Archers thread #142: Kill Jill? Is Ambridge heading for a Tarantino-style bloodbath on Stir Up Sunday? 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, although we do mostly try to be civil about it. Most of us are posting tongue in cheek a lot of the time, so don't worry about revealing that , 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.)

Well, things have taken a turn for the better in the last few days! The SWs have re-discovered their form and the actors and directors have risen to the challenge. I won't say much more than that for fear of jinxing things. Over to you!

(Thanks to @JanglyBeads for the thread title idea!)

In real life there would be a lot of drug taking going on among the younger generation in TA and some of the oldies too. Not that I want TA to turn into a rural version of Trainspotting

And If Elizabeth is concerned about her brother's MH, perhaps she should reflect on whether it is helped by her boyfriend's demand for immediately repayment several thousand pounds.

I wondered if the cake was Jill's acknowledgment that she was feeling bad about it. Though even Leonard seemed to acknowledge that it was crass.

But weren't the poison pen letters only because of a misplaced desire to help someone else? I don't remember the detail though.

I see Rex as essentially a nice guy, albeit a bit wet at times. I mean, even Toby seemed to redeem himself in recent months!

Jill's cake seems a slightly bizarre touch to me. I'm imagining her at the Bull commandeering the kitchen for her baking frenzy - stir-up Sunday and now this chocolate cake. It feels like a way of getting Leonard to go round because Jill appears so infrequently these days (making it all the more infuriating that she is so central to this storyline). I can't believe that Jill, having heard what had happened to Ben - whatever she may have thought and said previously - wouldn't have gone round in person (even if it was just comfort David!).

And then making the trauma all about the nice middle-class father, because Chelsea is Horobin scum and getting pregnant is exactly what happens to their sort

Only posters on this thread think that way.

I think I might take a break from listening I know I won't as I'm finding the Ben SL quite harrowing despite never having a child with MH issues.

Rex's very public on-line denunciation of Brookfield for having employed Philip Moss when nobody had the least idea he was a slave-master was because Rex and Toby were being evicted from Hollowtree in favour of Josh and his hens.

Simple spite.

It’s true, @LillianGish and @TottersBlankly. Nolutando (sp?) was last mentioned, what, when Freddie went to prison? So…four or five years ago?

Where is Phoebe now sorry - I lost track due to finding her very boring?

Phoebe told Roy she would be moving to "the highlands north of Glasgow" and I think that it was also specified as being on the coast (well, it must be if it is seaweed-wrangling).

@TottersBlankly , her family (other than DC) is in Ambridge, her job/company is in Ambridge, and her fella lives and works in Ambridge

I’m not even going to pretend you think those are valid reasons for abandoning her children on another continent. Even in fiction.

Clearly her children’s lives don’t matter (to the SWs).

I wonder why.

Kate has always done what she wanted. She's a 'free spirit' aka selfish.
She abandoned Phoebe when it suited her.
Then she abandoned her children in SA (she had an affair didn't she that caused the break up??)

Mmm … I guess I’m not so much querying Kate’s motivation as the script writers’. They have a mother who stropped off to her home country when she had marriage difficulties - leaving her children behind. They have her start a postgrad university course and a business in the home village - all the while parading her ‘motherliness’ towards the local daughter. But now … They seem to have forgotten the children in SA. She appears to have ceased all communication with them. They don’t seem to have realised they have turned her into a monster.

Why?

I choose to believe she zooms them weekly and we don't hear about it because it doesn't impact anything else.

I expect when/if they want to reintroduce Sipho or Nolly their names will be mentioned in the lead up to the reappearance and it will suddenly be clear Kate has been in constant touch with them all along.

I don’t think it’s unusual for children who do not live in the village to be erased. Roy never mentions his youngest child and there is no suggestion he ever visits her.

Bethany came to Ambridge only last Christmas!

Mmm … (Again! I’ve picked it up from Chelsea.) Last time I recall Roy mentioning Abbie it was the Christmas Kirsty crashed into the domestic Tucker bliss after Phillip was carted off. Abbie was visiting / staying with Roy.

Wonder if she’s visited her big half-sister in Scotland.

Poor Sipho - I’m not sure he’s ever even set foot on British soil. (Feel free to remind me.)

Its just all so disconcerting. When Kate lived in SA Brian and Jenny jumped on planes at the drop of a baby’s bib. And Kate could have brought the children for holidays whenever she wanted.

(It is weird that two of the Archer clan have abandoned children on distant continents. Imagine if a Grundy did that!)

Bethany came to Ambridge only last Christmas!

Quote function has disappeared.
Bethany is Roy's half sister, not his daughter surely?

Yes, only child of Mike's second marriage to Vicky, and thus half-sister to Roy and his forgotten sister Brenda.

Bethany was the named manifestation of Roy getting a whole-family visit, I thought. But perhaps Abbie wasn't among those present.

Nope, another synopsis has "[Mike] asks Roy to come and say goodbye to Vicky, Bethany and Abbie in the car." on 2nd January 2022, so she was there; just silently. On this visit only Mike spoke out of the entire family.

They seem to have forgotten the children in SA ...<snip> ... Why?

The post-it note fell off the scriptwriter's monitor.

Out of site, out of mind?

Kate is fundamentally not a nice or good person.

Among Jenny-darling's children, the only one I find likeable is Debbie, but that may be influenced by having a massive girl-crush on Tamsin Greig's voice.

My main objection to Debbie was her fervent support for intensive farming: Berrow was her idea, and she pushed it through with the board of BL while deploring the fact that in this country cows had to be allocated more space per cow than they were in Hungary.