Five Bedrooms – Season 4, Episode 2 (Two Battlers)
Now that the premiere has come and gone, the fun can begin with further exploration and development of story arcs, and again I’ll be reviewing this episode character by character.
Liz – As she is the narrator in this episode, I’ll start with her. Feeling guilty for throwing Harry under the bus, she is working overtime to be the best possible friend to him by offering to be Manju’s post-surgery carer and having her move into the granny flat. When Harry asks Liz about how her meeting went with Stuart, he quickly deduces that she threw him under the bus.
Whilst she and Harry get Manju ready to move into the granny flat, they discover that Manju has hidden several cartons of cigarettes in her home, despite telling Harry she quit twenty years earlier. Once Manju arrives and a visiting Stuart helps Manju into the newly-acquired hospital bed inside the granny flat, she tells him that Liz cheated on him (which she was informed of by Harry). Stuart angrily confronts Liz and leaves.
Later, she sets up a foldout bed in the dining room so she can be close enough to hear Manju when she needs her. Manju tells Liz that she was playing with fire when it came to Stuart. After unsuccessfully getting Manju to the bathroom on time, Liz cleans up the bed and Manju, with Manju asking her for a cigarette. Liz initially refuses, only to later agree to give her one a day if she goes through with chemo.
Harry – It’s revealed in this episode that Manju has some kind of reproductive cancer as she is undergoing a radical hysterectomy in an attempt to get rid of it. However, Harry later tells Liz that Manju’s cancer has spread and they couldn’t get it all in surgery, and that she’ll need a lot of chemo. Manju also knows about Liz’s cheating as Harry told her prior to her surgery.
Once Manju has settled into the granny flat and after getting sick of hearing her refuse chemo but being open to Mel’s wellness industry ‘treatment’ of cancer, Harry calls her out over hiding the cigarettes. She then tells Harry that she doesn’t have lung cancer, still refusing to have chemo.
Heather, Ben, Ainsley, and Mel – They are in the background in this episode but have an interesting dynamic going on throughout. Lachlan asks Ainsley to look after Starlette at work as Mel is not responding to his texts, it’s later revealed that Mel is hanging out with the gang as they get the granny flat ready for Manju’s arrival.
Mel tries to seduce Ben to no avail, but they still manage to have a good time watching the footy, alongside Simmo, whilst Ainsley looks after Starlette. Heather then calls out Ben for having Ainsley look after Starlette whilst he and Mel date, as Starlette is a reminder of losing Evie. However, Ainsley overhears this exchange and tells Heather that she doesn’t speak for her, and she loves looking after Starlette, and that she shouldn’t use her stillborn child as an excuse to interfere with Ben and Mel’s developing relationship.
Overall, I felt that this episode fell a little flat. Whilst I appreciated finding out a little secret about Manju, I am finding her to be more unbearable than usual. I’m also not liking the pairing of Ben and Mel, especially as Mel is unlikeable character who had run her course once Starlette was born, and is a step down from Heather in terms of a partner for Ben.
It will be interesting to see where we go from here.
Loveday Writing 