Agatha Bhriste, Literary Detective

Season 21, Episode 60

First aired 30 March 2017

We open with Caitríona looking at a copy of her new book, hot off the presses. My God, it’s long. I can’t imagine there’s that much to say about Colm. Vince congratulates her, but she’s depressed, because she feels she’s been played and will be humiliated when people find out she’s written a book claiming a money-laundering sleazeball is innocent. Well, on the plus side, nobody reads books anymore, especially this one, so I think she’s safe. Vince points out that Colm is actually innocent of the thing she talks about in the book, so it’s not her fault if he’s guilty of a bunch of other things. That’s some skillful, Dee-worthy lawyering right there. This doesn’t seem to cheer Caitríona up for some reason, and she frets that nobody will buy this book when they find out he’s “an actual criminal.” As a published nonfiction author myself I can see why she’s so upset about this, because my last royalty check was for $9, and she’s going to need that kind of serious dosh to pay for Annette’s new nose.

Mo arrives at work, clearly still rattled from last night’s Anto-induced yuckiness, and Tadhg gripes at her for leaving the place a mess when she closed up. She’s not in the mood for his nonsense, which in this case is actually justified, and tells him she’ll clean up now if he’ll shut up about it. He asks her if she took off early last night to go “do the jailhouse rock” with Colm, and while I usually love it when Tadhg insults people using references from his youth, such as telling them their powdered wig looks like Marie Antoinette’s and so on, Mo is so visibly shaken that it’s really no fun, because we love her.

There’s some uninteresting awkwardness involving David’s unemployment, and then we cut to Gaudi, where the troops are preparing Colm for his day in court, straightening his tie and ironing his balaclava and so on. Micheál drops by to return Laoise’s spare mobile as rudely as possible, reminding her that it’s her fault that Réailtín is a teenager and therefore awful, and then storming away. She complains about how unreasonable he’s being to an audience of Pádraig, who doesn’t care, and Colm, who barely knows who Micheál and Réailtín are, and then Caitríona shows up to engage in some moderate arguing with Colm. She takes him aside and hisses that she can’t believe he let her write this stupid book proving his innocence while he was off money-laundering and stagecoach-robbing the whole time. She continues that he may have made a fool of her, something which of course she is fully capable of doing on her own, but that she’ll have the last laugh when she tells the Gardaí everything. O’Shea will be relieved to have a case that doesn’t involve David turning himself in because he only paid for one Snickers bar but the vending machine gave him two. Before Caitríona can fly off on her broom, Colm tells her to wait, because yes, he laundered money, but she only knows half the story. Presumably the other half is that he’s also doing some light human trafficking on the side.

Meanwhile, a tiresome charade has broken out at the shop. We are only semi-paying attention, but it seems to involve Gráinne hiding in the flour-and-porno-mags aisle while Vince offers David a pretend job helping out with a youth photography course he’s doing. I don’t know, either. David clearly wants no part of this, claiming he’s afraid the camera will steal his soul and so on, but then Tadhg arrives and soliloquizes for a bit about how the yoof of today are nothing but trouble, which causes David to change his mind. I have no idea what’s happening here, but hopefully it will lead to David almost killing another teenager.

At Gaudi, Colm recaps for Caitríona, i.e., the viewers at home who have forgotten all this, that he took the fall and went to prison for something he didn’t do because Andy threatened his mother, and then adds that he had to do things he didn’t want to do to stay safe while there, such as launder Anto’s drug money. He continues that Anto is back because he wants Colm to do one more job for him. My guess is that he wants Colm to help him move, which is of course something no one wants to do for their actual friends, much less for some thug who repeatedly beat them up and smuggled drugs in their orifices while sharing a prison cell. Mack arrives to drive Colm to court, because he is contractually obligated to appear in every episode this season, and on the way out, Colm begs Caitríona not to breathe a word of this to anyone. It’s a good thing Caitríona has zero followers since she’s been tweeting about this all morning.

Anto shows up at the pub to sleaze around in Mo’s general vicinity, managing to insult her and all women within three seconds of his arrival. She’s frozen in fear at the sight of him, a state we’re not used to seeing her in, and it saddens us so much we hope she’ll be able to knock him unconscious with a hurley stick very, very soon. Vince sees what’s going on and rescues Mo by interrupting with some made-up nonsense, which fortunately makes Anto go away, though not before being vaguely menacing towards her one more time. Once they’re alone, Vince asks Mo if Anto has been hassling her, and she nervously says no, which Vince immediately recognizes as a lie. It’s nice to see that his years of living with robot Caitríona haven’t numbed him to actual human emotion.

Back at Gaudi, Tadhg overhears Pádraig discussing his forthcoming godfatherhood with Katy and Máire, and after worrying us all for a bit that he’s going to say something homophobic, instead says he’s surprised Pádraig would want anything to do with this ritual given how the Church treats “his kind.” I see his point, though I also expect part of Pádraig’s excitement is that he imagines the christening will give him an opportunity for several costume changes. Katy informs Tadhg that she doesn’t care about the Catholic Church, she just wants to make sure someone trustworthy will take care of Jay if anything happens to Jay, and since no one in town qualifies, she’ll have to go with Pádraig. Of course, in response we have to hear a Máirepedia article about the importance of the sacrament of baptism and the spiritual well-being of infants, and how in fact she was just discussing this very thing with St Ramada of Alicante, who appeared to her in a slice of toast. Eleven minutes later, Pádraig interrupts her to explain that he may not agree with the Church’s beliefs, but he believes in God, and also believes that Máire and Tadhg should go eff themselves. Tadhg seems to appreciate him for having the bollocks to stand up to them, and of course also enjoys the fact that this has really crammed a potato in Máire’s tailpipe, which I’m sure Fia is going to have to take a lot of drugs to sit through hearing about later.

David shows up at the shop, excited to get started on the children’s photosynthesis lessons or whatever, which of course Vince has forgotten all about. He explains that he’s too busy scratching his arse for this nonsense right now, and suggests they reschedule it for later, such as tomorrow, or never. Through a series of complicated circumstances, David discovers that Gráinne has been going around town trying to scrounge up busywork for him, including making pornography with Vince and planting parsnips with Laoise, so he storms off in a huff, vowing to get revenge on Gráinne by sulking around the house all night and then having a wee and intentionally forgetting to flush.

Mo is freaking out in the empty pub when Tadhg springs out from behind a coatrack, as he is wont to do, and she almost stabs him, but sadly doesn’t. That would’ve surprised us all, since we all assumed that if an employee someday stabbed Tadhg, it would be Bobbi-Lee. Poor Mo is basically having a panic attack, and we really hope Frances will run over Anto with her car soon so Mo can get back to being her usual badass self.

Caitríona is at home wistfully looking at her new book, which has a cover photo of Colm looking moody in what appears to be a dungeon, or possibly an abandoned asylum. I can’t tell what the title of the book is, but I swear the last bit looks like “iontach,” so I’m going to say it’s “Níl Sé Iontach.” Eventually she makes a call and leaves a voicemail for a detective, asking him or her to call her back ASAP, because it’s urgent, and then throws her book in the bin. It will be convenient for them to arrest Colm since he’s already at the courthouse!

After the break, during which we learn that our house smells bad and everyone is talking about it behind our backs, Gráinne is screeching at Annette that she’s not allowed to take photos of the street. Apparently Gráinne grew up in North Korea. Annette tells her to cram it in her blowhole, and when Gráinne tries to recruit a nearby David for support, he sides with Annette, because Gráinne is a big poo-poo head right now. The three of them get in a big fight, with Gráinne going halfway berserk on David and three-quarters berserk on Annette, but then when Annette clarifies that she’s only suing Caitríona, Gráinne realizes she doesn’t care about any of this. David and Annette go off to get a cup of coffee, and to compare notes about how David’s metaphorical nose was broken by society and Annette’s actual nose was broken by seaweed.

Vince has come home, reluctantly we’re sure, and is trying to convince Caitríona not to call the Gardaí. He says if she turns Colm and Anto in, they’ll have all sorts of unsavory people coming after them, such as Anto’s gang and the Spiddal Mafia. She counters that if people find out about all this, she’ll “have a bad name,” and Vince kindly refrains from pointing out that people’s opinion of her can’t really get any lower than it already is. Just then the detective calls back, and Caitríona hesitates to answer when Vince reminds her what O’Dowd did to his family (?), and also that Maeve is a thing, and warns her that if she blabs, she’ll be looking over her shoulder the rest of her life. Well, to be fair, they all get the summers off.

A zombielike Mo wanders into the pub, where she is immediately pounced on by Tadhg, because she vanished earlier without telling him, and Bobbi-Lee, because as a result she’s had to do some work. She claims she’s picked up a bug and needs someone to cover her shift, but Tadhg tells her he expects this kind of nonsense from Wobbly-Lee, but that Mo, as The Responsible One, can just throw up on the customers while she works. Eventually she talks him into letting her go home, but on the way out she runs into Colm, who tells her they’ve wiped his conviction and acquitted him of any guilt. We’d feel bad about the fact that he spent five years behind bars for something he didn’t do if he weren’t so unpleasant. Despite his victory, he’s grim because he knows Mo is still upset with him, and when he mentions Anto, her face crumples and tears well in her eyes, so he puts his arm around her and sits her down as uncreepily as we have ever seen him do anything.

Over at Gaudi, Katy is complaining to Jason that she’s been down the list of all the female-type people she knows, and she doesn’t want any of them to be Jay’s godmother. Clearly she has forgotten about famous wagon Geena Kennedy, who we wish would return immediately. He suggests they just skip having a godmother altogether, but she pouts that if they do that, people will wonder why they didn’t choose Dee, and then she’ll be forced to, like, show them the photos she took of herself having sex with Mack. Just then Gráinne bursts in in a tizzy demanding drinks, panics because she’s forgotten her purse, carries on for a while about how she ruins everything, knocks back multiple glasses of wine, and is basically a complete mess. Naturally Jason and Katy’s reaction to this production is to decide that Gráinne would make an excellent godmother. Right, because that won’t cause anyone to wonder why they didn’t choose Dee, given that no one has ever seen Katy or Jason express any interest in or affection for Gráinne before this moment.

At the community center, Mo has told Colm about her run-in with Anto, and is angry at herself for being so terrified she froze like a statue. She’s disappointed in herself, but Colm reassures her that it’s easy to imagine yourself standing up to a baddie, but it’s harder to do it when you’re actually faced with one, especially one who is a terrifying partially evolved primate like Anto.

Annette and David have finished their coffee break together, and she tells him he should be patient with Gráinne, because she may have screwed everything up as usual, but at least she was trying to help him. She sadly says she’s not getting much of that lately with her husband being gone and all, and thanks David for listening so supportively. Ooh, hopefully this is the beginning of our next bizarre love triangle.

Back at the community center, Colm has shifted into angry protector mode, and tells Mo he’ll make Anto regret what he did to her. She tells him to slow his roll, or else he’ll end up in prison again, and then we’ll all have to hear about Caitríona writing another bloody book for the next year. That last part is implied. Just then, Agatha Bhriste herself shows up and asks to speak privately to Colm. Mo leaves, and Caitríona tells him he’s got Vince to thank for the fact that the Gardaí aren’t on the way to arrest him right now, but that they’ve got a publicity photoshoot tomorrow at 3, and he better be there OR ELSE. Caitríona can be scary when she wants to be, like Emma Frost from the X-Men, or an angry blonde mongoose. She stomps off, and Colm rings Anto and asks him to meet up to celebrate the court victory.

Katy and Jason have summoned everyone to Gaudi to announce that they’ve chosen the godparents: David and Victoria Beckham! Unfortunately they are not available, so they’ve had to go with their second choices, Pádraig and Gráinne. Dee looks relieved, whereas Mack looks first sad, then confused, then handsome, then confused again, and finally happy. It’s a stubbly emotional rollercoaster. Máire tells Pádraig that Jay is lucky to have someone as kind, loving, and capable as him as his godfather, apparently having forgotten all that heathen gay-sex stuff from earlier. Amusingly, Tadhg says to no one in particular that he has no problem with Pádraig, but that “hippy-dippy” Gráinne is a different story. I thought my parents were the only ones who still use the word “hippy-dippy.” Someday I will tell you the story about the time my older sister and her hippy-dippy friends mortified my parents by sauntering through their elegant ‘70s dinner party looking like rejects from the cast of Hair.

Colm meets up with Anto in the street and immediately sends him flying to the ground with a sucker-punch to the jaw. He warns him that if he ever messes with Mo again, he’ll give him more than a fat lip, which would be more impressive if he weren’t half Anto’s size, but we appreciate the gesture. Furthermore, he explains, Caitríona is sniffing around asking a bunch of questions about money-laundering, and it’ll be hard to keep her quiet if Anto is hanging around all the time, hint hint. Anto agrees to disappear and gets in his car to leave, but not before punching Colm hard in the gut, just for fun. Tadhg materializes from nowhere, as he does, just in time to see Colm doubled over in pain, choking and gagging, as Anto drives off into the sunset, presumably to go join a travelling production of Planet of the Apes: The Musical.