Hurrah! Alik is back! But no sooner has he crossed the threshold to return to the arms of his lovely girlfriend (‘And your boyfriend!’ beams Sam, who subsequently has the smarts to admit that he feels a ‘bit awkward’ about it) than Spenny shows up and demands he get his best suit on for a ‘big bois one!’ The homoerotic subtext isn’t just present, it’s in the fridge looking for beers and demanding to know the wifi code. Louise responds poshly. ‘In thet case, wirral going tua spaaaaaaaaaaaaah.’ Who’s going to end their night covered in more oil, bois or girls? At this stage it’s impossible to tell. The bois march down Pall Mall looking just different enough from the cast of Reservoir Dogs for the producers not to have to pay Quentin Tarantino any royalties. They look almost cool until Spenny cries ‘It’s gonna be WHOPPING’.
Utterly bloody Fran gets another dubious storyline when Will shows up with Binky’s workout plan. ‘Come, chill, have a cookie!’ she coos, implying that she’s on the brink of getting him a funky green bean bag to sit on, unless he would care to join her for some table football in the breakout room. She reveals that Binky is now training with Lonan, and Will is weirdly furious. If you’ve decided you’re not going to date someone and hang out over dinner and cocktails, why would you want to pay them for the privilege of spending hours in their company while wearing your stinkiest trainers? Is it the loss of income? Because if you and Binky had got together, she might have felt a bit weird about having to give you fifty quid a week.
Binky fails to tell left from right during her training session, but is able to tell right from wrong - Lonan reveals he saw Sam snogging another girl so she sucks it up and tells a devastated Tiff. How is Sam Thompson getting these girls? Is he claiming to be a minor crown prince of a former European state? Does he have access to Dark Netflix, where he can stream every single movie, programme and deleted episode of Hammerman that has been wiped off the regular site? Does he ejaculate Nutella?
There’s only one cure for a broken heart - being touched by a greasy stranger, while listening to pop hits played on pan pipes! Tiffany unloads in the jacuzzi (not like that, there’s a sign forbidding it) and Stephanie wades in to bitch about Lauren and her high fiving. She is very upset that Lauren does not see herself as a future victim of Spenny’s wandering willy. After a quick, stimulating pillow fight, (yes, the bois have rented a hotel room for their ‘big boys one’) the subject of Stephanie comes up. Does she have unresolved feelings for Spenny? Is she jealous? No, she’s just so entrenched in reality culture that she thinks there’s something wrong with you if the ‘moving on’ process takes less than five years.
Josh breaks the no phones rule to ring Stephanie and give her a recap, which is adorable, and useful for plot purposes. Stephanie horrifies Tiff with the high five chat, and goes back to Lauren ‘I can’t tell if you’re cool or if you suck.’ Stephanie, why are you making the spa so tense? Are you determined that everyone gets their money’s worth before their massage? And the bois berate Sam, who pretends that he didn’t cheat on Tiff for about three seconds before crumpling. ‘YOU CAN’T DO THAT TO GIRLS,’ growls Josh, with Alik adding ‘YOU NEED TO GROW UP AND BECOME A MAN.’ Phwoar. Is this the start of a new, excitingly moral MIC era? Is Proudlock going to start attending church again?
Apart from Biscuits, who is abandoned during a game of strip poker, everyone makes it back from their adventures and tries to move on. Sam texts Tiff to say he’d ‘devastated’ and tells Louise he ‘bogged it’ - he really is as emotional as he is eloquent. Mark Francis meets Victoria to buy some skin - ‘I love the crocs,’ he murmurs, which someone could absolutely edit out of context and use as blackmail material, if they were feeling really cruel, or had some ugly rubber sandals to sell. He does also say ‘I’m tired of buying things’ - bloody hell, do we need to get you to Harley Street? Oh! Oh you’re going to make your own luxury goods. Now we understand. Alik turns up, which is a miracle because Mark isn’t entirely sure where he is. ‘Is this the East End? I gave the driver a postcode and it began with a letter I’m not entirely familiar with.’
Spencer is getting comfortable with Lauren - he’s taken her leather jacket shopping - and admits that he’s crap at playing the guitar after she sees the musical shop wall mounting and asks about when he ‘used to be in a band’. Nice, Spenny. Was that around the same time that you crashed both your Aston Martins and the signed pictures of you and various celebrities perished in a tragic fire? Spenny discovers ‘a particular Pratt’ was rude at the spa, which is a little awkward as Louise has organised a cosy couples dinner for them, with Josh and Stephanie. Is Steph going to be sweet and civil and let everyone concentrate on their ravioli? No. She’s going after Lauren like the poor girl is the last bit of lobster meat left in the claw, and Stephanie’s prepared to bang the shell against the table of she has to. ‘You either want Spencer to cheat on me or break up with me,’ wails poor Lauren at one point, who hasn’t even been able to get to the bread basket because of Stephanie’s needling. ‘I just want you to be a nicer girl,’ Stephanie snaps back. ‘Mmm, I love ravioli!’ interjects Louise, trying and failing to kill the Last Supper vibe. ‘No-one is going to cheat! But that barmaid downstairs is pretty fit!’ adds Spenny. Lauren, quite understandably under the circumstances, high fives him.
Will tries and fails to take Lonan to task over training Binky, seeming to audibly fluff his lines (‘I oddly went over to hers to drop over a work…a workout,’) and Lonan laughs him off even while drinking a glass full of raw egg yolks. No storyline for you, stirring Fran, but Lonan can come back! And Tiffany is doorstopped by Sam and copes with aplomb.
‘I feel like you never want to talk to me again,’ he whines.
‘I don’t. Are you joking. Why is it all about what you want? Maybe you should respect what I want!’ she replies. I LOVE THE WATSON GIRLS. If Lucy ever wanted to become a professional break up coach, I would pay her many thousands of pounds. Hopefully she will not, next week, be moved to take him back ‘because it’s Christmas.’ And as the weather turns wintry, I really, really hope someone has untied poor, naked Jamie Biscuits.
Hero of the week: It has to be Lonan, who took Will less seriously than a repeat of You’ve Been Framed, and rightly so. If you’ve successfully worked with your personal trainer after dumping them, this journalist wants to hear your story. Will is insane. And Lonan, with his raw eggs, is like Gaston, who is obviously a baddie and yet we find ourselves curiously aroused.
Villain of the week: She’s not a total wrong’un but we don’t dig the way Stephanie won’t leave poor Lauren alone. If you pick at it, you will make it worse - how can a woman with such clear, beautiful skin be so obsessed with squeezing the social pus from a situation and leaving angry red marks and faces in her wake. Go and shag lovely Josh, and hope that Spencer has finally changed his ways. As our teachers used to say when we were making collages, stop looking at what everyone else is doing and get on with your own work, Ms Pratt.
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MIC 8.9 - Is Spencer’s love cursed, or will Stephanie wreck it first? AND FRYTTON ARE THE WORST!
Non-Crap Christmas Specials To Get Your Jingle Balls Jingling
Follow Daisy on Twitter @NotRollerGirl
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.