Coming to the end of the Line

As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.

I just finished viewing my favorite television character portrayed by Richard Wilson in the English comedy One Foot In The Grave, in Victor Meldrew.

For those who are not familiar with this program,  Victor is a man not yet old enough to retire, but is fired from his job and replaced by a machine. He is a man who can not find work while his wife, Margaret, works until she loses her job. This sounds depressing but it is really a wonderful comedy in the reality of "what can go wrong will go wrong. Victor is a man who is astounded like most readers reading this in how absolutely asinine society is overflowing with incompetence, shiftlessness and outright immorality.

Victor gets into great trouble, from legal, to being made a laughingstock, to being beaten up. He simply though will not give up his standards in demanding that people act like humans and not some forest creatures.

The show deals with all the subjects we ignore and it does make the viewer comfortable in dealing with hosts of things in disappointed love, suicide, family deaths, failures and even Victor when he is hit and run.

I was pleased that in what I was watching in season 6 that the death surprised me on disc 1, as I thought disc 2 is where it would be. It was handled well as the writer handles all these subjects well without allowing the viewer to have the world pulled out from under them. It is always, "What the hell else can happen" and as Margaret says, "I did not know how much more Victor could take".

That is what TL and I were discussing as the ending of this show has Margaret having sworn she is living to kill the person who killed Victor and fled, leaving him in the gutter for her to find, discovering a woman who befriended her is the hit and run driver.
The woman has a migraine and Margaret goes out to get her some juice and puts the medication into a glass. We see the woman drink it and Margaret leaves and gets into her car, and what plays is the Traveling Willoughbys, End of the Line.

TL took from this song that it was about forgiveness as the Priest tells Margaret, as that is in the song in the last line. I was not paying to the last line, but the line 'Even when push comes to shove'. So I looked up if Margaret did kill this woman or let her live. All there is, is speculation and this analysis is the one I found.

The obvious question (maybe not from my description, but when you watch the episode) is: did Margaret put an overdose of painkillers into the juice? The creators have left it open-ended. Personally, I can’t reconcile forgiveness with the show’s overall message about taking action when people behave irresponsibly.
For our purposes, it doesn’t matter. What’s important here is that we have a woman in her sixties taking action in her life. If she forgave Glynnis, that’s certainly not something Victor would have done. If she killed Glynnis, that too is something Victor never proposed to do. Margaret may have chosen to be the passive partner, reacting to the plots Victor set in motion in their lives, but she is not Victor. She’s a very complicated and interesting person in her own right.

I was thinking about this in Victor was a moral man. Once when Margaret had found money at the market, Victor told her she had to give it back. The reason Margaret was reluctant to give it back is she had just lost her job. Victor always was about doing the right thing, and that meant balancing the scales. I even said to TL that Victor would not want Margaret to kill someone, but then I was pondering something else in this in who Margaret is.
In Margaret's mind she was going to kill someone for harming Victor. It is in that I contemplate what Victor would do. Victor was the most sensitive man Margaret ever met as she said in one episode. I put this into that view of if Margaret had been killed and left to lay in a gutter, I believe Victor would have killed anyone who harmed Margaret, not out of vengeance, not out of even balancing the scales, but it would come down to Victor would do this, because he would have owed Margaret this.

That is why when it comes down to it, no matter what the song lyrics say about forgiveness in the end, I think Margaret would have killed Victor's hit and run driver, because she owed Victor in the last thing she could do as his wife.
The episode opens with Margaret taking on Victor's role in dealing with idiots and incompetents. She moves on to picking up trash, because that is what Victor did all the time in people throwing trash on his property. I do not think that Margaret stepped away from that role in killing this woman who killed her husband. She tells the Priest that God must just get bored with people and kills them.  I realize the writer did all of this to make this debate, but Margaret helped put both of this woman's feet into the grave when she had one in there, just as she put both of Victor's feet into the grave.

It is all about the End of the Line as that is the last line in the song, after one considers to forgive. I conclude Margaret weighed out forgiveness and returned to the Judgment Day that Victor received and in the last line, sent this woman to the end of the line.

Traveling Wilburys – End Of The Line Lyrics

(Chorus 1)
Well it's all right, riding around in the breeze
Well it's all right, if you live the life you please
Well it's all right, doing the best you can
Well it's all right, as long as you lend a hand

You can sit around and wait for the phone to ring
Waiting for someone to tell you everything
Sit around and wonder what tomorrow will bring
Maybe a diamond ring

(Chorus 2)
Well it's all right, even if they say you're wrong
Well it's all right, sometimes you gotta be strong
Well it's all right, As long as you got somewhere to lay
Well it's all right, everyday is Judgement Day

Maybe somewhere down the road aways
You'll think of me, and wonder where I am these days
Maybe somewhere down the road when somebody plays
Purple haze

(Chorus 3)
Well it's all right, even when push comes to shove
Well it's all right, if you got someone to love
Well it's all right, everything'll work out fine
Well it's all right, we're going to the end of the line

Don't have to be ashamed of the car I drive
I'm just glad to be here, happy to be alive
It don't matter if you're by my side
I'm satisfied

(Chorus 4)
Well it's all right, even if you're old and grey
Well it's all right, you still got something to say
Well it's all right, remember to live and let live
Well it's all right, the best you can do is forgive

(Chorus 5)
Well it's all right, riding around in the breeze
Well it's all right, if you live the life you please
Well it's all right, even if the sun don't shine
Well it's all right, we're going to the end of the line

agtG