A Tale of Two Couples
This episode concerns two prominent couples on Brookside, both discussing their futures together - one white trash, one middle-class. One on the verge of a wedding, one on the verge of a life of crime. One dealing witht he consequences of a crime, one believing that crime was the only way of life to be had. Nice juxtaposition. Too bad Brookside had to cheapen the episode by filming Ellison, easily inheriting the mantle from Claire Sweeney as being one of the worst actresses ever to appear in a soap, semi-nude and covered only by a sheet for the entire episode; coupled with the beefcake wannabe that Tim’s become, hoping to cater to the fantasies of adolescent girls. Oh well, it seems to have turned the newest contributors to the newsgroup on to no end. Wet dreams abound.
Jacqui is uncertain as to her reaction to Max’s confession of having killed Susannah. In fact, she simply doesn’t believe such rubbish, but Max maintains that she wanted to know the reason behind his cancellation of the wedding, and there it was. He killed Susannah, pushed her down the stairs.
Jacqui still doesn’t believe the story. But Max admits that it’s actually a relief to have confessed to someone.
Jacqui rushes from the room, saying that she’s off upstairs to pack her bags.
Timily are preparing for their evening out, but Emily’s demanding to know where Tim’s going to find the money to allow her to visit Margi. Tim replies, playfully coy, that that fact was for Tim to know and Emily to find out. He then asks what it’s worth for her to know about where he proposed to find the money enabling her to visit her mother, and - with thoughts of an evening out aside - she dashes off toward their room, with Tim in hot (‘hot’ being the operative word) pursuit.
Max is headed off toward the bedroom as well, but for another reason. He opens the door, but doesn’t find Jacqui packing her bags. Instead, she sits morosely on the pre-marital (as well as extra-marital) bed, looking despondent. Max immediately apologises for everything, but Jacqui’s been doing some severe soul-searching.
What’s the matter with her? She demands. Boy, she sure can pick’em. Gobby hits women, and Max pushes them down stairs. She’s spent the past year of her life dealing with those types when she could have had an easy life with Nathan.
Max wants to explain to Jacqui exactly what happened the night of Susannah’s death. Of course, it was supposed to be the night before her wedding to Mick. Max knew in his heart of hearts that the whole idea of her marrying Mick Johnson would be a mistake, so he came back to the house in order to talk her out of it. The irony of the situation, says Max, was that by the time he arrived, the wedding had already been called off - due to Mick’s having found out about Susannah’s affair with Darren.
When Max found out about this, he was initially delighted. This meant that he could, in effect, wipe the slate clean and, hopefully, start again with Susannah.
The couple sat downstairs and had a long talk, which was constructive, and centred on their relationship over the years. Max actually thought that some progress had been made during the conversation in re-establishing their relationship on a new footing. Eventually, they found themselves standing on the landing, and Max moves from the bedroom to the top of the stairs to illustrate for Jacqui.
Max remembers that he told Susannah that he loved her and what she meant to him. He then tried to explain to her what it meant to him for the two of them to be together. He told her that he’d changed and that he would never let her down again. And to add insult to injury, Susannah even told him that she still loved him too.
When he heard that, Max was hopeful. He asked her if she would give him another chance to be with her, but Susannah replied that she would never give him another chance, ‘never in a million years’ being her exact words. And she qualified the statement by laughing in his face. She continued by telling Max that he disgusted her, that she could never trust him again and that he would never change.
At that very moment, Max says, he realised as well that he would never change, that she was right. An immense rage, more at himself than at her, welled up inside him. He wanted to kill her for being right. She was standing facing him on the landing (and Max peers down the steep, empty stairwell). Her back was to the stairs. Angrily, he pushed her. She tottered backwards and the heel of her mule sandal broke. She fell down the stairs.
Jacqui listens in horror.
Timily are (surprise surprise) in bed, having had what appears to have been a stonking bonk. Ms Ellison is draped modestly in a sheet, which is low enough to allow more than a decent footage of her decolletage. (For all you newsgroup readers who have trouble with words of more than one syllable, that means the sheet barely covers the nips on her plastically-enhanced boobs, causing you to salivate). In true lad fashion, Tim rolls off the recumbant Mekon, remarking in a self-satisfied manner that ‘Tinhead’ gets his way again.
Emily, however, isn’t wholly satisfied. She’s still disgruntled at missing out on a piece of the Gobby Moffatt action. So Tim begins to tell her the story about the capture and punishment of Gobby Moffatt. He tells her about Gobby meeting Katie at the derelict factory, not realising that he was being watched by Mike, Jimmy, Tim and Lindsey. When they made their presence known, Tim says, Gobby Moffatt turned as white as a sheet. He was so spooked, he reversed his car nearly over Katie Rogers.
Tim was in hot pursuit of him in Ron’s rattletrap Capri. He literally put the pedal to the metal and scarpered. In fact, Tim bets Ron’s never had that old banger going so fast. Tim went flat out. It was like the chase scene in Bullitt. He cut up a side street and suddenly found himself bang behind the Moffatt vehicle. Then suddenly Gobby did a handbrake turn and raced away. Tim, meanwhile, sat motionless, letting Gobby think he’d made an escape.
But they caught up with him at this block of flats. They got out of the car and ran towards Gobby. As soon as Gobby clocked the baseball bat, he began to run. But Tim caught up with him and rugby-tackled him. Gobby dropped, says Tim, like a sack of spuds.
Emily, looking pleased, as she lies on her side, resting her head on her arm, asks Tim what happens next. Rising from the bed, Tim gets the baseball bat to show her. Gobby, he says, has completely bottled out and is lying on the ground. But he’s still maintaining that he knew nothing about Harry’s whereabouts. So Tim asks him where the kid is. Gobby says he doesn’t know and ...WHACK! Down comes the bat across Gobby’s legs. (And Tim brings the bat down hard on his side of the mattress).
Tim asks the question again. Where’s the kid? Gobby doesn’t know. WHACK! The bat across his face, and Tim swipes the mattress again. Third time. Where’s the kid? Still a denial and WHACK! Across the ribs. Tim is getting flushed with reliving the violence, and Emily is getting aroused. When Tim realises this, he climbs back into bed with her. What a cheap scene!
Max is continuing his harrowing tale about Susannah’s death. After he had gone, it looked as though Susannah had crawled to the kitchen, trying to reach her mobile phone. But she had died before she found it. Finishing his account, Max tells Jacqui that at first he wanted to give himself up to the police; but the thought of having the children put into care prevented him from doing so. He didn’t want the children to know their father was a killer.
After another bonking session, Tim has something else to show Emily. He hands her a British passport. She takes the document, opens it and sees that it belongs to Gobby. So? Emily says. Gobby Moffat’s passport. What did that mean?
Tim explains that he met a lad in prison, who told him that there was a big market for stolen passports in the U.K. Gobby had that in his wallet. Tim had arranged to meet his prison mate tomorrow to get some dosh for the passport. In fact, the lad had told Tim that there might be some ‘work’ for Tim to do.
Emily is sceptical. Still clad in her sheet, she asks Tim rhetorically if this lad runs some sort of employment agency. Of a sort, Tim responds.
‘You mean for dodgy jobs, don’t you?’ Asks Emily, suspiciously.
Tim protests that he’s tried to go straight, but it hasn’t worked. It’s clear the only real money he’ll make is through crime.
Jacqui is lamenting again about having made a mess of her life. Max asks her what she’s going to do. Do? Queries Jacqui. Well, that was up to Max. But Max has already made his mind up. He’s going to ring the police, he states calmly. In fact, he has DI Holden’s number on a card in his shirt pocket. The man told Max to ring if he ever needed anything.
Jacqui tries to stop him. What about Harry and Emma? She asks. What happens to them?
Max replies that by doing this, he will save them from having to deal with a potentially violent father. Before, he was afraid of them going into care. Now, he knew they would be safe with Jacqui looking after them. It was time for Max to face the music, and he picks up the phone and dials the police.
Tim is doing the hard sell on Emily about his returning to a life of crime. Tim’s quite happy about it. Emily, he says, deserves the best - the best clothes, car, house, a swimming pool. He paints a picture of the pair of them at 60, with a big house and garden and grandkids. That was all a dream, but it wouldn’t come true by selling burgers. Emily reckons she wouldn’t look so great in a swimming cozzy at 60, but in a truly ironic line (considering the actress’s real-life experiences), Tim tells her by then she could have had all the cosmetic surgery she wanted - well, she’s well on the way, and she’s not even TWENTY!
Jacqui implores Max to hang up the phone, but Max tells her it’s too late. Someone has already gone to get DI Holden. But Jacqui persists. If Max does this, where does that leave her - alone with 2 kids. Max going to jail now would do no one any good.
Tim continues his act of convincing. Emily should realise that Tim had had nothing but shite jobs since coming out of prison. The last one was mere cabbage. Yesterday’s events gave him the old buzz again. The life of crime was the only life for him. What was their alternative? Em stuck in a salon doing OAP’s blue rinses and him stuck doing something for minimum wage. But crime is what he’s qualified to do. He wants the pair of them to start big. (Big ideas, but neither of them are big on brains. Another crime wave is something this show does NOT need. These two need culling).
Jacqui is desperately trying to convince Max to see reason, after failing to get through to the police. Max told her that when Susannah fell backward, her heel broke, didn’t he? Yes, Max agrees. Well, then, says Jacqui. If it hadn’t broke, then she wouldn’t have lost her balance, would she? She would have been able to catch herself from falling.
The phone rings, and Max reckons that’s DI Holden returning his call. He makes a motion to answer the phone, but Jacqui begs him to think this action through.
The call, however, is not the police; it’s the proprietors of the site where the couple are having their wedding reception the next day. Max apologises to the people, telling them that the wedding’s been cancelled and they didn’t require the room anymore. The party on the other end of the line tells Max that he has forfeited his deposit and Max rings off.
Jacqui asks Max if he truly meant to kill Susannah. She reasons that Max was full of rage and merely lashed out at her. He acted on impulse and in the heat of the moment, without thinking of the consequences. That wasn’t murder, says Jacqui. It was bad luck at the top of a staircase, a crime of passion, if anything.
Max argues that he lost his temper and as a result, Susannah lost her life. Jacqui maintains that it was an accident - a tragic one, yes, but an accident all the same. Max persists, saying that Harry and Emma had no right to be around him with that potential powder keg temper about to explode.
Jacqui reminds Max that the night Susannah was killed, Jacqui lost her temper with her too. She had offered to buy Harry back from her; the two had got into a tussle and Jacqui had lunged for Susannah, pinning her against a wall. She could have easily done the same as Max, she says.
But there was a difference, says Max. Susannah and Jacqui had their argument at the BOTTOM of the stairs.
Jacqui tries to reason further with Max, assuring him that he’s nothing like Gobby Moffatt. Max is kind and gentle. Jacqui’s seen the way he suffered after Susannah’s death, and she knows that never in a million years, would Max do something like that again. Hasn’t he suffered enough for Susannah’s death? And how could he abandon his children?
The phone rings again, and Jacqui moves to answer it. Before she does, however, Max asks her hopefully if everything she’s said means she still wants to marry him.
‘I didn’t say that,’ replies Jacqui, answering the phone.
This time the caller IS DI Holden, returning the previous call. Jacqui bluffs, telling him that the couple had called to inform him that they wouldn’t be pressing charges against Gobby for smashing the window, nor would they be changing their statements. She hangs up the phone to face Max.
She explains to Max that while she could forgive Max for what happened to Susannah, Max had to forgive himself. Jacqui trusts Max, and it hurt her that Max hadn’t trusted her with this story. He must trust her. Max is overwhelmed at Jacqui’s loyalty and love. He now is convinced that the couple should marry.
Jacqui, however, is now having doubts. She reminds Max that he’s been married a total of four times - twice to Susannah and twice to Patricia. He was unfaithful to both women - Susannah with Patricia and Patricia with Susannah and to them both with Faye. Everytime he’d wed, Max had taken vows and broken them. To Jacqui, that seems as if Max didn’t take these vows very seriously.
She’d thought that Susannah’s death had changed Max, but Max, himself, had told Jacqui that Susannah was convinced that he’d never change. He’d even admitted that Susannah was right. If this was the case, why should Jacqui marry him?
Across the Close, yet another Brookside woman is questioning her man’s motives. The Emily portion of Timily sits upright in their marital bed, demurely covering her pneumatic front with the ubiquitous sheet, whilst demanding to know what will happen if Tim should happen to get caught, if he returns to his bad-boy ways. Tim’s time in prison, Emily declares, was a nightmare for her. She could tolerate a few months, but - make no mistake - next time would mean a few YEARS. Emily just couldn’t cope with that.
Tim reasons that a better life is worth the risk of getting caught. Sure, Emily will miss him, but Tim thinks she’s made of stronger stuff. A nine-to-five job, he reckons, is worse than a prison sentence. A life of crime, if executed correctly, would mean loads of money for the couple. Why, prison would be a mere sacrifice, if they could have the dosh. (You gotta real brain there, Tim, old bean. Together, you and Emily could be lethal ... To yourselves).
‘Boot,’ begins Emily, articulately, ‘wouldn’t it bother yer rkids knowin’ yer wuz a criminal, like?’
Ah, but by the time the kids were old enough (whatever ‘old enough’ means), Tim would be a legitimate businessman - and successfull too. And he’d make sure their kids went straight too - they’d all be doctors and solicitors and the like. They’d have the best start in life, including the best schools. (Dream on ... Thugs beget thugs). The question is, he says, do they have the guts to carry through with this plan, while they were still young?
The two recite their love for each other. Emily remarks that Tim’s a gorgeous man and they were sure to have gorgeous kids. Tim pledges that he wants to ensure that Emily has it all - posh house, nice car, designer togs ... (Isn’t it significant how their ‘love’ is based on only the material and the obvious - the fact that they’re so gorgeous and their love is manifested by only material wealth? How spiritually starved these two philistines are, or rather, how depressingly ignorant).
So, finishes Tim, should they go for it? Emily agrees, readily. Happy to have convinced Emily of the merits of a life of crime, Tim asks if the pair are still going out. Emily coyly remarks that they don’t need to. (Oh, well, at least they’ll save 45 quid!)
Jacqui and Max are still discussing their future together. Jacqui asks a legitimate question. Every time Max says, ‘I do’, does he mean it? Max maintains that he does. Well, then, persists Jacqui, how does he explain his infatuation with Faye?
Max looks noticeably uncomfortable and struggles for an explanation. Well, er ... Whenever he made his wedding vows, he sincerely meant to keep them at the time. Jacqui sarcastically makes a comment about Max’s fingers being crossed.
Anyway, Max says, Fay was just an on-and-off thing. But, he assures Jacqui, he’s completely different now. Jacqui has proven to be a tower of strength for him. She now knows his darkest secrets, and she’s still willing to support him. She’s proven to be a wonderful mother, and Max and the children need her so much.
Jacqui eyes Max warily. So, Max SAYS he’s changed, but can he honestly look her in the eye and tell her he’s not still attracted to other women? Max asserts that he’s not. (Hang on a minute ... I never took Max Farnham to be a womaniser to a great degree, merely a victim of circumstance. Someone explain this to me, please.)
Max launches into a parable that occurred a few weeks after Susannah’s death. He was in a local shopping mall, when a young woman wearing a tight miniskirt (Emily?) passed him going up an escalator. Well, his immediate reaction was only natural (do tell). He was appreciative. But the difference was that he didn’t do anything ABOUT his attraction to the girl. Because of that, he was convinced that he would never give into any sort of tempation like this again. In fact, Max was about as sure of this as any man could be.
Jacqui gives Max one of her more dubious doe-eyed stares and sets a condition upon her going ahead with the wedding. She demands Max’s assurance that he is going to remain 100% faithful to her after marriage. If he cannot give her that reassurance, then she cannot go ahead with the wedding. (That’s a pretty reasonable reassurance, in my opinion. If you can’t guarantee your partner complete fidelity, you’ve got no reason to walk down the aisle).
Summary © 2001 Marion Watts
Brookside and all related materials are © Mersey Television 1982-2001