- My Mad Fat Diary – Episode 2- Review - 28 February, 2014
- My Mad Fat Diary – Episode 1 – Review - 20 February, 2014
- Mental Health and a Knock at the Door - 3 February, 2014
Diary, it’s over. ‘Rinn’ (Rae and Finn) are over. The love train has fantastically derailed and there’s Oxytocin haemorrhaging out of the first class cabin.
Raeism of the week: ‘As Uncle Mark might say: Am I fuck, fucking sorry. Fuck the fuck off!’
Episode 2 has literally been such a rollercoaster ride from pub necking to an exclusive sleepover to breaking up on a doorstep. My Brain feels like it has been torn out of my skull and drop-kicked into a choir of hormonal teenagers. The writers really have taken the happy-clappy running through a field complete with flowers in hair angle, from last week, and gunned down the merry skippers then set fire to the field. The unpredictability factor that constantly has the viewer on the edge of paranoia is undoubtedly what makes MMFD such engaging TV.
Rae finds herself at the centre of her very own spider web of deception, her Mum finds out that Rae has been skipping college bringing their earlier Spice Girls duet to an end with her brilliant ‘What about bullshit spice?’ comment, another great example of the writing talent behind the show. Several minutes in and already the rollercoaster is heading down shit valley at 90mph.
As college life continues, Rae is advised by Archie to keep well under the radar to avoid attracting unnecessary attention, namely from the Chucky-esque ‘Simmy’ (Nick Preston). Simmy’s choice of attack comprises of terrorising his victims with cleverly conceived nicknames rather than the use of offensive weapons. Inevitably Rae ends up soaring so far above the radar, like a 6ft 16st Golden Eagle, that she probably could have invited it out for dinner, spoke about her issues then left with its phone number and a friend for life.
Alongside World War Rae, the battle of Chloe is just beginning. When semi-nudes are plastered around the college walls Rae naturally morphs into Kevin Costner in The Bodyguard ready to take a bullet or indeed provide a bullet to protect her friend. I couldn’t help but feel that the writers were using Chloe as a pawn to take the focus off of Rae whilst still utilising Rae as a foundation wall to keep the house of Chloe from collapsing. It totally worked.
The time finally came for Rinn to get their bang on. The scenes in Finn’s living room slowly led to what I was hoping would be an ecstatic love-filled intimate encounter, instead the dreamy Finn, having drank too much passed out on his bed leaving Rae to play big spoon. It felt as though Rae almost preferred this type of ending, she couldn’t come to terms with getting naked in front of herself, revealing all to a guy would surely be just too much? Once again, the border of defloration had not been crossed. Oh c’mon, it just has to happen!
One particular scene this week was of golden quality; Rae’s Mum explaining to Rae that she feels Karim (Bamshad Abedi-Amin) is way out of her league. The way the wonderful Claire Rushbrook delivered made the whole interaction so natural with a real human quality. It was very moving to hear Rae’s mum voice exactly the same concerns that she has with Karim as Rae does with Finn. Of course, I wanted to dive into my television, time travel to 2001 and watch Bridget Jones’s Diary with the duo, have a little cry, maybe watch them eat a box of Malteasers. I want to see more emotional interaction between Rae and her Mum please!
We can’t exactly forget about mum’s ‘Menopause’ though, well… she’s actually pregnant! Blow up the balloons and erect the banners! It’s pretty expected that the news of her mother’s pregnancy hits Rae like several railway sleepers. However, through her murky specs she braves a brief ‘congrats’.
Well, well, well, could this can of worms episode possibly provide anything else? The answer is a resounding yes, it’s a yes because there’s smoke billowing out of Mount Kester, the volcano of wisdom. During therapy he advises Rae that she either has to tackle her issues with Finn head on, leave college or leave him. At this point I was really hoping that I could stumble into the session with a half full bottle of an unnameable whiskey and tell Kester to just piss off. But, as Rae says herself ‘Kester was annoyingly right.’
I can’t even… Ugh! Rae arrives at Finn’s place, handing back his jacket she shakes her head provoking a totally dumbfounded reaction, expertly executed by Nico Miragello. Forget Rose’s arguable gross negligence manslaughter of Jack in Titanic, this shit was seriously emotionally damaging. The dark side of the moon was beaming out of Rae, the product of her self-image insecurity was creatively displayed through Rae’s pyromaniacal thoughts towards a billboard displaying a ‘Barbie’ like figure. My jaw dropped.
Screenwriting around mental health has not been as impacting or interactive as what MMFD offers for a long time. The constantly evolving plot has me at the edge of my seat just waiting to be thrown into wild and wonderful situations.
Oh boy am I looking forward to what the rest of the series has to offer.
