Archers thread #180: Burgeoning backstories! Continuity, what’s that? 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 it's a great idea for Helen and the boys to lodge with Tom, Natasha, Seren and Dippity*, 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/5244480-the-archers-spoilers-thread-10-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.)

*Can't remember who coined this, but it's genius.

I was strongly tempted to use one or both of the posts suggested for the title of this thread on the last thread, but went for something a bit briefer. However, they're brilliant and will kickstart this thread very nicely, so here they are:

@Sidebeforeself: Beavers, bridge, bunny boilers and busybodies - it's all a load of bollocks!

(I couldn't agree more!)

@DeanElderberry: I don't usually speculate much on the appearance of characters, but do wonder what it is about Miranda that is bringing out the chest-thumping silverback in Brian and Justin? One little bridge game and the course of Ambridge rewilding is set. The face that launched a thousand beavers.

Over to you!

Sorry posted early - @Nettleteaser101 "couldn't give a kippers dick" 😂 brilliant.
Couldn't give a kippers dick about Mick.

I still can’t get over Rochelle arriving on Xmas day with no means of transport

the sw have devoted far too much time to joy since she arrived and she has ended up being part of far too many SL (bens breakdown, Rob’s death, bridge gate, jennys death etc)

I guess, from a human pov, if you’re going to a house where you’re not certain of a welcome, turning up on Christmas Day gives a better chance of not having the door slammed in your face.

Obiously from the SW’s pov it’s just DRAMA. Unfortunately about people we simply do not care about. It was bad enough squandering a Christmas at Bridge Farm on Joy when she first arrived. This latest episode is just too much. Three people we have no reason to care about - in a household with no intrinsic connection to any Archer or anything Ambridge.

Kipper’s dick is just about right.

Thank you for the new thread. I'll catch up at the weekend but, if Rochelle's presence prompts Mick to storm off to new pastures, she is going up in my esteem.

I think there might be a few National Express coaches on Xmas day, but rural trains give up by early afternoon on Xmas Eve.

I still don't understand how Joy funds her lifestyle (car, house, general living expenses and hefty hot tub heating bills).

How did she get from town to house though? I know people will say taxi but really?

I don’t want to spend my time thinking about illogicality tbh but the sw just seem incapable of making anything believable

Tbh I’ve been trying not to engage with the stupidity - but I do feel a certain amount of rage. This Horville thing being imposed on us over Christmas and NY - when we’ve heard nothing about how or where Ruairi spent Christmas …

A woman apparently wealthy enough to buy and live unsupported in her executive house - moving in a retired, homeless roadie - with neither of them having any connection to the village … It tries one’s patience.

Honestly Rochelle turning up on Christmas day with no prior notice is very selfish.

Thank you for the new thread.

I very much share the "So is that it then?" view about the big Joy and Rochelle reveal. It feels as though the SWs originally thought it would be a wizard wheeze to suggest there was some kind of mystery about Joy's relationship with her daughter but didn't bother to think what the mystery might actually be. Now their bluff has been called and they are all out of ideas and the big reveal is a damp squib: mother and daughter don't much get on, shock/horror.

Weren't we led to believe Mick had discovered some secret when he went to Rochelle's old address after the accident? So that was all a con? The SWs really do have zero respect for the listeners, don't they?

In addition, I can't stand Joy and would give her a very wide berth in real life, but I am struggling to see how she is "toxic". She had a breakdown when her marriage ended and wasn't a great mother, and now she worries about her daughter. If my DD in her 30s was rootless and unsettled and not part of her DC life I'd be worried too. Is that really "toxic"? And majorly irritating though Joy is, we haven't seen any signs of toxicity in her relationships in Ambridge. She doesn't gossip and try to stir up ill feeling. She doesn't try to poach other women's husbands. She has been a good neighbour to Helen and her ghastly spawn, she was understanding and helpful when Ben was ill, and she wasn't vindictive towards Emma over the George cover up.

Please make it all make sense again. I think I am going to have to hide behind the sofa until Rochelle has disappeared into the same black hole as the scam holiday cottage visitors, and until the idiotic 'Neil has heart warming reunion with his long lost dear old mother' SL has run it's painful course.

A close, loving, normal family….like you see every day round here.

Errr….you sure about that, Joy?

Sure Joy can be concerned about Rochelle and her relationship with her kids but she comes across as extremely controlling of how she expects Rochelle to behave

telling Rex that Rochelle is vulnerable when what she really meant was ‘she needs to be spending her time seeing my grandkids the way I want - not wasting time with you’ is pretty toxic. And ‘all you need is love’ is bullshit - perhaps the best thing Rochelle did was to leave the kids with benny

and the judgement of mothers not being 24/7 with their kids isn’t right - no one seems to ever mention ever absent fathers.

Nettleteaser101
is Helen looking for some where to live? It doesn't seem she is.

She is. She said she'd looked at two this week, she talked about having noticed that Lee's old place is on the market for rent, and told someone or other that she was surprised how many rental properties there are available in the area.

How long before Helen tells Pat and Tony to move out of Bridge Farm into April Cottage so she and the boys can have the farmhouse and she can send the boys to AC for the night when she thinks she might be in with the chance of a shag?

I predict in the long run that Helen will get the farm house, and Pat and Tony will live in a self build on the farm. Leaving Tom n Gnasher feeling very aggrieved because he wants the farm house and she wanted to self build.
I think they're obviously pitching Henry as the next generation at Bridge Farm.

Archers threads lurker here checking in.

Sorry @AskingQuestionsAllTheTime,I didn't hear Helen say that, but then again I try not to listen to Helen.
I just thought the was waiting for a Knight on a white Charger to carry her off to a castle somewhere, after all it's what she deserves.

Well beechwood isn't good enough for Helen, she made it very clear AC wasn't, living with her parents isn't - the only thing good enough in her opinion is to kick her parents out of their home.

Very hard to care about Rochelle - her pursuit of Rex would be considered entirely toxic if the sexes were revwrswd - regardless of the reason he had for trying to put her off. I still wouldn't be surprised if she was a narcissist or similar tbh.

And stupid. What did she plan to do if Joy was elsewhere for the day, or even for the week? Some people who live alone go to hotels or on cruises at Christmas. Rochelle would have looked all nohow hammering on the door and getting no reply, until Henry went over to tell her Joy had gone to see the Northern Lights on a P&O cruise and wouldn't be back until January.

She didn't know Mick existed, after all.

I can confirm there are National Express coaches on Xmas day. They can be quite expensive though and it probably depends where you are coming from. Ds got one this Christmas Day from London. He was working and forgot what day it was (normal for ds). We worked out it would have been about £10 more expensive to get an uber the 70 miles from London to ours.

Never mind Joy. What does Rochelle do for money? 3 adults with very little income living in a bloody lovely house! They're doing better than me!

Lest we forget Rochelle's a very persuasive free spirit, she probably hitchhiked.

I took a little break from the archers and have now caught up from before Christmas. I am not sure what to make of this Joy and Rochelle storyline. I think both Joy and Rochelle are surprisingly well acted and written compared to many TA characters and stories. I really hope there is more to it than that. I assumed Rochelle had a history of mental illness or something along those lines. I don't dislike Mick and I do really like Joy so I don't mind the focus but it's a bit underwhelming so far after such a build up.

I agree btw that Joy's behaviour in warning Rex off Rochelle and the way she spoke to Mick at the end of the last episode were both unpleasant, but, as far as I can remember, she hasn't previously displayed "toxic" behaviour. So it feels to me as though the SWs have suddenly changed her character to fit the backstory they have now introduced. We have known her as a character quite a while now so it doesn't seem believable to me that her toxic traits are only now revealing themselves.

The only time I can recall her being anything other than 100% pleasant - albeit intensely irritating - was when Muck tried to contact Rochelle after the accident. At the time we were led to believe that this was because there was some great mystery about Rochelle, not that they simply didn't get on very well.

And yes, I would be equally concerned if my DS didn't have contact with his DC. It's not just because Rochelle is a woman/mother. Probably because I have the great good fortune to come from 4 generations of happy, pretty normal families.

I am sooo confused.

Joy moved to Beechwood in 2019, living quite happily as a friendly, chatty caricatured Northerner (even when she nearly drowned) and now her character has suddenly changed

I'm pretty certain that Rochelle (estranged mother of teenage Harper and Noah - so possibly close in age to either Brad, Mia or Henry) was revered by Joy in the early days. I did think that Joy claimed to speak to "them" or Facetime/Skype them, but at that point most of us doubted that daughter and family even existed. Joy would have feigned an interest in football/console/role-play games/vaping or whatever it is the Ambridge youth get up to. She's in the village shop where the parents and kids shop.

Assuming both were reasonably young mothers, Rochelle must be mid-30's, Joy possibly 60ish but neither seem to have a job.

To my ears, Rochelle seems to be the impulsive, unpredictable one. As others have said, who arrives unannounced at a home of the parent you increasingly resent (leaving aside the transport logistics at Christmas) and then threaten to flounce off after 3 weeks without having noticed that villages and buses rarely go together.

I can only guess that somebody in the writing team had a cunning, slightly implausible, plan for Joy which never came to fruition because of covid or something and/or they moved onto pastures new.

Can we hear about Lower Loxley (I know it will require a bit of thought now that Freddie should have inherited it), Chris and Alice, even Grey Gables. Even better they could admit that Peggy is dead so that Tom/Helen/Tony have a tidy sum (or not, as the case may be) to fulfill some of their housing dreams.

Joy is on the Archers podcast this week, I notice.

Godesstobe
The only time I can recall her being anything other than 100% pleasant - albeit intensely irritating - was when Muck tried to contact Rochelle after the accident. At the time we were led to believe that this was because there was some great mystery about Rochelle, not that they simply didn't get on very well.

I personally took that as being a very understandable "What the fuck did you think you were doing going through my private address-book!" reaction. I would be absolutely furious with anyone who took it upon themselves to go through my possessions looking for contacts to invite into my house without my permission.

A surprise party may or may not be forgivable, but stealing my address-book and going through it to find contacts to invite would definitely not be.

Oops, I posted on the old thread.

I think it’s losing a sense of place and stability too. It feels a bit sad that quite a few of the big locations seem to have just been written out too. The traditions seem to be going away as well, I never thought I would miss the Christmas plays and pantomimes with the obligatory Lynda storyline, but I did. Also, though why have we got an ongoing storyline about a pantomime halfway through January that’s not even in the village, that teenagers seem inexplicably desperate to go to?

I think new characters have to be a very small part of the whole to balance and ground them. And they’ve become almost the whole thing. And the biggest storylines are just depressing, like Emma being permanently depressed, Brad, failing at university, Fallon and Harrison’s slow decline. And now Joy and OurRochelle when we don’t even care about OurRochelle. In fact, the lack of her was about the only intriguing storyline and now she’s turned up who even cares.

My wishes for 2025:
-Either have somebody move into Home Farm or have it as a holiday let or raffle-prize house
-Ditto The Lodge (which might make a nice holiday let)
-Stella/Hannah asks for help with taking care of Bert Fry's garden (they can dig up an unexploded bomb or time capsule if the scriptwriters think this is too dull) and become stalwarts of the Flower and Produce show
-Peggy has a funeral
-Elizabeth to sort out who is running Lower Loxley, mention the vineyard and realise that the Titcombes are probably no longer alive
-Brad to do well at Uni