Gentleman Jack – Tripe All Over The Place, Presumably

By: Kelly Kearney

The wretched Mariana is never far from Miss. Lister’s mind and after receiving a letter from the woman, Anne starts to wonder if a final in person goodbye wouldn’t finally leave the past where it belongs. With a head full of exes, Anne attempts to distract herself with the news about the highspeed railways coming to Halifax and just what that means for their canal trade and her coal mining business. Anne the shareholder has a thing or two to say about this new tech-boom, not to mention the politics driving it. Meanwhile, over at Sowden farm, the crude Uncle Ben has gone missing, and, in his absence, we find you g Thomas’ attitude getting darker by the minute. Maybe killing your father and feeding him to your pigs changes a guy…changes him into someone who thinks murder will fix his problems.

Exploding Cows at Breakfast

We begin with Anne Lister (Suranne Jones) and her meticulous accounts of her daily schedule. Her diary is full of moment-by-moment entries of everything she ate, said and saw throughout her days. After obsessing about her life down to the very sexy marital minute, she heads to breakfast where her sister Marian (Gemma Whelan) tells the Lister family about the new railway out of Selby. The discussion turns to whether or not the railway will make the canals obsolete when it comes to trade in the north. Captain Lister (Timothy West) and his niece debate back and forth about this until Marian changes the subject claiming she heard the railways caused an explosive situation that nobody at the breakfast table can believe. Apparently, seemingly healthy cows are exploding, and the locals have attributed it to this new tech. There’s also been rumors about headaches induced from these high-speed traveling trains, but Anne can’t get past this exploding cow scenario and how exactly this could have happen. It sounds like change is coming to Halifax and anyone stuck in their ways is hopping on conspiracy bandwagons.

Family Visits

After breakfast, Anne, and Ann (Sophie Rundle) head out to visit the Walker family– all of them. The couple fills the cousins in on all of their travels and French adventures including Miss. Lister’s scaling of the Alps. While the women chatter on about details of their trip, Anne zeroes in on one of the cousin’s husband and picks his brain about the Selby railway. While her appearance, and certainly the rumors surrounding her tastes in bedmates, tends to put people off, the men in Halifax can find some level of respect for Anne when it comes to business. She certainly knows her stuff and Ann Walker’s cousins can’t deny that.

As the newlyweds bounce from house to house regaling the stories of their travels, Marianna Lawton (Lydia Leonard) is at home suffering from dizzy spells from what she assumes is her emotional turmoil over the Anne/Ann marriage. She’s physically not well and whether or not her mental instability is causing it remains to be seen but she asks her husband Charles if she might invite Miss. Lister to the house–claiming it might help her heal. Charles agrees because it’s not like he’s unaware of what his wife and her friend get up to, and if ‘Freddy,’ the nickname she has for Anne can help, he’s all for it. Of course, the second Anne’s last letter is delivered, Mariana goes from excited for their reunion to downright devastated. It’s a kiss-off note telling Mariana she made the right choice by not visiting Shibden Hall when she was in Halifax because it’s time the two women moved on. The letter is scathing, and its content sharp in its words– like daggers she knew would pierce the heart of her longtime love. Mariana is left sobbing with the understanding that the woman she loves is over her for good.

Back in Halifax, Samuel Washington (Joe Armstrong) finds his daughter Eliza (Emma Wrightson) sitting alone in a huff–upset that her friend Henry’s parents won’t allow her to see him. When Samuel asks why, assuming the two kids got up to no good, Eliza assures him they didn’t do anything wrong, but the girl is so upset he knows he’s not getting the full story. After his talk with Eliza, he goes home to find out that his other daughter Suzannah (Amy James-Kelly) has been getting harassed both physically and verbally from her husband’s visiting uncle, Ben. Samuel was outraged and doesn’t understand why Thomas hasn’t taken care of this. It’s so bad, according to his wife, now their daughter wants to come back home. Divorce wasn’t really something women were granted during this time and while there are always growing pains with any marriage the Sowden farm is starting to sound like a dangerous place.

Later, when Suzannah does go home her husband, Thomas (Tom Lewis), tells her and his mother, Mary (Lucy Black) that his Uncle Ben is gone. He didn’t leave a note and didn’t say where he was going, and Thomas’ mother points out that it sounds an awful lot like how his father just up and left –at least that’s the story he’s been telling people. If the pigs look fatter, we know where Uncle Ben went but it’s Thomas who has seemed to check out the most at the farm. He has changed and the stress of keeping the farm together, pleasing his new wife, staying on top of his siblings, and a keeping a murder investigation at bay, has turned that sweet season one boy into something darker, and not what the young Suzannah wanted in a mate.

Mrs. Rawson is Always Team Lister

Next on their pop-in visits, Anne and Ann call on Mrs. Rawson (Sara Kestelman), who warns the two women about the rumors swirling around town. They both need to be a little bit more cautious about their living arrangements because people are nosy and not understanding–unlike the elder Rawson who seems to be thoroughly charmed by Anne Lister and supports her unusual lifestyle, if only because admires her authenticity. Anne blows off Mrs. Rawson concerns by blaming it all on that busybody, Mrs. Priestley, who started false rumors about them. She assures the older woman that the gossip is just that: gossip, but it’s with a wink and nod since Anne knows that Mrs. Rawson has always known what she gets up to.

After their meeting with the Mrs. Rawson, Ann Walker receives a letter from her sister in Scotland, but the contents do not mention anything about her request to divide up their estate. Ann feels ignored and not taken seriously when it comes to her family and her wife urges her to write her sister, Elizabeth, again and really impress the idea that she is taking control over her finances.

Back at Sowden farm and Samuel Washington stops in for a visit after his wife told him Thomas’ foul uncle was hounding their daughter. The concerned father wants to get a look at what’s happening behind their closed doors and if he can help, he will. When he asks about Ben, he’s shocked to hear that the man disappeared, and according to Suzannah, Thomas isn’t sure where he went. Samuel encourages his daughter to find him if she needs him in the future, and in the meantime, he pokes around the farm looking for evidence of where Ben and his brother could’ve gone. He makes his way inside the pig stalls, continuing to think something about these disappearances doesn’t add up. Now that his daughter is a part of this family, he isn’t about to drop this inquiry. He cares too much for her to allow her to be twisted up in some murderous mass.

Captain Lister’s Wheels

After completely ignoring her father’s orders to never touch his new gig, Anne takes Captain Lister’s carriage out for a spin for a meeting with John Waterhouse (Nicholas Farrell) about the Selby railway. Anne is a shareholder, and with that title comes a certain ability to inquire about the financial pros and cons of this new venture. She questions whether or not Waterhouse will continue to invest in the canals for trade or segue towards the railways. He does his best to avoid answering one way or another but, in the end, her persistence allows for some hints of where his money is heading. With her head full of figures and what ifs, Anne heads back to Shibden Hall were a letter from Marianna waits her. Breaking the 4th wall, Anne turns to the camera and tells us that Mariana is responsible for their fractured relationship, but when she sees the woman plead with her to come visit, her fury at the woman seems to subside. Should she reply? In the heat of the moment, it’s probably a bad idea to turn her ire onto a woman who’s already struggling, both physically and emotionally with the loss of her love, so she turns her aggression onto Mr. Waterhouse and pens a letter demanding he reveal his plans for blocking the railways. She isn’t the only woman in the house who’s fuming, her wife is also frustrated with her sister and her husband Captain Sutherland. Nobody in her family takes her seriously and it seems only her wife is the one looking out for her, or at least she’d like to believe that. To take their minds off of both of their problems, Anne proposes the two visits Selby and take a look at this railway themselves. Hopping on this new and dangerous technology that explodes cows and causes headaches could help Anne decide what side of the political coin she’s going to land on. It’s not long before the two women seem fascinated with the train’s technology, and even the male passenger riding along with them has nothing but praise for the locomotive that’s going to boost the north’s economy. These trains can move more goods and people in a day then the canal ways could do in a week! The future is here, it’s just whether or not Anne Lister is going to take it for a ride.

Back in Halifax, Thomas catches his mother looking around the pigsty for evidence of his uncle’s body. With a bite in his tone, he tells Mary that she won’t find anything and if she keeps looking, she might be next to disappear. That isn’t the only surprising moment in the episode, after hearing Eliza complain about her friend Henry’s parents keeping them apart, Henry’s mother tells his father the real reason why he’s not allowed to go near the girl, and it has nothing to do with the Washingtons and all to do with their employer. She tells her husband that when the two children were at Crowsnest they saw something of which she can barely speak. While hiding in a room they weren’t supposed to be in, they caught Ann Lister and Ann Walker in a marital romantic embrace and it scared Henry so bad he wet himself. Gossip is one thing, but seeing it in the flesh is another, and now Henry’s parents are concerned that if word gets back to Miss. Lister that their son saw her in this state, they could lose their home and their jobs in the process. Of course, the real issue here is the rampant homophobia that runs through Halifax and the era that they all live in, but there is some truth to the fact that Anne Lister would toss Henry’s family out into the cold if they even breathed truth into these rumors.

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Mariana?

With everyone talking about what’s going on at Shibden Hall between the two women, Ann Lister can’t seem to shake that feeling that she needs to settle things with Mariana. She uses the trusting nature of her sweet wife to ask permission if she could stop in at Lawton Hall and help the poor woman move on. She chokes out a “only if you approve” knowing her wife would always take a step back when it comes to Anne’s needs. But before she can head out to reunite with Mariana, Anne attends a shareholders meeting with Waterhouse and his associates. The topic is whether or not they’ll be wasting more money on the canals or investing it into the railways, and Mr. Briggs (Hywel Morgan) seems to be on the side of the railways. It won’t be long before the trains make the canals obsolete, and as he walks out of the meeting, he tips his hat too Captain Lister in a dig at Anne overtly rainbow identity. Once he and his bigotry is out the door, Waterhouse reveals that he believes Briggs will politicize the railway to his financial advantage. Feeling like she has a better understanding of what’s coming with these trains means Anne is a bit more focused on her future and that means when it comes to Mariana. When she heads home, she tells a surprised Ann AKA Adny, that she is heading to Lawton Hall to end this situation once and for all and promises her tearful wife she will be back.

When Anne does arrive at Marianna’s estate, the woman doesn’t greet her right away and instead leaves Anne waiting until she is ready to face her ex. When does enter the room, the devastated woman lays her pain at Lister’s feet– blaming this insipid Walker wife and marriage on the turn in her health? She claims the Anne she knows couldn’t possibly love Miss. Walker; she knows her well enough to read between the lines in the letters she’s written. Those are not the words of a woman in love; they are the words of a woman in love with the security a marriage offers her. This thing between them will never be over, and no marriage of convenience can change that. Things are heating up in this unfortunate thrupple, with hearts on the line and one of them bound to be left broken.