100 Archers threads! We are truly overinfested. Whether you need some help from a therapist in a tabard, or want to move your wife in with your FWB, there’s something in Ambridge for you!

[PseudoBadger]

Well hasn’t it been a fun few years! Thank you all for supporting the threads and sharing in love and critique of The Archers.

Another one gob-smacked at Tom's shameless utterance. Suspect Natasha is 100% behind it.

And my take on the Lizzie/Russ/Lilly walk-gate affair is that Lizzie was probably hugely relieved to have CMR droning on about himself; at least it meant no-one probing her innermost thoughts and emotional temperature for a change. No caring patronising 'how ARE you' with the special head tilt.

I predict Freddy will return and prove massive tonic to Lizzie - throwing Lilly into major (and understandable) funk.

Good point that the use of the word bungalow was specifically to echo the Brookfield situation. Weren’t Tom and Brenda at one point talking about building a full sized house on a bridge Farm land? A house could have the same footprint as a bungalow so don’t know what’s stopping them doing that. And Natasha with her top business success could even, shock horror, pay for some of it.

I suppose having an accessible home on a farm is a nice thing for when the older generation get too frail to manage the stairs, but Tom clearly has Pat n Tone shoved in it as soon as the cement is dry. Whereas David and Ruth lives in their bungalow for years, as a op pointed out upthread (all those years of hearing Rooth say “boongaloah” on a regular basis 😀.

I don't think Natasha is the root of Tom's gross assumptions about what he might inherit, I think we're seeing his true colours. Natasha is probably fanning the greedy flames. I hope Pat & Tony correct his assumptions though, and don't just roll over for him.

I agree Pattyhoo such unthinking crassness (in conversation with Hellin) would be just about understandable in a 19 year old. But for someone in their 30s? Hideous.

Pretty disappointing that Helen didn’t immediately say “and where do you see me and the boys living in this arrangement then?”

Listen in bed prior to a restful night's kip. But I could hardly sleep, so outraged was I by Tom's selfish, thoughtless... well, sense of entitlement, to coin a MN phrase.

At least with two Mrs Archers around Bridge Farm, the real Mrs Archer will be able to justify opening the parvenu's post.

I still love Lily. Yes she's bossy but she's only 20. Compare her filial love with Tom's.

I’m hesitating to second-guess anything about Natasha - I feel like Helen talking to Phoebe, we really don’t know anything about her. I shared Pat’s reaction to hearing Tom call Natasha Mrs Archer because it reminded me what a key role this virtual unknown has stepped into. The problem for Bridge Farm is that there are three people - Tom,Helen and Johnny - relying on it for an income in the future (this was not the case with Brookfield where the inheritance was more clear cut). The business has supported Pat and Tony and their family over the years , but will not go far if split three ways. Natasha already has a supposedly successful business but she and Tom have shown no intention of striking out on their own instead they are showing every intention of pushing Helen and her boys out of the nest while Johnny doesn’t even seem to be a consideration (in spite of being the one looking after the livestock on the farm).

I think Bridge Farm has been used by Tom to woo Natasha and she hasn't questioned it.

But I think Natasha was presented as a bright and capable woman with a successful business so I hope they don't rebrand her as not-a-real-farmer and not-very-good-at-business. Tom has run several businesses and must have learened a bit from his mistakes. They could do well. Though they'll have to stop treading on everyone's toes.

To be fair folks Tom was worried about moving Nat in with Hannah and Johnny, after their wedding, they has a specific meeting to discuss it and Hannah was all agreement, for her own reasons , Johnny not so much.

Well the obvious solution is for Tom and Natasha to live in the rental, Hannah to find somewhere else, and for Tony to build Jonny a luxury three-bedroom herdsmans house at Bridge Farm to be close to the cows.

Yes that makes sense Dark.

I hope they don't rebrand her as not-a-real-farmer and not-very-good-at-business

Whilst simultaneously branding her as the machiavellian potter behind the innocent nearly-forty boychild's usurping of the throne.

No shurely not, that would be a TASWAMA.

If we are going to cast Natasha as Megan Markle, can I cast Helen as Prince Charles. Why is she wandering around asking about Love ("whatever that is") and how you know if you are in it? She has been married twice; she will be 40 next month. Surely she has some inkling?

Helen’s only been married once.

Natasha lost me with her ghastly "beauty advice" to Pat. She and Tom deserve one another.

I think Pat and Tony (after everything that has happened to John and Helen) are so desperate to have Tom happy that they will just roll over and the big conflict will be between Natasha and Helen. Helen probably sees Bridge Farm as security for Henry and Jack as well as her own "safe place".

Is it possible that Hannah is pregnant with Tom's child?

I'm glad the dinner party wasn't a disaster- impressed by Susan's cooking. I liked the scenes between Chris and Alice: I want them to be happy

@C8H10N4O2 loving the image of the Machiavellian potter

Hannah won’t be pregnant. She works in animal husbandry, I am sure she understands contraception! Would be stupidly soapy if she were. It’s also too long ago for her to be upduffed with Tom’s baby and have no clue about it.

Hannah won’t be pregnant. She works in animal husbandry, I am sure she understands contraception!

so does pip. oops.

Ah. Were Helen and Greg not actually married? They were as-good-as.

Loved Susan and Neil's dinner party with Jenny and Brian surprising themselves by enjoying it😂
I like Natasha, she says it how it is, has character and hasn't been unpleasant.
I'm not keen on Johnny, sorry folks! goody-two-shoes and bland.

Oh, I don't know JazzerMcJazzer ... She may not be - but they've painted a picture of her as leading a somewhat chaotic social life (nothing wrong with that obvs); hangovers, skipping meals, in and out at random hours, often feeling the worse for wear. On top of unexpected emotional pain. It wouldn't be terribly surprising if, in the midst of all that, the small matter of being pregnant somehow escaped her notice. Particularly if it wasn't in her mind at all.

And, for soap purposes, it's going to be far more fun if she discovers it so late that her options are ... limited.

@ConstanzaLlama loving the image of the Machiavellian potter

Cunning devils those potters

Perhaps Natasha is going to make them all new cereal bowls as an "I'm moving in" gift whilst glazing them with toxic metals!

@C8H10N4O2 sounds like another fantastic farm diversification wheeze. I can see many uses - Borsetshire blue in those little pots you only get at Christmas, Kefir packaged up a bit like Gü, Custom Tea-room ware, Karate-chopping material for Lee...

I dunno, perhaps years of infertility have skewed my ability to believe anyone, real or fictional, could be unaware of whether or not they were pregnant. However I think that unplanned pregnancies are a very very lazy plot device and would be extremely disappointed in the SW if they went that way (again...).