We don’t like it when Nidge is happy. It unsettles us.
Anyway, obviously this article has mahoooosive spoilers for anyone who hasn’t got around to watching last week’s first episode of the fifth season of ‘Love/Hate,’ so turn back now if you’ve been keeping it aside.
Done? OK. On we go.
Opening scene. We’re on a ferry with Patrick, all grey skies and contemplation, and that’s quickly juxtaposed with Nidge and Elmo living the life in Spain. Nicely done – the noble traveller versus the vulgar gangsters.
It’s like Shakespeare, really, when you think about it.
We meet Terence Big Balls, who thinks he’s Ray Winstone but actually can’t stop reminding us of Mary Berry, who takes great delight in telling Nidge seven, eight or 314 times that he’s a marked man.
Yeah yeah.
Anyway, Terence assigns his nephew Paulie to help Nidge/keep Nidge in line/tell Nidge what to do, it’s never really all that clear, while flirting his little shmig off with Siobhan.
Paulie is played by Johnny Ward, who starred in a series of McDonald’s Eurosaver ads a couple of years ago, so it’s bloody impossible to take him seriously.
Siobhan is still in cahoots with the gardaí and, in one scene, drunkenly tells them there’s a new man in town. Otherwise she’s just there to look sad – and look pretty sexy looking sad, truth told – while Tommy’s on a respirator.
Who else? Trish. Oh yeah. MAJOR SPOILER HERE. Trish got her hair done. So there was that.
On to Franno.
We hadn’t heard Fran’s ‘simpering little girl voice’ before but he pushed it front and centre while Nidge threatened to break his legs, his back, his everything for killing the dentist. Nidge let him live but he’s now firmly in the baldy weasel’s back pocket, tucked away nicely, left with a bone in a matchbox, Deano, a few swigs of poitín and not much else.
Moving on…
Warren has nits. Come again? Warren has nits.
This may seem inconsequential but it becomes a f***ing huge deal when Nidge and Patrick – who had tried to have the kingpin killed earlier in the episode – face off in the boozer.
Deep breath: Patrick accuses Nidge of accusing Patrick of letting his own kid get headlice and Patrick does not like this one little bit so he tells Nidge to keep his €10,000 of truce money and buy himself a headstone with it.
And it was just a great, great line in an otherwise scattered episode.
P.S. Lizzie got killed.
LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Aideen McQueen – Faith healers, Coolock craic and Gigging as Gaeilge
