This episode focused a lot on Melanie, Alan, and the rest of the "new arrivals" from last episode. It seems that the remains of "Carter's Commune" have gained two new members prior to this episode, Ann and Barbara (played by Nula Conwell and Linda Robson). The young people live, love, and play together in the Old Mill. Melanie regulates the womens' menstrual cycles to reduce the likelihood of pregnancy.
Except that this planning wasn't terribly successful for young Sally, who had a dalliance with Alan:
Soon enough, Ruth confirmed that Sally is roughly three months pregnant with Alan's baby, except that Alan has eyes for Mel:
Sally wants Alan to marry her -- or, as they typically do in "Survivors," share a home --, but Alan doesn't want to be tied down. He tells her that everyone will help raise the baby. This doesn't impress Sally much.
And then there is Hubert he keeps on leering at Sally and calling her a slut. Remind me again why they don't have a special ghetto at Whitecross for Hubert to live in where he cannot interact with anyone else??
This leads Sally to seek a permanent solution to her pregnancy problem:
Charles is horrified that Sally wants an abortion. He's even more upset when he learns that most of the women at Whitecross don't want babies. He decides to throw a party celebrating Sally's pregnancy in an attempt to convince her that giving birth in a post-apocalyptic world is easy-peasy.
Charles makes a huge speech about how wonderful it is that they have a new baby coming to Whitecross and how they will all be mothers and fathers for the baby and that the baby will gain new siblings in the form of Paul, John, Lizzie, etc. I can't help but wonder what happened to Baby Matthew from Episode 19? It was mentioned that Whitecross has only had one baby, and yet Mina also has a little baby boy. Did he die between episodes??
The teens and twentysomethings run off to the Mill to throw a party. They have the place wired up with psychedelic lights and a record player that are all hooked up to an exercise bike for power. Pete pedals and Paul drums and the rest of them dance like crazy!
They then decide to do their special Game. Listen to John describe the Game:
We then realize that Sally is playing the Game, with the help of Melanie, Ann, and Barbara in order to induce a miscarriage. Sadly -- and much to Charles' chagrin -- she succeeds!
But not all is lost! Greg manages to harness his methane gas and produce a working engine! He plans to use this to operate a tractor. This proves much more motivating for the younger crowd than Sally's pregnancy. Mel agrees to quit playing the Game.
Here are some interesting odds and ends. There are currently 28 people at Whitecross. I'm assuming that this includes all of the children. I need to run through the numbers on my own sometime soon.
We learn that Jenny has been avoiding Greg at night so that she won't get pregnant for a second time.
We learn that Pet really wants to get pregnant, but has been unsuccessful so far. She tried seducing Greg in this episode. She figured that she shows that he's fertile, so he seemed like a sure bet for getting her pregnant. However, Charles never told her about the other women that he impregnated earlier in the series! (Jon's Note: I'm not quite certain that I believe that revelation. I could have sworn that she was around when Charles told Greg about his other children earlier this season.)
We have one more balloon-filled episode left in Series 2. It's called "New World" and it heralds the start of something completely new in Series 3!