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!

Dear whatevers, spare us that. The pair of them wittering about beavers are like something out of Enid Blyton and make me want to spew.

Kirsty should accept she’s rubbish at relationships and one of nature’s dumpees, and would be best off in an ecoconvent, possibly somewhere near Glastonbury. Rex should accept that he is almost totally devoid of personality, consider Rochelle to have been a lucky escape, and resign himself to a life of single blessedness. In Littlehampton.

Hard YES on the idiocy (and unlikelihood) of Rex saying 'hey Rochelle, your mummy says you're nuts, is that true?'.

Here is my Facebook memory from 14 years ago. My loathing is reassuringly consistent 🤣

“if Jill Archer wittered on at me in that pseudo-sympathetic voice, days after my husband had plunged from the roof of the stately home, I would hit her. one more empathic "oh, darling" and I might anyway... rapidly replacing pip as my new love-to-hate character.“

Haha she’ll definitely be back the minute whoever she’s gone to see boots her out again.

It’s interesting cos on the one hand Joy is clearly deluded if she thinks Rochelle is about to become mother of the year and pat the bairns off to school in a gingham apron every morning. It’s annoying that she wants to tell Rochelle what to do when she’s clearly chosen a different path. On the other hand that path is shit as she is being an absent parent and plunging her obvious energies into pursuing spectacularly unsexy pigmen and organising festivals of well-being (????) instead of being there to share the responsibilities of raising the kids. But then perhaps she is a terrible parent even when she’s there and they’re better off without her there?!

Honestly if someone set up an ecoconvent I think they’d be overwhelmed with applications

Didn't Justin give her a lift? Or am I mistaken?

I think that was Kirsty’s mum

What does being a 'drifter' and 'always looking for the next challenge' (as Joy described Rochelle) even mean? She produced two children, presumably not twins, so after the first one it didn’t become immediately apparent that she wasn’t cut out for ‘being a Mum', whatever that actually means? Does her free spiritdom really just boil down to cooking on a train? 🤔

Whatever, she doesn’t appear to have a job, the children don’t live with her, where she lives isn’t totally apparent, she hasn’t been in contact with Joy for as long as we’ve heard her name mentioned but just turns up totally out of the blue on Christmas Day, sets her cap at the only vaguely presentable single man she meets and declares he’s the ONLY man she’s fancied in YEARS (has she not met many men?) then strops off in a storm of rage and tears. Gosh. Unstable doesn’t begin to describe it.

FWIW I have no time for Joy and her saccharine cooing either, and am perfectly happy to accept past bad history on both sides, but I've known someone who gave off strong Rochelle-type vibes and putting (a lot of) distance between us was my first and only priority.

Yes, we are to believe that seemingly jobless Rochelle was able to travel down from Leeds on Christmas Eve/Day to a town she had never visited(?) and procure a taxi.

I re-listened to the bulk of this week and I reckon I'd run a mile if introduced to her.

She must be getting her "steps" the way she keeps popping up all over the place.

Who was the man Mick visited relatively nearby (from Joy's purloined address-book) who denied knowledge of Rochelle? Were we supposed to believe that was the ex, and the children are there with him?

And if Rochelle takes such grim satisfaction in knowing exactly what Joy's like, why on earth did she turn up on her doorstep?

I know I’m spending far too much time thinking about all this, but illogicality really annoys me. I feel the SWs are frantically spinning their wheels on this one because they’re trying to make up a convincing back-story. And not succeeding so far, for me.

The more I've thought about Rochelle's behaviour with Rex the more I'm on Joy's side. It's not clear (unless I missed it) if Rochelle was planning to move in with Joy or just stay for a while but either way, starting up something with a local man is just mad behaviour. Either she's looking for a shag/fling in which case doing it with a man your mum knows well in the village she lives in where everyone knows an unhealthy amount about each other's lives is spectacularly self absorbed or she's just a stage 4 clinger who is looking for 'true love' in every vaguely available man shaped package in which case she's emotionally unstable and a big red flag. Either way of course Joy doesn't want it on her doorstep.

I think part of the trouble now stems from having to many different writers and editors, who don't spend long enough discussing the character's development and back story.

I almost wonder whether somebody needs to "own" a few parts for a year so it stops sounding as if they all sit around playing the parlour game "Consequences" when it comes to developing plot lines.

It is inexcusable that was no 1-2 month fuss made about Peggy's 100th birthday (the actress herself didn't need to be there) or Freddie and Lily turning 25. Villagers, especially family, would have remarked.

As for Beechwood and blasted beavers!

Yes, the lack of fanfare for those two events is inexcusable. We’ve waited a very long time for both - and I feel personally slighted and deprived of something I had a right to expect.

How did ( if they have been NC for so long) did Rochelle know where Joy lived.

I do tend to agree.

The only puzzle for me is, why on earth Joy ever pretended that Rochelle was wonderful and an asset. My reaction to having a daughter like her would be not to tell people she existed, if I moved to a new place where they didn't already know about her.

I’m quite enjoying the Rochelle/Joy storyline, it’s the not knowing which one of them is unreasonable. Is it the case that Rochelle has struggled to make a life for herself after a dysfunctional childhood but can’t cope because she’s damaged, and Joy is overbearing in her efforts to erase the past? Or is Rochelle a delusional nutter and Joy is desperately applying damage limitation tactics and trying to stop Rochelle torpedoing the life she’s made for herself in Ambridge?

A bit like the early days of Ron. Was he a narcissist abuser or a hard-done-by decent sort?

I think they’re aiming for some boring thing in the middle. Presumably something for Mick to morally judge Joy on too. I also don’t think Joy has a nasty streak, I think she’s just lashes out a bit when upset.

I know moaning about the storylines is part of listening to The Archers but they’ve really properly been a mess recently.

I wonder if Joy's DH croaked whilst estranged but not divorced and Joy got the life assurance/pension/loads of dosh and she gives Richelle an allowance.

I listened on Sounds to the “was that it?” episode to see what you were all talking about, then realised I’d already heard it. That’s how much impact it made on me!

what happens to the wellness event if Rochelle’s buggered off?

No doubt Joy will step in. She does love people praising her after all

(off topic question -why do people go on threads that are over 30 pages long and only answer the OP without reading any updates or thinking that perhaps someone in the previous 30 pages may have suggested the same very simple analysis - it’s putting me off the site tbh and I end up just reading the and the spoiler thread)

Perhaps (this is all guesswork but it makes as much sense as anything else) Rochelle did briefly live in Borsetshire, Joy knew and that was why she moved there, but as soon as Rochelle knew Joy was coming, or perhaps coincidentally, she moved on. Joy still moved because she'd spent a lot of money on the move by that stage and she reasoned that she might as well live in the centre of England as anywhere else, given how often Rochelle moves - she'd never be too far from wherever Rochelle happened to be.

As for where the money came from, divorce settlement? Perhaps she got a SHL as they say on the Relationships board. Not very likely if she also went to pieces when Rochelle's dad left, but maybe someone else, no longer in her life, sorted it all out, e.g. a close friend who subsequently fell out of favour for saying something Joy didn't want to hear, or her parents. Or perhaps her ex and/or Joy had fantastically good jobs and/or had made a mint out of climbing the property ladder, so a simple 50:50 split left her in a very good position. Or perhaps Joy inherited some money. As far as I can recall, Joy has never mentioned any family at all except for Rochelle, Noah and Harper, but she must have had her own family at some point. Or she may have won the Lottery. Or she may be running an organised crime gang in her spare time from re-stocking the shelves in the Community Shop.

I feel the two minutes I've spent typing this out is two minutes longer than the SWs have spent on Joy's back story.

I have come up with a theory about the revisionist Neil garbage.

Neil had a pretty awful mother and an absentee father from whom she eventually got divorced. When he was just sixteen and about to be landed with a stepfather he actively disliked, he got out via an agricultural apprenticeship scheme and escaped to Ambridge.

Once there, however, he didn't want to admit what crap parents he had and said as little as possible about them, then over the years invented his dream parents and embellished the myth of his lovely foster home with lots of "brothers" and "sisters" all of whom moved on except him. His invented foster-father was everything Neil wanted in a Dad, and his foster-mother did all the things the actual mother he'd grown up living with didn't do, like loving him and feeding him well and caring about him. (And listening to the shipping forecast...)

He is distinctly unkeen on exploding this myth, even if Susan is suddenly (after fifty years of being silent on the subject) pushing for him to do so.

I just don’t understand why they chose this backstory for a such a grounded and reasonable character tbh

who else could they have picked I suppose

Vince?

They already did it with Matt, except they didn't bother to invent and embellish the "wonderful foster family" tosh.