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Great LezBritain: “Lip Service” Recap – Season 2, Episode 2

Let us just tell you all right now, that this episode is a shocker. Of tremendously highrise proportions. I wish you could see our faces. They are shocked faces.

If you’re on Twitter, then you probably all know what is about to happen, so we should stop rambling and get involved; we’re just worried about you.

Okay, shall we all do this together? Hold our hands. Sorry, Lee’s are sweaty Betty’s.

Sexy Lexy is moving into Frankie and Tess’ pad, but her possessions involve a paltry three cardboard boxes, two of which you could barely fit a boomerang in. This lady travels far too lightly for our liking; we’re suspicious of who she is and where she’s come from. She explains that when you see people die all the time then you don’t much care for ‘stuff’.  This does explain things somewhat and this conversation sets the dark scene for the rest of the episode.

It’s Cat’s birthday and DS Sam Murray continues to embody the Katie Brown to Cat’s Calamity.  Her birthday offerings are a breakfast spread fit for a queen – though it does include marmalade in an eggcup – and she gifts her birthday girl the designer bag she’s been lusting after. Cat clearly feels guilty about her Frankie fumblings because she is close to tears at how delightful Sam is being, and how not delightful she has been. There is also a prophetic vase of Lilies on the table, which Sam has bought for Cat.

Tess sits on Lexy’s bed watching lovingly as her new secret crush/flat-mate moves her two books from one end of the room to the other. Lexy mentions Fin and Tess tells her that she ended it with her. The cliffhanger from episode one has reached the climax we suspected.

Sarah: What? That’s it, Fin’s just gone?

Lee: She might still be in it. She should still be in it with all her little cartoon friends.

Like a smooth transition from past to present, Tess asks after Lexy’s current lovelife: Sexy Lexy is a singleton and in case you hadn’t noticed, Tess is keen.

Cat stares at her phone with bright eyes and DS Sam Murray heads out for a jog. 

Lee: These scenes are very quick and short.

Sarah: I can barely keep up with the pace.

Frankie has asked cool customer Sadie to meet her down by the river again. A disgruntled Artful Dodgeress saunters on over but can’t be bothered with this tete-a-tete much at all. Frankie pulls out the classic self-deprecating tact of calling herself a cock.

Sadie: You’re not getting back in my pants if that’s what you think.

Frankie: That’s not what I want.

Sadie: Charmed, I’m sure.

They uptake a metaphorical pinky shake and become friends again and Frankie offers to help Sadie out of her low funds and unemployed troubles.

DS Sam Murray is jogging along the Clyde and spots Lexy bent double, spluttering her unfitness into the river. Lexy admits that she’s new to the fitness caper.

She then admits that she’d actually just like to be an old woman, eating doughnuts sitting on a Stair Lift. Sam tries to stop Lexy’s weirdness by asking if she wants to run with her. 

Lexy: Ah no, no, no, you’re really fit. Er, I mean, you’re really healthy.

Sam jogs off leaving Lexy hugging her watermelon close to her chest.

Tess is in rehearsal, reading her lines as Sonia. However Nora is playing silly buggers by trying to muscle in on Tess’ moments of glory by asking the director to include her in extra scenes. 

This is a funny scene, but honestly we’ve got a lot to get through in this episode and there’s about a million short scenes, so you’ll just have to take our word for the humour for now.

DS Sam Murray walks Cat to her next work meeting, proclaiming her love once more by telling Cat that she’s booked a restaurant for them later that eve. But Cat has duped her hotcop girlfriend, as she doesn’t have a meeting at all. She heads into the building but then watches from a hallway window until the DS is out of eyeshot and hot foots it out of there like some sort of cold hearted s–tbag.

Sexy Lexy is walking the halls of the hospital with a handsome colleague regaling him with the embarrassing tale of meeting eye-candy DS Sam Murray, while having a coronary and basically telling her how fit she is. Her colleague is distracted by another fit doctor passing them by. He tells Lexy that he will seduce the fit doctor because he is a gay boy stud and everybody fancies him, even nuns. They skip off to deal with various explosions from the orifices of sick patients.

Tess complains to Hipflask actor that she doesn’t need Nora’s jealousies. Hipflask tells her that he didn’t need his wife to run off with a successful, handsome actor and leave him. Which very much trumps her situation. So she offers him a crisp.

Tess: It’s a new flavor. 

The duplicitous Cat has gone round to Frankie’s to continue their sexual frissons. Cat presents herself in a red corset and does things to herself; things that we shall not give explicit comment on, but Frankie eye spies it all with obvious pleasure.

DS Sam Murray begins her police duties that comprise the thrill of watching a building for ten hours whilst sitting in a car with Ryder who doesn’t seem to be offering too much intellectual banter. She tells him that she would tie the knot with Cat in an instant, while Cat lies in her red corset with Frankie rubbing her face. 

After their liaisons, Frankie hands Cat her birthday gift – it’s a bracelet, which has their initials inscribed on the inside. Cat’s eyes sparkle over the jewelry, but doesn’t want this to be the catalyst to discussing their future, which Frankie clearly does. Cat spots Frankie clock watching.

Frankie: Sadie is picking me up, but not for another hour yet.

Cat: Sadie?

Frankie: Yeah she’s broke so I am just paying for her to drive me to a job in the Highlands.

Cat has got a bee in her bonnet about Frankie seeing Sadie, but Frankie says her heart doth only lie with her; she will wait for her and not get jiggy with any others. 

Lee: This whole affair is just horrid, but I can’t help feel sorry for Frankie too because she just seems besotted by Cat

Sarah: The fact that she has to imprint their initials everywhere together shows just how much she’s desperate for a sense of identity.  And Cat is her one constant.

Lee: I think Cat loves Frankie more than Sam, so she should just tell her and then Sam can just get off with Sexy Lexy. And then they can all double date and go on holiday together like good lesbians

Tess comes home and heads to a mirror, to possibly pluck one of those annoying rogue chin hairs we’ve heard that some people get. She then spots Cat and Frankie frisking one another in the hallway.  Cat gives her a wide-eyed death stare and Frankie asks why she’s home so early. 

Sarah: Well excuse Tess for being in her own home, plucking her own chin.

Tess looks awkwardly at the pair and heads into the shower. Cat has a little panic that Tess will spill the beans but Frankie says she’ll sort it. Cat dashes off takes off the bracelet and Frankie heads into her bedroom and sniffs Cat’s corset.

Within a blink of an eye, Frankie confronts Tess when she emerges smelling of roses from the shower.

Frankie: Tess, It’s not what you think. I love her. I want to be with her.

Tess: That’s what you said last time.

Frankie: I’m not stupid enough to make the same mistake twice.

Tess tells her that she’s not going to say anything and there’s a knock at the door.

Lee: It is like Piccadilly Circus round there.

Sadie arrives looking quite simply exquisite, in killer heels and a smile that leaks out the tales of her checkered past. 

Sadie: I was going to wear sensible shoes and then I thought, “F–k that.”

Cat walks the streets ashen faced, even sponging a cigarette from a stranger to animate her desperate times even more. She spots a text from Frankie telling her that she does not need to fret: Tess is remaining tightlipped. 

Cat gazes loving at her phone and walks across the road, fixated on the text. 

A car hits Cat and whips her across the road. 

She’s been knocked down. 

She lies in an unnatural pose in the middle of the road. 

Lee: OMG.

Sarah: What the Lenny Henry?

Lee: OMG.

Sarah: What the Lenny Henry?

Lee: OMG.

It’s hard to describe exactly how shocking that scene is. Even if you had heard the rumours. Even if you are actually Mystic Meg and absolutely knew that this was coming, the actual execution of the scene is unbelievable. Quick and out of absolutely nowhere. And then before you’ve even got time to shut your gaping mouth …

Sadie and Frankie load into Sadie’s car and head off to Frankie’s job in the Highlands, amidst knickers and bras that are strewn in the passenger’s seat. 

The DS is leaving work when she’s called back and given the dreadful message that the love of her life has been in an accident.

Cat is wheeled into A&E and Lexy and her gay stud colleague are the first response. Cat begins to flatline just as DS Sam Murray races in, white-faced and shaken.

DS Sam Murray: My partner has been brought in, Cat McKenzie, a traffic accident.

Receptionist: Can you wait there a moment please?

Sam follows the receptionist and it leads her to the door of the room where Cat lies, adrenaline is injected and her chest is pumped, all in a desperate attempt to revive her. Sam watches, her face stricken with heartbreak. Lexy’s expression pushes out the impending doom.

Gay Stud: Okay, lets call it. Time of death …

Sam falls back to the wall, the camera focused on the silent grief on her face, her short breaths, the only sound.

Lee: OMG.

Sarah: What the Lenny Henry?

Lee: Cats are supposed to have nine lives.

Sarah: Not this kitty cat.

Tess and Ed are sitting in the kitchen discussing how Cat often buys Ed expensive gifts when Ed gets a call from the hospital. He and Tess zoom into the room where Cat lies, grey and empty. Ed can’t comprehend that his sister is no more. He tries to go and get help. Tess lays her hands on his chest and tells him that Cat hasn’t made it as Sam sits grey and empty silently beside Cat’s body.

Oblivious to all happenings, Frankie and Sadie are stranded as their wheels have got a flat. 

Sarah: Quite ironic really. Should we turn to the subtext of this?

Lee: I can’t bear it.

Sadie opens up her boot and it’s obvious with the amount of knickers and bras she has in there that her car is also her home. Amidst her smalls, Sadie and Frankie wrestle with a car tyre, trying to get it free from the boot, which results in Frankie falling over into the mud and buggering her phone in the process. Sadie raspberry laughs and so Frankie pulls her down into the mud too. They laugh at the playfulness of it all. And we also laugh, because it is funny, even though we also have tears and mascara and snot. And then we stop laughing because …

Cat lies with Tess, Ed and Sam sitting in a triangle around her. The pain etched all over their faces.     

Lexy comes in and offers anything she can give in the circumstance: vending machine supplies, answers to any questions they may have and her deepest condolences.

Sam: What was his blood-alcohol level, the bloke that killed her?

Lexy: He hadn’t been drinking. 

Sam: Is he here?

Lexy: He’s got suspected concussion; we’re keeping him in for observation.

Sam holds in a rage she doesn’t know how to expel and Tess tries to phone Frankie to no avail, because Frankie’s mobile is broken and protecting her for just a little while longer from also being completely broken.

Sadie and Frankie rock up to their well-to-do hotel in the Highlands, with mud riding up their trouser legs. 

They soon get comfortable sipping champagne in their luxurious room. Frankie wants to get her head down, but Sadie is lying behind her like lady muck, very much trying her luck.

Sadie: [Rubbing Frankie’s back tattoo] I’ve always liked this.

Frankie: Sadie!

Sadie: You’re seriously telling me we are going to waste a s–t hot hotel room?

Frankie: I’ve told Cat I’m not going to sleep with anyone else.

Sadie: Why not, she is?

This is a very good point, but Sadie sees how much Frankie doth love Cat and resigns herself to her rejection.

DS Sam Murray leans over Cat’s white, drawn face, her body covered by a sheet. Sam pulls herself away and touches Cat’s arm tentatively, but tenderly for what she knows will be the last time. Arriving home to the flat that Cat will never again visit, she looks at the breakfast spread and flowers that she lovingly presented that morning. Something breaks in our hotcop. She falls to the floor, shattered, all control gone. 

Lee: I’m so sad. The acting from the cast is so good, but it’s making me so sad.

Sarah: [Sniffs]

Ed lays on the couch and Tess on her bed – both curled in balls like little children. 

Morning comes and Sam calls work to find out the name of the driver that killed Cat and heads to the hospital. She finds out which room he resides in by a sly bit of detective work and stares at him through the glass with her eyes welling up in pain and anger. Lexy spots the DS, approaches her and talks her down by sharing how distraught the driver has been through the night.

Lexy: If you go in there you are not going to feel any better and you’ll make an already devastated man feel a lot worse.

Sam squeezes out another tear and walks away.

Sarah: Heather is playing this so well.

Lee: She’s so still, it’s heartbreaking.

Ed and Tess are on the sofa trying to distract themselves by watching daytime irrelevancies. Frankie arrives home and reads their faces and so doesn’t need to be informed that something is clearly afoot.

Ed: There was an accident. Cat was hurt.

Frankie: Is she okay, where is she?

Tess: [Shakes her head.]

Frankie: Just tell me where she is. 

Tess: [Fighting the lump in her throat.] She died Frankie.

Frankie: What?

Tess: She’s dead. 

Frankie does a guttural, almost silent wail that seems to come from the pit of her very being and falls to the floor like a pendulum and all three pour out their grief together.

Lee: Oh FFS, pause this while I weep.

Sarah: This is the very best acting I’ve seen from any of this cast; they are killing me, all of them.

Lee: That is a terrible choice of words, what’s wrong with you?

Sam wakes in her and Cat’s bed and reaches across to feel the void where Cat is no longer. Frankie lies on her bed swinging Cat’s necklace. Tess comes and offers her a cup of tea.

Lee: Just a cup of tea?

Sarah: Most certainly.

Frankie refuses her offer and reiterates to Tess that she must remain quiet of her and Cat’s illicit goings-on. Tess goes to make tea and seeks comfort with Lexy who gives her a hug after she questions how Cat could “go and die on us?”

Sam goes round to pick up some things from Tess for the funeral, including photos from when she and Cat were at University. Whilst Tess collects them, Sam thanks Lexy for her interjection at the hospital. Frankie emerges from her bedroom, immediately spots Sam and bolts out of there like a horse bolting out of the bolts. There’s a silence and nobody knows what to do until Sam leaves to make her way to Cat’s parents.

At Judy and Gerry’s house, Judy prepares tea and chocolate biscuits for Sam’s arrival. 

Ed sits like a petulant child at his mum’s unnecessary fussing.  

Gerry speaks for the first time in Lip Service history.

Gerry: Can I help with anything dear?

Judy: Gerry, Gerry sit down. I don’t need you under my feet.

Judy is worried that Sam might be a diabetic and unable to eat chocolate. She shouts at Gerry for not buying digestives. This classic coping mechanism of displacement shines brightly through the tragedy. The doorbell goes and Ed jumps up like a whippet to answer it.

Frankie visits Cat in her open coffin, crying and apologising at the helplessness of it all. We cry again at the sight of Frankie’s sobs. We may be slightly pre-menstrual.

Back at Gerry and Judy’s house, the funeral director tries to orchestrate the forthcoming plans. Judy places herself as the authority on the logistics but Sam wants to represent what she thinks Cat would really want.

Sam: I was wondering, maybe we should have Cat’s favourite flowers. She loved lilies.

Judy: She never mentioned it to me.

Judy then suggests Cliff Richard as the record of choice and as much as we all love Britain’s number one bachelor singing in the rain come Wimbledon, Ed and Sam both know Cat would not want him at her funeral. Judy cracks and consumes herself in a persecution complex. Ed comforts her and Sam looks on, a grief-stricken solitary figure cradling some very ordinary tea.

The day of the funeral is upon them. Tess has laddered her tights and Frankie has decided that she is not going. Sadie visits to see if Frankie is okay because Frankie is a friend in need, and Sadie is turning out to be a friend indeed. 

Frankie: I can’t sit there with Sam and Cat’s parents and just pretend like we were just good friends and nobody knowing what we meant to each other. 

Lee: Hmm, how to make the situation completely about yourself.

Sadie tells her that she knows and that’s the important thing, to pull her socks up, change out of her jogging bottoms and go because she will surely regret it if she does not. 

Sarah: Sadie is such a good one here, just the ticket for Frankie.

Gay stud and Lexy are on their lunch break and chatter over the hospital canteen picks. Gay stud is very insensitive and suggests that now Cat is no more, there’s an opening for Lexy to get it on with Sam. However karmic forces are clearly in pursuit because he leaves Lexy to go and chat up the radiologist of his affections and gets blatantly shunned, much to Lexy’s delight.

Sarah: These two are so funny together; this scene is actually a bit of a relief.

The funeral is about to begin and John Denver booms out from the church much to Ed, The Jaygermeister, Tess and Sam’s dismay. Frankie has still not reared her pretty head.

Jaygermister: Maybe she couldn’t take it?

In the background Judy croaks on about the hyacinths – and not lilies. Sam reveals that she hasn’t yet told her parents about Cat, so as not to ruin their holiday. This is a very strange thing, and suggests that it’s still not quite real in the hot cop’s sad head.

The Jaygermeister announces that he’s upping sticks and heading to the Big Smoke because as recent events have shown him, life is a very precious thing. This makes us sad, even though we weren’t massive Jaygermeister fans. We just feel a little needy.

Lee: I hate change.  

Sarah: This whole episode feels like change so you better deal with it.

At the funeral, the service is led by a priest who takes a very traditional spin on proceedings. He calls Ed “Edward” and doesn’t mention Sam at all. Tess remarks on the ridiculousness of it all to Ed who agrees his parent’s choice is not one that is too clever.

Jaygermeister and Tess are worried that Frankie still hasn’t shown up and how she’ll handle the situation. Jay admits to Tess that he also knew about Frankie and Cat’s liaisons before her death. 

Edward delivers a heart-wrenching speech about how Cat was much more than just a big sister; she was in essence his rock and he needs her now to help him cope with this. James Anthony Pearson is just a superstar in this scene.  

Sarah: Please pause this for a minute so I can blow my nose.

During his speech Frankie creeps in and takes a pew on a pew at the back. Ed hands the reigns to Sam and before she utters a word Frankie once again bolts.

Sam: Cat was the best thing that ever happened to me. I thought I would have kids with her and grow old with her. I never thought I would be here today saying this.

Lee: FFS pause this for a minute so I can blow my nose.

Frankie goes to the boozer get shitfaced on whisky. The barman looks judgmental that she’s drinking so early, and we can tell you that this is entirely unrealistic in Scotland. 

The rest of the funeral party weep beside Cat’s graveside as the service continues outside. We weep on our couch as the service continues on our tellybox. 

With a few drams floating around her veins Frankie decides she needs her mum. 

Sarah: This is really Frankie’s entire issue. She has just always really needed her mum.

But her mother has been caught on the hop, she hasn’t expected her daughter to show up drunk and devastated, and she is in no way capable of dealing with it. She worries that her husband will come outside and tells Frankie to leave.

Lee: This is so harsh.

Door Slam.

Frankie: F–k you. I didn’t want to know you anyway.

Tess tries to find Frankie in the hallway of their home; it’s not a very thorough seeking out to be fair. But Frankie isn’t there, she’s at Cat’s graveside, clawing the gravel, her heart bleeding and her eyes soaked.

Sam sits in in her dimly lit bedroom delicately picking up Cat’s hairbrush and rubbing it against her lips. She smells Cat’s bra and strokes her underwear. During her pining she finds something she’s unfamiliar with, a foreign object wrapped in a cloth. 

Sarah: Oh my giddy aunt, this is not ideal.

Lee: Do not open that. Do not f–king open that.

But Sam does and she finds the wood. The bit of wood from the school. The bit of wood that Frankie took from the school before it got destroyed. The wood that they inscribed when at school together. The bit of wood that represented their love and probably how deep that love was. This is the bit of wood that has just staked Sam’s heart.

Lee: It’s with the note.

Sarah: Oh my, it’s with the note.

The note says: “Some things shouldn’t be destroyed.”

Frankie is lying in the hallway, her face smeared in mud. Sadie lets herself in.

Sadie: [Crouching beside Frankie and noticing her face looks like she’s been wrestled with] I guess it didn’t go so well then.

Frankie sobs and Sadie rubs her hair to try and give her some comfort.

Frankie: If she wasn’t with me, she’d still be at work … she’d be alive. 

Sarah: That is technically true.

Lee: Come on, we’ve all seen Final Destination. If it’s time, it’s time, whether you’re f–king your ex-girlfriend or not.

She then turns to Sadie and tries to kiss her. Sadie pulls away because she knows what this is about. However Frankie begs a little and Sadie takes it on because Sadie is a friend indeed and when she’s pressed she will undress.

Sarah: Well that was quite an hour.

Lee: Not half. I’m not sure where to go or how to be.

Sarah: It was most excellent though. 

Lee: One of the best death scenes I’ve ever seen.

Sarah: Do you think she’s really dead?

Lee: Who knows? It could all have been Ed’s cocaine-induced dream.

Sarah: Maybe he’s dead?

So what did you think Lip Servants? We are super-keen for next week. See you on the flipside.

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