Last Tango in Halifax - There’s no stopping us.

Last Tango in Halifax: 2x02. 

Celia: We got married and had a baby, in just 48 hours. 

Alan: We’re on fire. 

Celia: We’re cooking with gas. 

Alan: There’s no stopping us.

It’s kind of interesting to think about time in relation to this show. Alan and Celia were married to people that they didn’t truly love, even if Alan’s marriage was considerably more happy than Celia’s, for years, and it’s only now that they’ve found each other again, and are starting to build a new, happy life with each other. Gillian seems to have been in arrested development for years, at least since the tragic death of her husband, and she still can’t move on from relying entirely on Alan for any kind of stability in her life – she seems to have found some kind of routine in her relationship with Robbie, but this isn’t something that she’s willing to commit to entirely, at least not for now. Caroline’s marriage wasn’t unhappy, at least not from how she talks about it, but took a bitter turn recently due to John leaving her for Judith, and her newly found happiness (or at least her willingness to commit to that happiness) is even newer than Alan and Celia’s. And then there’s Raff, who apparently finds out that he’s going to be a father, informs his family of this fact, and actually witnesses the birth of his daughter (from the hallway, hyperventilating, while Celia offers him Mints Imperial) in the span of a couple of days. 

Changes comes at a different pace for each of these characters, and some are better at adapting to it, or willing to embrace it, than others. While Raff immediately makes plans to drop out of school and take care of his child – against the wishes of both his mum and his grandfather, who have high hopes for him and want him to stay in school at all cost – Gillian is still very much stuck and unable to move on from the fact that Alan’s role in her life is changing. In the beginning of the episode, she interrupts Celia and Alan’s secret wedding like a ball of fury and resentment, throwing accusations at her father and Celia. Unable to confront the thing that upset Alan – her sleeping with John, and the disappointment over it reminding him of her being pregnant and upsetting her mother when she was fifteen – she blames everything else she can possibly think of, Celia for changing her father into a person that she does not recognize, Caroline for being the seemingly perfect daughter that she could never be, the economic and social difference between the two families (“Go live in Harrogate with your posh pals”). It’s a painful and draining moment for Alan – later, when they come by her house, having gone through with the wedding, the accusations continue, with an occasional half-hearted apology for “over-reacting”, followed by more resentment. It’s hard to see where Gillian is going exactly except heading towards some kind of breakdown. 

Alan: Perhaps we have made a mistake. Well we have, clearly, because this doesn’t resemble in any way, shape or form the happy moment we hoped it might be.
Gillian: I’m sorry. I’ve overreacted.

Celia only reveals the true reason for their quick wedding later, to Caroline: before leaving the hospital, they were told that Alan would die if he had another heart attack, but he isn’t willing to admit this to Gillian, who incidentally constantly creates situations that are nerve-wrecking – even though Alan seems to take the news of Ellie’s, Raff’s girlfriend’s, pregnancy, quite well, even looking forward to becoming a great-grandfather (and he’s good with babies!). 

The other person chronically unable to move on, and eloquently causing chaos and destruction through his aggressive passivity (which should be an oxymoron, but he somehow pulls it off) is John. He takes his grief over being dropped by his publisher and feeling his old life disappear under his feet to Caroline, who is mostly concerned by the fact that he won’t be able to pay her out if he doesn’t have any money, so she has to come up with a way to keep the house in the family. 

Caroline: What do you want? I meant generally, in life, now. What do you want? Focus on the future, not the past.
John: I want you. I want everything to go back to the way it was.
Caroline: I’ve moved on. You are gonna have to get used to that, and when you do…
John: My publisher’s dropped me.

John’s idea of dealing with his life at the moment is angrily clinging to whatever bits and pieces are left of it rather than building something new, while everyone else has moved on – he’s not writing, he’s drinking heavily, he tries to move back in with Judith, who throws him out and finally doesn’t show any patience for his whining (and she’s the one who is actually getting some writing done, even if she’s running on vodka). 

Judith: I don’t know why I’m not surprised. It’s been obvious for ages that you’ve lost it.
John: What are you talking about?
Judith: I don’t even know if you ever really had it.
John: Had it? What?
Judith: That fire. That real passion. I think you were just lucky for a while.
John: You have no idea.
Judith: You know, the trouble with you is that you’ve never lived life on the edge, you’ve never really taken a risk with anything, you’ve never really dared to do anything properly dangerous, you just fiddle faddle around the boundaries of it, don’t you, pretending, but you never actually push them, like a real writer. You’re terrified. Given the choice, if she’d have you back, you’d go crawling back to Caroline, with your tail between your legs. What do you want? What do you really, really want? You don’t have to answer that. I’m not really interested. But whatever it is, can you piss off out of my flat and chase after it for once in your life, instead of clinging on to what’s familiar?

Where Caroline kindly asks him for his plans, and receives the frustrating old answer that he doesn’t actually have any, except return to the life that he’s actively squandered and ruined, Judith calls him out on his passivity, and links it to him being a mediocre and hopeless writer without any original ideas.  

Last Tango in Halifax is brilliant and portraying relationships and connections – John’s professional decline leads to Caroline having to come up with a plan to keep the house, and, being Caroline, she doesn’t wait for weeks until the problem’s grown out of hand, she tackles it immediately, even if it means asking her mum for a financial contribution on her wedding day. And she decides to ask Kate to sell her house, even if it looks like rushing things on the surface, but I quite like her explanation that she is certain enough of their relationship that she assumed they were heading that way anyway, so why wait? 

Caroline: Kate, I wouldn’t have asked you if I thought I’d regret it. I like that house a lot but I’m not blinkered. I wanna spend the rest of my life with you. I hope I’m not shallow enough to be asking for the wrong reasons, it’s just a bit sooner than we might have anticipated.

It’s always lovely to see the effect that Caroline has on Kate, who is absolutely smitten with her, after months of waiting patiently, and is willing to embrace the pace that Caroline is setting to the extent that she reveals – “which I would have brought up further down the line had things progressed… but seeing as we’re possibly moving forward slightly faster…” – wanting a baby, and soon, because she’s turning 42 next week and time is not on her side. 

It seems like a massive step in a relatively new relationship, but on the other hand, they are both rational and responsible, especially in comparison to John and Gillian. When confronted with the danger of losing her home, Caroline confronts the problem immediately – and when she finds out that Kate wants a baby, she’s willing to talk about it, asking what the plan is, precisely (and of course Kate has a plan, because she’s thought about this for a long time), and she takes Kate seriously, even if it isn’t what she had planned after (or while – Lawrence seems like he’ll still be a lot of work in the future) two teenagers, and especially when Kate tells her that she tried to get pregnant with her husband and had four miscarriages – and Caroline is genuinely shocked that this is one of the hundred things that she didn’t know about Kate, because she never asked about her life.  

Kate: Caroline, if you think it’s a daft idea, just say.
Caroline: I don’t think it’s a daft idea, you’ve obviously thought about it a lot. And it obviously means a lot to you. I mean, it’s fundamental, babies, isn’t it. Even if I said no, It’s your life, it’s your body.
Kate: No, it is. I wouldn’t want to do it on my own. So, we would be talking sleepless nights, and nappies, and years of angst and teenage tantrums.
Caroline: I can do all that.
Kate: You’re 46. It’s not really what you planned on doing next, is it, babies. 

They’re both characters who decidedly do not fiddle faddle, and are brave enough to chase their dreams, even if it’s difficult. 

Random notes: 

Celia: He’s a policeman. He shouldn’t be fleecing pensioners!

I was really hoping that Lawrence was over his issues after the last season, but apparently he’s gotten much worse and unbearable over the break – but at least Caroline isn’t the kind of mum who indulges him. 

Celia: Raff’s put his girlfriend in the pudding club.

Ellie: Why haven’t we evolved better. This is medieval. […]I’m firmly of the opinion that I’m not here.

The newly born means a potential future fracture between Alan and Celia: Alan is committed to help Raff stay in school, and help them financially to make sure that everyone’s taken care of, but Celia wants to help Caroline with the house. 

“Apparently that is the best way of getting pregnant.” – Ah, pragmatism (served with Caroline’s even more awesome expressive face). 

John’s brilliant plan, possibly hatched after Judith’s “go after what you really want” speech, is to break up Gillian and Robbie since “that’s just a disaster waiting to happen”, dangle the money he’ll get from Caroline paying him out in front of Gillian’s face, and basically buying himself a new home by saving the farm. And then I’m sure he’ll write a book about it all that will be hailed as the new great family novel of the decade.