The Archers: Tally-Ho for the Hunt Ball! Will Justin return from Scotland with the Gay Gordons? Will Adam feel a right Charlie? Discussion #81

[DadDadDad]

Thanks, R4, for the title (again!).

I'm your temporary host while PseudoBadger is on her sabbatical / prison term / secret mission.

Old hands and complete newbies all welcome.

Spoilers (eg Radio Times descriptions of future programmes) not welcome.

When will Matt reappear? Before / during / after the wedding?

The floor is yours...

I don't think we heard the conversation between Adam and Alice, but Adam and Ian discussed how to turn Kate down without causing a fuss and decided to ask Alice for help.

So basically, Justin is doing a number on Lillian, getting his hands on her house and her business before they get married so he can then dump her without her having any rights to anything of his. And he's ramping up the controlling behaviour so she won't complain. Plot prediction. Matt knows some bad stuff about Justin which he will tell Lillian about just in time for her to get herself free.

Just de-lurking to say I don't seem to be able to Bookmark any more and have to scroll through the whole thread to find my place. Has anyone else got this problem?

I don't use bookmark but have noticed threads about it in active conversations. Do an advanced search on 'bookmark' between 01/10/17 and today and you will find several threads.

I liked the Alice/Kate interaction. It took me until the second conversation to realise that it was a set-up, engineered off-air. I like that Huge credited us with the intelligence, and background knowledge of the characters, to join the dots ourselves.

I can't understand why Justin would care about owning amside or the house if it was just a ploy

But then the whole damara thing and the way it's run makes no sense at all and has clearly been written by someone who didn't get beyond chapter 1 of 'business for dummies'

I wonder if Justin isn't anything like as rich as he says he is. I think there's a parallel going on with him and Josh........

I can't understand why Justin would care about owning Amside or the house if it was just a ploy.

Those two are about besting Matt.
I think that Justin thinks he loves Lilian but he's too selfish and used to getting his own way to truly love anyone.

Has Lillian actually seen the divorce papers?

Thanks Bertrand. I really didn't see that one coming. I've not been able to listen properly for months so I'm well out of the loop - but I thought Justin was well portrayed as a nice (ish) old rich guy glad to have found the welcoming --gin soaked embrace of Lilian after years of being frozen out by Miranda.

Total turnaround? Or shoddy character development?

Dunno, Bert - but now I understand just why we had to be privy to that ghastly "splitting up the assets" conversation between Miranda and Justin. If I hadn't heard it with my own ears I would now be wondering if the relationship with Lil and subsequent marital break up was all some complicated scam.

"Thanks Bertrand. I really didn't see that one coming."

Just to be clear- it hasn't happened. I made it all up out of my fevered imagination!

Total turnaround? Or shoddy character development?

I think that Lilian and Justin are both pretty shallow, craving the next bit of excitement. He enjoyed the thrill of the chase, getting one over on her indoors, feeling like he was still desirable. She just wanted a man to cling to.
He is now settled into the new relationship and getting restless again. It looks like he might cheat on his mistress with his wife.
Lilian isn't settled yet and won't be until she is married. Concentrating on the wedding instead of the man isn't helping.
They enjoyed each other's company when it was illicit, snatched moments. A regular 24/7 relationship is another thing altogether.

Sorry, Gasp - I saw your remark about Keri Davies but as I understood it, you were offering your interpretation of the situation, not actually a fact. My apologies for not understanding what you meant.

Phew - found you all! Have struggled to keep up for the last week or so. Thanks for the new thread D3 and R4.

I know it's been resolved now (great work Alice - enjoyed that scene) but I think people tend to pick young surrogates don't they? Kate - leaving aside the vagaries of her personality and motherhood style - is now (just) over 40 and therefore full of high risks for all sorts of things in pregnancy. Not to mention the state of her eggs, which are certainly on the wrong side of 35. Obviously many people do, happily, have successful pregnancies in their 40s, but the miscarriage rate is 50% iirc. I think Adam and Ian may need to read up on some pregnancy stats if they think the only worry about Kate was her personality.

Anyway, thankfully we are not going to have to live through that particular scenario. Hoping they'll go back to adoption of an older child.

I too was completely confused by the dying horse. I thought I wasn't listening carefully but maybe it just wasn't very clear, given how many of us didn't understand what animal it was!

Am enjoying hearing Lillian get ratty with Justin. We can hear her getting to the end of her tether with him, I think, and starting to reassert herself with or without Matt's help. I think Matt turning up was just to cement in her mind that however much he screwed her over in any ways their relationship was better than what she has with Justin.

They enjoyed each other's company when it was illicit, snatched moments.

Her panicked reaction to his proposal was all we needed to hear to know that he's definitely not right for her. She's always known it. As have we.

It does seem crazy that they went to all that effort to get the dead horse sound effects right (detailed in Mrs Shappey's link) but quite a few of us didn't even realise that it was a horse! A horse's death being more significant, especially for Anisha.
Perhaps it was more along these lines...

I’ve never thought Justin and Lillian would last the course - for one thing it’s just unlistenabley tedious to hear them billing and cooing when everything is going well. Say what you like about Matt and Lillian, but they were never dull (it all got a bit ott and ridiculous towards the end , but I blame Ambridge Extra for that - something which I studiously ignored for the most part). I’d be more than happy to see the back of Justin - love Simon Williams as an actor, hate him as Justin. I’d love to see Huge Canoe get rid of him in a final act of mopping up the destruction wrought by SOC.

You see I find Matt endlessly dull with his two bit gangster act. Not sure if that's a real phrase but you know what I mean!

His two bit gangster act is something that stems from Ambridge Extra - he was always a bit of a rough diamond, but that has been significantly ramped up latterly (presumably to be a contrast to Justin who increasingly sounds like the Major in Fawlty Towers to my my 14-year-old son’s ear at any rate).

Would anyone really play ‘Moving on up, moving on out’ at a house warming?!

I finally listened last night – but didn't notice the music, Pseudo!

It's interesting that Woodbine Cottage is suddenly perfect for them- I can only assume that the Extra Room Fairy has been at work again.......

Did I hear Robert Snell talking about coriander and Justin renting in last episode? Is this Justin's big secret ?

He did say Coriander and Justin! I presume an entirely different Justin.
I'm not quite sure why Christine offered to pay for the women's changing facilities (especially before she'd heard how much she was committing herself to!) as she has no connection to cricket. But it's funny that Harrison has, effectively, paid for it.