The Archers: The Archers Pause

The Archers is currently running two stressful storylines (s.s.). We all find different things stressful, of course. My high watermark of nerve-wracking  entertainment is the movie Top Hat starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, which I can only tolerate if I’m feverishly drunk. It’s all those misunderstandings, the will they won’t they get together, the nearly and almost, that do me in. (Spoiler: they fall in love eventually, though not before your correspondent is a wrung-out wreck. An inebriated wrung-out wreck.)

The first s.s. in the Archers’ current roster is the clunkily-written and embarrassingly-acted David and Ruth being menaced thing, which consists of the following: a baddie (you know he’s a baddie because he’s played by someone who sounds like Clive Horribin, in fact he might well be Clive Horrobin as there isn’t really room for more than one baddie in Borsetshire), phones up and says something mildly threatening. David and Ruth then panic and buy security cameras even though we thought they’d spent all their money on the Olympic-style opening ceremony  for their new slurry tank, which featured poetry from Bert Fry and cup-cakes. Sometimes when I write about the Archers I can scarcely believe my own eyes at the words that come out.  Did we really listen to a slurry tank party? Anyway, then there’s some stuff about how Josh/Ben (interchangeably annoying boys) want to ride their bikes to Hollerton and Ruth/David (interchangeably annoying parents) are worried in case the phone baddie does something bad off the phone. See? Stressful. Josh’s acting, in particular.

True Blood 202: I’ll be your bad-ass vampire

Ooh, the stress, my dear! Even Jason, who usually provides light relief, set my nerves a-jangling. At first it was fun watching him bounce around Christian Leadership camp with other blond chirpy Walton types, all in their silver anti-vamp rings and sunshine yellow t-shirts. Or sunshine yellow pecs in Jason’s case. That boy can’t keep his top on for more than five minutes. But he freaked during role play with Sarah when she popped plastic fangs into her mouth (only slightly less convincing than the ones the real vampires wear). Flashing back to the horror of  Amy killing Eddie, Jason damn near staked Sarah with the American flag. From the way Sarah flushed and licked her over-heated lips, it seemed she’d be purty glad to be staked by him any time.

You could, uh, fry an Egg on that

It was Pecs On Parade this week, as Eggs also swanned about shirtless. He has a perfect washboard stomach, but for some reason Tara was less interested in that than in interrogating him about his past. Though the poor boy wiggled his manly chest at her, she kept her eyes resolutely above neck-level and insisted on knowing what he’d served time for. Who cares, Tara? So it was armed robbery. Never mind that, look at his six-pack!

Maryann was stressing me out too. If she wasn’t eating her way through Merlotte’s entire menu (‘what’s going on at table four?’), she was somehow persuading the entire bar to dance and rut in bacchanal fashion. And turning Sam into a dog when he gave her a hard time about it. When Sookie listened in to Maryann’s thoughts, all she got was a lot of what could be ancient Greek. Or Latin. Who knows? It’s all Greek to me.

True Blood 111: I don’t have to sit like a lady, and I can kill whoever I like

And so,  in a twist nicked from The Usual Suspects – the faxing of a criminal’s picture  –  we finally discovered the identity of the murderer. But unlike The Usual Suspects, the ditsy secretary was so excited to see Jason Stackhouse, brought in on suspicion of killing Amy, that she lost the fax in a pile of random papers. I will reveal the murderer shortly, so if, like my friend Gary when we first saw The Usual Suspects, you drifted off and missed the crucial denouement, don’t read on.

This week, the announcer added ‘strong violence’ to the warning about strong language and strong sexual scenes. What’ll it be next time, strong tea-making? I can’t wait.

Amy made Jason vomit with her self-righteous eco-speak (though I guess clearing up Eddie’s entrails didn’t help), and I thought he might ditch her at last. During the commercial break, I stuck pins in my Amy voodoo doll. Then, while she and Jase tripped the light fantastic on V, the murderer slunk in and put us all out of our misery. Oh dear. I do feel a bit responsible for her death; like Nancy Banks-Smith worrying she might have killed Mark Hebden (The Archers) because she found him so boring.

And yet.  I despised Amy, I think Jason’s a daft banana, but I was genuinely moved when she died during their shared trip, floating away from Jason’s outstretched arms, up into the sky, forever out of his reach. It was rather a beautiful image and, for a moment, wished she hadn’t been strangled. Then I remembered her banging on about her low carbon footprint, and took it back. Poor old Jason, though. He did love her, in his own funny way, and as she’s his third dead girl in a row, he assumed he must be the murderer, and turned himself in.

Tara was also in jail, for drink driving. Her ridiculous mama refused to bail her on the grounds of some shit that neither we nor Tara were buying. Into the gap came a glamorous and mysterious social worker named Maryann, who swept Tara off in her nippy little sports car. Maryann’s smile made one wonder: was she a vampire? And was she also the woman who caused Tara to crash in the first place, being as she was, standing in the middle of the road stark naked, her hand resting lightly on a hog? I merely ask the questions.

Quick high five for Lafayette, who put the frighteners on a closeted politician. Go Lafayette! He looked, in his expensive suit, as handsome and urbane as Barak Obama, though considerably more gay.

Meanwhile poor old Bill, having been forced to ‘make’ young cowering Jessica, could now only stand helplessly by, a parent bewildered by a screaming toddler, as Jessica took to her new non-life with gusto. At first, as she reared, terrified, from the cold earth, she seemed distraught. ‘No more Mama and Papa? No more sisters?’ Then, slowly, ‘No more belt? No more bible class?’ She raised her arms high and whooped, ‘YAYYYY! I’M A VAMPIRE!’

Bill tried to teach her right from wrong, but, like Cyndi Lauper, Jessica just wanted to have fun. Bill, she felt, was an old fuddy-duddy: ‘I want to kill people. I’m hungry. You’re so mean! You suck. Ha ha ha!’

And then poor old Bill, having gone through his own personal ring of fire, raced back to Bon Temps, just in time to catch Sookie about to snog Sam. Sookie’s got the attention span of a gnat with ADHD. Bill, Sam, Bill, Sam – she decides purely on the basis of whichever one is in the room at the time. Bill probably thinks all humans are as fickle as her. They’re not, Bill! Anyway she meanly rescinded his invitation, which meant poor old Bill (must stop calling him that), was banished from her house. It didn’t help Sam though, who tried it on, only to be told shirtily that what with murderers, vampires and shape-shifters on her plate, she wasn’t in the mood any more.

She and Sam had managed to trigger the fax, which told everyone, though probably not my friend Gary, that the murderer was Rene. Weird coincidence, as he had clearly based his mumbling Latino performance on Benicio del Toro’s in The Usual Suspects. Anyway, poor old Arlene, I guess, and poor old everyone he’s killed, but I was just glad it wasn’t Hoyt.

So next week’s going to all be about whether the slow-poke gum-shoes can stop interrogating Jason long enough to uncover the crucial fax and convict the right man. Logic dictates they have to, as it’s the season finale, but given their pitiful work so far, bets are on that they’ll only do it if assisted by Ms Sookie Stackhouse. She’s a flake in love for sure, and something of a dunce when it comes to remembering she’s telepathic and thus could have sorted this out months ago, but compared to Dim Cop and Dopey Cop, she’s the closest thing Bon Temps has to a superbrain. God help us all, as Miss Jeanette might say.

Posted by Qwerty

True Blood 108: I just want to lick your mind

I don’t want to say I told you so, but I did predict that Bill wasn’t among the doubly-dead un-dead, who were burnt to nothing but happy memories and a trickle of bubbling blood.

But even I, with my mastery of extremely basic plot-twists, didn’t guess that Bill would turn up starkers crawling out from his own grave. Covered in soil, he clung onto a handy leg, which turned out to be Sookie’s. Then they had rough and ready sex right there amongst the tombs, my golly. Transpired he had heeded her warnings to make for a place of safety, and had literally gone underground. That’s one difference between me and Bill: when looking for a refuge, he chose the cold dark earth, while I would choose the Hilton. 

Jason found his soulmate in Amy, the most boring woman in Bon Temps. She infiltrated herself into Merlotte’s with ease, graciously fending off Sookie’s bitchy suggestion that once Jason tired of her, he’d be off with the next floozy. ‘Oh’, added Sookie flatly, ‘Not that I meant that you were a floozy’. Yes you did, Sookie. Amy floated around, spouting her usual ‘we are at one with Gaia’ baloney, trailed by an awe-struck Jason marvelling at her amazing mind. Suddenly, she went cold turkey on V and became a nail-biting maniac. She and Jason kidnapped, by means of silver tat from Clare’s Accessories, an inoffensive suburban vampire. I fear they mean to drain the poor fellow of every last drop.

Sam told the cops he’d been seen nude in the woods because he was from a family of naturists. It was so lame, even the dim-bulb gumshoe saw through it. But Sam was probably still reeling from Tara calling him a racist. Tara spent the episode in a spectacular pet, taking umbrage at insults and compliments alike. She did have a tough time of it, to be fair. Her mama, who we now see is considerably more annoying sober than drunk, cooked breakfast for the first time ever and threw out all her booze. She and a mad hatter friend encouraged Tara to go to bible studies, but found that Tara sure as hell needed no help with her biblical language.

When Sam gently commented on the way Tara ‘grunted like an athlete’ during lovemaking, she screamed, ‘What, I’m like Serena? Cos we’re both black?’ and leaped out of bed. Sam could only gape, as indeed, could we. Go Tara! When everyone got fed up of being yelled at, she started arguing with herself, and took off to the voodoo woman in the woods, to be exorcised. Don’t do it! We love your grumpy sassy self just the way it is.

Rene proposed to Arlene on the way home from fine dining at a Red Lobster. He behaved so creepily I thought he was about to kill her, but no, it was to offer to become her fiancé. Fourth time lucky, eh, Arlene? Meanwhile, Sookie and Bill baby-sat her charmingly plain kids, who asked to see Bill’s fangs. He obliged, in time-honoured fashion by sticking bits of carrot in his mouth. What a missed opportunity – he could’ve shown them the real thing and scared seven types of crap out of them.

Baby-sitting is exactly the sort of mainstreaming that Eric so disapproves of. Bill found Eric in his bath, complaining that he hadn’t replied to his texts.  I love it that they text each other; I guess as they’re immortal, they get pretty competitive long-term contracts from T-Mobile. Eric insisted that Sookie do her mind-reading party trick at Fangtasia, to discover who was stealing from the bar. Honestly, did they really need to call in a telepathy expert? The creepy goth barman has practically got ‘villain’ tattooed on his forehead. They could have just asked me, or even one of the plodding cops, who would probably have worked it out eventually, but no – Sookie had to interrogate a series of hapless humans before the chief suspect leapt from the bar, fangs akimbo, aiming straight for her slightly-punctured but still very creamy neck.

Posted by Qwerty