This is a very important episode for the ongoing development of
Peter and Assumpta's relationship. It also has some key scenes that will
be referred to again in later episodes, so it is a "must-see" for a full
understanding and appreciation of the genius that is Ballykissangel. This
is a very thought-provoking episode, with much emotion shown and lots of
interplay among the plots. One of the very best.
Missing You Already
A Festival, Not A Fertility Rite (Baaaa!)
Not Afraid Of A Little Competition
Oh, And By The Way...
Although the line was uttered by Assumpta in reference to Siobhan
(who had to abscond to Dublin in order to avoid incurring Brian Quigley's
wrath, see the following plot), the story here
is Peter's upcoming transfer.
In the opening sequence, Assumpta douses Peter with a bucketful of cold water. "Unintentionally". It was a cheap sight gag, but what if there was a deeper meaning? Was Assumpta really telling Peter that he should go take a cold shower? Or maybe suggesting that he join in the next wet T-shirt contest? (Tip: White will win you more points than black.) It will not have escaped anyone that the previous line was the question posed by Father Mac, "And what about the people of Ballykay? How do they feel? ...They fight to keep you here? They care for you that much?" and that the bucket of water served as the answer. As an at-face-value answer, it was quite appropriate that Assumpta be the one to deliver it, since she is the only openly anti-Church member of the community, and she would be the last one to fight to keep a priest. But the clever part is (and we all know Ballykissangel is full of clever parts), Assumpta is in fact the only member of the community that cares enough to actually fight to keep the priest. Whether this is because she really cares about him as a person, or whether she will go to any lengths whatsoever to annoy Father Mac, is another really interesting question that I will leave unanswered.
The next encounter between our two heroes takes place in the glade, where Assumpta tells Peter about the immobility of the statue of the Virgin Mary. (Are there statues that move?) This is a key scene for understanding the fight scene between Peter and Leo in Episode 3.12 Amongst Friends, and also for the parallel scene with Father Sheahan and Frankie in Episode 6.2 Drink. The importance of this scene in this episode is that Assumpta reaches out to Peter (figuratively, not literally), who is feeling very much rejected by that point. However, once Peter starts to open up to Assumpta and tell her what the problem is, she beats a hasty retreat, literally, turning heel and heading straight for her van. Peter tries to continue the conversation, but Assumpta just calls out her answers over her shoulder and leaves. Is she trying to indicate that she couldn't care less about whether the priest gets transferred? Does she have a problem with talking about feelings? Is she afraid of showing too much interest in Peter personally? She effectively throws cold water in his face again by leaving like that. But yet she is the only member of the community who notices that something is bothering Peter and has enough sympathy for him to ask what's wrong.
Indeed, shortly afterward, Assumpta defends Peter from Padraig's insinuation that Peter's transfer was due to his being a bad priest. This causes Brendan to tease her for "caring" about what happens to Peter. Which brings us to a question of great interest: who knew what and when? When did people begin to suspect that there was "something" going on between Peter and Assumpta? I don't think Brendan really meant anything by it here, except perhaps in a "you're not going soft on us, now, Assumpta, are you?" kind of way, but the whole exchange was probably the start of an inkling for Brendan. Just as the conversation the next day between Brian and Peter is the start of an inkling for Brian.
In that scene (which properly belongs to another plot line), Peter goes to Brian in order to find out whether Brian is really out to put Assumpta out of business. Brian, in what is probably a very defensive comment meant to deflect attention from his own conscience, asks Peter why he's even interested, to which Peter replies just a little too virtuously that Assumpta is a parishioner. Yeah right. Like Peter would try to talk Assumpta out of it if she went into land development, in order to protect Brian's interests. Brian, without even having the legilimancy skill, also sees right through this obvious smokescreen, and snorts back, "Hm. In your dreams!"
Dream: 1. a succession of images, thoughts, or emotions passing through the mind during sleep. ...5. a vision voluntarily indulged in while awake. 6. an aspiration; goal; aim. (Random House Dictionary of the English Language)A very interesting question indeed. Is Assumpta the stuff of which Peter's dreams are made? Is she a nocturnal vision, or a diurnal one? Has she merely entered into Peter's unconscious, or is he conscious yet of his feelings for her?
But I'm getting ahead of myself. I've skipped right over the all-important scenes in St. Joseph's and at Fitzgerald's. You know, where First Contact occurs. His hands caress her face, he looks tenderly into her eyes, and he says, "Two minutes, eh?" So he's a two-minute wonder, is he? No, even better, let's review the whole exchange (once again, imagine this with the characters under a sheet together):
Peter: Look, let me do this properly.Hey, I'm not making this stuff up, that's how it was written! But once again, I've gotten ahead of myself. How did it even get to the point of shrieks and groans?
Assumpta: Aaahhh!
Peter: Aaaahhh, two minutes, eh?
Assumpta: Ooh!
Peter: Sh, sh.
Assumpta: God!
Assumpta, in another uncharacteristic move, actually went to the church for solace. The building anyway, if not the institution. I wonder.... Remember what Assumpta said to Father Mac in Episode 1.1 Trying To Connect You: "Oh you could make a pepper pot out of it [her pub's roof] Father you still won't get me up there [to the church]." Maybe that's why there was a leak in the pub! Maybe Father Mac sabotaged her plumbing, hoping to flood her out and force her to higher ground, like a lemming. No wait, lemmings jump off cliffs to their deaths. OK then, like a beetle. A flightless one, so it can't fly away. But not a burrowing one either, because those would just try to escape by digging down into the earth. Like a really dumb, flightless, non-burrowing beetle. And of course one that can't swim. Goes without saying.
But it turns out Assumpta was right about the church all along (the building, not the institution), since no sooner does Peter leave her alone with her petty little existenzängste than her prayers are answered with a beer bottle to the noggin. (Strangely enough, not even this is enough to put her off completely, since she shows up two days later, rarin' to go for Niamh and Ambrose's wedding. I think her aversity to the church, be it building or institution, is a wee bit overrated.) And that's how she ended up with the teeny little scratch on her forehead that Peter just about made a Federal case out of. Oh my God, we'd better get that X-rayed! (I just wrote that line, and less than an hour later, my 5-year-old son fell on the pavement and got a hole in his head that had to be stapled shut and he didn't even cry. So quit whining, Assumpta!)
Finally, though, Peter and Assumpta manage to have a serious, calm, civil conversation, in which Assumpta reveals that she doesn't think Peter's such a bad guy after all. Awwww.
At some point, Assumpta decides to get that petition started. I think it's after they rescue the sheep (ram!). Actually, it is never stated explicitly that it was Assumpta who started the petition, but I assume it was, since she is the one who presents it to Peter and she says that she is the one who will be sending it to the Bishop. Then Peter makes a very bold move. He asks Assumpta how she feels about him, personally. Well, not in so many words, but in his tone of voice and the look in his eyes when he says, "You said they all wanted me to stay. What about you?" It was the last line of the episode, the last line of Series 1, and it was a thriller.
It was also, come to think of it, rather superfluous. I mean, if she went to all the trouble of starting the petition, getting it passed around to the entire village (lucky stroke that they all came to town for Niamh's wedding), gathering all the pages together again, and mailing it to the Bishop, then it's a pretty certain bet that she was a little more than slightly interested in whether Peter stays in town. Although the question still lingers, was she interested on a personal level, or because she is trying to reform the church? She does say that "as priests go, we could do a lot worse" than Peter. She must realize that Father Mac won't stop driving curates away until he gets one in his own mold (although as he himself admits, in Episode 3.11 The Day of Reckoning, "There aren't many of my kind left."). So maybe it was a little of both.
And speaking of animal rights, you know how, at the end of any feature movie, they have the little disclaimer, "No animals were harmed in the making of this motion picture," or something along those lines? Well, they don't say that in the Ballykissangel credits. I'm not suggesting anything, I'm just saying.
So, the Ballykissangel Festival. Apparently, Brian has taken ideas from all over, but what he comes up with is strictly Quigley. Unfortunately, I didn't fully understand the part about the goat, since both lines in which it is mentioned weren't clear to me, maybe they were saying some Irish name. But there seems to be a legend of a heroic goat making the bardic rounds in Ireland, and Quigley has appropriated the framework of the story, but instead of the goat, he has a ram save the town from the Romans. Maybe it butted Caesar off a cliff. Who knows. But the point is, in order to honour the famous ram's memory, one of his direct descendants has to be suspended over a stage in the beating sun for three days with nothing but a cabbage for company.
And that's about the size of it. Oh, yes, there's also Irish music and dancing, a kiddie's fun fair, a speech, and plenty of booze, very little of which is actually served by Assumpta, which is the topic of the next plot. But before we get there, some of the regulars have a little surprise in store for Brian.
The escapade with the rescue of the ram was clever and useful for several
reasons. First, it hearkened back to the past with the wooden sheep from
Episode
1.3 Live in My Heart and Pay No Rent, as well as giving Eamonn
a couple of lines. Next, it gave Peter and Assumpta another chance to bond
while doing something sneaky and underhanded. (Peter would have bonded
with Siobhan during this episode, except she was passed-out drunk.) And
third, it showed that Siobhan will stoop to just about anything when she
is under the influence of alcohol, which will be useful to keep in mind
for the future. A story in three dimensions. And couldn't we use more of
those, instead of the paper-doll, cookie-cutter, assembly-line pap they're
churning out these days?
This was absolutely Brian's best entrepreneurial idea, and I can't understand why he didn't try to open a bar again. If it was just fire regulations that shut him down, that would have been a simple thing to correct. I mean, did you see the crowd he had? Forget holiday homes, forget golf courses, people want alcohol, and lots of it. I don't know what the zoning regulations are in County Wicklow, maybe they only allow one liquor license per 250 inhabitants or something, but there sure seemed to be enough business to go 'round. Maybe Assumpta should take a cue from Brian, play some really loud canned music (none of that acoustic stuff Enda does), get some gambling started (don't tell me Brian and Father Mac were playing "Old Maid"), and serve some real food (chicken wings, not beer nuts!).
The great highlight of this episode (sorry, P&A fans) was the musical interlude showing the preparations for the publicans' race. The editing was right on target, changing scenes with every line of the song, although they did get a little out of sync near the end. And who was Brian's fourth man? Like the fourth horseman of the apocalypse ('And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death'). Kind of eerie. I guess they just ran out of regular characters who could be on Brian's side.
I was actually quite shocked that Peter fixed the race the way he did.
He refused to throw the football game back in Episode
1.2 The Things We Do For Love; he rejected Assumpta's suggestion
of lying to Ambrose about St. John's head in Episode
1.3 Live in My Heart and Pay No Rent; but here he happily glues
drinking glasses to a tray in order to cheat Brian out of a possibly lucrative
source of income. Even worse, Peter was the one who came up with the idea
in the first place! Yeah, yeah, he says he felt guilty about it, but obviously
not too guilty, and he did it after all, didn't he? Does this show just
how far he's willing to bend the moral law in order to make Assumpta happy?
It was a good thing that Brian had already written off the Bar and Grill
idea, otherwise Peter might have ended up in the middle of a nasty fight.
Did anyone notice there was a wedding going on? 'Cause it seemed
more like an assembly to sign the petition...or a pre-party to the Publicans'
Race.
The wedding itself went off picture-perfect, which was a great relief, since weddings are notorious prank-and-bad-luck magnets, especially on TV (remember "The Brady Bunch"'s first episode, where the dog ran amok?). Luckily, Kieran restrained himself, saving the hijinks for afterwards.
Niamh was lovely and trembling with great expectations, Ambrose was much less nervous than I would have reckoned, and didn't have a single cold foot. Remains to see whether their hopes and dreams pan out...
Damn, and I was so looking forward to the sacrifice of the virgins.
2. Siobhan: How would you like it if you were stuck in a crate for
three days and nights with nothing
but a-- a-- a cabbage for company?
Brendan: Be better than lying on a plate, with
a cabbage for company.
I think I'd be quite tasty with baby carrots sauteed in butter with dill and tiny new potatoes in a garlic sauce. Hannibal, I think we need your input here.
3. Fr Mac: Popular support? What do you think the church is, a democracy?
All in favor, say "amen".
4. Assumpta: Is there a metric measure for a skinful?
Why yes, in fact there is: the plenicutis.
5. Peter: Assumpta, will you stop it? You make him sound like Don
Corleone.
Assumpta: Well he is! Without the morals!
Sounds like something out of a Mario Lanza novel. (See Episode
6.5 "Paul Dooley Sleeps With The Fishes")
9. They need him back at the coal face.
8. They need him more at home.
7. He wasn't fitting in.
6. They were short-handed.
5. He rocks the boat.
4. He's a square peg, Ballykissangel's a round hole.
3. Father MacAnally's a bitter, bitter old man.
2. He was having a secret affair with Kathleen and Father Mac found out about it and got jealous.
And the Number 1 reason why Peter had to leave is...
1. It's a good plot device.
OK, I get the point that Assumpta is complaining about how slow a drinker Brendan is, but who the heck is Sonya O'Sullivan? Apparently she is known for being really, really slow. I, for one, have never heard of her.
2. Peter: It doesn't make me a hustler. You ever thought about time share?
I guess we need some context: Peter has offered to listen to Assumpta's problems, and she has declined, saying she doesn't want to be rude to him. Peter responds with this poser. First off, what's that bit about being a hustler? Does he mean that his offer of an open ear doesn't constitute a come-on? All well and good, but then the time share reference is a total non-sequitor. To me, a time share is a part ownership of a vacation property. Sorry, I just don't get it.
3. Why did Peter get so angry when he found the broken glass on the
floor of the church and Assumpta missing? Did he actually think that she
had done it, like a hit-and-run? And yes, he was angry with her. He only
became concerned about her well-being once he saw that she had gotten knocked
on the head.
2. It's homo sapiens. With an s at the end. Even in the singular.
3. When Peter crosses the road to go into Quigley's Bar and Grill, he looks first left, then right. In Ireland (or any country where you drive on the left) you should look first right, then left.
4. After the opening scene with Fitzgerald's flooding, we never hear another thing about the leaking water or the plumber they called. Apparently, it got fixed, but it isn't like Kieran Prendiville to open with a scene that has nothing whatsoever to do with the rest of the episode. (Yes, Assumpta was stapling plastic sheeting to the ceiling later on, but the problem was still unresolved.)
5. I can't believe that Ambrose and Niamh said their wedding vows without prompts or cue cards (the characters, not the actors). They were much too nervous.
6. The publicans' race was fixed rather clunkily. What I mean is that
I didn't feel that the actors did a particularly convincing job of stumbling
at their appointed times. There was absolutely no reason for Assumpta to
have bobbled her tray when she did, and then when Brian kind of jogged
to one side and spilled his glass, it was clear that he (Tony Doyle anyway)
had done it on purpose.