After a shorter break than previously, I’m back with more (probably over-critical) thoughts on two more Malory Tower episodes.

The Hamper

I think I’ve only just realised that all the episodes are The something. Which limits them a bit! This one sounds like another filler, but we’ll see if it develops the plots further.

What worked well in this episode

Miss Johnson continues to slowly and insidiously lock the school down. Incoming letters are now being read before they are passed on to the girls. She also shows that she really does have a prejudice against Darrell who gets all the blame for the mouse trick. (I actually think it’s fair, in this instance, that there is a punishment as they took advantage of the trick to leave class and go play lacrosse. I’m generally on the girls’ side when they play a trick that is funny while briefly disrupting class, but they took it rather far this time!) Mam’zelle and Matron’s reactions to the mouse were hilarious.

I was glad to see Matron back as, strangely, she was completely absent from the previous two episodes. I don’t know if she has other obligations, or if she was ill/in quarantine, but there was no on-screen explanation.

Alicia hiding her tricks in the cake was funny, especially as Matron almost ate them but was put off by the prunes. Her secret message was fun – very Five Find Outers.

It was also good to see Mavis again, and although it wasn’t good that she has laryngitis, it is good that they have continued that thread of plot.

In a rare moment from the books it was nice to see Darrell making the team, having thought she didn’t as she only checked the reserves.

What didn’t make sense

I was a little confused with the opening scene – Sally, gazing wistfully out of the window in her pyjamas, lamenting that recovering from mumps is no fun. Why is she back if she’s not recovered? She’s apparently not allowed to play lacrosse as she’s not well.

The mouse “trick” was terrible. I can see that being caught with a fake mouse would have gotten them into real trouble, but a grey sock on a string is a really pathetic mouse analogue – it’s massive for one, more rat-sized than mouse! As it was just a sock on a string Alicia could have just put a note in the cake telling them how to do it instead of sending one. Likewise, Darrell drawing attention to it in the dorm was silly. I doubt Miss Johnson would have noticed a balled-up sock sitting on a bedside table without her pulling it along on a string.

Matron takes the cake (very in-character) but leaves the girls with the rest of the hamper, all that food which they are not allowed to eat anywhere but the dining hall as per the new rules. Miss Johnson sees the cake crumbs in the dorm later and chastises them for leaving crumbs for mice, but makes no mention of the no food rule. Similarly, the girls are constantly talking in the corridors and often talking to Ron, which is also against the rules. Now I think about it – so is them wearing their lacrosse uniforms in the dorm!

The fake mouse suddenly made Mary-Lou worried that the mouse traps would catch a real mouse. An old building like Malory Towers would probably always have mouse traps set up as it would almost certainly have mice, given it has huge grounds and a load of girls leaving crumbs everywhere.

Darrell’s tantrum at the end was baffling. She, like Mary-Lou was worried about real mice being harmed. So it makes sense that she would sabotage the traps. But why on earth did she start wrecking the classroom to do so? Tipping out the contents of the bin and a drawer were unnecessary and a bizarre delayed temper tantrum. Darrell in the books often acted in the heat of the moment – she didn’t trash things after the fact, and certainly not for discovering she hadn’t made the reserve list.

I may be being overly critical again but how did Darrell make the team considering she didn’t exactly shine in the match at Malory Towers, and didn’t make the away match as she was in trouble? I’m glad they are showing that being a team player is important, not just scoring goals, but it seems unlikely.

What also makes no sense is having made it a complicated inter-school competition. If girls from 3 schools make up the team, who are they playing? How many fee-paying schools are there within a reasonable driving distance for games? Do they play against other mixed teams from the same three schools?

Other thoughts

I was left wondering if Darrell even be allowed to play any team lacrosse, seeing as she can’t keep out of trouble. (Which is at least in part her own fault, not just Miss Johnson’s vendetta!)

The final scene has Darrell making plans to use the skeleton key that Alicia sent. I wrote:

She’s going to get cauuught and in even bigger trouble!

Over-all this was a bit of a filler episode, as nothing major happened, but it did introduce the skeleton key which will be important later on I’m sure.

The Peaches

With a title like that this will surely be another filler episode.

What worked well in this episode

Jean’s little moment of turn-coating was well-done, as it turned out to be a deliberate plan to get Sally banned from the circus trip.

The whole peaches story might actually seem silly to children today – but tinned fruit was still rationed until May 1950, and series three is set in around 1949/50. From what I can gather peaches were rarer than some other tinned fruit and were a real treat. Saying that – while rationing has been mentioned once or twice it hasn’t seemed to have impacted their meals or midnight feasts much!

I loved their plan to swap the labels with tinned potatoes and managing to trick Miss Johnson with them. Thankfully she did blame Alicia and not Darrell! (Miss Johnson seems the type to decant tinned fruit into a pretty bowl before eating it, rather than eating it from a tin but perhaps this is a hint that she is not as posh as she seems?)

I liked the well-timed choreography of Mary-Lou and Irene getting out of bed in the san.

There are (possibly) little hints to the mystery here. Mary-Lou comments on the canvases being different to usual.

It was so good to see Matron and Mavis joining the girls’ side – at least for a short while – and hugely frustrating to see Miss Johnson sweet-talk her way out of trouble by pretending she had kept the conservatoire letters as a surprise. At least Mavis and Irene found out, though.

Lastly, it was good to see Gwen taking part in the midnight feast – the lure of peaches was obviously enough to sway her from the head of form duties!

What didn’t make sense

Miss Johnson’s TV seemed an extreme extravagance for the times (not that child viewers today might understand just how much!). There were only 350,000 TVs in the UK at that point – or in England, rather, as I’ve said before, Scotland and Wales didn’t get TV broadcasts until 1952! That (I think) works out at about one household in 20. A TV around that time would easily have cost seven weeks wages for an “industrial working” man. I assume this is to show that she’s not all that she seems, most teachers probably couldn’t afford a TV in 1950, even acting headmistresses – but again, would current viewers understand that?

The decision to keep four girls back for their plan was excessive, the more of them running about the more likely they are to be caught! In addition to that, the school wasn’t empty! Miss Johnson took six girls, leaving Matron and Mam’zelle Rougier (the only adults we know of) plus the cook(s), maids, presumably other teachers and all the other year groups. Covid has meant a really small cast but we are, I assume, supposed to believe that Malory Towers has more than fifteen people in it. Obviously it doesn’t make sense for us to see all the other girls going on their trips, but a two-second sentence like “The fourth-formers are going tomorrow,” would have created the illusion of other girls at least.

I have no idea why Miss Johnson kept the letters from the conservatoire, and Sally’s letter to Miss Grayling. Her plan was to prevent them from reaching their intended recipients, so why not destroy them?

Getting Mary-Lou and Irene out of the circus trip involved them sniffing onions to make them cough and sneeze. I don’t know about anyone else, but onions make my eyes run, never heard of them coughing sneezing and coughing!

Darrell and Sally are to paint pictures of Malory Towers as their punishment, but to free them up for searching Miss Johnson’s office Mary-Lou paints them instead. She doesn’t even try to paint less well – after Darrell and Sally protest that they aren’t good painters, nobody’s going to believe that those two painted those! (Spoiler, Miss Johnson rumbles them!)

Miss Johnson comes back from the circus early as she has so much work to do. Who is watching the girls then, and how are they getting back? For a woman who is so determined for them not to talk to the outside world letting them go to the circus in the first place seems risky – but to leave them there unchaperoned?

I can understand that they wanted to make the peaches more important than just something tasty the girls wanted, but the idea that a glass of peach syrup (tasty as it is) will cure laryngitis is ridiculous.

Other thoughts

I was convinced I had a nitpick about Irene looking through the keyhole and being able to see Darrell and Mavis behind the sofa, when the door to Miss Johnson’s office is on the other side of the room – but you can see another door to her room at the other side (which is never used). I can’t say I’ve ever noticed this before, but it has probably always been there.

I did go back to one or two episodes to see if I could see it, but the camera angle was wrong. I did notice, though, a bunch of paintings in her office – behind Sally when she first talks to Miss Johnson about the school rules…

This was just another filler episode, though. Yes, Darrell found out that Miss Johnson had hidden the letters, but as Miss Johnson managed to cover for herself we are no further forward. In addition to that Gwen has been criminally under-used! We’ve hardly seen her, apart from the odd line here and there.