It has to be said. No one does disaster better than Brookside - sieges, murders, famine, flood, even a multiplicity of explosions, and - of course - fire. But, special effects aside, I have to say, as a seasoned Brookside viewer, that this week’s episodes showed Brookside at its best of old. It showed how one event linked and intertwined the Close as a community, how a single disaster made even the Murrays interact with their other neighbours as a unit. This theme carried through the week, and guess what? It worked and worked well. This is what we should see more of - not disaster per se, but characters interacting with each other and commenting upon each other’s lives.
The only downside to this week was the atrocious over-acting and high decibel delivery of Jennifer Ellison. Take her out of the equation and you would have had Brookie to perfection. She was, quite simply, awful - awful to watch, awful to stomach and awful to bear. One feels no sympathy for Emily, no matter how many times the writers are told to emphasise the fact that she is still suffering from the deaths of her father and brother and her father’s infidelity. She comes across as mean-spirited, selfish and simply, hateful. Intelligent men who watch the show find nothing attractive about her. Most women can’t abide her, but it isn’t jealousy - it’s mere annoyance at her shallowness.
The sooner her character is axed, the better. Suffice it to say, that there should have been a death in the fire this week. Like the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz, she should have been melted down until her plastic body popped, and she should have been discovered as a blob of hardened plastic topped with a thatch of bleached straw.
Ratings would have soared.
It’s Sunday morning on Brookside Close. Jacqui Farnham’s been out with Harry and Emma and she and the kids return home to be greeted by Max. Jacqui’s wound up, however, and it’s not the fault of the kids. As soon as she enters the house, she starts rabbiting about the situation at the Health Club that’s evolved in her absence.
She just couldn’t settle with the kids this morning, she says to Max, as soon as she sees him. She’s away for a couple of weeks and comes back to find that Sammy Rogers settled in at the Health Club - cuckoos in the nest. She thought Sol had better judgement than to hire someone like that.
Max tries to soothe his wife. Maybe Jacqui should just let the situation lie, he suggests. After all, Sol was the manager and he only did what he thought was best. Anyway, Max observes, innocently, it isn’t as if Sammy Rogers wasn’t qualified for the job. She must have loads of experience in the hotel and leisure industry. Why not let her stay? It’s not as though Jacqui were round the Health Club on a daily basis anyway.
Is Max forgetting how that bitch tried to break up their marriage? Jacqui retorts. She’s of a mind to go right around the Health Centre right now and have it out with Sol.
Again, Max tries to soothe her. Look, he says, it’s Sunday. Mike and Rachel are working next door and the kids are settled from their outing. Why not relax and enjoy the day together?
Jacqui concedes the point, but it’s obvious from the look on her face that she’s still bothered.
Next-door at the bungalow, that archtypical student, Nikki Shadwick, is trying to study in the middle of the busiest room in the house (as students do ... Not). From the back garden, we hear the steady and loud, buzzing noise of some sort of power saw, indicative of the fact that Ray must be nearby.
Jerome enters the room, the ubiquitous black spider still perched atop his head. He remarks on how noisy Ray is. Why can’t he do some normal Sunday morning thing, like go for a walk? Obviously, Jerome has been roused from his bed by the clamour.
Well, Nikki remarks, it’s better than him and Jessie blatantly not talking. The silence in that house between the pair was positively deafening. In fact, she tells Jerome, Ray and Jessie haven’t spoken two words for days.
It does make for an atmosphere, Jerome admits, ruefully, especially when he, himself, was hoping for a little afternoon delight that day on Nikki’s part.
She can’t oblige, apologises Nikki. She has yet another essay to write. (Sorry, but Brookside really SHOULD do its homework - pun intended. Nikki, a THIRD year psych student, should be researching a scholarly paper. University work does not consist of pithy essays smattered here and there. It’s lectures, tutorials, research, discussion groups and MAJOR papers - and I mean at least twenty to thirty-page papers. Essays are a thing for high school students). In fact, it was so noisy in that house, she was thinking of popping over to Emily’s for the afternoon for a bit of peace and quiet. (HA ... HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA ... Now I’ve heard everything. The sound of Ray’s power saw is more mellifluous than the Mekon’s grating voice). How about a romantic evening instead? Nikki suggests.
Jerome looks uneasy. He’s promised to work tonight. Someone had called in sick and the bingo club asked if he could fill in. He wouldn’t normally, but he could do with the extra money.
It’s Sunday morning at Sitcom House. Marty and Plank sprawl in the lounge, reading the Sunday papers. As the doorbell rings, Plank plonks up to answer it, being admonished by his father to lay off the Belgian beer he suddenly brought home.
Answering the door, he finds Brigid waiting on the doorstep and calls out to Dire that his Nin is here. Brigid enters the lounge and greets Marty coldly. Marty doesn’t move from his chair.
Dire explodes into the lounge. Surprise, surprise! Rent-a-Catholic is going to Mass. Now that’s a first! In her usual rough tones, she commands that Marty make sure he put the chicken on at 3:30 - sorry, but what the hell’s going on here? The last Sunday Mass is High Mass at 11AM. Mass, even High Mass, only lasts 45 minutes. A body can set his watch by that. What the hell’s happening with Dire? Perhaps she and Brigid have secretly become Mormons, who spend three hours a Sunday at church services.
Brigid asks Dire if Antony had changed his mind about coming to Mass. Marty speaks up, answering that Antony wasn’t going to Mass. Dire, who seems to have had a change of heart since she backed Marty on not allowing Antony to go to Mass, flippantly tells Brigid to take no notice of Marty. (I mean, Dire doesn’t, so why should Brigid?)
Now Dire rounds on her Proddy husband. Antony used to enjoy going to Church, she berates him. What harm would it do? (Such a loving, supportive wife. If Dire is the best Marty can come up with, Jan must have been an ogre).
Marty gives Dire a purposeful and determined look from behind his sports page. Perhaps Dire and Brigid didn’t fully understand. The Church is part of Antony’s problem. It’s the Church and the way the two women have indoctrinated the lad, that alienates him from his peers.
Antony stalks, beetle-browed, into the lounge. Dire suggests that they let the lad speak for himself and asks Ant if he wants to come to Mass with them.
‘No!’ Exclaims Antony. ‘I’m NOT going!’
Seated on the sitcom sofa, Plank stifles a triumphant grin as he buries his head in The Sunday Sport (which probably features a topless pic of his ex-girlfriend Trona. It usually does).
Ray has at last had the temerity to enter the bungalow. Nikki is still trying
to study, amidst even more of a hubbub. Jessie is furiously running a hoover
over the carpet, making as much noise with the machine as is
ly possible.
Ray, thinking to break the thickening icy atmosphere emanating from Jess, puts
the kettle on and asks Jessie solicitously if she’d like a cuppa.
Jessie ignores him.
Ray then offers to put the casserole on for Jessie, whilst she’s at church that evening. Still no reply.
Nikki, meanwhile, hastily scribbles a note to Jerome, in puerile handwriting, telling him that she’s just popped over to Emily’s. Rising from the table, she goes toward Jessie and shouts about the hoover din that she’s going across to Jimily House in order to try to study.
Ray is still faffing about in the background, repeatedly asking Jessie if she wants him to put the casserole on for her whilst she’s at Evensong.
With Nikki wittering in front of her and Ray going on in back of her, Jessie finally turns the hoover off in consternation, announcing that she can’t hear herself think. Nikki tapes the note for Jerome onto the fridge and repeats to Jessie that she’s going across to Emily’s.
Finally deciding to answer Ray’s countless requests, Jessie roughly tells him that she doesn’t care what he does.
Alone with his wife, after Nikki departs, Ray says that he and Jessie simply have to talk about this situation in which they found themselves, but Jessie again ignores him. She tells him that she doesn’t want to talk.
Antichrist Ant sits alone in his shrine of a room, playing interminably with his Gameboy. Plank appears at the doorway. He speaks. He’s glad Ant’s decided to give up that church rubbish, he announces, approvingly. The look on Brigid’s face when Ant said he didn’t want to go to Mass was priceless. Why, Plank had given up that church nonsense when he was nine. (This must mean that the Murrays were not originally Catholic as this would have been before Dire was on the scene. If they were, this means that Plank had no confirmation, something that Dire would have certainly endeavoured to put right. I think Plank is C of E, nominally so).
Antony retorts that he hasn’t stopped going for good.
Plank shoots him a look of disbelief, then eyes the room. The state of the place - posters of saints, icons, Sacred Heart of Jesus! No wonder Ant gets stick from kids at school. What would any kid think, coming into a room where there were pictures of the Pope et al.
Antony shouts that no one knows what he has on the walls of his room.
Get real, says Plank. Didn’t that Imelda and Paige come over to see him last year when he was sick? They were up here, all right, and they saw all this rubbish. No wonder he gets called ‘Altar Boy’.
Antony accuses Plank of picking on him like the rest of people, because he’s different.
Get normal, orders Plank. Ant needs to get rid of this stuff and get some mates.
Antony protests that he has mates.
Plank shakes his head. Since when was the last time anyone at Sitcom House had even seen one of Antony’s so-called mates? A lad his age, Plank tells him, should have mates in and out of school. Antony had none.
Nikki is seated at the table in Jimily House now, ‘studying’. I use inverted commas because studying usually entails quiet and the person is usually alone. If not, he or she is usually closeted in some place conducive to the scholastic atmosphere - a library, for example. Nikki must either be very clever or very stupid, to even pretend to be able to study in the main room of a busy house, surrounded by her family and now engulfed by Emily’s grating, over-loud voice. (By the way, Nikki is NOT clever. She is stupid. You’ll see).
Emily is sounding particularly like chalk against a blackboard today, screeching at the top of her awful voice in her unitelligible white trash Scouse accent (even Ringo Starr at his worst never sounded this bad) about the foibles of Ray, giving vent to the fact that Dim had seen Ray ant that sneaking slag come out of The Black Bull in broad daylight, holding hands.
Not only that, she continues, he had the nerve to actually have that bitch in the bungalow. Nikki had seen that much.
Nikki is adding the diplomat’s card to her medical credentials. She’s certain that Ray had a good explanation for his behaviour. She couldn’t ever imagine Ray cheating on their nan. Why, perhaps the woman and Ray were just old friends?
Emily, in her best fishwife trailer trash voice, berates Nikki, reminding her of the situation of Gred, their father, and Susannah. Why, this was that all over again, only now it was their nan who would get hurt.
Dim speaks up briefly to say that he has to go out. He promises to text Emily later, and when he does, Emily is to meet him and Plank on The Parade.
When he goes, Emily begins her ceaseless tirade again. Ray’s a dark horse, that one, acting all nice, when all the time behind everyone’s back he was seeing that slag.
Nikki admits that she doesn’t think Jessie’s tackled Ray for an explanation of his actions yet.
Emily’s vile ears prick up at that remark. Well, if Jessie can’t be bothered to get the truth out of him, she will, she vows. She suggests that she and Nikki lay low until Jessie goes out and then tackle Ray for an explanation.
Jimmy appears in the front room at that moment, sniffing the air curiously. That smell, he announces, puzzled. He just couldn’t seem to get rid of it. He’s armed with a bucket, rubber gloves and a scouring brush.
What smell? Nikki asks.
That chemical smell, Jimmy explains. It’s coming from the drains, and he was about to clean them.
Emily casually and briefly remarks that he probably smells the ‘bog cleaner’, which is what Emily should be using to brush her teeth, her mouth is so vile and foul. (I wouldn’t be surprised if she has halitosis in real life).
As Jimmy passes through, Emily begins to moan about Jimmy’s weird behaviour and his obsession with smells. Nikki upbraids her sister, telling her not to upset Jimmy in his present state and reminding the callous, selfish, little bitch (how I do hope Ellison reads these summaries) that Jimmy was the only person for miles stupid enough to put a roof over her and Dim’s heads.
Emily intends to go over to the bungalow as soon as Jessie goes to church and kick Ray out before she comes back.
Next door, Plank is still trying to reason with a religious bigot - Antony, that is. Plank reminds the kid that he spends most of his time with his grandmother, for Christ’s sake. And when he’s not with her, he’s up here in his room praying or doing whatever. How many lads his age have their grandmothers for their best mates? Even Dire was worried about that, he says. Antony should forget about his Nin and that Mass rubbish and come into the real world.
Antony accuses Plank of bullying him, just like Imelda and Paige.
Get normal, Plank orders again. Antony was going back to school tomorrow, whether he liked it or not - or else he’d end up a right Billy No-Mates for the rest of his life.
Max Farnham, now dressed in his suit and ready to leave for the restaurant, stands in the middle of the Farnham front room and calls for his wife. He calls Jacqui’s name again, but gets no response. Suddenly, he realises where she might be and bolts for the front door.
Left alone in his room, the little Antichrist slowly approaches the wall and removes a large Crucifix. He sits on the bed and stares at it sadly.
Jessie is still bustling about the bungalow, tidying up. Ray follows her forlornly, like a lost puppy, offering to do various and sundry little jobs for her. Should he lay the table while she’s out? Should he finish tidying up for her?
Finally, in sheer exasperation, he pleads with her to talk to him.
Jessie spins around to face him, angrily. How could she talk to a man who was a fraud? She demands. Someone who so callously walked away from a pregnant woman? Someone who had a daughter all these years and didn’t think once to tell her about it? Jessie was insulted. She had made a point to share ALL her innermost secrets with Ray and this is how he repays her! She had no time for such a person, she says, storming off. She was going to church.
As she sweeps past a forlorn Ray, he’s heard to echo, wanly, ‘If you could only spare just ten minutes of your time ...’
At the Health Club, it being a Sunday, Sol sits at the reception desk having what is obviously a personal phone call with his wife (which is odd, because at the dinner party, he gave the impression that they were separated). He’s heard to ask her to give Lydia, their daughter, a big kiss from Daddy and that he would be home later that evening. Glancing up at the sound of someone entering, he sees Jacqui and hastily bids good-bye to his wife, saying that the boss had just entered.
Jacqui, her face like thunder, approaches the desk. Sol innocently asks how her holiday went.
‘Brilliant,’ replies Jacqui, brusquely, ‘until I came home to find Sammy Rogers working in the Club.’
Is that a problem? Asks Sol. Sammy’s a good member of staff and more than qualified for the job. Her CV was impeccable.
Jacqui could care less about her CV. She wants Sammy out and now.
Sol is genuinely puzzled by Jacqui’s reaction. (Remember Sammy snookered him into believing that she and Jacqui were mates). Jacqui succinctly explains to him that ‘that bitch Sammy’ did everything in her power to break up Jacqui’s marriage. She was the last person Jacqui would EVER consider employing after that. Now, Jacqui orders Sol, she’s out.
‘But I’ve given her a 12-month contract,’ protests Sol, still puzzled at the state of affairs. In the background, Max is seen descending the staircase from The Shelf.
Jacqui is appalled at Sol’s admission. ‘I don’t care if you’ve given her a contract for life,’ she cries, issuing an ultimatum. ‘Either YOU get rid of HER, or I’ll get shot of you both!’ Brushing past Max, she leaves in a huff, whilst Max remains to try to smooth the situation for Sol.
Back at Jimily House, Emily is glued to the front window on reconnaissance mission. Nikki is still seated at the kitchen table, trying to write her essay. Jimmy returns from the back garden, still wittering about the mysterious smell remaining in the drains. Anyway, he announces to Nikki, he’s given the drains a good swill. Now, he continues, is the scholar hungry? She must be. He’ll just nip to the loo and then rustle up some tea for them all.
He carries on upstairs, as Emily turns briefly from her surveillance duties to remark scathingly about Jimmy’s smell obsession. It’s really strange, she says, callously indifferent.
Dr Nikki (all credit given to Jaci Stephan), explains that Jimmy’s strange behaviour is due to his lack of medication; but Emily’s not even listening to Nikki now. She’s spied Jessie leaving the bungalow on her way to Evensong. Emily’s out the door in a flash, to have it out with Ray. Nikki follows desperately, begging Emily not to fly off the handle.
Emily barges in the front door of the bungalow to catch poor Ray, sitting alone and unawares. This particular scene brings out the worst in her character, and this scene, alone, is justification enough as to why Brookside ought to consider not renewing Jennifer Ellison’s contract. In this one scene, she blatantly exhibits why her character is the most unlikeable, unsympathetic, one-dimensional, selfish, self-centred and generally awful character EVER to be represented on the show, and that’s taking Lindsey Corkhill at her worst into consideration. The character of Emily does nothing but sink Brookside into the mire of white trash, and she’s one character that only the immature and the blatant wankers of the world would miss. Without her, Brookside might, just MIGHT gain back some of the 500,000 viewers it lost last year. With her, it stands to lose even more. (And anyone who wishes to quote this on the Official Forum has my permission).
Emily launches into a tirade of near-unintelligible invective against the old man, sounding like the worst of the great unwashed of the welfare state. What was Ray up to today? She grates, sarcastically. Thinking of sneaking his gerrrlfriend in while her Nan was at cherrrrrch? Ray was nothing boot a derrrty, sneaking, slimy al man. What was ‘e thinkink off, going out with a woman old enough to be his daughter?
Physically hunched against her lambast, Ray quietly remarks that the woman WAS his daughter.
Emily stops in mid-flow, asking him to repeat what he said.
‘I said she IS my daughter,’ he replies, with dignity. ‘And it’s a pity YOU thought the worst of me before you bothered to find out the truth.’
Emily is stunned, but immediately the narky, little bitch recovers herself. Well, she asks, who’s her mother? Reenie?
No, Ray admits, a woman called Sylvia Morgan.
So Ray was still an adulterer, sorry, aDOOlterer, shrills the Mekon, with her horrible, orange plastic face not two inches from the poor man’s ear. (I’m surprised Kenneth Cope didn’t have a heart attack, being faced with that ugly mug). And, she bets, that poor Jessie never never knew a thing about this until now!
Ray holds his head in his hands, near tears. It’s not something he’s proud of, he admits, wretchedly.
At that moment, an plastic extension of the Mekon’s plastic body makes a sound. It’s her mobile phone, signalling a text message (or txt msg) from Dim. She checks the contents and suddenly admits that she has to dash off. No explanation. She joost ‘as ter go.
‘Why don’t you stay?/ Asks Ray, summoning up some sarcasm. ‘Why don’t you stay and find out the truth?’
But the selfish, little bitch doesn’t seem to be bothered anymore. Dim has summoned her worthless presence. Ray can tell Nikki the truth, she remarks, callously, and thankfully for the viewers, leaves the screen.
There are still flashes of promise about the character of Nikki Shadwick. Take away the useless, stereotypical and false student image, the endless lectures about tuition fees and her association with either Jimmy or Jerome, and you have a character that could be developed nicely and turn into the successor to Jacqui Dixon. Nikki sits down, sympathetically, beside Ray, who seems confused at having assumptions so harshly levelled against his character.
‘It’s not something I’m proud of,’ he repeats, helplessly. ‘I was young ...’
Nikki apologises for Emily’s crass behaviour (when a sharp slap across her face might have been a better reaction). Emily sees these things differently than she does, Nikki explains, basically because of their father’s adultery (when Nikki couldn’t see anything at all because she was three sheets to the wind at the time).
Ray looks at the girl tremulously. Nikki had no idea how much this had been weighing on Ray’s mind. He fully intended on telling Jessie, but in his own way and in his own time, after Helen appeared. But he had simply wanted someone in whom he could confide before tackling Jessie.
Nikki puts her hand on his arm and tells him that he could confide in her. She would listen.
Max has led Sol out into one of the stairwells of the Health Club in order to explain Jacqui’s dilemma to him. This thing with Sammy Rogers, he begins, goes back to the time when Jacqui’s father, Ron, was found not guilty for the death of Katie Rogers’s fiancé, the sainted Clint.
Sol admits he heard glimmers of the story.
Well, Max continues, Katie and Sammy Rogers somehow twisted things in their minds to the effect that they reckoned Jacqui should pay for Clint’s death; so they hatched a cack-handed revenge scheme. It consisted of planting a honey trap for Max, trapping him in a compromising position with Sammy. In short, says Max, they tried to break up the Farnhams’ marriage. Of course, it didn’t work - the scheme was too puerile, really, but all the same, it left Jacqui feeling very upset.
As Sol listens, Max explains that Jacqui was generally pleased with Sol as manager of the club. He was good at his job and an asset; but his appointment of Sammy Rogers had upset Jacqui’s peace of mind. Jacqui, he continues, is determined to devote her full-time energies to being a mother to Harry and Emma, and that’s why she appointed Sol as club manager. She trusted him to take the everyday strain of dealing with the club off her shoulders. The longer Sammy stayed on as a member of staff, the more this situation was going to divert Jacqui’s attention from the children.
But, Sol reminds him, he’d given Sammy a 12-month contract. Was Max suggesting he should sack her? That could create all sorts of problems.
Max sighs and intimates that perhaps it would be better if Sol could ‘encourage’ Sammy to resign.
‘Jacqui did say it was either Sammy or me,’ ponders Sol.
Then, concludes Max, don’t give Jacqui the headache of replacing him as manager.
Ray has finished telling Nikki about Helen and his part in her parentage. He ends the tale by expressing doubt as to whether Jessie would ever feel the same way about him again.
All that happened over forty years ago, Nikki says, soothing him. Jess would come around. Why, all Ray had to do was to look at her and Jerome for his inspiration. They were back together after his fling with Nisha. Surely he and her nan could get through this thing if they really loved each other.
Of course, Nikki’s solution to this monumental problem of a revelation of the existence of a love-child is stultifyingly puerile. She reckons a romantic, candlelit dinner would be all it takes to bring Jessie around. (Remember, Nikki only had to deal with a boyfriend sowing a few wild oats with a woman who knew how to look after herself; Jess is having to deal with the fact that the man she loved and believed to be unremittingly honest and upright, has revealed a darker, less responsible side. She’s also facing the fact that the woman who was obviously the love of Ray’s life has left him a memento in the form of a daughter. Is Nikki so shallow that she measures everyone else’s depth by her own shallowness? Sadly, the answer is ‘yes’.)
Tonight would be a perfect opportunity to put Nikki’s plan in action. Jessie was away at church. Nikki would undertake to prepare the casserole for their evening meal. Oh, and Ray should make sure that he has a hot bath run for Jess when she returns. He could even use Nikki’s bath oils - Jessie really thinks they are lovely.
Then, over the romantic atmosphere of the meal, Ray and Jessie could have a heartfelt talk about Ray’s situation and - hopefully - Ray could convince her nan that Helen’s existence had nothing to do with their relationship.
Back at Jimily House, Jimmy tucks into a solitary sarni, left to his own devices.
Nikki’s put her plan into action immediately. She ensures that Ray is preparing the vegetables for the casserole, whilst she has miraculously produced around FIFTY big, fat-stemmed votive candles, which she’s lighted and placed around the lounge section of the bungalow. Now, my idea of a romantic, candlelit meal is long-stemmed candles, in a holder on the table. But Nikki’s gone hole hog. It’s simply unbelieveable that anyone would have so many candles - and fat-stemmed votives that can’t be put in any holders - in a house. There’s a veritable plethora of them. And the most important candle of all, sits atop the television set, sans any kind of holder or barrier between the wax and the plastic top of the set.
Ray confirms that he’s done the veg and the casserole is ready in the oven. But doesn’t Nikki think that she’s overdone it with the candles? Not at all, replies Nikki.
Looking out of the kitchen window, Nikki sees Jessie just entering the Close from the path to The Parade. She quickly tells Ray to run Jessie’s bath.
But, Ray blubs, won’t Jessie think something’s fishy when she sees Nikki there?
Nikki confirms that she’s just going now, via the back way, and as she steps out from the rear of the house, she catches sight of her grandmother putting her key into the front door. Nikki smiles conspiratorily and dashes across the Close to Jimily House.
As Jess enters the bungalow, she’s met by the plethora of burning candles, set table and the sound of Matt Munro/Frank Sinatra singing in the background. As she stands, sceptically surveying the scene, Ray emerges from the bathroom. He’s run her a nice, hot bath, he begins, tentatively.
Jessie turns a wary eye in his direction. Does Ray think she’s stupid? She asks. Did Ray honestly think that the events of the last few days would just go away because of a few burning candles? (Well, more than just a few, Jess, but -hey- who’s counting?)
She immediately turns and makes a beeline for the bedroom. Ray follows forlornly, desperately trying to explain the facts to her. But if we listen closely to Ray’s ‘facts’, we hear that he isn’t being entirely honest with Jessie.
This thing with Sylvia, he witters, frantically, it was just a one-off fling. It all happened when Reenie got rid of their baby. He went to Sylvia for a bit of comfort, nothing more.
As she sits at her dressing table, Jessie whirls on her seat to face Ray. She wanted him to realise that she had told him EVERYTHING, but EVERYTHING about her past, and now this secret from Ray’s is thrown up in her face. She would never have known a thing about it if the girls hadn’t brought it out into the open. She orders Ray to turn the bath off.
Back at Jimily House, Nikki, secure in the assumption that her plan would work, sits down at the table to resume working on her essay. Jimmy passes by and asks how the work is going. Nikki says that she’s almost finished her essay and was going to ask Jimmy to have a read of it as a critique. (HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA ... Sorry, but is Nikki indicative of the state of university students today? If so, then the future of this country is dire. Nikki should be asking another student in her subject or her tutor to read this work, not some semi-literate scally, who doesn’t even understand the ramifications of his own mental condition and gleans all knowledge from the Internet).
Jimmy confesses that he had already read her essay, whilst Nikki explains that this is only part of the work. The beginning is on the laptop at home. What did Jimmy think?
Well, Jimmy begins, sitting down beside her, he DOES have a few suggestions.
And Nikki, the brainwashed disciple of a mental Messiah, smiles beatifically.
Closeted in their bedroom, a desperate Ray is trying to get Jessie to listen to his confession. He was surprised, he says, when Helen tracked him down. Why, he hadn’t thought of Sylvia in years.
‘So what were you going to do?’ Sneers Jessie. ‘Keep me in the dark about the whole affair? I don’t believe you!’
The couple continue arguing, their voices rising in anger, when Jerome, finished his shift at the bingo club, quietly enters the bungalow. He pauses at the door of the lounge and surveys the candlelit scene, with the romantic music ever playing softly in the background. Glancing toward the kitchen, he sees Nikki’s note left taped to the fridge. He reads her message that she’s just popped over to Emily’s and smiles to himself, remembering their conversation of that morning, when Nikki promised him a romantic evening.
Unbuttoning his shirt, he enters the bathroom to see the fragrant oil bath steaming in wait. Pausing in his act of disrobing, Jerome takes time to pull out his mobile and text Nikki to say that he’s waiting for her in the bath.
Outside the bathroom, we see the camera pan the lounge area, with all candles blazing, the music playing and the cacophony of Ray and Jessie arguing in the background. We see the candle atop the television set burn down to the plastic and the set immediately catches fire.
Jerome relaxes in the bath and sends the text message to Nikki, with his portable CD Walkman resting on the side of the bath and the earphones in his ears. As he lies there, he realises that through the earphones, he can still hear the muted sounds of Ray and Jessie arguing from their bedroom. He gets briefly out of the bath, walks to the window and closes it. Then re-entering the bath, he turns up the volume on his Walkman. In the lounge the fire quicly spreads.
Jessie and Ray are still going at it hammer and tongs. Jessie tells Ray that she’s never been more disgusted in her life than she was to hear of his past antics. Ray counters that he still can’t believe that she’s going to let events that happened four decades ago cloud their marriage.
In the lounge, the fire is now raging.
Jerome relaxes, oblivious to everything, in the bath.
At that moment in the lounge, the television has burned through to its transformer and it explodes with a bang.
Jessie is so engrossed in her argument with Ray that she misses the sound. Did Ray have any idea how much he had hurt her in the past few days -
Suddenly Ray, who had caught the explosive sound, shushes her.
‘Don’t you DARE shush me!’ Threatens Jessie, but Ray quells her.
What’s that sound? He wants to know, straining to listen. Doesn’t she smell smoke? Ray opens the bedroom door, only to be met with a rush of flames outside. He slams the door shut and they begin to shout for help.
At that moment, Dim, Plank and the Mekon enter the Close by way of the pathway. It’s obvious where they’ve been. They’ve been sitting in Jacqui’s old flat, imbibing the stolen ales and bragging about how minted they all were going to be once they ever got round to selling the stuff.
Suddenly, the Mekon glances up and catches sight of the bungalow in flames. The trio run toward it. As Plank tries desperately to ring the doorbell, Dim pulls out his trusty mobile and rings 999, instructing Emergency Services that the fire brigade is wanted at Number 6, Brookside Close.
We see a brief glimpse of Jacqui Farnham peep through the Venetian blinds of the Farnham house and another glimpse of Marty Murray gazing out of the front window of Sitcom House.
Emily searches for keys to her nan’s house and screams to Dim to run to Jimmy’s in search of them.
Jerome is still relaxing in the bath, listening to music on his headphones.
The trio are driven back by the heat of the flames, as an explosion rips through the lounge section of the house and the fire becomes more intense. Dim and Plank try unsuccessfully to break down the front door as Emily screeches shrilly in the background, the sound of her awful voice pervading the scene.
The lads try to enter the house via the back way, but they are unsuccessful. Jimmy and Nikki arrive on the scene and as Nikki peers into Jessie’s bedroom, she spies the couple unconscious on the bed.
Dim steps up, heroically, to the sounds of Emily’s awful, ugly screams and breaks the window, which is surprising, as I thought all the windows of the houses on the Close were double-glazed. Without a second thought, Dim and Plank enter the bedroom. (Plank must have been doused in water, else he would have been kindling). Each take hold of Ray and Jessie and manage to pull them through the window, all t he while Emily is shrieking, ‘Tim, get out o’there!’ (It grates the spine, that voice, and it ruined the entire scene).
In the distance we hear the siren and clanging bells of the fire brigade
as they arrive, but still Jerome is ignorant of what is happening around him
and even of the smoke beginning to appear under the bathroom door.
Summary © 2002 Marion Watts
Brookside and all related materials are © Mersey Television 1982-2002