The Archers: Why are we meant to care where Pip lives?

Gah, script-writers! What is going on?? I know it’s not the first time I’ve said that to you, and doubtless won’t be the last. But look here, Pip has had three addresses in as many weeks, and I just know that there won’t be a decent pay-off. If the only reason you’ve dragged us through her boring house moves is so that the following scene will play out in an episode several years in the future, I will be quite aggrieved.

Pip: Oh no, this official form will to take ages to fill in [sound-effect of pen being hurled onto the desk].
Toby/Rex/Tom [it’ll be one of these three who wins the dubious Pip prize in the end, mark my words]: Why’s that, Pip?
Pip: It asks for all my addresses in the last five years! Do you remember that time after we/me and Toby split [delete as applicable] and I left Rickyard and went back home, then ended up slumming it at Lower Loxley?
T/R/T: Oh yes, that’s right. Fancy a coffee?
Pip: Go on then. [Sighs, sound-effect of pen being picked up.] I’d better get on with this.
Brian [entering randomly]: I say Pip, you look awfully glamorous considering you’re just filling in a form.*

* Yes, OK, I admit I am still feeling very freaked out by Brian smarmily/pervily? complimenting Pip on the Drag-Race makeover Lily forced on her. I’ll get over it at some point, though not without outside help.

Anyway, back to the script-writers’ intentions. If the point of Pip’s Many Moves is to highlight the sad contemporary issue of how people can become homeless following a relationship break-up, surely this is somewhat undermined by Pip moving rent-free into her aunt’s fecking stately home?

If the point is to drive a wedge between Pip and her parents once and for all (even though their massively appalling behaviour over Pip’s massively appalling boyfriend didn’t do it, and nor did Ruth’s recent enormo-sulk about Pip being the one who let the cows out, Who! Who! Who let the cows out! Sorry, went off on a thing there), then OK. Except, EXCEPT, that Pip’s still round at Brookfield every fecking minute, doing more milking than you can shake a dairy pulsation tube at.

If the point is to drive a wedge between Pip and Josh (Ben clearly having been written out as the even more spare and useless brother), then OK. But they weren’t exactly super-mates before, were they, and anyway, don’t we have enough warring siblings for one village?

If the point is to drive a wedge between Elizabeth and David, well all I can say is, what, ANOTHER ONE? If they weathered David shoving Nigel off the roof (yes, I know that’s not the official version), I’m sure they can breeze through this.

So, like Carrie Bradshaw, I couldn’t help but wonder. What would be an acceptable (to me) outcome of this Pip pillar-to-post palaver? Here are a few:

1. Pip and Elizabeth, living under the same roof, discover one drunken night that they are in love, and they start an affair. Please, please, please, let this happen.
2. Pip and Freddie, living under the s.r., discover one d.n. that they are i.l., and they s.a.a., which scandalises Elizabeth (the hypocrite!) and gives Freddie something to do other than moan. Well, he can still moan, but now they are happy moans.
3. I’m not going to squash Pip and Lily together because that would mean hearing more of Lily. In fact that leads me to…
4. Pip inadvertently (or vertently, I don’t mind) murders Lily. Possibly by pushing her off the roof in a twisted re-enactment of THAT NIGHT THAT ROCKED AMBRIDGE TO ITS CORE EXCEPT IT DIDN’T REALLY.
5. Pip sinks into a spiral of despair, despite (or perhaps, Gatsby-esquely, because of) her luxurious surroundings and drinks the Lower Loxley vineyard dry. She becomes an alcoholic with a greatly reduced life expectancy. She gets back with Toby because of the handy access to free gin and thereafter quickly succumbs to liver failure.

Am I missing any possibilities here?

Posted by Qwerty, whose book For the Love of the Archers can be purchased all over the place.