Archers thread #140: Changing rooms at Brookfield with Leonard Llewellyn-Bowen, or saving souls with St Smugula in the heathen wastelands of the North? Discuss The Archers here!

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

Thank you, @PseudoBadger, for kicking off this long, long series of Archers threads.

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 think a stained glass window marking the birth of newborn twins is just what Ambridge needs, or other 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 www.mumsnet.com/talk/radio_addicts/4636789-the-archers-spoilers-thread-7-cant-wait-for-702pm-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.)

Title composed in haste, making use of @Octothorpe's lovely coinage of Leonard Llewellyn-Bowen and @TheLassWiADelicateAir's terrific description of St. Smugula's mission to the heathen wasteland of far flung Sunderland, both from the last thread

I've abandoned the use of an emoji in the title, having been alerted by another thread recently to the fact that it makes it difficult for people with visual problems to use assistive software.

I won't say much more about The Archers, as I'm still feeling extremely jaundiced about the programme at the moment. Fingers crossed it takes a turn for the better over the next few days. It was good to hear Helen, Lee and Joy again tonight. Less delighted to hear the loathsome George. What a numpty not to recognise pheasant chicks! His Dad would be far from impressed.

Over to you!

There aren't by the way "constant legislative attempts to roll back abortion rights in the UK"

I think the last one was in 2008. But there are a number of MPs who have said they would like the current 24 week limit reduced, citing advances in the survival rate of micro-preemies. Jacob Rees Mogg, Jeremy Hunt, Nadine Dorries have all stated that they are in favour of a reduction.

It is vanishingly rare for any abortion to take place at 18 weeks because a teenager has spent weeks / months saying "I don't knowwwwww" but the popularity of the Archers might mean that that is the sort of situation people may think any future legislative change would affect.

I was the poster who raised the point, and I clearly wasn’t suggesting that Roe vs Wade would be referenced in The Archers. I also wasn’t scare mongering or being dramatic. I was making the exact point that @GoldenCupidon has made - although they’ve done so more eloquently than me.

Agree. They broke the rules of satisfying storytelling by the damp squib (sorry) of an ending that didn’t represent the emotional arc of the character.

And Lily still hasn’t realised how much time she wasted on CMR and thinks she’s had a better experience than her fellow students

It’s like that game where each person writes a line of a story without seeing the line the previous person wrote.

Which is essentially how TA is written!

I don’t think we ever get ‘satisfying storytelling’ in the conventional sense because of the tag team writing. I doubt anyone believes the Helen & Rob story made any logical sense, for instance.

(Perhaps I just accepted long, long ago that I had to do a lot of the work of straightening out any Archers story in my own head. Though I was explaining to someone this weekend how much more entertaining it is now the internet provides people to talk about it with.)

All of the Helen and Rob story made sense apart from the silly ending / temporary ending.....

Aw shucks Totters! I enjoy it more too.

Re the legislative attempts to change the rules - not a website I'd usually link to but if you scroll down through Nadine Dorries' voting record here you can see the legislation that has been voted on in the last 14 years relating to (mostly) abortion. Quite a lot of it. (And she's still at it which is why I thought of her: www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/nadine-dorries-abortion-time-limit-24434072)

...Somehow deleted my first link: righttolife.org.uk/votes/Mid-Bedfordshire/Nadine-Dorries

Meer is going to sab the ball, isn't she?

I hope so.

Could almost see her secretly cackling to the camera and cracking her knuckles in anticipation of evil doing !

😈

Probably being thick, SAB the ball means hunt sabotage?
If Chelsea has a very straightforward termination, it will be against normal experience at 18 weeks. I hope that will be realistic and that Ben will go with her

SAB the ball means hunt sabotage?

👍🏽

(But an actual 💃🏽🕺🏽ball.)

@Raera it is going to be grim isn't it?

And yes sorry. I meant 'sab', as in sabotage the hunt ball. It's like they don't know her. It will involve a tin of soup and some superglue.

Chelsea is in for a shock at the appointment, isn't she, and she'll change her mind.

I hated that story

but somehow it is better than Helen and her current squeeze as a comedy duo act. Like a sleazy Good Life or Terry and June

Agree that the hunt ball = sab on the part of Mia, and Chelsea will balk after the meeting.

Or Ben will. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have him there to hear the details. There’s not a way this storyline could go at this point that will redeem it to be honest.

Could well be Ben who suggests Chelsea doesn’t have the termination.

Maybe he and Beth could start their new life in NZ with the baby?

Too bizarre?

I’ve been talking about this storyline with non-listeners and all have been horrified at the portrayal of the dithering teen. We discussed how at various stages of life we had faced the prospect of unwanted pregnancy and responses to it, and stories of hidden pregnancy by younger girls that we knew of…but dithering like Chelsea just doesn’t happen. It’s infuriating they depicted it like this. I really can’t understand why they would write such an awful storyline that doesn’t reflect modern life.

It's incredibly dopey of Elizabeth et al not to realise it. It's not as if Mia hasn't made her views on animal cruelty very public indeed.

I doubt it. She will have been told exactly what it will entail when she had her counselling session. Even she can't think this is going to be like a heavy period.

I don’t know, yes in real life, but I felt like they made a point in the last episode that she was referring to finding out the details of what it would entail.

I have a feeling the whole late abortion storyline has been a device to get us to the point where Chelsea 100% wants an abortion but can’t have one due to the nature of it being too much for either her or Ben, setting up a whole horrible scenario where she has to go through with the pregnancy or is in a conflict with the Archer family for either doing it or not. I really hope not for multiple reasons, not only that there’s no need to suggest abortions happen for this reason.

I’d really have enjoyed a scenario where we see Brad and Chelsea thrive, Tracy for that matter. Instead we get this questionable mess.

I wondered last night if we were hearing Ben's disappointment. After his shock and dismay at the unplanned pregnancy I wonder if there's a part of him that would quite like the idea of a baby and now he's having to give up on that. Obviously this has the potential to cause more friction with Beth who presumably is now hoping that this whole sorry story is coming to an end and they can get on with their lives.

I hate how Chelsea has been portrayed through this, but from a SW POV maybe the 18wks is so that she can very clearly know what she wants and (even though we know it will be a complicated TOP compared to 10 weeks ago) go on and thrive afterwards whereas she leaves Archer devastation in her wake by means of the effects on Lily and Ben.

Agree that Mia will be up to no good at the hunt ball. Not sure that her rehabilitation into the village afterwards will be as straightforward as Tom's after his GM vandalism. No more Saturday jobs for her!