'The A Word' Season 3 Episode 1: A fire, secret marriage plans and a surprise pregnancy keeps Maurice busy
"Here. There. There. Here. Just like that." This is what Joe Hughes (Max Vento) repeats to process the cataclysmic change in his life. His parents are divorced, their old house is sold and his mother, Alison, (Morven Christie), has moved to Manchester.
Since his parents are living 100 miles apart, Joe moves between his home with his mother on weekdays and his grandfather Maurice Scott's (Christopher Eccleston) house, where his dad, Paul Hughes (Lee Ingleby) is putting up while he gets their new home ready.
Paul is obsessed with giving Joe the stability and structure he needs which Maurice is determined to thwart because he is Mr Chaos. The episode starts off with a disrupting event when Paul's new house catches fire. The exterior is fine but the inside is a soot-covered mess. Making matters worse, Maurice brings Joe to see the place like this and Joe is visibly distressed. He goes back to the old house and his old room and then proceeds to throw his headphones in the lake.
Paul is mad at Maurice but later in the episode, we see that Maurice has a better idea about what is going on in Joe's head. Things have changed at the Lake District location and pretending they have not is not helping Joe. When he is at his mother's place in Manchester, the headphones and the music remind him of the old home at the Lake District. But when he is with his dad at the Lake District, he has to develop a new routine to address the changes there. He has to split himself between "here" and "there".
It's been two years since we last saw the Hughes and Scotts families and much has happened and much happens in the first hour of this season too. Maurice is still with Louise and still trying to fix things and people around him, even at the cost of his health -- even though the doctor warns him that he has to take it easy. But between being a volunteer firefighter, leading hiking groups, the problems of his divorced children, and his girlfriend Louise nagging him to 'interrogate' her son Ralph about what he's hiding from her, he doesn't have a lot of time to rest. Making matters worse, someone is stealing all his food from his fridge.
The first bombshell is that Ralph is planning to get married to Katie and move out -- something he doesn't want to tell his mother. Since both Ralph and Katie have Down's Syndrome, Louise is both proud but also worried, knowing they can't live without assistance. Maurice again uses his chaotic powers for good, stalking Ralph till he finds out that he actually has been planning this for a while. Ralph with Katie's parents and Katie has found an assisted living home set up with the local council's help and this is why he is now ready to get married and move out. The only reason he doesn't tell Louise his plans is the thought that he is a "disappointment". Since he was little, Louise has told him he can do anything he wants so admitting he needed help to live with Katie made him feel that he was letting his mom down.
When Maurice lets Louise in on what Ralph is thinking, Louise is in tears because as worried as she may be, she is first and foremost proud of her son. Just when you think Maurice finally has solved all the problems, he finds out who has been stealing his food. It's not his son Eddie, as he suspected, but Rebecca, his granddaughter, back from uni and eating for two because of a surprise pregnancy. So, of course, he has to stick his oar in and tells her she has to tell her parents. After leading her to them, saying he'll be there, we see him leaving at top speed minutes later. Some fires, even Maurice doesn't want to be around.
'The A Word' airs on Wednesdays on Sundance TV at 11 pm ET.