Archers thread #165: Bridge over troubled waters! 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 believe Rochelle exists, 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 https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/radio_addicts/5071889-the-archers-spoilers-thread-9-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.)

This thread may well fill up as fast as the last one, so let's just get stuck in!

Kate and Jakob is a bit like a try-again of her relationship with Lucas. A man from right outside Ambridge with a mature and responsible world-view who loves her but doesn't indulge her. She might have been too young and self-centred to stay with Lucas and his family, but did learn from them. She may have learned a bit from her grandmother as well. She was a really appalling teenager even by Ambridge standards, but she has grown and developed - while still remaining her aura-sensing, goat-yoga-ing self.

This is why the doctor should have told Fallon on her own

Harrison nearly lost his job because of Alice.

Apart from my 🤬 at listening to that episode all I'm thinking is how nice it sounded to be under the duvet with Jakob!

Fallon should pack him in and get together with someone like kind and empathetic and sexy (last bit my own imagining) Chris Carter. But Chris Carter was another one who couldn’t bear not to have children - that’s partly what drove Alice to drink in the first place.

Cross post with @BrightYellowDaffodil

Pregnancy can be a trigger in DV situations too, which is another reason no responsible doctor would ever do what happened on TA.

An excellent summary of the situation. Harrison behaved badly, but it’s clear to see where it came from.

No he nearly lost his job because he has a hero complex and a big mouth

Good point @LillianGish
Im being flip really - actually I’d like to see Fallon leave Ambridge and Harrison because she has outgrown it all.

This - it was his actions, however well intentioned for Alice, that nearly cost him his job (unless the other poster means when Alice made it worse at the nick).

It will be his actions that make him nearly or fully lose his wife, too.

They really have developed Jacob's character haven't they. Remember how 2D he was when he first arrived?

I thought Fallon sounded scared of Harrison when she was urging Alice to leave.

No he nearly lost his job because he has a hero complex and a big mouth - I don't think that's fair. Harrison has always tried to support Alice - turning a blind eye to the drunk in charge when she called him out and then kissed him, talking to Fallon about Harry because he (quite rightly as it turns out) thought he wouldn't be good for Alice's recovery. I imagine a large part of his outburst yesterday came from a feeling of "after all I've done for you, I've done everything I can to support you and prop you up and now you've done this!"

I thought Fallon sounded scared of Harrison when she was urging Alice to leave she wasn't scared of him knew what he was going to say and she didn't want Alice to hear it. I think Fallon will eventually take the same saintly understanding approach to Harrison as she did to Alice. And of course this all building up to the moment when George is unmasked as perpetrator - I'm now thinking it's not just Harrison's outburst we were waiting for, but now what Alice will do as a result of that - all of which is building towards making everything so much worse for George.

I listened to that almost literally open mouthed. I suppose plot device and all that but it was appalling.

Can someone fill me in on Lucas and Kate? I think it was just before I started listening...

Also when you go back to the scene he goes through the whole ‘one test was positive’ etc etc and then says ‘did you know you were pregnant?’. What a shit bedside manner

…all of which is building towards making everything so much worse for George.

Quite. Not least because the tentacles of all this spread far and wide. Not only Alice’s immediate family (Kate, Jakob, Brian, Lillian) but her wider family and Chris’s too. And those in the accident (Joy, Mick, Fallon) plus their families and especially Jolene who will undoubtably know about the pregnancy by now (unless she’s deaf) and the effect on Harrison and Fallon’s marriage.

And in the middle of it all, like a spider in a web, is George. And his family basking in his reflected glory, thinking that for once the Grundys came out on top.

When the truth comes out that tangle is going to be even messier. The recriminations will be a spectacle to rival Eddie’s not-silent fireworks.

Is it possible to have a positive urine pregnancy test but the foetus/embryo to have already died? Ur when the hospital tested Fallon could it have been dead already?

Hate Harrison. As soon as he heard that the pregnancy test was positive he assumed that Fallon would keep it. Such arrogance. And then blabbing about it. I understand wanting to talk about it with someone but he's already done that with the vicar. Maybe he should see a therapist.

Fallon should dump him.
Maybe she will and then get together with Alice once Alice gets back on the straight and narrow.

May Harrison and Hannah can get together and make lots of little babies.

I thought that both Brian and Kate had valid points when they had their ding dong.

And in the middle of it all, like a spider in a web, is George brilliantly expressed.

And I think the truth WILL out, not least because neither Chris nor Fallon have abandoned Alice and they know her best, arguably. They’re the ones who are going to pick up on something not adding up (like Chris knowing that Alice wouldn’t drink fruit cider) and Fallon would be in a position to feed that back to Harrison, assuming he’s retained his job and his sanity.

The bad thing about this for us listeners however, is that George is going to end up in prison for quite a stretch within the next year or so. So we'll have to wait until his release to see how that radicalises or 'sets him right'.

The comment about the fruit cider signals that it won't be that long before someone somehow works out what really happened.

Is it possible to have a positive urine pregnancy test but the foetus/embryo to have already died? Ur when the hospital tested Fallon could it have been dead already?

@SaffyRosie, not only is it possible, it is very common: HcG levels in the blood take a while to fall. In that the mechanical trauma was relatively trivial, that is highly unlikely to have affected an early pregnancy, so the chances are it was already dead. Pity the doctor didn’t see fit to tell them that.

Telling other people about it was wrong. Not listening to Fallon was wrong. Wanting children was not wrong.

Kate met Lucas when she was working in South Africa and lived there with him for several years - he was very grounded and his own parents were always presented as both grounded and conservative. He and Kate eventually split up because of her unfaithfulness, and their children stayed with him and their grandparents in SA - Nolithando, the older one has visited Ambridge (which she found achingly dull) and contributed to the mess Freddie got into with drugs