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“Scott and Bailey” recap (3.5): The Stories of Skeletons

The House of Horrors investigation continues on this week’s Scott & Bailey, in addition to Rachel’s very recent marriage rapidly crumbling. Fun times in Manchester!

If there is anything positive about this investigation, it’s that we get to see more of DSI Julie Dobson. The episode starts with her and Gill examining the grim row of skeletons exhumed from the Bevan household, and as they drive away, talking smack and figuring shit out like the damn fine detectives they are. This convo is brought to a halt, however, when they get a call informing them that yet another body has been found at the home, this one wedged between some floor boards. It turns out to be the missing sister, Sheila. Which really makes you think, if you didn’t already, that it’s a wonder Helen and Julie got out of that piece alive.

Shipping them so hard.

Rachel continues to interrogate Joe Bevan and he continues to play the Befuddled Old Man shtick, but she never stops pressing. As Janet and New Kid on the Block, DS Rob, watch the interviews from another room, Rob comments on Rachel, “She sure is good, isn’t she?” Janet replies with a little smile, “Yeah, well, she’s trained,” which I take to actually mean either, “Of course she is, you dumbass,” or “I know; she really, really is!,” followed by hearts floating heavenwards from her eyes like a cartoon. One or the other.

I mean, Rachel, amIright?

Janet teases Rachel about the interrogation later on as they’re heading towards the hotel where Helen’s staying. Part of Joe Bevan’s reasoning as to why there was a mattress in his cellar covered in his semen was that he masturbated there, which leads Janet and Rachel to a perfectly Scott & Bailey conversation about how women wouldn’t do such a thing, because women are LADIES. As they say, “We don’t wank.” “We don’t fart.” “We don’t get drunk. We don’t swear.”

Nope, never.

The laughs end when they eventually get to Helen’s room, which they have to have a hotel worker open for them, as Helen is currently passed out face down on the bed, cuddling with a whole bunch of pills and alcohol.

Well, damn.

Helen’s partner with the hair shows up at the hospital, where Rachel assures her that while it didn’t seem like Helen was messing around, she was conscious and in good hands.

The stress of the evening doesn’t end here for Rach, as she returns to her flat for the first time in four days. She’s spent the last four nights at Janet’s, and shockingly, her husband Sean wants to know why. The ensuing conversation is tough, and murky, and hard to watch at parts; it’s also untypical in terms of how most women are portrayed on TV when it comes to matters of the heart.

Rachel had earlier told Janet that she just wanted Sean to know that “he doesn’t own me.” But when Sean confronts her, it seems to be even more than that, that she “can’t do this 24/7,” that it has nothing to do with him; it’s her. When he asks exactly what “this” is that she can’t do, she replies simply, “I want to be on my own.” She then asks him to move out. He doesn’t take it well.

I understand Sean’s frustrations here; if my wife stayed away for four nights in a row I’d be pissed, too. But it couldn’t be clearer that he just doesn’t understand who she is, and never has. While it was wrong for Rachel to go through with a marriage that she knew deep down wouldn’t work, she’s also never really covered up her personality. If he thought marriage would suddenly turn her soft and intimate and nurturing, he must have been living under some delusions of his own.

It seems to me that when a man refuses to be tied down, he’s seen as independent and complex; people accept it as part of his personality, a sort of rebel without a cause, something almost esteemed. Yet when a woman desires the same things, men literally can’t even understand it, and it’s seen not just as part of who they are, but something that’s wrong with them. Sean will tell Rachel later that her issues around refusing to commit are “all in her head,” and he remains convinced that she’ll come around eventually.

Speaking of complicated women, Helen, meanwhile, has recovered from her suicide attempt and is at her flat when Janet comes to tell her the news about Sheila. Helen’s partner remarks that they’ve had a few nasty phone calls along with things pushed through their door; a few moments later, everyone ducks as someone throws a rock through the window. The press also somehow know about her suicide attempt. For whatever reason, people are out for Helen’s blood.

She gets brought in for yet more questioning by Janet, although at least this time they get to sit in the room with the blue couches instead of the accusatory interrogation room. Helen tells the harrowing story of she and her sister Julie discovering one of the boys in the cellar when she was 12, bound and blindfolded and dirty, and how Julie cut through his ropes in hopes of his getting away. It seems this is probably the homeless man who Janet talked to last time, who did get away, who ends up being a key part of this whole investigation. Helen seems to genuinely not know that all the boys were tortured this way, including her own brother. God, Helen’s life really sucks.

Bastard.

Joe finally confesses to the murder of the boys, although he says it was all because he was coerced by his dead wife Eustace. He does refuse to admit to the murder of Sheila, though, until Rachel finally catches him during interrogation when he slips up and admits more details than he’s supposed to know. Dear old Joe is dragged to a jail cell, while everyone else celebrates. Even Gill is all smiles!

She’s the best, this one!

She really is!

Janet and Rachel also share a smiles filled car ride, where Rachel even tickles Janet under the chin as Janet teases her for her brilliance, and how could you NOT love these two?

I can’t.

The only person who still isn’t smiling, not surprisingly, is Helen. The unit charging her in “preventing a lawful burial” of her brother has refused to drop their charges even though the investigation has tried to press them on it. Janet and Rachel have the unfortunate job of arresting Helen at the end of the day. And Helen goes down fighting. Oh, Helen. Maybe one day you’ll find peace.

Saddest lesbian EVER.

Our episode wraps up there, but clearly even with Joe Bevan put away, this story isn’t completely over. The show returns with an episodic storyline next week, but Helen (and I) will be back for Episodes 7 and 8.

I also feel the need to comment on some of the reviews of this show I’ve read recently, just because the idea of such a female heavy show is apparently so damn scary to everyone. In the Daily Mail this week, Christopher Stevens wrote a column entitled, “Hooray for Scott & Bailey…it’s just a pity about the manhating.” This is by no means the first such criticism I’ve seen. While people agree that the female characters are top-notch, some complain that the male characters fall flat, lacking dimension and empathy. A caption in this most recent article explains it as male characters often being “incidental” on the program. Oh, really? Boo hoo for all the poor men! We have no idea what that must feel like! Stevens goes on to say this, though:

There’s a disturbing strain of man hatred, which has become more pronounced through Scott & Bailey’s three series. Someone behind this show really does believe all men are violent pigs – not just the suspects, but colleagues and husbands, too.

And now, this assertion seems just silly to me. I don’t get the “men are violent pigs” vibe at ALL. In both Janet and Rachel’s rocky personal relationships, the women themselves are often just as at fault for the rocky times as the men, if not more so. While I did just complain about Sean’s refusal to accept Rachel in this very episode, it’s clear that his anger is born out of love–with a side of testosterone fueled pigheadedness, sure. But he’s not cast as an evil person, which is even more true with the colleagues. Sure, there’s the buffoon of the office, Kevin, who often says dumb and ignorant things (and it’s unfortunate there are never ever any female side characters whose purpose is to be dumb and ignorant on TV), but the other men in the office appear to be quite good people. They’re just not as fleshed out as the ladies because they’re NOT THE MAIN CHARACTERS.

Another article in the Independent, meanwhile, made a different argument altogether. It poses that the world of Scott & Bailey, where women rule every rank and situation, is maybe refreshing but also completely unrealistic, a world out of the future. Tom Sutcliffe says:

After all, pretending that a problem doesn’t exist isn’t always the best way to address it. The glass ceiling appears to have been simply willed out of existence here, which is something a fiction can easily do, but doesn’t stop you thinking that it might be avoiding a battle rather than fighting it.

It appears the lack of a gender struggle in such a typically male-centric world as the police is a flaw of the show to him. But while I can at least understand this logic, part of me just wonders–so? Why can’t it just be refreshing? There are plenty of shows and books and movies that document the struggle of minorities, whether it be women or queers and racial minorities. They’re incredibly important.

But we’re also always hearing that the only way to really change discrimination isn’t through laws but changing society’s views. Isn’t showing viewers a world where women run things just as a matter of course–and doing just fine at it, thankyouverymuch–working to do just that?

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