It’s one of those weeks where I sat down to write this and had trouble remembering what actually happened this last week, so apologies if this is more rambling than usual.
*UK PACE*
David is in the Big House
It turns out I was wrong about the police officer who comes to visit David about his bail check-in. He isn’t a wrong-un at all. Instead, the wrong-un turns out to be the Air BnB host, who dobs David in for joking about doing a runner. The police also see searches on David’s phone for non-extradition countries and feel that he is a flight risk. This means David is carted off to prison, and because of overcrowding, he then gets moved to a maximum-security unit.
Predictably, Paul tries to intervene and help in the only way he knows how – by throwing money at the situation. He sees Brent’s dodgy mate (Bryce Holden? Holden Bryce? I don’t know which way around it is) in the prison when he’s visiting David and goes to see him, offering him a ton of money to act as David’s in-prison bodyguard. As one of the world’s best double-crossers, it’s amazing that Paul doesn’t see it coming, but Bryce takes Paul’s money and then just sits and watches while David gets beaten up.
Another old and dodgy character shows their face again in the form of one of Gareth’s gang, who tells Freya that she has two options: either she cooperates with her, and she’ll call off the gang, or the gang finishes the job. It turns out what she wants is for Freya to do some minor surgery on an injured gang member, which I’m sure isn’t the least bit illegal or unethical.
This is all going awfully well.
Mel Has a Wobble
Mel has a big bout of insecurity brought on by living in the house Toadie shared with Sonya. She’s constantly surrounded by pictures of Sonya and Sonya’s belongings, including her children. Still, the meltdown properly hits when she and Amy park the juice van in front of the giant portrait of Sonya’s head.
She tells Amy she’s feeling insecure about living up to Sonya’s memory but asks her not to tell Toadie. Amy manages to keep her word for almost a whole second before she spills the beans and tells him everything. Toadie is remarkably calm about it and agrees to take some of the various Sonya memorabilia down from around the house and also removes his wedding ring.
I don’t really know how I feel about this storyline, I know that this must be hard for Melanie because she’s been in this situation before, but I kind of think that as a grown-up, she should suck it up and realise that she’s lucky Toadie has opened his heart to someone again. Also, Sonya’s kids’ welfare is pretty important, and it must be reassuring for them to have reminders of their mum. Grief is complicated, and relationships are complicated, and I can see how a picture the size of a building of your partner’s dead wife might be a bit much to deal with, but I don’t think I have a lot of sympathy for Melanie on this one. I have less sympathy for Amy, though, it wasn’t her place to tell Toadie, and she needs to grow up a bit.
Kiri and Chloe Need to Have a Conversation
Dear God, nobody in the history of TV romance ( or lack thereof) has needed to have a conversation more than these two. Since the wedding, they’ve been having awkward encounters and bad sex that neither of them is the slightest bit into. Kiri has been making heart eyes at Nicolette all week, and yet still, they persist with pretending something is going on between them. There absolutely isn’t, and they just need to have a chat and move on, so we all can too.
Jane’s Saucy Son
Jane’s son Byron turns up, and she clearly thinks the sun shines out of his rear end. Meanwhile, he’s secretly a sex worker, giving lots of wealthy older women the time of their lives in return for lots of dollars. I don’t have much to say about this except that I cannot wait for Jane to find out because her reaction is going to be absolutely delicious.
Mackenzie’s Forced Grieving
What in the actual heck was everybody thinking this week with how they dealt with Mackenzie? Yes, she’s clearly been putting a brave face on things and not allowing herself to grieve, but that doesn’t mean that you force her to go to a grief group, tell her how sad you all are about her husband’s death and then drop heavy hints at how sad she should be. As someone who has experienced some pretty gnarly grief in their life, I was absolutely furious at this! This is not helpful. It’s horrific.
The poor girl has lost the love of her life, who she never thought she would ever meet, let alone marry, and she’s awfully young to be dealing with this level of bereavement. So the right thing to do is to let her do it at her own pace and in the way she wants to do it, and support her the best you can along the way. But what Chloe, Toadie, and Mackenzie’s dad decide to do is take her to a group therapy session, make it all about them and then tell her how sad she should be feeling.
Here’s a top tip for dealing with grief – treat it like a series of concentric circles. The people right in the middle are the dead person’s immediate nearest and dearest who will be feeling it the most. The next ring contains people one step further away, and so on as you go further out. Everyone inside the rings is grieving, but the venting only goes from the inside to the outside, and support goes from the outside to the inside. So, Mackenzie is in the middle, and she vents to Chloe, who is in the next ring. Chloe then vents to Toadie, who is in the next ring, and so on. The people in the middle should not be put in the position where they’re supporting the people in the outer rings. They just don’t have the emotional space for it.
So it’s no surprise later when Mackenzie can be heard wailing from Hendrix’s room, where she’s sitting in her wedding dress, watching videos of her dead husband. I just cannot with this one at all. But, of course, that was going to be triggering for her. Have they all lost their damn minds? Toadie especially should know better, having lost his own wife. But, Christ on a cracker, I just don’t have enough words to explain how much this lot all need putting straight into the trash compactor this week. It. Isn’t. About. You.
Wow, I feel so much better for having had that rant. It turns out this is kind of like group therapy…
