#102: Fatted calf is off the menu - will the Easter Bunny save Lower Loxley's bacon, or will there be egg on Russ's face? Will Tom's sausage business get the chop? Join us here to discuss The Archers!

[GabrielleNelson]

Thanks due to @PseudoBadger for kicking off this long, long series of Archers threads and to @DadDadDad for being our resident statistician and keeping the ball rolling when Pseudo stepped back a bit. Thanks also to all those who contributed to the thread title, principally Dumdedumdedum and MikeUniformMike on this occasion.

All views on The Archers welcome here! New blood welcomed. We don't all agree on all points and most of us are posting tongue in cheek a lot of the time, so don't worry about revealing that you'd like to be Susan's best friend or other odd unusual views.

Spoilers: not on this thread, please. We don't wait for the omnibus to discuss the weeknight episodes, but we do try our best to avoid cross-contamination from this thread, where spoilers are positively welcomed!

So, to business: will Helen's new cheese be a success? Will Kate succeed in keeping her visiting Brummies under control? Will Pip, Toby, Tom and Natasha fall into the slurry pit, leaving Rosie to be brought up by Anthony Head Robin Fairbrother? Will we ever hear Lee again, and will he casually drop in a mention of his fine collection of framed Bruce Lee posters?

Ooh maybe he’s double bluffing: he’s a master forger planning to paint a fake to swap with the real thing and then disappear with it on a plane to South America .

Or maybe I’ve read too many cheep detective novels .

I think you might be right@WheresThatCatGoneNow

Do we know if the Gwen John is actually on display in the LL gallery? Or is it locked away somewhere 'safe'? 🐰🐇😊

It can only be a matter of time before CMR decides to put on a Gwen John/Augustus John exhibition, cunningly connecting the brother/sister them to Frilly.

Professional artists don’t hang about for inspiration from the primroses or whatever grows at LL, but sit down and get on with producing.

True. It's like playing an instrument, you need to do it every day. A lot of artists also run courses, either in person, or online, and they also have an active a social media presence, mostly on Instagram, but sometimes also on Twitter, and/or FB.

Which reminds me, social media is never mentioned on TA, which is odd, but especially so amongst the younger characters, they'd all be on something. Most teenagers now spend most of their time glued to their phones, but the teenagers of Ambridge appear to be living in the past.

And you just know, Susan would be all over FB!

Hmm ...

Bridge Farm has generally tried to keep on top of SM. I recall Tom and Helen throwing themselves into a campaign to improve Ambridge Organics SM reputation after the E.coli outbreak.

Still laughing at Josh, when Pip and Toby were a proper item, accusing them of “snap chatting photos of their bits to each other”.

And didn’t Ben say the Lily & Mr Jones farrago was all over SM (amongst the college students)?

Not sure I can think of any other examples though!

There was an Ambridge forum for a while. Didn't Kenton post on it under the pseudonym Foursquare? He said some rather forthright things, as I recall. Jennifer closed the forum down to avoid further upset.

Ah, I must have missed those.

And Jolene has been all over SM recently

Tom also posted twee videos of the pigs on SM.

Piggy Football...

CMR is a vile scumbag .

Whatever happened to the Helen and poster-boy Lee storyline? Last scene I remember was him storming out the farm shop and Helen howling afterwards - then it's not been mentioned since? Who ever described it as storyline whack-a-mole at the moment is completely right.

And Jolene has been all over SM recently

Doh! I'd completely forgotten about that!

Re Lee, he'd decided to take some time off from running the karate classes, another guy was taking them. Emma took Henwee for Helen, and when Helen asked how he looked, that's when we found out he wasn't there.

Ooh! Another Tomntash spat.

My Natasha is hard work.

Is this going to be the shortest marriage in the archers.

'I've been talking regularly to my ex, Tom, because things have been so awful here and he's the only one who understands - you must see that, surely ...'

It wasn't far off that, was it? I don't feel sorry for Tom because he's Tom, but blimey, that's not a good start to a marriage.

Now I’m wondering if poor Tom was literally a tool intended to galvanise Natasha’s ex into being what she wants him to be.

Nah ... That would be way too soap. Wouldn’t it?

Where is this storyline going? I mean assuming the SWs have any idea?

They can't surely carry on like this. Every conversation starts with Natasha all sweetness and light and ends with her twisting what Tom says or does and a list of imaginary grievances about various villagers. She is unhinged.

My point was, echt, that the bit where Lizzie said they'd left Manchester because of her didn't get into the script by accident, it was put in very deliberately to show that she's deluded about CMR, and that CMR isn't in any hurry to put her right about the facts

I agree with you acis, but was having joke about the cavalier attitude of TA SWs to anything that has gone before.

Agree with all upthread about the utter weirdness of just about every Tom/Natasha scene. No honeymoon period for them.

My favourite bit of this episode was Natasha noticing the fabulous painting of the horses in Shula's place: "my mum's friend Leonard."

I foresee more shenanigans on the art fakery front.

Hang on...maybe it will be a Friday night showdown episode where CMR has arranged local artists' exhibition as his opening show at the LL gallery.....excellent comic potential.

Tom is trapped, he can't admit that getting married quickly was unbelievably stupid, so where else is there to go.

There seems to be a lot happening “off mike” in a very clunky way at the moment. When did Leonard give Shula the picture? What about the church service where Jakob played? Very odd.

I hope Tom notices that Gnasher's justification for unburdening herself to Trevor just doesn't work. The excuse is that there's allegedly no-one in Ambridge she can talk to, but if she's going to phone anyone, why not her Mum? Does she have any siblings? Surely she has at least one female friend she can unburden herself to?

And she has only had 2 weeks to be so lonely and unhappy in. How many times has she had so unburden herself to her ex in two weeks?