Last week on Last Tango in Halifax, we left off with Celia and Alan on their way to the town’s registry to get married, and that’s exactly where we start this week. The two secretive lovebirds have dragged in two randoms from the street to be their witnesses, one a butcher and one a policeman who may or may not actually be on duty. Celia seems somewhat disturbed by all this, but Alan is in his element, happy with whatever’s happening because it involves marrying Celia.
All seems to be going well until Gillian drives down the street in her lesbianmobile, the card listing their marriage appointment stuck between her teeth, which is somehow attractive to me, and she then bursts into the room in a rage.
“No, fine! You carry on. Don’t tell us. We don’t mind. We’re just your daughters!” At the mention of daughters, plural, Celia asks if Caroline is here, too, at which point the true extent of Gillian’s indignant anger begins to show itself. “No, Celia, she isn’t, because you can’t get from Harrogate to Halifax in the space of 15 minutes, not unless you’re Captain Spock, and you can disappear at your own backside in a cloud of glitter with a cheesy sound effect and land on another planet two seconds later. I don’t think even Caroline can do that. I may be wrong!” Well, then. The butcher leans over to contribute helpfully: “She means Mr. Spock.”
Gillian then begins to hone her betrayal and hurt onto Celia, saying that Alan never would have done something like this-get married without telling her-before Celia came around. Gillian is being selfish and real inappropriate, yet there is also something glorious about her in her craziness. After a few more irrational shouts, she storms out, only to walk right back in to ask, more teary this time, if Alan has any idea how worried and upset she’s been. Then she actually walks out, runs back to her car, and cries. The unraveling of Gillian has begun.
She meets Robbie at a pub and hashes out all of her frustrations and fears and annoyances, all of which Robbie calmly sits back and listens to while drinking a tiny coffee. He counters every one of her rants with the more logical realities, not necessarily in a condescending way, but in a “You are out of control so I’m going to be a grown up” way. But Gillian doesn’t want to hear it, and the whole time I can’t understand why Robbie’s not just reaching over and kissing her, because that’s what I would do.
It’s like the argument she had with Alan, where he called her a disappointment to her mother, has seeped into her brain in the last two weeks when they haven’t really been talking, and she is starting to believe it. She’s starting to believe that the rest of the world really does see her as low life trailer trash, and she’s decided that war against the posh elite of Harrogate, the world that has taken her father, her best friend, away from her, is the only answer. At the end of their conversation, Robbie asks if he and her should get married in secret sometime, which is the only thing that makes her smile.
Meanwhile, over in that fancy world of Harrogate, John is sitting in Caroline’s office, looking particularly gross and John-ish. His publishers dropping him has really cut down whatever last shreds of dignity he has, a fact which makes even Caroline feel a little sorry for him. The most important thing about this scene is that the bright midday light is shining into Caroline’s office most wonderfully, hitting those blue eyes just right, and apparently the secret marriage of her mother that day hasn’t been bothering her in the least, because she seems cool as a lovely cucumber.
Celia and Alan are waiting at the farm for Gillian when she arrives home after leaving the pub, and she stands in front of them to say, sheepishly, “I may have…overreacted.” Alan tries to explain why they wanted to get married by themselves, and that it was nothing personal, but Gillian really still isn’t over it, still hurt from their fight, and this whole scene is less amusing and more painful than her anger at the registry. Eventually, after more accusations and pleas, she seems to slide sloppily towards acceptance and/or apology. But even though she’s vulnerable now, and just wants her dad to stay, there’s no easy fix. Celia and Alan eventually leave to go to Caroline’s, to where they live now.
At Caroline’s, she and Kate and the boys arrive home from school. Because this is what they do now, their cars gliding into the drive at the same time, asking how each other’s day was, checking the mail. Caroline shares the news about Celia and Alan’s wedding, which the best son seems adorably delighted by, until Lawrence shoves him out of the screen and ruins everything by telling Kate that the REAL reason why they weren’t invited to the wedding is obvious. “It’s not rocket science, is it?” He sneers before leaving the room. Kate asks Caroline if there’s any possibility they weren’t invited because of her and her lesbian spores. Caroline tells her that’s ridiculous, but Kate seems unsure. Oh, Lawrence. I know this Mom turning into a lesbian thing is probably weird and hard to take, but you don’t have to be mean.
But hey, at least Lawrence hasn’t gotten a girl pregnant, which Gillian’s son Raff totally has! Surprise! And not only is she pregnant, she is like, EIGHT MONTHS pregnant. Which Raff shares after they have a pleasant family dinner where Gillian is still really, really not over it, calling Celia a bitch and mocking Caroline, all while Raff is like, “I don’t know, Ma, I think they’re rather splendid.” Which makes Gillian’s grumpiness kinda funny again. But then as she and Robbie are doing dishes, Raff finally comes around to share the my-girlfriend-is-eight-months-pregnant news, and things are back to not funny.
As we prepare for an imminent birth, over at Caroline’s, Celia has also shared news about Alan’s precarious relationship with death. We flash back to when he was released from the hospital last episode, but this time we hear the doctor say that Alan likely won’t survive another heart attack-even a small one. It was with this news in mind above all else that they decided to rush through with the wedding. Alan!
But perhaps the most interesting things that transpires in this whole episode are the conversations that soon transpire between Kate and Caroline. Kate has been a bit freaked by the Lawrence presumably hating her thing, because she is a fragile, fragile creature. But while she’s feeling more cautious, Caroline is chugging full steam ahead, asking Kate to sell her own house and buy part of Caroline’s, making them joint homeowners. So basically, the living together situation just went from a temporary thing to a very permanent thing, woosh, like that.
Here’s the thing, though: She’s only asked Kate to sell her house because Caroline wants to buy out John’s portion of her house. And she needs extra money to do it. Kate voices doubts about this in the school hallway, that if it was ONLY about Kate and Caroline, and not financial matters, that she’d think they were rushing into it too fast. To which Caroline cracks all of our hearts by responding that that isn’t true, because “I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”
She continues, “I hope I’m not shallow enough to be asking you for the wrong reasons. It’s just a bit sooner than we might have anticipated, that’s all.” Kate asks what we’re all thinking: “Really?” Caroline says, “Really.” And she sounds so sincere! But I don’t know. Caroline has never said anything so strong in regards to her feelings for Kate before. We’ve seen the way she’s been looking at Kate so far this season, and they are in fact nice, lovely looks. But we also haven’t really seen their relationship progress on an intimate, emotional level much further than it was in the first season, and in the first season it still seemed to be a very much beginning relationship. Don’t get me wrong, I want them to spend the rest of their lives together. And I think that Caroline believes she’s telling the truth. But I also feel like she’s not giving herself enough time right now to really, actually think about whether she’s telling the truth.
Kate decides that, well, if we’re talking about this spending eternity with each other business, I should probably get this out of the way now, and says, “I want a baby.” Caroline doesn’t actually laugh right away, as it’s been portrayed in the previews, so maybe the idea isn’t completely ridiculous to her. Or maybe it is and she’s just had a moment of shock, because when Kate continues to explain how she’s always wanted a baby, so maybe it’s good that they’re moving forward so quickly because she’s turning 42 next week and time isn’t really on her side, that’s when Caroline laughs. Kate says a few other things to her that we can’t hear, and then Caroline turns away to walk down the great hall to address her students, her face a blank.
Gillian has called Alan and Celia over to the farm to help out with Raff and his pregnant girlfriend, which turns out to be timely as the girlfriend starts having contractions as soon as they get there. Celia calls Caroline once they get to the hospital to fill her in on the whole situation, and as they chat, the whole Kate-selling-her-house-to-help-buy-Caroline’s thing is brought up, and some of my suspicions are confirmed. Celia says not to take this the wrong way, but isn’t it all a little soon? Caroline doesn’t say, “I want to spend the rest of my life with her,” to her mother. In fact, she doesn’t say anything about Kate at all. She just sighs and says, “I can’t lose that house.”
At the hospital, Raff’s girlfriend is terrified and disbelieving of this entire thing that’s happening to her body. She asks, “Why haven’t we evolved better? This is medieval!” True story, girlfriend. She continues: “This is so weird. I’m not really comfortable with the fact that this is happening. In fact, I’m inclined to suggest that it isn’t. I am firmly of the opinion that I’m not really here.” Declaration: Raff’s girlfriend is amazing and is acting exactly how I would be if I were about to push a living being out of myself.
Gillian, Alan, and Celia are hanging out to comfort the prospective new parents since the girlfriend’s family is nowhere around, even if Gillian is still trying to convince herself that Raff isn’t actually the dad. Alan introduces himself to the nurse as the granddad, but is corrected-he’s actually going to be the great granddad now, a fact which appears to delight him. And if there’s anything good in this situation, it’s that the stress of it all has distracted Gillian enough to be able to have a conversation with both Alan and Celia without crying. In the end, the baby is born safely-a girl-albeit a girl with an uncertain future.
Speaking of children, meanwhile at the schoolyard in Harrogate, Lawrence watches Kate and his mom walk across the grass as one of his friends asks him if they snog and have sex. Lawrence says disgustedly, “I don’t know.” But if they do, this is apparently reason enough for the friend to suggest that Lawrence move in with his father. Even though his father technically doesn’t really have a home right now, but, little details. Lawrence responds, “I might.”
Close up to Kate and Caroline’s conversation in the yard, which is furthering the baby idea. Kate was thinking of getting sperm from someone that she knows, perhaps a guy she’s slept with in the past who is a really good man. Caroline, understandably, seems a little put off by just the idea of men who Kate has slept with in the past, but Kate assures her that the only people who are really part of the equation here are Kate, Caroline, and the baby. When it comes down to how it’ll actually be done, Kate suggests that instead of a lengthy, medical process, she and this dude could just…do it. KATE, NO. KATE, THIS IS A BAD IDEA. TELL HER IT’S A BAD IDEA, CAROLINE.
Caroline doesn’t exactly tell her outright that it’s a bad idea, but essentially, they leave the conversation open for further discussion, with Caroline tentatively being supportive of whatever Kate wants to do. We also learn that Kate tried to have a baby before, back when she was married to a dude, but she miscarried four times. This is heartbreaking, but more than anything, it makes me realize that we really don’t know much about Kate at all. More about Kate, please.
What are your feelings on the baby situation? On Kate selling her house? And do we think Gillian is going to get it together at any point in this season?
