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With the recap featuring those famous last words by Lorilei - "A few hours in solitary's not going to hurt me." And then followed one of the most exciting and tense episodes of late.
The actual rape was not shown, and this seemed to have better effect. We saw the men pouncing on Lorilei, and the next thing we saw was her alone in the morning, weeping. The actress' 'post-rape' performance was very good, despite the attempts by the sound engineer to distract the viewers with bizarrely inappropriate sci-fi music, woop-woooooping over the scene.
"Surely it couldn't be the prisoners!" Ann exclaimed to Meg, as if it would be unreasonable to believe a bunch of violent rapists and murderers would do such a thing given half a chance. The ex-Blackmoor staff became the primary suspects, despite not being particularly visible or saying more than a handful of lines since their transfer. Craven was not a suspect because of not being there at the time, but he was clear about what he was up to. "When a prisoner makes a threat against my life it's time to pull on the gloves," he said, ironically to Joan - the officer famed for pulling on her gloves when a prisoner needs to be 'dealt' with.
Joan's reaction on hearing the news of Lorilei's rape was interesting, and the look on her face was an excellent performance in itself. After shouting at Craven, she tried to explain to Lorilei that she hadn't known it would happen. I thought this was a very good scene, with Lorilei saying she could finally see why all the women hated Joan so much. I also thought Ann's reaction was good, when she started to open the infirmary door and saw Rita comforting Lorilei. Rather than punish her for being in an area she shouldn't be in, she quietly closed the door without being seen, and said to Meg, "I don't need any more proof."
When the other inmates saw Craven, they started chanting "Rapist! Rapist!" at him. He soon stopped this by whipping out his black pudding and waving it menacingly, as I had a nostalgic flashback to the 1970s when 'The Goodies' had flat caps and black puddings and sang about "Eckie Thump".
Craven warned Lorilei to tell the "truth", using her daughter as a threat, then sent her off to the showers, thereby destroying any forensic evidence to prove the rape took place. I can't help feeling the police surgeon was partly to blame for this. After such a horrific ordeal, and sensitive situation, where the victim is likely to be desperate to shower, I would have expected the police surgeon to be there in next to no time. But it was starting to look questionable whether anyone would turn up that day at all. It was Meg who found Lori after her shower, and asked her "Why?" To which she replied, with probably the saddest line of the episode, "Because it's hopeless.."
Mr Dwyer the Minister was called in, and seemed a tad ANGRY as usual. In the middle of this fraught meeting, Joycie burst through the door (as seems the norm for staff when important meetings are taking place), and we had one of those classic conversations, that could only happen in Prisoner:
Joyce: "I'm sorry but Merle Jones has escaped."
Dwyer: "Escaped?!"
Joyce: "Well no, not exactly. She just wandered off."
Dwyer: "Wandered?! Where from?"
Craven: "Probably solitary!"
Joyce: "No. She was on a shopping excursion."
Things went from bad to worse, and Meg stopped the group on its way to see Lorilei, asking Ann for "a word" (or something that sounded like that, as she mumbled at her feet). Lorilei had changed her story, implicating Ann in a plot to get rid of Craven. Despite the word of Ann (prison Governor) not being considered evidence enough for the rape accusation against Craven, the highly questionable claim by an inmate with a reputation for deception was taken seriously without any query, and Ann was instantly relieved of her duty, with Craven brought in as Acting Governor in her absence. Not much of a surprise that it eventually happened, I thought, though I was surprised that the Deputy Governor was by-passed in this case. What was more surprising was Craven handing the governorship to Joan after her threat to give evidence against him. And I still find it bizarre that the Department was happy for Joan to go back to the Governor position after they'd already had to remove her from the post for making a mess of it last time.
Alice and Spike were trying to sort out a method of communication throughout the prison, using pipes. (Not sure why, when simply shouting seems to cut through most of the concrete and brickwork, and messages hidden in food trays are shockingly easy to get away with.) After all the terrible and illegal things that had gone on in the boiler room, it was reassuring to see it still didn't appear to be locked or guarded and inmates could wander around it freely. Especially after the recent issue with hidden contraband in there. (By the way, when Joycie came in to check the boiler dials, she tapped them and looked at them, but why on earth did she stick her ear to them?) As if this weren't freedom enough, Alice and Spike were later seen in a toilet (that was clearly a real room rather than a set) with proper doors on the cubicles, so obviously not a toilet for inmates. Presumably then a staff or visitor toilet, which begs the question, how can inmates just wander in, and how come nobody had spotted Alice and Spike wandering all around the prison buildings?
Back to Merle, who had made a new friend with a child "actor" and a couple of mice. Merle and Muscles (the mice, not the inmate and her friend) had been stolen from a pet shop run by a man with the most hilarious acting I've seen in ages. Merle and the boy strolled off and jumped onto a bus, as more inappropriate ("comedy") music played. Still a very convincing performance by the actress playing Merle. It might not have been the 'comedy' the music was suggesting it was, but what really did make me laugh was Merle making yet another reference to Alice as being "not very bright"!
Great stuff.
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