'The Trouble with Maggie Cole' Recap: Season 1, Episode 5
This week’s installment of The Trouble with Maggie Cole turned up the drama several notches as more secrets were revealed. But before digging into the specifics, let’s remind ourselves of how we got here.
In Episode 4, Maggie finally got the chance to made amends with Roxanna. Alex’s predicament continued to worsen when the money he was intending to use to pay off his gambling debts mysteriously disappeared. Maggie was very publicly blindsided when she discovered that her son had a secret of his own that she knew nothing about. For more details, feel free to peruse the recap.
After the humiliating leak of a family secret, Maggie spent a sleepless night on the sofa. In the morning, Peter wants to talk it over, but she’s feeling angry that her family kept something this important from her for so long. She needs time to process before she’s ready to forgive that betrayal.
So the story that Peter had feared would come out about his son made a huge splash in Thurlbury. At university, Jamie seriously injured a boxing opponent during a sparring match. The thing is, the guy had an undiagnosed blood clot on his brain, a ticking time bomb that just happened to go off when Jamie delivered a routine punch. The young man recovered after a two-week coma but was never the same. Because of this unfortunate accident, Jamie carried around a weight of responsibility that Peter said almost destroyed him. He never even told Becka, let alone his mother.
Maggie feels the need to get away from the house to think so she sets out to get a room at Brian’s B&B. Once there, she attempts to apologize to the pub landlord, but ever-protective barmaid, Sydney insists on schooling Maggie how Brian gave her a job when she was having a hard time at home. She calls him the nicest, kindest most honorable man she’s ever known, which out of embarrassment (but more likely out of guilt), he yells at her to stop before walking out.
Both women go after him so Brian closes the pub and reveals the story of why he is actually in hiding. He was from a military family and enlisted when he was 18. He was fortunate to never see any real combat in his career. But around the age of 40, he was notified that he was being shipped off to Afghanistan. Before he could be deployed, Brian went AWOL. He would be court-martialed and possibly sent to prison if found out. Syd and Maggie try their best to convince him that he’s not a coward and Brian accepts Maggie’s apology. He looks rather relieved to have the secret off his chest. We also learn that the gun in his dresser drawer is his heroic grandfather’s service revolver from WWII.
In the meantime, we find Alex’s nan agitated about something she says has been stolen from under her bed. The plot thickens as we realize the bag of money Alex hid away was actually his grandmother’s stash of cash, most likely her life’s savings. He looks very ashamed indeed when the confused old lady mistakes him for his father and tells his mother that he can't be trusted. After their visit, Alex gets another threatening phone call from his debt collectors and, just to prove a point, they’re parked only a few yards away from the care home.
When Karen hears that Peter will be Maggie-less that evening, all systems are a go in her plan to seduce her boss. Poor Peter is so clueless.
