Archers thread #152: The Dog Days of Summer in Ambridge! Rabid rants, tearoom dogfight, Bully Dog George gets it all on camera. Is Lone wolf Rob waiting in the woods? 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, and of course we are always delighted to welcome back former or occasional listeners/posters. 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 you'd love a son like George, 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.)

Starting this new thread a bit early, as we're near the end of the last thread and I'm out all day today. As last night's episode was a banger, I thought I'd better ensure discussion can continue seamlessly!

The original idea for a dog theme for this thread came from the death of poor Weaver. RIP. The Dog Days of summer are associated with storms and the silly season, so quite appropriate for The Archers at the moment! They may technically be over now, as it's all to do with the heliacal rising of the Dog Star, Sirius (no, me neither), but apparently the Anglo-Saxons considered they lasted into September (thank you, Wikipedia), so that will do for me.

So - what next for Helen, Henry and Jack? Surely even the Bridge Farm Archers will see that she needs professional help? After her outburst the other night they might finally grasp that Henry could do with some too. All very grim.

On the lighter side (perhaps), whither Pip and Stella?

Over to you!

Goodness, been away and only just found the new thread; it’s filling up fast!

@TonightMatthewIamgoingtobecher - your perception is spot on: for most of 2023, these threads have been slowing down, with an average of 30 posts per day, but from July that picked up to 50 posts per day. This current thread - in the two days it has been running - has managed 144 posts per day.

It seems that whatever you think of the Helen and Rob story, a bit of Titchener (ew!) animates posters here!

Since the night Helen wielded the knife and the subsequent trial in 2016, there has been only one other event - something unconnected to Rob, in 2018 - which has caused such a spike in posting here. I wonder if anyone can remember what that was? (Strangely, Jennifer's death didn't cause that much of a ripple).

Nics death?

Was it “Who ran over Matt?”

You lot are good - it's one of those...

Ooh ooh, I reckon it's Tiger being run over. Thanks for update on daily stats, amazing.

It’s George rather than Rob I’m finding interesting at the moment. He’s a more satisfying villain somehow. Rob is well acted but the storyline is stressful and sad vs compelling.

If you’ve got it wrong you can just go back and edit this post and no one will ever know!!

But they will, because every edited post gains an Edited link, and if you click that, you can see the edit history.

Like this.

I bet it was the whodunnit

I mean sometimes we argue for a few pages over types of vegetables 🤷‍♀️😂

I love the countryside/farming stuff too.
I remembering - Bert maybe or Joe - saying that you should plant marigolds among your leafy veg to keep the slugs off. And then I remembered my Grandad used to do that in his allotment. (it works too)

The honey scene was great.

It's more complicated here because I can see his arranging for Henry to meet Rob was in part due to his ignorance of the facts and would merit forgiveness, but his putting up of the video was malicious.
The helping Henry was not from ignorance, it was more sinister than that.
With Henry, he had an opportunity to influence, and the motive was to show Henry that he could disobey his mother.

I miss all of the farming chat. I’m from a farming family and started listening to assuage some homesickness.

I agree @MiniHector

He was ‘grooming’ Henry

Exactly. Even before he put the Helen meme up, all his relatives were falling over themselves to say "He was just trying to be helpful" when actually he was just trying to undermine Helen without for a moment considering that she might know better.

If he'd approached Helen on the premise that he knew nothing was going to make her trust him, and that he wasn't asking for his job back, but wanted to apologise anyway, it would have gone so much better.

I'd still argue the arrangement was in part due to ignorance of Rob as his reaction to his mother's unequivocal criticism of Ron was met by a serious reception from George. Now whether this was because he thought his mammaries might just be in the wringer over this is a moot point.

I think people are putting some quite sinister motives onto what is really a silly little boy.

Unless I’m misremembering I don’t think George had anything to do with arranging for Henry to meet Rob. Henry asked if he could tag along on the Grundy family trip to the country show and then revealed he was going to meet Rob there. It was all pre-arranged. George went along with it but became concerned when he heard Emma describing how vile Rob was. He then tried to discourage Henry when he was at the show and even offered to come and ‘rescue’ him.

George is awful generally but I think he’s shouldering way too much of the blame here. Helen screeching that Henry would not have been so idiotic without encouragement, help etc was ridiculous. He’s a bright 12 year old and would have engineered a way to meet Rob without George’s ‘help’.

Definitely grooming.

George doesn't seem to have any friends, other than the slightly younger Brad, who is his mother's first cousin.

Brad is not streetwise like Chelsea , who can see through George, but Brad has enough sense to speak to his mother or sister.

George isn't a little boy, and he 'masterminded' his revenge on Hannah by manipulating his parents.

George actively encouraged Henry to let him change the setting on his phone.

No he didn't arrange the meeting but he did help Henry contact Ron and was very willing the drip feed the overbearing, controlling Mother rhetoric in his ear. So I don't think Helen was far off the mark really.

I hope the Bridge Farm Archers have changed their SM passwords. George could log in, change the passwords himself locking them all out!

This

Emma and Will sounded uncharacteristically right-on last night. I will let the SWs off as I am enjoying the George SL hugely but I think they have endowed surprising levels of social awareness to E and W…

It felt like the SWs were trying to define the Andrew Tate phenomenon to R4 listeners who don’t really get what it’s all about.

The worst sl have been where they’ve tried to shoehorn in a ‘live’ issue so to speak.

But what about all the really vile things he said?