Discuss The Archers - yes, this really is Thread 103. Are you going to vote for feet, stations of the cross, or a hologram? Will Natasha ever return? Will Russ ever leave?

[DadDadDad]

Exciting times - this thread will witness our 100,000th post in this long-running unbroken chain of threads.

New and old posters welcome. Don't spoil with any future plotlines.

And if you need a beginners' guide see here: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/radio_addicts/3557323-For-Archers-fans-a-guide-to-acronyms-on-the-long-running-discussion-threads-and-any-other-meta-thread-questions-you-may-have

Carry on...

Will has always been vile- but that took it to a new level.

Acts of Pennants

Early contender for next thread title?

It was an awkward situation with Mia and Will. Even though she has his surname they’re just not related. Sad for both of them but it was just too weird to be sustainable.

I thought that Will's offer of camping in the Lake District was only going to make Mere think of how she would end up doing all the catering. Poor Mere.

Oh! Yes!

Duxford!

That was the surname I couldn't remember...

Urgh he's even worse than Rob, at least he tried to be subtle when being a controlling arsehole. Don't go back, Mia! Poor Poppy having to live with that pathetic excuse for a father.

Yes, DDD, you really made me smile.

Your humour is deliciously Wodehouse-esque!

Just listened again but still not sure where Poppy was. Hiding under her bed maybe?

Will said where Poppy was before he offered Mia a choice of takeaway...

That was awful. I bet Will takes it out on Andrew,

But I can’t remember what he said.

Poppy was at Grange Farm.

Still trying to find out where May Donaghue’s bronze statue is located! Unlike most of you, I do have family links with Paisley - a twig of family tree several generations ago and now DS1 resides there.

Also asked the most pedantic man on the planet who I happen to be married to what he knew of the versus/and thing. No law degree but similar background to Jim. English with a classics degree and has lived in Scotland since young-ish adulthood. He knew the English version but he did not know Scots law had ‘and’ instead. A very interesting discussion altogether.

Maw - it’s English law that uses ‘and’!

I think Mere = Mia?

So, legal types, when I see, e.g. "R v Smith and Jones" how should I be pronouncing it? "R and Smith and Jones?". "Regina and Smith and Jones"?

Also, didn't Tiger go to jail for a while? I seem to remember Pusscat visiting him.

Yes, Abraide, but it looks like there will no Winder-Mia.

Oh me oh mia, she’s merely going to her Dad’s!

MikeUniform what have you started! 🙂

Just keeping you all on your toes. Actually I was typing away and thought ‘Oh no, which is it?’ And I guessed, wrongly in this case.

Scratches 30+ year old brains cells back into life from a law option at Uni....
A v B always used to be' A and B" unless they were wrong'uns. Then it would be Crown against....

I'm rather disappointed about the "Jazzer, pigman no more!" storyline. Surely somebody would have googled it or taken him into Felpersham to attempt to see Citizens Advice (whose local charities are desperately short of £ and could do with the publicity).

I reckon Jazzer is due a bit of redundancy ££, despite walking off (notice period/years of service stat redundancy/accrued holiday pay) as I am not sure whether he/the alternative job would be able to 'leverage his transferrable skills').

How long has he bailed Tom out?

This episode:

Good points: just how scarily good was the Will actor at conveying Will's anger and desperation? His voice was deeper, very threatening and I immediately thought of Rob. And then back to his lighter-toned conciliatory mode when trying to make good, passing off the frankly nasty things no adult has the right to say to a child. I've never considered Will as vile, just dense and self-obssessed, but here he was horrible.

Bad point: And oddly, it's voice-related too. Elizabeth's breathy voice when being sentimentally sincere. Makes me boak, every time.

Thinking of LL and all the gubbins in the attic , has Freddie made an inventory of the stuff? Some of it could go walkies. His sweeping aside of Kenton's Elf and Safety comments bodes ill, the entire point of his knowing LL like the back of his hand ignores the fact that the visitors won't. I foresee foreheads bashing into low beams.

Aw! Thanks, **George! Feel a bit giddy at that!

Now I’ve de-lurked, I feel unstoppable- would like to share this article by SOC. (Don’t read if you’re having a bad day, the ego is a bit much!)
thecra.co.uk/hiddleston-hitchcock-archers-sean-oconnor/

And a BOOP for the young actress playing Mia. I think she’s handled a series of tough storylines brilliantly.

I’m currently enjoying Academic Archers 2019 on You Tube, along with lovely Lynda Snell’s after dinner talk. I think one of last year’s talks did an analysis of how connected each character was and declared, based on that, Ed as the rightful King of Ambridge. He’s never quite managed to realise the potential of his network. But maybe it will come into its own if he does end up in trouble over Timotei. I can live in hope... (although my real hope is that he’ll come to his senses and not get in any deeper...)

SOC... BOOP... correct spelling of Lynda... Timotei...

If you hadn't drawn attention to delurking ShulasCream, I would have assumed you were a longstanding poster here with a name-change! You speak like a native.

Gosh, that’s a high compliment, DDD!

(Lurked for about 6 years but let’s gloss over that. Long admired the knowledge, tangential discussions and friendliness. I feel like I’m speaking to film stars!) And I really didn’t think through the name abbreviation, did I? ShulasCream is a bit ick!

I do have a question for the historical buffs- is there an acknowledged tradition to make the episode descriptions overly dramatic compared to what actually transpires? (Don’t worry, no spoilers, I know about The Other Place!) Today, the leader - ‘Freddy says goodbye’ - naturally sets one off thinking about all sorts of dramatic possibilities under the circs. But the actual goodbye was pretty low key. It’s a bit like saying ‘Peggy hits the hard stuff in the kitchen’ when she decides to switch from decaf to fully caffeinated coffee for her morning brew.

But then, if the descriptions were honest, it would be more like, ‘Jill bakes a cake and one of the tired-sounding men drives a tractor’ - I just wondered if the over-egged descriptions were a recognised affectation? Because I always fall for it!

O'Connor says "a court case would give us an inciting incident," in that article. ("inciting"? What did he mean?)

The actual court case was the most hopeless episode in the entire year as far as I was concerned; shouty shouty shouty, everyone pretty-much agreed on a verdict, and then suddenly with nothing in between the opposite verdict was read out in court. Do people on juries really pick fights with each other and have slanging matches in the jury-room the way Tim Stimpson wrote them as doing?

I think the episode descriptions do have a clickbaity feel to them sometimes. But really they are so ambiguous (your example, "Freddie says goodbye") that I am not sure what they tell you apart from the name of someone appearing in the episode.