🏘️ Archers thread #129: Casey, Macy, Lily, Alice – Decent types or full of malice? Discuss The Archers here.

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

Thank you, @PseudoBadger, for kicking off this long, long series of Archers threads, which has now passed 125,000 posts! (See below for further details.)

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 lust after Russ, or other unusual things.

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 www.mumsnet.com/Talk/radio_addicts/4197199--The-Archers-spoilers-thread-6-Cant-wait-for-7-02pm-Join-us-here, where spoilers are positively welcomed!

For newer listeners, lurkers or those who just have no idea what we're talking about, @DadDadDad has created this useful thread: 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 - BOOP point for him! (See thread for explanation.)

For the thread title I was very tempted to go with @R4's title suggestion of Come follow the exploits of Brine, Lily, Elizabeth, Usha, Ruari, George and Helen. Know collectively as bleurgh. because on the last thread @DadDadDad, our invaluable statistician, identified a post from @ILoveShula as the 125,000th. Many of us felt it was fitting that the post simply said Bleurgh!.

However, feeling that was a bit niche for the casual listener, I adapted @MayIDestroyYou's title suggestion in the end. Thanks, MIDY!

Back to Ambridge this week, after our enjoyable sojourn at Lower Loxley last week! Will we go with Alice to rehab? (Hope not.) Will the petulant Adam make good his threat to leave Home Farm? (Hope so.) What will Jennifer say? (Lots, I hope, and preferably to Brian.) Will the fete be a triumph? (Of course it will.) Will we ever return to Brookfield, or have they all fallen unnoticed into the slurry pit? (Let's hope Pip did, anyway.) WHERE IS PAT? (Can't answer this one.)

Over to you!

So, then, as Adam himself mentioned,
why didn't Ian check the emails too?

Plot.

Adam won’t care if Ian leaves him and takes Xander with him anyway.

If Adam doesn't care, the SWs will make him. Zander is biologically an Archer - so, like Johnny, his fate is Ambridge. (Although I worry, really quite often, that the newer SWs simply don't understand the mythology underpinning TA.)

To me, Adam should be ‘good’ because he’s a good farmer and steward of the land. It’s part of the allegory. Like Neil.

Brian is ‘bad’ because of the pollution.

Adam being ‘bad’ doesn’t fit.

To me, Adam should be ‘good’ because he’s a good farmer and steward of the land. It’s part of the allegory. Like Neil.
To me, he's like Pip - full of theory, pouring money into the next fad before the last one is bedded in. It doesn't feel like innovation, it feels like turning with the weather-vane. Bridge Farm seem to be the ones who are conviction-driven.

However, I don't think that this is about The Archer Bloodline. It's about The Fall of The House of Aldridge.

God that was shit. The Radio Addicts board is under the Fun and Games section on MN. Oh, the irony.

There is no way Adam would say about the money and Iain would have backed down sooner when he thought it was Brian behind it. Also I just can't see Iain as a dirty laundry in public person. But if we can get rid of Adam that would be great. Now we are going to have to suffer some Adam centred SL. Fun and games?

Also I just can't see Iain as a dirty laundry in public person.

Tbh I can see that if you're still smarting over learning of your spouse's infidelity via The Worst Man in Ambridge several years ago - you might lurch to the other extreme and try to take control of how you receive any subsequent bad news.

The Fall of the House of Aldridge

Yes, this may well be what they're working through.

Started with the contaminated land and the loss of Home Farm.

Then onto Alice and her drinking.

Now Adam is out of a job and unemployable, and will probably soon be divorced and living a long way from Zander.

So that leaves Debbie, Kate and Ruairi.

Ruairi is probably destined to become sole owner of HF. The whole thing is presumably some sort of long-term working through of a curse uttered (off air) by Siobhan when Brian dumped her and stayed with Jennifer.

So what horrors can befall Debbie and Kate?

I like Debbie, but Tamsin Grieg is too busy to be in TA now so if she were to be killed off or incapacitated it would make little difference these days.

Kate could perhaps decide against being vaccinated and get Covid. That would be completely plausible and a useful public service announcement.

Eventually, we will be left with just Jennifer and Brian, sitting silently in a field, like something out of a Samuel Beckett play.

Cheery stuff!

That's a truly beautiful image, Gasp0!

But Aldridges don't matter ... As long as Archers thrive and survive. I agree Ruairi looks a likely lad - but that could surely only make him, in the long term, an Antagonist. Because it's Jenny's children and grandchildren who must inherit the earth.

And Lilian's grandchild, of course. I miss Mungo ...

Phoebe has Archer blood. I forgot about her, as she is of course also part-Aldridge. Hmm.

It may perhaps be time for me to go and do something useful and more mentally healthy ...

Phoebe and Ruarie will rise as the true heirs...

Have to say, taking the long view, the TA creative team has done Jack Archer proud. It's a really impressive achievement. I wish he could come back and see ...

I cringe every time someone says Xander. Just call him Alexander or Alex.

Jenny, Lilian, Tony.

James, Adam, Debbie, Alice, Kate, (John) Helen, Tom.

Mungo, Zander, Martha, Phoebe, Noluthando, Sipho, Johnny, Henry, Jack ...

(I meant Xander, blame non-Sloane-y phone ... )

But I like it as a name.

Adam's new job had to fall through so that he gets to stay. After all, Brine has done bugger all about finding a replacement for him.

It seems to me the central improbability is Adam "borrowing" the money in the first place and then getting so huffy and self-righteous when he was discovered. Even if the electrics did need redoing so soon after they were redone after the flood, Adam could have raised a loan elsewhere or indeed just asked for some sort of salary advance arrangement. Why on earth would he just assume it was his right to take the money and pay it back whenever he felt like it? And why would he not just explain and apologise when it was discovered? No-one with basic intelligence would claim that they had a right to take the money and get all indignant when it was suggested that they didn't.

the TA creative team has done Jack Archer proud. It's a really impressive achievement.
Not only are his descendants a pretty useless bunch but they also choose sub-par Significant Others, too.
The further TA goes on, the more ridiculous it gets. Is nobody capable of choosing a career, getting the qualifications, slowly and steadily progressing said career whilst getting a spouse, 2.4 children, a dog and an uneventful life. Does everybody have to be car-crash? After 70 years, it's getting a bit wearing.

To be fair, the Brookfield Archers are very much like that, and most of us hate them, and also hate it when the SWs make their lives more eventful.

Oh dear - should I be ashamed to admit that I find it all highly entertaining! There's so much variety in the types of car crash. So many reasons why each new child is born with conflicting loyalties or is inherently a threat to the security of other members of their family.

And it doesn't matter how far-flung they may be - every human being who might potentially have a claim on even one square centimetre of Archer land eventually arrives to seek it.

What's Sipho doing these days?

@Edmontine yes, good point.

TA does long-Ish family saga type stuff best. Divided loyalties, concerns over inheritance, sibling rivalry, imagined and real slights, and farming woes the best. Sprinkle a bit of other stuff, infidelities, addiction etc but not too much or it all goes a bit east Enders

@Edmontine

Oh dear - should I be ashamed to admit that I find it all highly entertaining! There's so much variety in the types of car crash. So many reasons why each new child is born with conflicting loyalties or is inherently a threat to the security of other members of their family.

And it doesn't matter how far-flung they may be - every human being who might potentially have a claim on even one square centimetre of Archer land eventually arrives to seek it.

What's Sipho doing these days?

Or Meriel....

Indeed!

Do we know if Dan is keen on horses? Or will he eventually sell off or re-purpose the Stables?

Shula will be 63 next month ...

Even if the vicaring does happen, she may be thinking about retiring from stable-mastering. I presume the SWs have a plan for the future of her business.

Ridiculous episode. Adam could have prevented Ian’s histrionics by simply telling him what was going on right at the start of the ‘confrontation’. No need for all the “it’s not what you think…” nonsense.

Completely unbelievable that they would have had a screaming match like that in front of a stranger.

Is Helen not close to Adam? They never seem to speak to each other otherwise I would have expected her to warn him about Ian’s suspicions

@Edmontine

Also I just can't see Iain as a dirty laundry in public person.

Tbh I can see that if you're still smarting over learning of your spouse's infidelity via The Worst Man in Ambridge several years ago - you might lurch to the other extreme and try to take control of how you receive any subsequent bad news.

What I found remarkable about that was that Ian took Rob's word for it in an unquestioning way, and never actually seems to have asked Adam what had actually happened.

If he did talk it through with Adam, he seems not to have believed what Adam told him: the truth that Adam had sex with Pawel once, on the night Ian had said he was going to leave Adam if Adam didn't sell all his principles down the river and kowtow to Brian's latest agrifarming plans, and been kissed by Charlie once when both were drunk at a New year's Eve party at which Ian was also present.

Why, in that case and if he found those things to be completely unforgiveable as he clearly does, did Ian marry Adam at all? Or stay with him? The relationship had clearly become a trainwreck the moment Ian believed Rob and assumed Adam was lying.

@ChristmasShearwater

I cringe every time someone says Xander. Just call him Alexander or Alex.

Those are not his names. His name is Xander. Why should he be called out of it? Should Debbie always be called Deborah or Debs, and Kate called Katherine or Kat?

@Edmontine
I presume the SWs have a plan for the future of her business.

You show an unreasonable level of optimism...