Last week on Last Tango in Halifax, we witnessed Gillian losing her shit, Kate and Caroline discussing the worst baby plans, and Gillian’s son Raff having a very sudden child with his teenage girlfriend. This child now appears to be mainly taken care of by the great-grandparents, as we start off the third episode of the series with Alan and his best buds Harry and Maurice hanging around the pub with the wee one. Harry, funnily enough, happens to be the other great-grandfather, and this scene is great because scenes with these three are always great.
“Harry calls her Foo Foo Tinkerbell or something. But he’s an idiot.”
Celia has popped over to Caroline’s to get a few things, where she chats with Kate and hilariously ignores every question John asks, while he hovers around in the background, anxiously wanting to know about Gillian. Celia reports that Raff and girlfriend Ellie, both currently living at Gillian’s with the baby, appear almost frightened of their child, and haven’t even named it yet. She asks Kate what she would name a child if she were to have one, and we suddenly watch Kate talk more than we’ve ever seen her talk before, as she lists off baby girl names rapid fire, like it’s the only topic she’s ever thought about in her life. Her face lights up and my heart aches.“Flora, Jasmine, Poppy, Grace, Rosie, Rosalind.”
She’s on such a roll that she ends her naming spree by letting it slip that it would all depend on what Caroline thinks, of course. Celia, bless her heart, seems utterly confuzzled on how two ladies would have a baby. She continues on that she can’t believe Caroline would ever want to go through all that again, at her age. Kate looks down, saying sadly, “No.”John then rings Gillian, and she picks up, even though she’s standing in the middle of a pen of sheep. John tells her that she’s essentially been his muse, as he’s started writing again, in the super creative writerly way of writing a “fictional” story about people in his real life, with Gillian at the center of it. She says, “That’s swell, John, but no thanks to a date, bye bye.”
Harry and Alan come home to find the teens who are super ready for parenting playing video games, and when Harry forcibly turns the game off and yells about how they shouldn’t have gotten pregnant, Raff throws his controller and storms to his room.
Raff, understandably, is not having the best time of his life right now. Alan goes to his room to comfort him in a tear-jerking scene, where Raff’s whole body shakes in sobs, the way you do when you’re really scared. He finally falls onto his granddad’s chest, as Alan affectionately and sadly rubs his back.
Alan calls Celia to talk about what a bloody mess it all is, and as Celia half-listens, she’s also on her laptop, arranging a viewing of a bungalow she dreams of for her and Alan. After a while, she says, “I’m missing you,” and he says he’s missing her too, and there’s something about this that hits harder than just saying, “I miss you,” as if it’s not just a fact but an active process, a current, ongoing action of love.
Caroline finally arrives home after watching a production of King Lear at her school. She walks in and sees Kate, passed out on her loveseat, and while Caroline has been doing some questionable things with Kate’s heart recently, the look on her face at this moment is tender and undeniable and killing me. If the look weren’t enough, she then kneels down in front of Kate to touch the side of her face. Caroline asks if she’s been crying. She has.
As if everything about this scene isn’t already squeezing our hearts enough, Caroline then leans over and kisses her, in a way that seems more true than we’ve ever seen Caroline kiss before. She asks Kate if she’d like to talk it out in bed. YES, PLEASE.
But before this can happen, Kate’s mouth starts quivering, not in a crying way this time, but a I-can’t-breathe kind of way. She asks if Caroline’s eaten peanuts. She had some at intermission of the play, but has had wine since then and thought that would have rinsed it out. “Not necessarily,” Kate wheezes. But Caroline is on it, cool and collected, whipping out the epipen and stabbing Kate’s leg as Kate lays on the ground, and mere seconds later phoning for an ambulance, all while holding Kate’s hand.
Lawrence walks by as Caroline is aggressively massaging Kate’s leg, in what appears to be a somewhat unfortunate position. Lawrence just raises his eyebrows and leaves the room as Caroline stutters to try to explain.
The next morning, as Kate relaxes at the hospital, Caroline is on fire in the kitchen. John blunders in, wondering where his papers have gone. Caroline proceeds to mock everything he’s written about their lives in his new opus in a most haughty, most Caroline-ish way, including the section where he refers to Gillian having the body of a young boy. She bumps her hip against young Lawrence, who’s sitting eating his cereal, and drawls, “Ooh, la la, so, Mommy isn’t the only gay in the village.”
I mean, I don’t think Lawrence is quite ready for gay jokes yet, Caroline, but still, her sassiness is amazingly off the charts. Let’s also take a moment to just mention how much we miss William, who isn’t around as much this season because he has a job or something. Lame.
After John grunts out of the room, Caroline then continues to send us mixed messages. She tells her mother that yes, Kate is serious about the baby thing, but the chances of her actually conceiving are extremely low, and she’s planning on trying to talk her out of it this weekend. It’s Kate’s birthday, and Caroline’s reserved a fancy hotel, if Celia’s able to take care of the boys. So on the one hand: reserving a hotel for Kate’s birthday = romantic and fun! Being somewhat flippant over Kate’s deepest desires = not good.
And while Caroline is still depending on Celia and Alan forking over some money for staying in the guest house, Celia and Alan head out to look at the bungalow of Celia’s dreams, which is a bungalow of my dreams, too. A living room looking over miles of lush green countryside? I’d take it. It’s clear Celia wants to take it, too, but Alan knows that, with their obligations to the rest of their families, they’re probably fooling themselves.
We then get to see yet ANOTHER adorable Kate and Caroline scene, as they cuddle while watching the news. This idyllic scene, however, is shaken slightly when Kate mentions that she’s contacted the dude whose sperm she wants to use, and she wants Caroline to meet him. This whole talking-Kate-out-of-it thing is clearly not going to be as easy as Caroline imagined.
Celia has returned to Halifax, and while Gillian is at work, she chats with Robbie as he prepares supper. And for some reason or another, she ends up telling him that Gillian had an abortion when she was 15, and she and Alan fighting about it was what had been making her so upset for those weeks. Celia, of course, has no idea that the baby who Gillian was pregnant with at 15 was Robbie’s, but he immediately knows, and waits for Gillian to get home to confront her as she gets out of her car. He’s upset that he never knew, that she never told him. As he gets in his own truck to leave, she asks, “Are you dumping me?” He doesn’t say yes; he just can’t be there right now. Gillian’s vulnerability turns to anger, and she reminds him that she’s the one who suffered the consequences for it. “I didn’t tell you, but I didn’t inflict anything on you, either.”
Gillian only waits a few minutes after Robbie leaves and she walks inside to explode. Celia apologizes, but there’s not a lot she can do to slow Gillian’s anger. Gillian spits out, “It’s poisonous, saying something like that.” Raff comes down the stairs for dinner, and in her rage, Gillian shares the news with him about having an abortion at 15 and Robbie just finding out he was the dad, all of which is maybe not the best information to tell your son about when he’s already in a fragile state himself. Celia decides she should leave. Alan says if she’s leaving, so is he, which really pushes Gillian over the edge. She says that she can barely recognize him since he’s been going around with Celia, and that she doesn’t like this new him. Alan snaps at her that with all the things he knows about her life, that he’s never held against her, she doesn’t have any right talking badly about Celia to him.
The next day, Ellie decides to disappear, leaving Raff and Gillian alone with the baby. But Gillian insists that Raff keeps going to school, so really Gillian is alone with the baby, which is totally easy to take care of while running a farm on your own, right? Right. Caroline calls to apologize again for her mother and make sure she’s alright, and they share one of those Caroline and Gillian conversations we’re now familiar with, where they are kind and understanding of the other, while still somehow seeming miles away.
Caroline and Lawrence drive to school, and Lawrence boldly asks why she and Kate aren’t totally out in their relationship there, since everyone knows. He wrily says that she’s not setting a good example for the 2.7% of students who will also end up being “muff munching shirt lifters.” And you have a good day, too, Lawrence!
At the farm, since everything is going so well for Gillian at the moment, she decides now would be an excellent time to invite John over for a cup of tea. Because Gillian is good at decisions. Through split conversations between her and John and between Alan and Celia, we learn more about Gillian’s past, the thing that only she and Alan know: that when she found her husband Eddie after he’d split his head open in the barn, she should’ve called an ambulance, because he was still alive. She didn’t. But this isn’t all. As Alan tells Celia: she finished him off with a block of wood. Sometimes, Alan says, he even wonders if it was a suicide at all.
Gillian explains to John that this is why she won’t be able to pursue anything with Robbie anyway, even if he does forgive her about the abortion thing: he’s always known about Eddie, and Eddie is the only person that’s ever really mattered to him. John appears to take all of this in stride, listening to her story and then simply saying that he’s still very fond of her, and thinks they could be good for each other. And then they make out.
I don’t know what to say about all of this, but Gillian’s decision making skills are starting to actually bum me out. What are your views on her past, and what she’s doing now with John? Where do you see the baby storyline going now for Kate and Caroline?
