After a strong couple of weeks, Fresh Meat seems to have rewound itself for episode six, discounting all of the character development for JP, Josie and Oregon that we’d experienced over the first two series. This is disappointing to say the least and, with only two more weeks left of the series, more than a little worrying.
Heather is still hanging around the house as if she’s paying rent, and we start with her walking in on JP whilst he’s showering. Because he’s JP, this has a profound effect on him throughout the episode and gives him the permanent horn, much to Kingsley’s displeasure. While I found myself tolerating, even half-rooting for, Kingsley and Josie’s tentative relationship last year, the addition of Heather really hasn’t added anything to the house dynamic. If anything, she makes Kinglsey appear even more unlikeable, and she doesn’t have much to do besides interact with her friend and boyfriend each week.
Despite having a pseudo-epiphany about her horrible actions last week, Josie is the worst offender for rewinding time and character development in this episode. Instead of owning up to what happened in her dental exam (drilling a hole through a patient’s cheek while she was hungover/still drunk), her getting kicked off the course compels her to start a petition. Obviously, no one really wants to sign up for the right to assault people in class, so she resorts to ‘normalizing’ the mistake. Asking Heather to pierce a willing volunteer and pretend it’s an accident, things go wrong all over again for the show’s most messed up housemate.
I really hope the writers can do something positive with Josie before the finale, since she began and ended last series as a horrible loser, and it looks like things are going the same way now. We know her getting kicked off the course can’t last should the show continue with the character, but I can’t see a way out of the hole she’s dug for herself. I’m bored of the love triangle between her, Kingsley and Heather, and wish we weren’t constantly bombarded with her easily avoidable mistakes and selfish intentions. Kingsley, at least, gets his own storyline this week, as he complains against a returning Robert Webb.
Another annoying move for the show is Oregon’s one step forward and two steps back. Finding the perfect guy she’s always been dreaming of, even giving him her real name, she soon discovers that he is, in fact, Shales’ son. This effectively means that, not only did she sleep with his dad, but she brought about the end of his parent’s marriage. It’s not incest, the girls assure her (“its a little Jeremy Kyle”), but it’s almost as icky. Last week I was over the moon that Oregon finally had a storyline that had nothing to do with her series one affair with her teacher, but the writer’s don’t seem quite as willing to let it go.
Filling in the gaps are Vod and Howard, who both have story-lines that are fun but don’t really go anywhere. Vod is ecstatic to find a letter offering her RAF money again (so much so she burns her cleaning uniform), but doesn’t read the small print about routine drug tests that come with the scholarship. The rest of the episode is spent begging people for their urine samples (she’s too tainted with cannabis), but things don’t turn out quite as she’d planned. Howard and Sabine are still continuing their ‘friends with benefits’ arrangement, but things are sadly all on Sabine’s terms. It’s nice to see Howard have something to do, if nothing else.
What did you think of the episode? Will Kingsley and Josie ever end up together? Would you like to see Oregon free from Shales at last? Let us know in the comments.
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