I get that Moira’s trial put a time pressure on everything and the dialogue was mostly hitting the right beats (I particularly enjoyed Aaron’s comment about so much time being wasted with John and Kev because boy don’t we all feel that), but I wanted them to lean more into the desperation of everything slipping through their fingers again in the same way it did last time.

The significance of Robert choosing to go back to a place that caused him so much trauma and suffering after months of clumsily trying to rebuild a life for himself, Aaron and their family. Of Aaron back to drifting through life without his other half, consigned to prison visits and waiting for him no matter what, left to hope that Robert will even let him wait this time, because it always ends with them together. There is no other option. So much of this was there (the emotions of it all felt most palpable to me in the bed scene and that barely had any dialogue so I’ll put that largely down to Danny and Ryan’s performance), it just felt a bit like every time they touched the surface it was all yanked out of our reach before we could delve into it any further.

I suppose that’s what happens when this has far more to do with freeing Moira than it does about Robert and Aaron themselves. It’s a plot device more than it actually is their story. And if I’m being generous, there are narrative ways to explain the approach they took. Robert’s despondency isn’t exactly a massive stretch when he has such little self worth, when there’s probably a part of him that never fully believed he deserved the happiness he was trying to take hold of. I can understand why Aaron is so in denial about reliving his worst nightmare that he’s hyper-focused on avoiding it and finding another way around it rather than lingering in his devastation.