View from the Couch : Lip Service, Series 2, Ep 3

by Fairy Cake

Okay … I can hide it no longer.  I’m starting to really enjoy this.

Wait, wait!  That does not mean Lip Service is now brilliant.  Everyone knows the only show that got everything right all the time was Six Feet Under, and I don’t want to talk about that right now in case I accidentally go into mourning again.

But for an episode in which very little happened (except lots of not-exceptionally-subtle foreshadowing), this was pretty entertaining.  The cast have gotten evidently more comfortable with each other.  On a scale of 1 to Skins, the storyline is hitting a clean 4 for being reasonably believable.  And two of the most irritating/two-dimensional characters, Frankie and Cat, have left, being in New York and dead respectively.

Maybe I’m just confused.  Maybe in my scheduled viewing of these episodes  I have become so consumed with Lip Service that I can no longer determine my opinions.

Fantastic! I am obviously the right person to be reviewing this!

10 things I realised while watching Season 2, Episode 3 of Lip Service

1)  I am kind of glad that Cat got hit by a car and can’t think of nicer way to say that.

2)  I’m pretty convinced that Sadie is modelled on the character Marsha from Spaced.  I can just see her sat at a gallery opening somewhere with two glasses of Chateaux de Tesco, laughing a bit too loudly and smelling of menopause.

3)  Apparently, despite having just over half a million residents and covering 67 square miles of terrain, Glasgow is actually the size of a large roundabout, judging by how often Sam and Lexy bump into each other while jogging.

4)  Part of me really doesn’t want things with Ed and Tess to become romantic, because there are already way too many “distressed lesbian turns to cock in time of need” storylines out there.  Having said that, there’s something genuinely moving – and I feel, realistic – about how they have become magnetised by their grief and loneliness.  I wonder whether the realism stems from the fact that actors Fiona Button and James Anthony Pearson are straight, and therefore the male/female dyanmic is just easier for them.  This could be a great storyline if the writers navigate properly.

5)  This episode is yet more proof that, in archetypal fiction land, asking someone to not to tell is a great way to guarantee that they will absolutely definitely tell. I’m looking at you, Tess.

"Please sir, can I have some talent?"

6)  I’m starting to think Sam’s dress sense is marginally worse than Tess’s.  Bugger me copper, it’s not 1993 and you are not k.d lang.  Is that a fucking GILLET?  Get out.

7)  Sex that involves food has always been glorified on camera and it just seems impractical and expensive to me.  Maybe if you’re like Sadie and you can’t leave the house without getting laid you keep a stash of whipped cream, chocolate sauce and other condiments available for such occasions, but if a girl came back to mine and wanted to be rubbed with food-stuffs, the best I could offer her is some leftover lasagne… maybe some natural yogurt.  Have any of our readers done this?  I genuinely want to know how it worked out.

8)  Having said that, the other half of that sex scene (the Lexy/hot blonde half) was rather awesome wasn’t it?  Unabashed treatment of cunnilingus!  You go girls!  You dive that muff!

9) How is it that people on film and TV can just randomly leave the country at a moment’s notice?  And why do they always go to New York?  You don’t see them booking the Easybus and trying to sort out their Visa.   They just get in a fucking taxi like ‘no big deal’.

10)  I now feel sorry for Sinead Keenan, who plays Nora.  She’s one evil laugh away from being Jafar.  Ditto for doctor bitch Declan, played by Adam Sinclair, and his endless canteen-based failures to get laid.  The Lip Service writing team are slowly demonstrating their talents, but depth isn’t one of them.

Number of reasons to hate Frankie in this episode :

I counted 56, but there may have been more.

No, but seriously…

One of the reasons I will never come to truly love this series is Frankie.  Both how she is written, as ungrateful, selfish, childish and humourless, and because of the actress who plays her.  I’m not sure whether Ruta Gedmintas feels she hasn’t been given enough to work with, but she is consistently unsympathetic and unbelievable.  Every time I start to enjoy this series, Frankie comes in with her 4 interchangeable facial expressions, inexplicably covered in mud, and ruins it for everyone.  Maybe now she’s fucked off to New York things will get better.

Percentage of cast that was not White :

3% (one person again – new psychiatrist man, who said exactly 3 lines of dialogue… picture me slow-clapping at my desk)

A few questions I was left with …

1) How much product does The New Scottish Lesbian use to get her hair looking like that?  It’s like a 90′s Rachel Leigh-Cook bob with added horrible.

2)  Why can’t I meet nice, funny older men like actor guy Hugh to go drinking with and rant about my love life to?  He seems like such a dude.  Every time I try hanging out with men like this they either talk at me incessantly about Pink Floyd, or try and put their hand up my skirt, or both.

3)  Can we please see boobs again please?  Can you hear me BBC!?  BOOBS!

4)  Who’s calling Lexy?  Is it Cat?  Is this all going to get a bit last-episode-of-Sherlock?

Overall rating :

7/10