Summary
Things are moving a bit too fast for Ally “No Choice”, as discussions of a third baby and new home get out of control.
This recap of Breeders season 2, episode 6, “No Choice”, contains spoilers.
Ally believing she was pregnant and then discovering that she probably couldn’t get pregnant obviously awakened a newly energized maternalism in her, since “No Choice” lets us know rather quickly that she’s going through IVF. With her internal clock tick, tick, ticking, there’s no time to be wasted on frivolity. If her mother, Leah, can fall in love with Alex (Hugh Quarshie) at her age, then surely Ally can have another child at hers?
Still, there’s at least time to visit Broadstairs, an English coastal town where, according to Jim, “proper people do proper things”, and also where he and Jackie are thinking of moving to as part of a council house swap (they’re sick of London becoming too middle-class and “poncey”, but eventually decide that Broadstairs is equally poncey, and “better the ponce you know”). There’s something about the sea air, though, that makes Paul wistful for a freer life and perhaps a dog, something that is reinforced by flashbacks to Paul and Ally first buying their house, and the excitement of it. Now that place is too small for their needs (Luke is complaining about having his own “space” rather than a room, and that’s to say nothing of where a new baby might go) and they’re probably going to have to sell it. Jim and Jackie considering moving only brings their inevitable relocation into starker relief.
With her hormones bouncing all over the place, Ally just wants to unload on Keeley, but she’s unavailable so she has to settle for dopey Darren instead, who’s barely on speaking terms with his own wife since she blames him for coercing into having IVF, which resulted in apparently very badly behaved twins. Not exactly the conversation she needed. The problem is that her need for conversation, to be listened to, drives her into the arms of a fellow parent at Ava’s taekwondo class. All the talk of moving out by the sea and having a third child has sent her a bit loopy, and she hastily plants a kiss, perhaps of gratitude, on the only man in the vicinity who stops to hear what she’s actually saying.
Admittedly, Ally tells Paul about this right away, and for once he does listen, although he perhaps wishes he didn’t. Ally tries to explain how she wanted everything to just stop, and she didn’t know how to make it stop, and he wouldn’t listen to her, but once you know your wife has kissed another man it’s quite difficult to be rational and understanding. The pair of them don’t make amends in Breeders season 2, episode 6, which creates a lot of uncertainty around the last few episodes.
