Archers thread #174: God it's lame! But it still limps on. 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 think Ben-meets-Zainab is on a par with Elizabeth-meets-Darcy, 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/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 @Bruisername for the title inspiration. She said God it's lame and that seemed to strike a chord with many, for some reason.

I am terrified of wasps and live in fear of encountering a hornet, so that was a tricky episode. I hope that's the last we're going to hear of them, except for confirmation that they've been nuked. [shudder]

So what do we reckon - custodial or suspended sentence for George? Will Clarrie return from Great Yarmouth or will she realise that actually life as a carer for her (presumably disabled) sister is easier than the endless and thankless drudgery at Grange Farm? Will any more tables collapse at the Village Hall?

Over to you!

As I recall Alice had been doing a good job.

The near loss of her job was primarily down to Emma posting under a poor false id slagging off Alice as a drunk, unfit to work at the Stables, causing reputational damage. Emma’s posts were directly motivated by the shocking drinking and driving incident which caused her darling, innocent, just happened to be passing, village hero George, to have to risk his life to rescue Alice’s supposed victims.

Even when Emma was found out and grudgingly forced to delete the posts, she made it clear she was still going to go on verbally slagging off Alice.

Of course as scripted the stress of being falsely blamed and set up for that and the self and village hatred, drove Alice spiralling after she felt compelled to give up Martha specifically because of the accident, which she had to accept responsibility for because of the evidence, even though she could not believe she could have done it. Pretty horrible cruel stuff and mental torment, most especially to an alcoholic trying to control and compartmentalise her relapse. As the judge said a vulnerable person.

No I am attempting to protect the truth as scripted.

Thanks.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g Time with Sean Bean was brilliant, in such a harrowing way. There was a line that has stuck with me ever since. It was in relation to the awful and violent conditions in prison and the all-too-common ‘you deserve everything you get’ attitude - you go to prison AS punishment, not FOR punishment. So true.

Alice is certainly an alcoholic, which is an addiction. And she has been pretty nasty on a few occasions notably when drunk or craving a drink. Obviously there are concerns for a young child of an alcoholic, just as there must be for many other conditions that mean at times the parent cannot fully function.

Outside that Alice has always been scripted as an honest, generally kindly and fairly caring person. If somewhat spoilt and a bit thoughtless and snobby at times.

I have no particular affinity with Alice’s character except as the victim of a cruel crime which profoundly affected her and how she was presented with trying her best to honestly and responsibly deal with that, whilst dealing with her alcoholism.

I also have a desire for balance especially when a character is being plied upon with scant regard for the facts of the script. It might be said that those that hate the characters are too invested, as, as with most people, they are mostly presented as complex creatures with many shades of personality / issues.

I think outside her Alcoholism Alice is presented as actually a very good and caring mother. But of course when she relapses it is hard to split the two. Although she has tried to compartmentalise it from her time with Martha, hence the accident made her feel she no longer even had that control and felt forced to give her up as her own decision, itself a pretty wrenching and responsible act.

I just don’t see the character as you do. I don’t hate her and see her as a fictional character that is tremendously flawed. But my biggest issue with her is that i don’t think she’s written in a way that makes her well rounded

I saw a news item on Facebook about conditions at a certain prison where inmates were sleeping in freezing cold rat infested cells and the comments underneath were all along the lines of “they deserve it”, “I thought that was the idea of prison”, “prisons are like holiday camps” etc, so depressing.

Beat the boss mobile phone Google tells me “the boss” is a chair shaped scanner of bodily orifices

Once you “other” people it’s easy to accept sub human treatment. It doesn’t matter how bad prisons are because “people like us”, “well brought up children” will never experience it. I wonder how Elizabeth will respond to the current storyline.

MereDintofPandiculation
I wonder how Elizabeth will respond to the current storyline.

If Emma were "One Of Us Darling" I'm sure Elizabeth would weigh in with good advice for her, in spite of Elizabeth having handled Freddie's incarceration about as badly as it could have been short of her committing Sati or something equivalent. She has never been backward about coming forward to use her bad experiences as Moral Lessons For The Young. But on the whole she does this only for Archers and Archer Descendants, so Emma may be lucky enough to escape it.

There's no end to human ingenuity, is there?

Obviously the characters have no existence outside of the scripts so this is a fatuous comment, but if Jennifer were still alive, I suspect she would be very sympathetic to Emma.

Happily, she isn’t.

Exactly - so there is no doubt what the phones are designed for, although in fact they shouldn't beat the BOSS.

Oh, how Emma would resent that!

True. Could have been entertaining

It might be said that those that hate the characters are too invested, as, as with most people, they are mostly presented as complex creatures with many shades of personality / issues.

To be fair, you’re coming across as perhaps more invested than most of us, which is saying something Not that there’s anything wrong with being invested, it’s what the thread is for.

I think it is quite healthy for me to have fictional characters to offload my bile onto, so that I can be all sweetness and light and tolerance and making allowances for the actual real humans I have to interact with.

Not that there’s anything wrong with being invested, it’s what the thread is for. Indeed - I'd go so far as to say that being over infested is a requirement for being on this thread. If we were all just typing: "Well I don't really mind one way or the other, it's fiction after all." or "I don't really give it too much thought," it would be a pretty dull read. I particularly love it when experts of all kinds pop up on here to give their analysis - many thanks to @Molecule who described being on the receiving end of a phone call from prison.

Well quite. I do have to say though, I’m not very infested over what they call the pub cat.

To hark back to a previous title and George’s prior offenses, the sausage really has rolled for him now.

But surely the pub cat's name is the most important long-term story we've had for an age!

They should call it Markie

The cat is the latest in a line of tedious feline additions to the cast (or cat) list. It signals we will be subject to some seriously unfunny cat-based light relief. I think it should named Count Arthur Strong after another R4 character whose comedy antics divide opinion.

I think it should be called Half Pint. Anyway, it shouldn’t be a cat, it should obviously be a parrot.

@Molecule , to change your name, go to Account > Settings. This opens Account details. In Change username, enter the username.
Click Save username.

You can type a name in Your username when you post on a thread but I don't think you can change the name mid-thread.