Archers thread #161: Kenton seems to be getting better, but the storylines aren’t. Discuss The Archers here.

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Well, here we are. I was strongly tempted to go for the dog's dinner, dog/human bullies etc suggestions for the title, but Mere asked if we could not have anything graphic in the thread title, so I've held back. In a couple of weeks when this thead is nearing its end the attack may all be a distant memory, anyway.

Goodness knows what's in store for us now. Kenton seems likely to have PTSD, not surprisingly. Surely we must soon find out why HARRY talks so. Unconvincingly. Alice! Hello. CHRIS. CHRIS. etc, and also whether he is (as many of us suspect) addicted to opiates and/or up to no good. Too much to hope why nobody in Ambridge horsey circles had ever heard of him until recent weeks.

Over to you!

Maybe Harrison’s actor was cast due to his in depth knowledge of police protocols?.

I’m surprised he hasn’t been googling frantically. Harry’s driving ban will be in the local press, and there’s likely to be more. There can be no objection to drawing Alice’s attention to stuff in the public domain.

I knew that but what did Vince do that David finds unforgivable?

i know Ben had a mental breakdown but I thought he acted pretty badly with beth

Vince called Ben all sorts of names in the Bull and was in no small part a cause of his breakdown. David wouldn’t forget or forgive that.

Didn’t Vince also then withdraw a loan or something from Ruth and David as a kind of punishment for Ben dumping Beth. And then that left them in loads of shite and they had to sell some land and then they had all the hoo ha about being blamed for the charging station, including Jim Lloyd doing down ridiculous sit in at the B&B.

and also Vince announced to the whole pub that Chelsea had an abortion.

Do breakdowns work like that though?

vince had some justification as Ben had behaved badly to his daughter.

although I always thought the Ben sl was a bit too contrived anyway

Oh and what I came here to post:

”Harrison, this is like talking to Lassie! Just TELL ME”

was a fantastic line.

Oh yes I forgot about the loan

i felt sorry for Chelsea during all of that and that she ended up being an afterthought in the whole SL despite being the most mature and having to make a really hard decision.

the stupid sl have been going on for quite a while

The decision would have been really quite easy if she'd remembered that she knew she didn't want to have a baby. Her initial decision was to take a morning after pill, only it didn't work (they don't at the wrong time of the cycle). She then refused to go for any professional advice and havered for enough weeks for it to cease to be an early chemical abortion and become a late surgical one. That absolutely was not mature.

(Sunday 4th September, 2022: it comes out that she did in fact take the morning after pill and thought she had sorted it all out.)

I said being the most mature - not mature!

they did drag it out but deciding on an abortion or even accepting you are pregnant isn’t always easy. Don’t want to drag up that debate again but its not a time when people act purely rationally

with Ben he got on my nerves because he made Beth’s pain all about him - and then we ended up with the stupid Jill SL and the breakdown. If David can’t forgive Vince, has he forgiven his mother?

From experience it was awful, you don’t just make a phone call and get someone sectioned (especially not the first time), even when they are behaving in a dangerous way, from experience it’s days/weeks of being fobbed off.

I don’t recall the idiot Ben being sectioned at all- just getting prompt and lavish ‘treatment’, @FloopyMango, but your point stands

Me too! It’s probably like being actually married to Lassie!

Like talking to Lassie 😂 Pls let that be in the next title!

Whenever Vince’s name is mentioned, David acts like a teenager whose divorced parent has remarried and he doesn’t like it.

‘What’s that Lassie? Harry fell into a pint glass?’

Exactly that!

Absolutely, but an ex-event rider losing theirs is the sort of trash our local rag would be all over.

Also, they clearly mix in overlapping circles given Harry’s mum has a friend who knew Alice. The likelihood that there is no talk of Harry’s drinking behaviour reaching Lillian or Shula for eg is unlikely

Fabulous line, even my Sheltie, minature Lassie collie, would agree

I still haven't forgiven Vince for the way he treated Ben.

I agree Vince was awful. He went against Beth's wishes to sort it out with Ben including going round to beat him up. If you remember Beth wasn't speaking to him for quite a while.
And the pressure of calling in the loan to David and Ruth and then forcing Ben to pay for a holiday he didn't even want in the first place.
Vince is not a "nice guy". (Neither was Matt Crawford).

I don't believe Jolene's story is the full truth, I suspect everything is far more recent. Did something happen when she went on "tour" before Covid?

And I'm surprised something didn't show up when Lillian googled Harry.

We know that David dislikes Vince for having been pretty-much directly responsible for Ben's breakdown, which is slightly more cogent as a reason than "mummy has a new lover". I think I would still be angry fifteen months later with someone who had behaved towards my child as Vince did towards Ben, even if he had not then compounded the injury by forcing me to sell land to repay him for a loan I had been unwilling to accept in the first place, as well as charging me thousands of pounds for an unsolicited gift he had not actually made to his daughter.

As for dragging in the information that Chelsea had had an abortion, broadcasting it to the entire pub and lying about Ben having forced her to do so, that was utterly despicable and should have been condemned by everyone, starting with Elizabeth (who knows about abortion).

Even Vince is aware of how very wrong his behaviour was, and claims to be ashamed of it, now he's finally got round to saying that – which he hadn't till now. That apology is more than a little belated.

I don’t agree Vince was directly responsible. Ben was spiralling before then and his grandmothers input was unhelpful

the whole SL was fast though with Jill telling Beth and Ben how perfect they were - that was creepy. And then his ‘I betrayed you but am going to do the ‘we’re splitting for your own good and then I'm going to feel sorry for myself’ routine

Speaking of Vince, and not having followed every Archers thread on here (sorry 😳) does anyone remember how he met Elizabeth - she was online dating, when he was interested in her. And she was in a place for a date, that she was stood up for. And then Vince swooped in because he jus thappened to be in that restaurant at that exact time... 🤔

I always reckoned that Vince had created an online account to set that whole situation up. He's very slimy and manipulative. Is that generally accepted? Or just my little theory?

Ben was holding it together until Vince attacked him, very much in public and in as nasty a way as he could.

Yes, direct responsibility. I didn't say "exclusive" responsibility; but definitely causal to the final collapse. The knowledge that Vince had called in the loan and was also making David pay for the holiday Beth and Ben neither wanted nor went on was one of the things which shoved Ben over the edge.