Doesn’t Mick Johnno’s leaving line just leave you ... ANGRY? I thought Sinbad’s line was bad, but Mick’s is positively pathetic. It’s no storyline at all, just another incidence of miraculously cured madness on Brookside, which has replaced drugs, sorry, ‘drooks’. It’s almost as if the writers have panicked and just picked a situation out of a hat and expected Mick to react to it. What results is a lame line for a character who has been nothing less than a Brookside stalwart for 12 years. AND he’s reduced to taking advice off the resident ‘been there-done that-red the book-seen the movie- and-bought the tee-shirt man. Tonight’s ep was the weakest link in the series of ‘bubbles’ recently featured on Brookside.
We pick up the action literally minutes from where we left off on Friday, with Mick returned in despair to his home. He is at the kitchen sink, washing the blood from his hands. You’ll recall that he pierced his hand with a kitchen utensil after trying to open a jar of coffee, before he set about swigging from a bottle of whiskey and generally destroying his fixtures and fittings. He glances at the shattered mirror, catching his angry reflection in the remaining pieces of glass.
Jimmy had previously knocked at the front door and was given short shrift by Mick, but now he’s gone round to the back door and is knocking. Mick opens the door, glaring at Jim. Is there a problem? Mick demands.
No problem, replies Jimmy the Wise. It’s just that he’s worried about Mick, that’s all.
The last thing he needs, snaps Mick, is some amateur shrink come round, sticking his nose in where it’s not wanted.
Hearing those words, Jimmy turns and starts to walk away; but Mick suddenly realises what he’s said and calls out an apology to Jimmy. Saying that he meant nothing of what he said, he invites Jimmy into the house.
Inside, Jimmy finds the place a mess - knives and forks all over the floor - and he clocks the broken mirror. Jim offers to tidy up, but Mick insists that he’ll do the job, himself. As he surveys the mayhem, Jimmy muses that Mick has really lost his head this time.
Jimmy decides to take the bull by the horns and asks Mick exactly what happened at Max Farnham’s. Mick shamefully admits that he ‘went beserk’ and nearly killed Max because he believed that Max had killed Susannah. Mick explains bitterly that it should have been Mick now living in Susannah’s house and raising her kids. Instead, he had nearly killed Max and basically that was down to the fact that Mick had become a raging screw-up, who was merely jealous of Max and Max’s ‘new woman’. (At least he admits that jealousy is the cause of his violence, something that the Miserable Madam, Katie, will never do).
Amazed at his own capacity for violence, Mick confesses to Jimmy that he would have easily killed Max, if Jacqui hadn’t arrived and stopped him. Now what if he’d gone ahead and killed the man? Mick asks rhetorically. That would have set him behind bars for the rest of his life.
Jimmy listens to this and ruefully reflects that he’s aware of prison life ... He’s been there, and it’s no picnic having your kids visit you in prison. Ah, but Mick’s kids have disowned him, Mick reckons. Jimmy protests that Mick’s kids think the world of him; but Mick disagrees.
Mick points out that he blasted Jemma for being stupid and naive, when she overdosed on drugs at the Millennium Club; and all the time, he’d done the same thing when he took steroids whilst body-building a few years back. Why, he’d been popping pills long before Jemma ever thought about doing such things.
And then there’s Leo, Mick continues. Mick confesses to coming over with the moral high-hand when Leo got an underaged girl pregnant. He even ran Leo out of the house. But who was he, Mick, to preach morals? He’d robbed Leo of a girlfriend in the past, and then proceeded to sleep with the girl’s mother. Mick begins to laugh hysterically, whilst swigging from the whiskey bottle. He can’t blame his kids for running out on him - after all, he let them down.
Jimmy calmly tells Mick that he hasn’t let his kids down. If anyone, Jimmy knows all about letting kids down. If he had been a better dad, Little Jimmy would have been alive today, instead of in a grave. And Mick was wrong to think his kids had deserted him. They’d simply spread their wings and moved on, as you do ... As Mick should do.
Mick confesses to Jimmy that all he had ever wanted, he had in Susannah; and how did she repay his love? By sleeping with that snooty doctor, he snarls. And even in the end, Yvonne couldn’t stand the sight of him. Mick reckons he should get used to being on his own.
Jimmy identifies with Mick’s attitude. He knows the feeling of being on his own, of thinking that there is no one in the world for you. Jim muses that when a person is really close to another person, then having to cope with being on your own is doubly hard. Jimmy gazes out the Johnson window in the direction of Hotel Corkhill, obviously thinking of Jackie.
He reminisces about when he ‘lost it’ big time, and found himself on the school roof. As he gazed down at Jackie standing on the ground, he realised how far apart he and Jackie had really become. And he knew at that moment, that the further apart they were from each other, the better it would be for both of them. And nothing mattered to Jimmy at that moment, simply because for that moment, he had no one.
Mick interjects to ask Jimmy if the sight of Jackie standing on the ground below stopped him from jumping.
No, Jimmy admits, it was some interfering bizzie, who grabbed him from behind. (No mention of Lindsey’s pep talk then).
Hearing that, Mick invites Jimmy to take a pew and have a drink with him. As Jimmy takes a seat, he notices a shard of broken mirror in the shape of a dagger, lying atop a picture of Susannah.
Jim declines a drink, citing the fact that he’s still on his tablets and the two don’t mix. Mick asks Jimmy if he hates the bizzie who saved his life, or has everything all worked out for him?
Jimmy is determined that his life WILL work out. He admits that he gets through days by telling himself about all the good things that have happened to him in his life, like Wills, for example.
Feeling sorry for himself again, Mick comments that Jimmy is lucky to have most of his family still around him. Mick has no one.
Jimmy tells Mick that he has himself; he doesn’t need anyone else; but Mick maintains that everyone hates him. He admits that he’s too heavy-handed with people. Why, just ask Max and Jacqui; ask Jerome and Yvonne; ask Sinbad, he says sadly. Mick says that he comes over as this big, moralistic, anti-violent bloke, but just look what he’s done in the past year - nutted Dave Burns, brawled in the street with Marty Murray. He even tried to physically hurt Jerome; and now Jerome was absolutely terrified of him. Then, of course, he’d only just returned from the Farnhams’, where he had Max by the neck on the floor. If it hadn’t been for Jacqui coming home at that moment ... And all because he had that silly notion that Max had killed Susannah!
Jimmy sighs wearily, saying that a person’s mind does funny things in times of stress. When a person loses someone he loves, it’s natural to want to blame someone.
Mick continues. Susannah had pleaded with him when he kicked off about her and Darren, he says. She still wanted him to marry her; but instead, Mick lashed out at her and left her in bits. He walked out on her; he’d come home that night and left her in a state. Mick picks up the shard of mirror glass and ruminates sadly. He might as well have pushed Susannah down the stairs, himself. More than anyone, he was responsible for her death; and he stares at his image in the shard of mirror.
Shortly, he and Jimmy adjourn to the back garden. It’s early evening, and Mick is still holding the jagged piece of mirror. Jimmy gently reaches over and removes the potential weapon from Mick’s hand, commenting that he knew Susannah meant a lot to Mick.
Mick begins a belated eulogy to Susannah (which, regrettably, is almost laughable, considering the sort of person Susannah was). Mick thought of her as being really delicate (probably because she was posh). Whenever he held her in his arms, he felt good; he felt she was his to look after (there you go, Mick, with the old ‘woman as chattel’ premise). He loved Susannah’s voice - how one moment she could sound just like a little girl and the next she could be strong. He loved the way she took no nonsense off others - especially Max.
He reminisces about her beautiful, deep blue eyes. Why she didn’t have to say anything; she just had this way of looking at Mick ... And he would have done anything for her. He would have done anything anyway, he admits. But he couldn’t save her life.
Jimmy remarks that Mick can’t continue to blame himself and Mick reflects on the sadness of the situation. Jimmy then asks if Mick thought that he and Susannah would have gone the distance. Mick says he was ‘well up for it’.
(There’s a brief cinematic bridge here, complete with ‘WHOOSH’ sound effects, showing briefly photos in an album of happier times in Mick’s life that had gone by - Mick and Susannah smiling happily, then Mick and Leo together).
Jimmy asks Mick what his plans are now. Mick replies that he just wants to dig a hole and retreat within it for awhile. There’s no point in doing that, says Jim. The world would still be there, each time Mick raised his head above the parapet. Mick needs to go forward.
(Another WHOOSH bridge, and we see a brief photo of a much younger Mick, Josie and the kids - the first Leo and Jemma. Surprised there’s no WHOOSH about Marianne, Ellis, or Elaine!)
Jimmy begins to tell Mick a surrealistic story about when he was in hospital. Shortly before Christmas, the hozzy had organised a trip out for a group of patients to a local shopping precinct, in order to acclimatise them to life in the world again. There was muzak playing all around and people were rushing to and fro, Christmas shopping.
Jimmy and the other patients were all seated on a bench in the middle of the precinct; and as people passed, they would stare at them, as though they were freaks of nature. He felt that they were like parts of the Christmas display, like little elves and Tinkerbells et al. Only people didn’t bring their children close to them, but rather pulled them away to avoid contact. As he tells this story, the camera pans around Mick’s front room, taking in various family pics on display (which we’d never seen before). There’s a picture of Jemma with a painted face and a picture of Leo standing like a berk.
Jimmy continues with his story. Jim was so distressed by the public’s reaction to him and his fellow patients, that he wanted to scream at the people. And just at that moment, Jimmy says, reality left him. The camera pans on a shot of Mick, and over his shoulder, we see a photo of Sinbad, decked out in a suit.
Then, Jim says, from out of nowhere, a nurse appeared. He thought that he was hallucinating and that she was actually an angel. He remembered crying and saying that he didn’t want to die. (This is a bad imitation of Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life - ‘Please, God, let me live again. I want to live again’). Anyway, at that moment, Jim says, his head suddenly cleared. And he could see that the mystery woman wasn’t an angel at all, just a smiling nurse.
The nurse sat down on the bench beside him and put a comforting arm around his shoulder. Jimmy admits that that was one of the best feelings he’d ever experienced. This wasn’t some professional trying to dose him up on something. It was just someone recognising him for what he was - a no-mark who needed a bit of help, or a talk or a cuddle. He just sat there with her for ages; and for the first time, he knew he was going to get better.
Mick jokes mirthlessly that Jimmy should send that nurse his way; but Jimmy tells him that the nurse is there with Mick already. She’s in his mind.
Jimmy pronounces that he’s better because he’s learned to accept what he is, not to dwell a lot on what he was or worry about what he would be in the future. Suddenly, Mick, who’s sitting beside Jimmy on the sofa, starts to cry. He blubs that it’s so hard knowing what was best or what to do. Jimmy pats him on the arm comfortingly.
Only Mick can decide what’s best for Mick, Jim tells him, whether he should make a fresh start or get stuck in with his old memories that keep dragging him back. Jimmy reminds Mick that he won’t solve anything by running away or by ‘taking that big sleep option that you won’t wake up from’.
Mick rises from the sofa and gazes around his home, as if in revelation.
As though he’s seen the proverbial light, Mick announces that it’s time to stop feeling sorry for himself. Why, he sees people worse off than himself every day of his life. When he was a kid, he reminisces, he used to play on some of the disused bomb sites in town. Being a kid then was nothing like it was today - no designer toys and such. He recalls being one of the poorest kids around. He was aware of that. And he grafted hard all his life.
He strove to be someone, and he was always afraid of getting bucked back to what he was in the beginning, a no one.
Jimmy encourages Mick by telling him that he was always ‘someone’ - he was himself.
Mick tries to explain what he means, saying that when he was a kid, there were no black role models the way there were today. Black people were totally ignored - no blacks on television, radio or in newspapers of films. It was as though they didn’t exist. This is what Mick really wanted to show people, his family and friends - that any snot-nosed kid, black or white, could be a success if they worked hard enough for it.
‘I’ll drink to that!’ Cheers Jimmy.
Mick pledges to stop trying to worry about what other people think of him and to try to stop living his life for other people - his kids or all the women he was desperate to cling onto or any kid or misfit in trouble, like Tim or Sinbad.
‘It’s your life,’ surmises Jim. ‘What do you reckon?’
Mick wonders whether he should stay right where he is or get off and go where he hasn’t a clue.
Jimmy admits that the latter option has all the appeal of a great adventure.
Looking at some point in the far distant future, Mick decides that he has enough nerve to give the adventure a go. As the camera pulls back, we see a smiling Mick gazing into a mirror.
(There really ought to have been swelling music, but that would have been
too sickening
Summary © 2001 Marion Watts
Brookside and all related materials are © Mersey Television 1982-2001