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Meg's house isn't exactly domestic bliss, Mum discovers that good Neighbours don't necessarily become good friends, and Bea finds life on the outside is a blast.
In this episode we see our first glimpses of the officers private lives, with the breakfast table in Meg's house. Good old social worker Bill told his Little Woman he wanted her to give up work, to stay at home cooking and cleaning instead. Meg the career woman stuck to her feminist principles and declined, as she busied herself by running around after him and his breakfast in her stripey apron. Besides, on top of work, she was perfectly capable of being a wife and caring mother. Which is when she finally noticed her teenage son hadn't been seen since the day before. Maybe it was Bill's horrible yellow jumper that had distracted her. She exclaimed that Marty was only "sixteen". Quite a frightening revelation, because when the same Marty is seen again a couple of years later, he seems to be well into his twenties. Maybe Meg had been thinking of work far too much, probably not helped by the fake brick wall the other side of her front door, that could so easily have been lifted straight from the prison set.
The steely Bride of Frankenstein version of Erica in the last episode, seemed to have softened overnight, and rather than glaring at prisoners and telling them her opinions of their guilt, she was already more inclined to cosy chats while sipping invisible tea. "You've been a good Governor," Mum pointed out. The new soft and cuddly Erica had not only given her blessing to the Bea/Mum farewell party, but was actually there to make a speech. They were there "to farewell Bea and Mum," she said in her precise Queen's English accent, but with surprising lack of Queen's English grammar.
Even though the viewers hadn't had much chance to get to know Mum's character, her goodbye speech was still very touching. She said the prison was "the only home I've had for quite a few years," and she thought of the women as "my daughters". In reply, the women handed her a blanket, which "every girl [had] made a square for", which I thought was a nice sentimental touch (though surprisingly it did appear to have more than 10 squares, so I guess some of the inmates did a few extras.)
Marilyn was sneaked into Erica's office to make a secret telephone call to Eddie, with the help of bent screw Officer Yates. Rather than the trendy avacado-green phone of later episodes, I was surprised to see two huge clunky phones on Erica's poor straining desk, one of which looked like it had it's own telephone exchange built in.
The front chicken-wire gates yawned open, and out stepped Mum and Bea, blinking at the road outside. Which must be pretty embarrassing I guess, if the clothes you are wearing were the height of fashion when you wore them into the prison ten years or so ago. Mum's snooty daughter Lorraine arrived, instantly recognisable as Madge from Neighbours with crazed black hair, and snobby views about what people might think, and promptly escorted Mum to the sophisticated elegance of a Pizza Hut on stilts. There, her true character was revealed (no, not Madge from Neighbours) when she told Mum she could not stay at their house, which gave Mum more delicious pathos and sad dialogue: "you have no mother Lorraine, she died in there a few minutes ago."
Back in Wentworth, Lynn was in the garden, where Mum had recently drawn attention to the rosebud behind the fencing yet again, to make sure we viewers got the point. Lynn asked Meg what nice old Mum had done to get put inside, and I loved the bright and chirpy way Meg replied, "Oh, she killed someone."
As for Bea, she was enjoying "luxury all the way", at a supposedly luxurious hotel, nicely inter-cut with scenes of Mum moving into a dark little guest house. (The room was apparently "smaller than the last place", Mum said, which is not surprising after the spacious Wentworth cells with two or three sharing and not a bunk bed in sight.) Another nice scene with Mum hugging the blanket the women made for her, as she wept.
After a night at the hotel, Bea set off to see the grave of daughter ‘Dibby’, with its unusual inscription ("Deborah Smith - 1957 to 1977 - daughter of Beatrice"). She put the flowers down, but seemed to prefer keeping a good ten paces away (maybe she'd seen the film Carrie a few too many times). This conjured up more flashbacks - of her daughter, played by the actress' daughter in real life, and Vera telling her she couldn't go to Dibby's funeral - both ringed in that weird yellow Weetabix glow.
On to Karen, who was having an argument with Greg in the hospital, where comments such as "I loved you once!" were yelled at the top of their voices, while Sister was just the other side of the partition door. Naturally, she didn’t hear a thing.
Finally, Bea had already mentioned how she wanted to "surprise" her old man, and this she certainly managed! This was today's audience shocker, and explained the mysterious gift from her old cellmate Val, and her comments that Franky wouldn't be on top for long. An ending to go out with a BANG!
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