Mo + Colm - Fiach = ♥

Season 23, Episode 44

First aired January 31, 2019

I’m a bit off schedule, recapping an episode from last week, but this one is too special to miss, so here we go. It’s directed by our pal Eamonn Norris, filmmaker extraordinaire and all-around good guy, who if I ever meet in person I will ply with round after round of drinks, a) because I like him and b) in hopes of getting scandalous tales of Domhnall O’Donoghue’s lurid past out of him.

We open out in the street, where Mo asks the increasingly skeevy Fiach how Jennifer is doing after yesterday’s chemo. On one hand, it’s nice that Mo cares about Jennifer’s well being in spite of her relentless awfulness, but on the other hand, we can’t help feeling that if she’d stop encouraging them, Jennifer and Fiach would both go away. I’m just saying. Anyway, Fiach says that Jennifer is tired, probably of him but possibly also of other things, and that she’s not up for visitors, so therefore Mo should come over for dinner tonight. Oh, good lord. Mo agrees, because she believes in the innate goodness and dignity of all human-type beings and has also apparently suffered a series of recent head injuries, and as she walks off, Fiach looks smirkily pleased with himself. I am, of course, a consummate pacifist and am against violence of all kinds, but also hope somebody punches Fiach in the junk in the near future.

Speaking of people who need to be punched in the nether regions, over at Caitríona’s we are subjected to the return of Tommy, whom we last saw being hilariously Thelma-and-Louise-d by Berni and Bobbi Lee. It seems she has hired him to go install hidden cameras over at the radio station to monitor Sonia’s activities, because Caitríona hates her and has tortured Vince till he’s a smoldering husk and therefore needs a new toy. Surprisingly, Tommy asks her whether this is legal, a word we wouldn’t have thought would be in his vocabulary, but she insists it is. This will be a good case for Dee to take on the next time she needs a break from murdering Katy. Tommy agrees to do it, but protests weakly that he doesn’t think it’s right, another concept we doubt he’d concern himself with, so she tells him she’s not paying him to think about what’s right and wrong and that he’ll shut up and get installing if he knows what’s good for him. He flirts with her grossly for a while before she throws him out, at which point she looks somehow surprised that someone she found in the Uncredentialed Day Laborers section of YuckosForHire.com is morally questionable.

At the café, Tadhg is complaining to Berni about the broken thermometer he found in his pancake when in walks Bobbi Lee, who has returned early from her cruise to bring meaning to our lives. Hurrah! She reports that the drunk Americans on the ship really enjoyed her Country & Western stylings, especially her medley of songs from Titanic, The Poseidon Adventure, and various folk ballads about women widowed by the sea, such as, “Man! I Feel Like a Widow!” Tadhg insults her for a while before wandering away, and then she notes that she really missed Niall while she was away and is SURE he missed her, too. Berni, realizing she doesn’t have all the facts and that this is none of her business anyway, welcomes Bobbi Lee home with a hug and a free scone. Ha ha! Of course I am kidding. She actually tells Bobbi Lee ominously that they need to go upstairs for a devastating chat about how all men are pigs, but mostly Niall. With friends like Berni, who needs enemies?

Over at wherever they’re living now, Dee is marveling over how fetching Mack looks in his suit, and we have to admit he is pretty dashing and will clearly be the hottest attendee at whatever funeral he’s going to. Possibly Pádraig’s, whom we have not seen in a suspiciously long time. She asks if he’s driving a celebrity today, which is always a possibility given that in recent years Ros na Rún has been visited by prominent celebrities such as moi, that country singer Darryl O’Darryl, and Gordon Ramsay’s father. He clarifies that he’s dressed up to go to the bank to ask for a loan for a new van. You may recall that what’s actually going on here is that he’s giving a presentation today for the business course he is taking but is keeping a secret from Dee so she will think he is riding Katy at all times. Dee seems completely unconcerned that he’s taking out a car loan without having discussed it with her at all, which as a married person myself I can tell you SEEMS TOTALLY BELIEVABLE TO ME, THAT’S FOR SURE. She wishes him good luck and then reminds him that she’s going to ask Katy about moving in “here” permanently, wherever “here” is, and even Mack is having trouble keeping up with what’s going on in this house-switching plotline at this point. We hope it’s leading to hilarious hijinks, such as Dee burying Mack’s torso in one of her two houses and forgetting which one.

Back at their place, Berni tells Bobbi Lee that Niall chose to move out so he could go shack up with Vanessa at the B&B, conveniently leaving out the part where she asked him to leave so she could be reverse-cowgirling Tony and/or Briain in the sitting room at all times. It’s possible I’m having trouble keeping up with all the comings and goings, which I attribute to my interest being less piqued when Bobbi Lee disappears for too long. Anyway, Bobbi Lee retorts that she spoke to Niall every day from the ship, at least until a seagull flew off with her cell phone on day 3, and that he didn’t mention anything about floozing around with this Vanessa person. Furthermore, she argues, she’d know if Niall were cheating on her because she has heard every George Jones song ever and therefore knows all men’s rascally tricks. Berni replies, “Well, don’t come crying to me when this blows up in your face,” once again demonstrating what a good friend she is, and Bobbi Lee brightly bounces off to apply a light sheen of the “Princess by Letitia Dean” perfume she bought at duty free, but she looks worried. Well, thank heavens Bobbi Lee always demonstrates impeccable judgment or else we’d be concerned about what might happen next.

Out in the street, Niall and Dee are talking about something or another, but we’re distracted because an extra walks past who looks alarmingly like Maggie, who you may recall was last seen being dead. Anyway, Niall is asking Dee for romantic advice for some reason, presumably because Áine and Réailtín were unavailable. He wonders if women like being met at the airport with flowers, and as someone who has made the trek from the Dublin airport to Spiddal in the recent past, I would volunteer that women would probably be happy just not to have to take two buses and a taxi. Dee is vaguely semi-helpful in a very Dee way for about half a millisecond, but then spots Mack and Katy sneaking into his car together and then speeding away laughing conspiratorially. Clearly no longer paying attention to poor Niall, she concludes that she’s sure Labhrás would love to be met at the Texaco with a stack of Spider-Man comics or whatever, so Niall gives up and wanders off. This is why you should never ask Dee anything ever.

Back at the café, Fiach is ordering a banoffee pie, which a) Microsoft Word does not think is a word, b) I can never remember if it’s banana plus coffee or banana plus toffee, and c) I have only ever had once, at a seaside café in Bray. I do not think it is a thing in America, which is the cue for all my American readers to email me and say there is banoffee pie everywhere here. Anyway, Sonia appears and the two of them remind us that they are long-lost friends who go way, way back, and that Sonia used to be Jennifer’s personal assistant/handmaiden of evil/whatever. This Sonia/Fiach/Jennifer thing is definitely a case of turds of a feather flocking together. He explains that he’s doing some shopping to try to get Mo into bed later, because nothing puts one in the mood for sex like eating an entire banoffee pie. Sonia complains that Mo has been a real grouch lately, noting that she tried to engage her in conversation the other day and Mo did not seem interested. Apparently Sonia is forgetting the part where she and Mo are not friends, and also that she is utterly terrible. The actress who plays her is great, but has everyone forgotten what a complete dumpster fire of a human being Sonia was all last season? There is some Boris-and-Natasha-style banter between them, during which Fiach gloats that Colm and Mo have broken up and Sonia acts vaguely guilty about having been the direct cause of it, and I really have no idea whether the show thinks Sonia has been rehabilitated enough for us to care about her yet, but: no.

Meanwhile, over at a table, Niall has asked Vanessa about Operation: Meet Bobbi Lee At The Bus Stop With Flowers, and she’s gently teasing him about how smitten he is. Their relationship is actually very sweet, especially in this scene, but she is touching his hand unnecessarily a lot, which of course Bobbi Lee gets a good hard look at when she pops her head in the door. She looks stricken and storms off in tears, and OH MY GOD if Bobbi Lee’s first healthy relationship in at least 3 years gets ruined because of bloody Berni I swear I am going to kick her arse back to the remote island of Themyscira where she bloody comes from.

Across town, Boris Jr. and Natasha II, in the form of Caitríona and Tommy, are celebrating his successful installation of the secret spycam at the radio station, by which I mean he is trying to extort extra money out of her while she tells him to get lost. Amazingly, he manages to outsmart her and collect twice the fee he originally quoted, although it’s also possible she is just handing him money to make him go away. He oozes away and she smiles triumphantly at the image of the office that now fills her laptop screen, because as everyone knows, there are few media more suitable for sitting around watching all day than radio.

At home, Bobbi Lee is packing her suitcase, which is so full of sparkly things there should be a pirate standing guard over it. She’s on the phone with her agent, telling him that she’s ready to hit the high seas for another cruise ASAP, preferably one that starts out with her smashing a bottle of champagne over Niall’s face. Just then, he pops into the flat to return his key and is surprised and delighted to find her there, because he has not looked ahead to the next page in the script and therefore doesn’t know what’s about to happen. He offers to surprise her by dropping his pants, possibly because he’s gotten her face tattooed somewhere down there, but she’s aloof and icy, sniffing that she’s going on another cruise and doesn’t know when or if she’ll be back. His face falls, and he sadly tells her it felt like she was gone forever and is now leaving again, and then a light bulb goes on over her head—always a dangerous thing with our Bobbi Lee—and she tells him she’s met another man! BLOODY. BERNI.

After the break, we return immediately to watching poor Niall’s heart break in slow motion. You may not have noticed, but it’s only when something very meaningful is happening that we return from the commercial break immediately to the scene we just left. Nine times out of ten, when we come back from the adverts we get routed through a scene of Máire baking a cake or David and Gráinne trying to figure out how salad tongs work before we get back to the thing we care about. I’m blathering nervously because I do not want to talk about the tragic mess that’s about to happen. Niall is in shock, and Bobbi Lee brightly lies that she met an, errr, musician on the ship whose name is, umm, Randy! Randy McSexytime! Bobbi Lee’s lies are always a bit on the nose, which makes me think she should take lessons from Mack, who would’ve included a handful of magic beans and at least two cows in the road in this story.

Anyway, it seems Randy McSexytime is from Tennessee, which is the only American state Bobbi Lee can name, and they fell in love while waltzing. As someone who once lived in Tennessee, I should point out that it would be much more likely that they’d fall in love while being run over by a car with a missing door and no working headlights driven by a smoking toddler with no insurance. Niall desperately tries to tell her that sharing a dance isn’t a big deal, but she says that TRUST IS VERY IMPORTANT and that PEOPLE SHOULD HAVE RESPECT FOR EACH OTHER, even when one of them has left the country. Niall is too stunned and devastated to realize that this is all rhetorically very confusing, even by Bobbi Lee’s standards, so when she asks him to leave so she can finish packing, he does. NOOOOOOOOO!

Meanwhile, over at the House of Sleaze, it seems Jennifer, who you may recall Fiach claimed was too ill from chemo to leave the house earlier in the episode, has made a miraculous recovery and gone out for the evening, leaving Fiach and Mo alone. It’s also possible that Fiach has killed Jennifer, and while we would normally be opposed to matricide, in this case we will make an exception. Anyway, Mo has brought over a bottle of non-alcoholic wine, or, as I like to call it, “piss,” but then finds it’s disgusting, much like the general tone of this scene. Fiach offers to pour her a glass of “the real stuff,” which he’s conveniently holding while standing three inches away from her face, and which is probably only about 40 percent roofie. Run, Mo, run!

A cheerful Berni returns home after a long day of life ruining and is surprised to find Bobbi Lee grimly packing her suitcase. If she’s sad now, wait till she finds out she’s flying Ryanair. She explains that Berni was right about Niall and Vanessa’s carrying on, having seen it with her own eyes in the café, and then apologizes for having doubted Berni’s giant load of crap earlier. Bobbi Lee gets Stockholm syndrome very easily. Berni, who seems genuinely sad about the thought of Bobbi Lee leaving, tries to talk her out of it, arguing that Ros na Rún is her home now and that she shouldn’t give Niall the satisfaction of running her off, but she says her mind is made up: she’s leaving on the midnight train to Georgia. Woo woo!

Back in this year’s house of horrors, which I fully expect to see in ruins and occupied by Pól, Fia, and three of the Happy Mondays by the end of the season, Mo is still wondering where Jennifer is. Fiach assures her that she’s having the time of her life hang-gliding over Tayto Park or whatever and that the important thing is that Mo should finish this bottle of wine and then swallow these pills he found on the floor. That last part is implied. The topic turns to Colm as Mo points out that she didn’t appreciate him telling her she shouldn’t be friends with Fiach, but on the other hand, she admits ignoring his calls all day and cutting his brake lines was probably childish on her part. Fiach’s helpful response is that Colm is terrible and probably a sex offender, and that if Mo knows what’s good for her, she’ll drink another gallon of wine while gazing deeply into his beard. She agrees, and the only thing that is making this horror show bearable is that Mo is wearing her gorgeous Spanish lady earrings that she puts on for special occasions, such as—hopefully—breaking a dining room table in half with Fiach’s face in a few minutes.

Over at the radio station, which seems to be staffed 24/7 by Sonia and Colm now, she tells him that his countdown of his 400 favorite Pogues B-sides was really iontach, but he’s in a foul mood, which is not improved by her telling him she’s sorry to hear that he and Mo broke up and that she is over at Fiach’s getting leched on right now. This gives Colm an opportunity to exclaim “Fiach!” in disgusted disbelief again, which is my very favorite thing about this entire storyline. I kind of want it to be my ringtone. FIACH! He storms off, and then Sonia, who apparently got her sleeves caught in a sewing machine earlier but didn’t have time to change clothes before she left home, answers a phone call from Caitríona, who’s rung to test out her new spycam and pull Sonia’s strings from afar like a Bluetooth marionette. Dance, Sonia, dance!

Things have moved to the sofa over at Fiach’s, but he’s annoyed that Mo is talking about Colm instead of making out with him. Hilariously, Mo says—apparently sincerely—“Would you believe that Caitríona is terrible to work for?”, as if this would come as a surprise to anyone who has ever met Caitríona. Fiach reminds her that Colm is terrible, what with his almost-kissing-Sonia behind Mo’s back and all, and then shoots himself in the foot by bragging that if he hadn’t insisted Sonia tell Mo about the near-kiss, she never would’ve found out about it. Fortunately this heralds the return of the Super-Mo we all love, as she realizes that Fiach has orchestrated this entire thing to try to break her and Colm up, just as Colm has been trying to tell her all along. He tries to stammer his way out of it, and she bats him around like a cat with its prey for a while before going in for the kill, which, sadly, is not literal. She storms out, wishing him a good evening, but we are pretty sure she does not actually care whether the rest of his oíche is maith or not.

Niall is propping up the bar at Gaudi when Mack appears, putting his arm around Katy and saying his presentation was sound and mighty and so on, even the part where a squirrel stole his index cards. Of course Dee walks in while he’s looking very chummy with Katy, and when she asks if he got the loan, he replies evasively that he doesn’t know yet because there is paperwork to fill out and the bank burned down and there was a cow and so on. She tries to get him or Katy to confess that they were together with some light entrapment, but neither of them falls for it, so they go off in opposite directions, leaving Niall to tell Mack that Bobbi Lee has left him for another man. Mack charitably chalks this up to how bitches be crazy, especially Bobbi Lee, but Niall says he’s madly in love with her and would gladly forget all about this little fling if they could just be together again. Mack, to his credit, changes his tune and says that Niall should go after her, then, before it’s too late. Oh, God, if Niall and Bobbi Lee don’t get back together by the end of this episode, I am marching over to Tennessee, finding Randy McSexytime, and giving him a piece of my mind!

At home alone, Bobbi Lee finally breaks down in tears, and we are devastated, but then we see Niall walking up to the front door and we are thrilled! But then he pauses before ringing the doorbell, and then inside we see her picking herself up, dusting herself off, and heading for the door, either to go see Niall or to leave for the bus station! We don’t know! But there are a lot of exclamation points! Outside, he hesitates with his finger on the buzzer a while longer and then sadly walks away, and inside she hesitates before deciding not to go out after him, and this is killing us! I have to say, I was dubious about this Niall/Bobbi Lee thing at first, because while I liked him, I am…maybe just a little protective of her, but their love story has been wonderful to watch, and I really hope they manage to get it together, for their sakes but mostly for mine.

Mo tracks Colm down in the street outside the pub and admits he was right about Fiach: he’s a big creep who’s been trying to manipulate her back into his life ever since he came back from Canada or whatever other imaginary place he has been. She thought she knew him better than that, she explains, but now she realizes she should’ve trusted Colm more, because he’s always been there for her, through cancer and Úna and Dee and all sorts of other trying times. She tells him he’s the best scaffold she’s ever had, and while he’s initially confused by the metaphor, she tells him she hopes he’ll be the scaffold that props her up for the rest of her life, and it’s really much sweeter than it probably sounds here. He says if he didn’t know better he’d think this was a proposal, and she says it is, and then asks him to marry her. He says yes, and they kiss, and then the camera pulls up and away, leaving us with a gorgeous shot of the two lovers walking off into the Ros na Rún night. Awww! I love this show.