which really gives Laoise something to think about.

The cast of LA Law have arrived at Gaudi to celebrate their brilliant victory in today’s court case, which is all thanks to Dee, though of course she couldn’t have done it without Turlough’s creepy lecherousness. Juries really respond positively to that. She doesn’t think she should drink since she has to drive, but he insists, and I’m sure he has no ulterior motives, because he never does. Meanwhile, Tadhg arrives to harass Mo, who is surly, and he tells her that if she’s going to keep being so cranky, she can stay home tonight and he’ll call Bobbi-Lee in to work in her place. You can tell how disagreeable Mo is being if Tadhg thinks Bobbi-Lee would be an improvement. She tells him about David and Gráinne’s ridiculous poitín scheme and how they’re going to blow themselves up, the idea of which excites him very much. As she continues listing all the things they’re doing wrong, he realizes she’s the only one who knows Séamus’ secret poitín recipe, and therefore she is useful to him. Presumably he’s also excited because she will know the most efficient way to make David explode.

Berni declares the café officially open, and makes a big production out of thanking everyone in the scene except Bobbi-Lee, whose idea this whole thing was in the first place. Typical. You repeatedly steal thousands and thousands of euros from Berni and she gets all pissy about it. John Joe goes into the kitchen to turn the oven on, which causes a terrible buzzing and sizzling sound, like Frankenstein’s monster coming to life and then being sucked into a jet engine. He comes back doing that thing where you can’t tell whether he’s smiling or grimacing, and tells her there’s a bit of a problem.

Back at the shed, David reaches into a hole in the wall and pulls out a hidden bottle of poitín that Mo didn’t dump out. He better be careful, because given the crumbling stone walls of this deathtrap, that may have been a load-bearing bottle. He and Gráinne fume about what a wagon Mo is being, but then David announces he’s figured out what’s wrong with her, because of course he’s famous for understanding women. He theorizes that Mo is upset because the shed had been just the way Séamus left it until he and Gráinne came in and mucked everything up, so they should put everything back the way it was. Just then Tadhg and Mo arrive, which gives David and Gráinne instant diarrhea face.

After the break, Micheál and Réailtín are at home arguing, because it seems she was found wandering around “town,” wherever that is, when she was supposed to be at school. This is a very touching full-circle for me because my very first Ros na Recap was about the last time Réailtín ran away. There is a season, turn turn turn, a time to run away, a time to put your father in a coffin and set the building on fire, etc. He asks her why she went into town, and she tells him she needed something but won’t say what. We are all afraid this is going to turn out to be about feminine hygiene products, which are not scary by themselves, but they are when Micheál gets involved with them. He tells her he’s going to start walking her to and from the front door of the school again, just like he did when she was a child, and she screams that she hates him and so on. This is just like that Taylor Swift song, “I Hate You And Wish You Would Die, So Now I’m Going To My Room And Slamming The Door.”

Back at the shed, Mo is still shouting at David and Gráinne, while Tadhg stands around on autopilot calling them all idiots. David admits there’s one bottle left that Mo hasn’t poured out, and she crosses her arms so severely and furrows her brow so deeply she may collapse into a black hole at any second.

In the street, Mack, who is carrying a bouquet of roses and his freshly-cleaned best suit, leaves Dee a voicemail telling her he’s booked them a dinner table at the Green Gables, which is apparently a very posh restaurant. I would guess it’s not as nice as Nando’s, because there aren’t unlimited Coke refills, but nicer than McDonald’s, because you are less likely to find an Elastoplast in your food. He tells her he hopes she won today and that he’ll see her soon, and looks happy for the first time in at least a year.

Meanwhile, over at Gaudi, the Supreme Court of Ireland is still celebrating with mid-priced champagne and Lidl-brand imitation Doritos. Dee listens to Mack’s voicemail and starts gathering her things to go, but Turlough, who is under the impression that this is his business somehow, comes over and tells her she can go to dinner with Mack another night, because they’re celebrating. He says he knows their marriage is on the rocks because he saw the blanket on the couch, which annoys her, so she starts making up some nonsense about how she’s housing Scottish Brexit refugees and so on. He tells her he warned her not to marry Mack but she wouldn’t listen, and assumes Mack is jealous because she makes more money than he does or goes out with clients, and because Dee always has to be right about everything, she tells him that no, it’s because Mack slept with someone else, actually. Oh, Dee.

Across the restaurant, Laoise has invited Colm to join her for a drink at the bar. He asks if Máire has been giving her “a hard time” about their relationship, and we watch through our fingers because we’re afraid he’s about to offer to give her A Hard Time himself, but fortunately he does not. She starts to invite him to the dance, but just then he notices the Valentine’s tat hanging from the restaurant’s every orifice and starts complaining about what a load of old bollocks this so-called holiday is. She agrees with him as she tucks the dance tickets in her purse, and when he asks what she wanted to see him about, she makes up something about whether she should give Gráinne more hours since she’s such a good worker. He couldn’t care less, because he barely knows who the hell Gráinne is, and Laoise looks sad and awkward as she frowns into her wine glass.

Micheál tracks Frances down in the street and asks her why she’s letting Áine go to this Murderteen Overdose concert. In one of those moments that make us remember why we love Frances, her reply is, “What exactly has it got to do with you?” Snerk. He says Réailitín is banging on about wanting to go and that it’s not helping that Áine gets to go, especially since she’s only nine or three or however old she is. Frances asks him if he is actually asking her not to let Áine go just so he’ll have the upper hand in his stupid argument with Réailtín, which of course he denies even though that’s exactly what he’s doing. She suddenly slams on her brakes and makes a U-turn, though, and starts empathizing with him about what pains in the ass daughters are, and calls to the witness stand a passing John Joe, so he can present into evidence Exhibits A and B, or rather, Exhibits D and K, the two most pain-in-the-ass daughters in all of Ireland. Hilariously, he’s basically like, “Oh, yeah, Dee and Katy are total bitches, but right now I’m more worried about Berni and her stupid kitchen.” He’s sad that he can’t fix her dead oven even though he’s a mechanic, but also takes this opportunity to point out to everyone that he told Berni so, but she wouldn’t listen. I would be getting tired of this routine of his if not for the fact that Berni has won the World Cup of “I Told You So” the past 24 years running.

Speaking of Little Miss Sunshine, Berni is sulking around the house while Bobbi-Lee makes suggestions on how they can fix this mess, such as using the oven across the road at the community center, or just serving soup and sandwiches. Of course Berni poo-poos these as stupid ideas, partly because she’s in that kind of mood, but also because: Bobbi-Lee. If Evan said them she’d think they were brilliant. She sighs that she has no other option: she’ll just have to close the café until she has the money to buy a new industrial oven. I’m unclear how she expects to make any money with the café closed, but OK. Bobbi-Lee tries to comfort her, but she’s just in the mood to cry, and wanders off, announcing she’s going to bed for the next week. Bobbi-Lee looks sad, and calls her agent or someone on her phone and asks them, “How much did you say you’d pay me for my song again?” If this doesn’t make you clutch your chest and say “Awwww,” you are a cold, cold husk.

Back at the shed, David offers Mo the first taste of the poitín, but she just glares at him with her laser death stare, which is getting quite a workout today. He takes a sip and gags and retches, and then passes the cup to Gráinne, who spits it out and chokes that it’s disgusting. He hands the bottle to Tadhg, who refuses to even try it based on the fact that it’s yellow and has stuff floating in it. I mean, really. He thinks they should leave it to someone who knows what they’re doing, and they assume he’s talking about himself, causing David to start ranting about Tadhg wanting to line his pockets and Gráinne to start making alarming noises like a malfunctioning till, or possibly a fruit machine someone’s spilled their drink into. He’s like, “No, you little idiots, I’m talking about Mo, for God’s sake,” but she frowns and tells him to forget it.

It’s sometime later, and Dee and Turlough are still at Gaudi arguing. She tells him she’s not going to tell him all the details of the affair and to stop asking, and then proceeds to tell him all the details of the affair. He carries on for a while about how people never change, and if Mack did it once he’ll do it again, and it should be noted that Turlough seems to be attempting to grow stubble, but it is not even in Mack’s league, and is just embarrassing.

And speaking of, Mack is looking very stubbly and handsome indeed in his fancy suit as he paces the house looking at his watch. He leaves Dee another voicemail, telling her it’s getting late and wondering where she is, and looks sad. My question is, will the “T” in “Turlough” be eclipsed or lenited in the near future when we say, “Mack punches Turlough”? I can never keep the initial mutations straight.

Tadhg is still trying to coax Mo into starting up a poitín operation with him. I really wish they’d move this conversation somewhere else because it looks like that shed is going to collapse at any second and this show would be a lot less fun without Mo and Tadhg. She continues to refuse until David and Gráinne announce they will just keep making it themselves then, at which point she changes her mind and says she’ll do it, but only because they are stupid. I’m paraphrasing. She says they’re going to follow her instructions exactly and not argue, and Gráinne readily agrees, though David grits his teeth and acts petulant, because he really wanted to the still to explode so he could then karate the fire out.

Mack is disheveled and partially mummified on the couch when Dee finally arrives home, and he’s furious that she’s very late and didn’t bother calling, especially because he went to all that trouble to make fancy dinner plans. We will ignore the fact that it’s clearly still broad daylight outside, which, given how early the sun sets this time of year, suggests he made the dinner reservation for 11am. She tells him she won the case, and when he isn’t sufficiently excited, she tells him this is all his fault because he slept with Katy. That whole argument starts up again, and eventually she storms out and he smashes the roses on the floor. If only there were some way to make this whole situation worse, such as by having Dee kiss someone. Oh well, MAYBE NEXT TIME!