There's a bomb scare on a bridge, but the gang are facing something much more dauting: the first day of the school year.
Tropes
- Comical Overreacting: Clare's doing a 24 hour fast. She starts lamenting very early into it.Clare: I feel awful. I think my body is going into starvation mode. I think it's starting to shut down.
Michelle: For Christ's sake, Clare, you've just basically skipped lunch. - Death as Comedy: An elderly nun passes away while supervising detention, and Michelle tries to take her confiscated lipstick out of her purse, Erin tries to sneak out the window, Clare takes the nun's leftovers and James is peeing into a bin right beside her.
- Detention Episode
- Dies Wide Open: Sister Declan dies while monitoring the five of them in detention. At first Orla thinks she's just "sleeping with her eyes open".
- Establishing Character Moment:
- Erin tries to customize her school uniform as a show of individuality, only to balk when her mother won't let her.
- Orla steals and reads her cousin's diary, completely oblivious as to why that's bad.
- Clare sees Erin isn't wearing her dress code violation and quickly sheds her own, too afraid to stand out and break the rules.
- Michelle greets her girlfriends by shouting, "MOTHERFUCKERS!!"
- James stands nervously and quietly, and doesn't try to defend himself from Michelle's verbal abuse.
- Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: Michelle flippantly mentions a student teacher who was sexually assaulted by two students. That said, it's played as a sort of Black Comedy; Michelle's disregard for it is not framed as correct.James: What's "the Mr Mullin affair"?
Michelle: Student teacher. Two fourth-years cable-tied him to the monkey bars and started dry riding him. He was really good-looking, so you've nothing to worry about. - Extremely Short Timespan: The episode takes place over a single school day.
- First Day of School Episode
- Gossip Evolution: When the parents are called down to Sister Michael's office, Sarah asks the kids why they were "pissing on [Sister Declan's] dead body and making sandwiches". Of course, that could just be Sarah being Sarah.
- Hilarity Ensues: When the gang end up in detention but think Sister Declan has fallen asleep, they proceed to get into hijinks, which they then freeze in when Sister Michael walks in: James is peeing in a bucket, Erin is halfway through climbing out the window, Michelle is dramatically rifling through Sister Declan's handbag, Orla is holding Sister Declan's head up to retrieve Erin's diary from underneath, and Clare is orgasmically eating a sandwich.
- Immediate Self-ContradictionClare: [before going into office] Look, whatever happens in there, we have to stick together, okay? We have to back each other up.
Clare: [in the office] So it had nothing to do with me. Yes, okay, I was there, I admit that. But I didn't do anything! It was Michelle. It was all Michelle! I'm not going down for something I didn't do. If anyone deserves to get punished, it should be Michelle! - Kissing Warm-Up: According to Orla, having read Erin's diary, Erin has practiced kissing her pillow.Erin: You've never even kissed a boy before. You practise on your pillow sometimes, but you don't think that's the same.
- Left the Background Music On: A voiceover version.
- The opening scene is a visual montage of Derry, paired with a voiceover of Erin's thoughts about the place and her life. Then it's reviled this isn't actually a narrator voiceover, but rather a diary entry written in that style, being read aloud by Orla.Montage read by Orla: My name is Erin Quinn. I'm 16 years old, and I come from a place called Derry, or Londonderry, depending on your persuasion, a troubled little corner in the Northwest of Ireland. It's fair to say I have a somewhat complicated relationship with my home town. You see, the thing about living in Derry is, there's nowhere to hide. Everybody knows everybody, knows everything about everybody, and sometimes all I really want... [Reveal Shot] is to be simply left alone.
Erin: Is that my diary? - The final scene of the episode is the same.Montage read by Orla: But the thing is, life isn't fair. You see, injustice is something I've become accustomed to. I am, after all, a child of the crossfire, surrounded by conflict. But I choose to rise above it. The path to peace is paved with tolerance and understanding. [Reveal Shot] Violence is never the answer.
Erin: I am going to ram that so far up your arse!
- The opening scene is a visual montage of Derry, paired with a voiceover of Erin's thoughts about the place and her life. Then it's reviled this isn't actually a narrator voiceover, but rather a diary entry written in that style, being read aloud by Orla.
- Never Speak Ill of the Dead:Deidre: What are you playing at, rifling through a dead nun's handbag?
Michelle: She stole my lipstick, Mammy!
Deidre: Don't lie. Sister Declan was a woman of God.
Sister Michael: Actually, she was known to be a bit light-fingered. - Parental Fashion Veto: Erin attempts to wear a jean jacket instead of her school uniform blazer to school. Her mum argues with her about this and threatens her with a wooden spoon, leading to a Gilligan Cut where Erin is headed to school in her usual uniform.
- Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: Macaulay Culkin is an actor, not a Protestant boy Erin meet at Friends Across the Barricade.
- Potty Emergency: As the the first boy at an all-girls school, Our Lady Immaculate does not have a plan set up for James, nor are they interested in making one. He's banned from using the students' (girls') toilet, but also isn't allowed to use the staff (unisex) bathroom. He first asks for the bathroom around morning break, and is finally forced to relieve himself in a bin when he and the rest of the ensemble are stuck in detention.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Clare is given the brunt of this by Sister Michael after she threw Michelle under a bus in an attempt to save her own skin when she and her friends were brought into Sister Michael's office. Her friends gave Clare frosty looks as a result after Sister Michael responds.
