Mandy episode 5 and 6 recap – “Meat” and “Broadsword to Donna Ball”

By Jonathon Wilson
Published: August 18, 2020 (Last updated: last month)
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Mandy episode 5 and 6 recap - "Meat" and "Broadsword to Donna Ball"
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Summary

Mandy quits smoking to bloody results in “Meat”, and rises from the dead in “Broadsword to Donna Ball”.

This recap of Mandy episode 5 and Mandy episode 6, “Meat” and “Broadsword to Donna Ball”, contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous two episodes by clicking these words.

Check out our spoiler-free season review.


Mandy episode 5: “Meat”

Mandy needs to make some lifestyle changes so that she can survive to see World’s Strongest Man in Gateshead. Five fruits and vegetables a day — she thinks she’s done this already because she’s had five total in her life — and stopping smoking so that her uterus isn’t “mustard yellow”.

Lola proposes dog walking as a form of exercise, which Mandy interprets as harassing people in the park, including Walder Frey — sorry, Frank, played by David Bradley — who finally lets her take his pooch for a walk. In the meantime, she plonks a plastic bag full of bloody meat down in the salon and has a breakdown when she’s asked to move it. Nicotine withdrawal is going perfectly well, it seems.

Mandy’s next bright idea is to visit a pub-based hypnotist and then sit next to a smoking man on a bench and show him her meat, which despite being due to go off is the nice pink colour she’d like her lungs and eventually her uterus to be. She’s just on time to take out Max the dog, and she’s provided with his treats — no more than three, no less than one — along with his doo-doo bags, coat and hat. Max gets the scent of something and sets off running, dragging what is clearly — and hilariously — a dummy in a bomber jacket along behind him. Mandy is left in a pool of half-eaten offal that she mistakes for Max.

Mandy, covered in blood, returns to Frank to tell him that Max is dead. She thinks the anti-smoking pills have turned her into a monster and that she’s torn Max limb from limb and eaten him. Frank is devastated by the loss, having only just lost his wife, whose memory he has honored by changing his ringtone to her favorite song: “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” by Rod Stewart. When he gets a call and it starts playing, Mandy can’t help but dance. Looks like that hypnotism worked after all.

Mandy episode 6: “Broadsword to Donna Ball”

Mandy’s in a coffin, being buried, which is apparently a matter for a guest-starring Iain Lee as a radio host. This works as a framing device for a flashback to Mandy being recruited by an old friend, Donna Ball (Natalie Cassidy), for a bank heist. Apparently she’s retired. Cassidy’s having a right old time with this manic performance.

An incredulous Iain Lee pushes the story along as Mandy explains how, as a lookout, she had to break into an undertaker’s to monitor the bank next door. Mark Silcox shows up again — he was the wedding officiator in “Russian” — alongside Michael Spicer, who thinks the queen is a “really high-up” lizard person. Mandy’s codename is “Broadsword” and she drinks a full bottle of old Advocaat on the job.

Mandy, now wasted, falls asleep in one of the caskets while Donna Ball’s heist goes wrong. She wakes up the next morning as a mourning family looks her over and declares her to be “barely recognizable”. Trapped, she turns to Siri for advice and gets directed to a YouTube tutorial that works as a great mockery of such things courtesy of Alistair Green, who naturally provides no decent advice whatsoever. She falls down a YouTube rabbit hole and negotiates her gym membership while being transported in a hearse, and gets an earful of foul-mouthed abuse from Natalie Cassidy.

In her final moments, Mandy wants Iain Lee to play something peaceful and uplifting. He does and agrees to stay with her until the end as her grave is filled in. It goes on longer than he expects, but luckily she remembers she’s got a drill with her. The final shot of the season is her hand bursting through the soil like Night of the Living Dead. I hope there’s a resurrection for the show too.

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