Derry Girls New Series

[Taytocrisps]

Counting down the days here.

Oh wow. I can imagine it must have brought back a lot of emotions for you. To see such a turning point in your life to be unexpectedly replicated onscreen.

I did love the scene earlier on where the adults were all toing and froing with Claire's dad about stacking them up in the back of his mini, and then we cut to Claire and her dad sharing a lovely moment as he pulled them along in the parade.

Such a brilliant episode again (apart from the Clare 'romance' which was completely unbelievable - they could have written that so much better). I'm glad they didn't kill off one of the main characters but instead showed their friendship having to deal with the deep grief that one of them is experiencing - and being totalled unprepared for it, as you are at that age.

The scene with Gerry and Ciaran was very moving in a strange kind of way, and as always, Sister Michael did not disappoint. There hasn't been enough of her this series imo.

Looking forward to tonight's finale.

I agree with PP that Tommy Tiernan has been stellar this series. I won't soon get over the scene where he thinks Mary's been cheating on him and turns absolutely purple, but still manages to be the bigger man and say the right thing when it turns out she hasn't.

James putting his arm wordlessly around Orla when she said that Claire's dad would be okay, right? Like Sarah, Orla is "special".

It is rather wonderful how the writing has highlighted inheritance of personal qualities from parents to children.

(Not keen on ‘special’ as a description - but as it was used in the show I’ll assume it means ‘away with the fairies, with a somewhat intermittent relationship with reality’.)

Nobody does care about Clare's father, the point of his death was about the girls growing up. I'm sure many of us had that moment as carefree youngsters that changed us into adults in seconds.

Nobody as in none of the viewers.

I’ll admit to tears too. Gerry was wonderful, the scene in the hospital with Orla and James when he puts his arm around her started me off .
Jenny Joyce putting her hand on Claire’s arm and giving her condolences as she’s walking out of church was lovely.

I know that. I just felt it was lazy and poor writing to try to shoehorn in a big ‘emotional moment’ without really putting in the effort. It was done in about three minutes and is intended to pull on the heartstrings of viewers but from a writing perspective it’s done lazily. If you want to show them growing up it has to be done so that we see the buildup and the impact, not just kill off a character we’ve never seen then do a minute long montage of everyone crying and sad. I thought it was a poor round off to a good programme.

But we had seen him before!

Fun fact about Claire's dad is that his real job is being a successful playwright. His play Sadie was dramatised by BBC and I believe is still on the iplayer. Well worth a watch.

In one half minute scene in the first episode then pushed into this series briefly. I didn’t know his name, whether he and Claire generally got on, anything really about him. I just felt like they thought ‘who can we kill off for a bit of emotional damage, but someone that won’t really affect anything and we can just kill them off easily without bothering to do any work? What about Claire’s dad?’ I think if you’re going to kill a character off and expect it to have an emotional impact on the audience you need to do a lot better than that.

I think if you’re going to kill a character off and expect it to have an emotional impact on the audience you need to do a lot better than that.

It did have an emotional impact on lots of the audience though, loads of us were in tears! Because it wasn't about her dad as such, it was about her losing him and her friends responses to her grief.

Plus 90% of a character dying is is seeing the before and the aftermath properly, actual effort put into it. Someone mentioned Buffy’s mother upthread and that was done well. We had 4 full series of Buffy’s mother as a loving (and Buffy’s only involved) parent, despite them sometimes disagreeing. Her death was handled sensitively with time given to it, then we see how it affects her children. Good writing, sensitive handling, respect of the audience in how they will be satisfied by a storyline etc. This just felt lazy and poor to me.

Yeah I appreciate that. I mean loads were in tears reading A Little Life but I thought it was absolute rubbish, poorly written and badly plotted. So it’s all taste. I thought this finale was lazy and banking on an easy emotional impact by showing all the girls crying and sad in a montage. Others obviously thought it was good.

The moment that was emotional for me was watching her crumble from a high to the worst thing that had ever happened to her. In a way, making it a character that the audience themselves wasn't hugely involved with meant it was all about Clare's reaction and not how we ourselves felt about 'losing' him.

As I've said, it was something with an extremely close parallel to me in my life, and so I reacted very strongly to it. But I think looking back that my friends at the time, while not in any way close to my mother, felt the impact of the event through me and not because of their own sorrow that she was dead.

That's when I stopped watching Buffy! If I'm watching a light hearted teen drama or comedy I really don't want many episodes of a total depression session. Plus it would have been out of kilter to have a huge build up and aftermath to Clare's dad dying when the terror and death that's the background to the girls story is handled with a light touch.

I love the fact that Lisa McGee’s real life husband was the mute fella in the mammies episode 😂

I love Gerry! Despite his FIL being consistently hideous to him and his SIL driving him up the wall he is so supportive of Mary in a solid dependable way.
I thought Mary and Gerry were the standouts this episode. And the mammy episode was my favourite.

I meant this season, not this episode.

I've recently re-watched all three series and I'm pretty certain we saw Claire's Dad in series 1 before we saw her Mum, who I recognised from Motherland. He's never been a major character, but as others have said, I responded last night to the grief of the girls and their support for Claire. I'm glad somebody else noticed the normally loathsome Jenny reaching out to touch Claire and show her sympathy. I was very touched by that.

I love Jenny Joyce. Every scene she's in is gold.

'You'll go far in life, Jenny.........

........but you won't be well liked'

I bet there'll be a scene in the final episode where grandad tells Gerry he actually likes him but that he'll deny it and beat him up if he dares tell anyone he said so.

Yes!

Completely agree @GregBrawlsInDogJail

I don’t think we were meant to feel sad that Mr Devlin died, we were meant to feel sad for Clare that she’d lost her daddy aged 17.

I’m also glad it wasn’t a Troubles related death, it shows irony really - the girls are told to fear the conflict their whole lives because it may result in death, but what did results in death was something no one saw coming