Archers thread #157: How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless clan! Discuss The Grundys here. Bicker about The Archers as well if you like.

[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, 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.)

Thanks to @OverArmour for the idea of making it clear in the title many of us are inveterate bickerers!

Now over to you, as we are about to eat and I won't hear tonight's offering till later ....

We sort of do. It was a continuing sequence - Helen said goodbye, opened and closed the door, we heard Rob sobbing, Pat and Joy rolled up, Helen came out of the door. There was no suggestion that there was a gap, and indeed why or how would there be? Why would Helen go back into the flat having said goodbye? Indeed, if there was a Yale lock, how could she?

If I'm talking about my dad to my children, I call him Grandpa, even in his presence. Likewise if I'm talking about DH, I call him Dad.

I guess a question might arise as to whether it was a mercy killing. But that would raise the question why Helen would want to show Rob any mercy, and you would expect to see some sort of evidence, e.g. fibres in his airway from being smothered.

It did feel cruel when she seemed to be agreeing to euthanasize him "are you ready?" And then didn't, but instead relished the prospect of him and his father and brother dying alone.

I saw that as her refusing to be manipulated by him any more.

I don’t think she was cruel to him

him dying has manipulated your emotions towards him so that you felt sympathy for him and felt Helen should have behaved differently and been kind

which is why I didn’t like this end to the sl - the abuse is a distant memory or not even heard by listeners and so the sl ends with Helen being painted the bad one

I do see your point, @CaptainMyCaptain but the best refusal would have been to stay away, not to gloat. I'm probably conflicted as I left my own abusive husband and it's made me think.

I'm also surprised that a terminally ill man who has a colostomy bag and can't move would just be left alone to die as he had "refused a hospice". Wouldn't he be in hospital? I know doctors check if there's someone at home to look after patients who are discharged - but maybe he's not actually been in hospital?

She didn’t intend to see him and when she went in she started kindly by showing photos etc. he then turned it and was trying to manipulate and control her again. She just said enough - I know what you’re doing.

Yes I agree, but am going to LA and analyse!

My thought now is that he wasn't about to die and was still manipulating, still abusing. Very important for Helen to be able to remember that she stood up to him.

But I want to hear the lines again.

Bruisername
him dying has manipulated your emotions towards him so that you felt sympathy for him and felt Helen should have behaved differently and been kind

No, it absolutely has not. I do not feel sympathy for Rob: the programme is well rid of him, and if he were real, the world would be.

What I do feel is disgust at Helen's behaviour. Nothing to do with Rob; Helen. She was horrible. If she didn't want to be manipulated by him, why go to see him at all? Or if, having been talked into the flat by the nurse, she didn't want to be manipulated by him, why didn't she simply leave when she felt he had started? She stayed to do what she likes best: occupying the high ground while lessening others. (A bit like running someone over and hospitalising him, then managing to make it so that he apologises to her: one of her more impressive achievements.)

She has been being written as a nasty person, vindictive and manipulative, ever since her treatment of the bereaved Hayley in 1998, so her being thoroughly unpleasant now is really nothing new. It's just even more obvious than usual.

And ultimately she is the one who suffers by it: unlike Rob, who is dead and doesn't have to live with anything, she has to live with what she's done and with what if I were religious I would describe as her shrivelled soul.

WombatCowgirl
a terminally ill man who has a colostomy bag

I'm fairly sure the wound to his gut had healed up during 2016 and he no longer had to have a colostomy bag by the time he was unsuccessfully kidnapping Jack in 2017.

Couldn't the wretched woman simply rest on her laurels after seeing him off with his tail between his legs when he was fit and well in 2017, and stop picking at the scab by defeating someone who was totally unfit to deal with her?

He went back - she didn’t seek him out

And in what way was he not fit to deal with her? He knew all the buttons to press and she ended it by saying ‘not anymore mate’

he will die (probably not for a few days) understanding any control he still thought he had over her is gone

But he returned and hurt her partner (and thence her relationship), her older son - therefore her. It didn't end in 2017.

The baptism thing was also designed to get at her and her family.

I agree @Bruisername

She so did seek him out! Repeatedly! In fact, she couldn't stay away for weeks. She has gone to see him in caffs and in hospitals and then in his own flat; all occasions on which she could simply not have gone along, and sat back in the knowledge that she had a non mol in place and could call in the cops if he came near her or the boys.

He was not fit full stop: he is dying, and has difficulty breathing and cannot raise his head. Hardly a vicious opponent who could prevent her from simply going away.

And simply going away would have shown him, just as well as taunting and tormenting, that he could not control her; "don't you dare leave" followed by "sorry, I have a parcel to collect: by-eeee" works just as well as "oh, maybe I'll kill you as you want, no on the other hand I think I won't after all".

That’s the whole point of the sl! He still had control over her so she was meeting him when asked etc.

She stayed because she didn’t want him to be alone - compassion. And he started with the you still love me crap and her telling him the truth of their relationship was her showing that she had finally thrown the shackles off

the whole thing is ridiculous of course but expecting her to mop his brow and agree with him because he is dying would be even more so

Rob inviting Helen to kill him was his own piece of cruelty. At the very least, he wanted her to have that on her conscience for the rest of her life; at best, she would probably get arrested. Killing someone by smothering will certainly leave forensic traces.

So I'm not sure that pretending to be about to do it and then withdrawing was any sort of cruelty on Helen's part. At worst, she allowed him to think for a moment that, yet again, he had successfully manipulated her and messed up her life before disabusing him of that belief. None of that requires us to feel sorry for him.

Helen has about as much compassion in her as the average Great White Shark! She stayed because it made her look good to herself: how compassionate I am! See how I turn the other cheek to those who despitefully use me! Am I not wonderful?

She has not thrown off the shackles; she'll still be just as chained to him and the idea of him tomorrow as she was on Friday, because she has not got what she wanted: him telling her she was right. And since she wasn't and isn't, that is a thing she wouldn't get from him. From Mike, from Pat, from Tony, from Tom, from Kirsty, from Lee, from Ian, it's easy-peasy to get apologies every time they offend her (and even when they have not actually done anything); she didn't get the unconditional apology and admission of her wonderfulness from Greg, because he blew his head off and didn't come crawling to give it to her, she didn't get it from Leon because he simply laughed at her and walked away, she didn't get it from Russ because he saw in time what she was up to and told her to leave him alone in brutal and unmistakeable terms, and she hasn't got it from Rob. That will rankle with her as much as the others did. Still, we can hope that she won't now have another baby because "I'm no good at relationships, and the baby will always love me."

I can't think that anyone has had or voiced the least expectation that she would "mop his brow and agree with him because he is dying"; if they did it could only be because they started listening to the programme last week and had never met her before. But I think expecting her to behave with ordinary decency might have been reasonable. Tony managed it.

But what does ordinary decency look like to you here? What exactly should she not have done?

she didn't get it from Russ

When was she with Russ?

No she wasn't.

Asking really doesn't like Helen.....

Russ was an innocent purchaser of cucumbers who had to ask Helen not to stalk him, way back when.
Helen has been consistently written as a monster of egoism, ever since she appeared. That she experienced domestic abuse doesn’t let her off the hook for horrible behaviour over the years, and certainly not retrospectively!
Ordiary human decency? Well, either not going at all, or terminating her visit with the card (which she was hell-bent on making - Jack’s alleged wishes were a convenient excuse only) once she had handed it over and given her little vignette.

what will she do with herself now? On previous form, nothing in trousers in the environs of Ambridge will be safe. She might still extract a bit of sympathy from her acolytes by wailing that Rob said terrible, cruel things to her, but I doubt she will dare to go into the detail of what those actually were.

Yeah, I don’t like Helen either.

What does Rob say at 11:30 here as she leaves - it sounds like "You're packing" maybe meant to be a slurred "I'm begging" though?

I do think they slightly overegged Helen's gloating as she pretended to be about to carry out his wishes. But no one's perfect.

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001sdyl?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile