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A discussion between Libby Purves and the astrophysicist Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell on this week’s Radio 4 Midweek programme has brought to the front of my mind something that has troubled me about Rob, which I will come to below. Over recent months I’ve been plagued by feelings of “how did I get him so wrong” and I now think it is the change of gear by the script writers grafted onto his character when they decided to make him a villain, which we know was not the original intention. Because this sits on top of his original characterisation we still get glimpses shining through and these are unsettling as he seems to have two separate sides. There is good Rob (though arguably old fashioned) and bad Rob. Because bad Rob is so awful when good Rob appears now we look for bad intentions and I don’t think they are always meant to be there.
So here is my case for the character of good Rob. He comes from an old fashioned family where, like it or not, there is a social premium placed on continuing the lineage. It’s all about male succession. As I mentioned in my call this week we now see Rob’s fixation on a male heir (paying for an extra scan etc) reflected in his mother Ursula’s behaviour. I can’t help thinking if it were a girl Ursula would not have dashed to Ambridge. Now the link to Midweek. Libby & Jocelyn were reflecting that they were of a generation where bright girls were going to university but it was still seen as a kind of finishing school after which they could work but only till they got married and settled down. Jocelyn stated that wearing her engagement ring to the lab signalled the end of her career, at least that was the expectation of the management. There was a shame attached to married women going out to work – in that it meant the husband could not provide for the family.
Libby is 65 and Jocelyn is 72, I would suspect Ursula is around this age. Whilst the gender pay gap still exists and is an issue, we can easily forget just how far we have come since this time. From the brief scenes with Ursula I can imagine she is bright and probably sacrificed a career to focus on her two darling boys, raised as little princes. The banter / joshing Rob exhibits too is not untypical (though the dial is turned up to 11 to suit the bad Rob character graft). If this premise is correct then Rob’s desire to protect and look after Helen could be just that. He feels that Helen, like Ursula, should be focussed only creating a stable home environment and bringing up the heir. [I appreciate this is undermined by his seeming lack of activity securing gainful employment unless he things he will just take Helen’s job as she won’t need it anymore].
When Rob arrived he seemed a perfectly “decent chap” not quite a young fogey but definitely out of his time despite being at the cutting edge of the agri business with his factory cow experience. That, for me, is the real Rob and maybe contributes to why I hate hearing his scenes. Yes – bad Rob is doing some terrible things and deserves all that Goddess Deeva has planned for him, but it also grates because it is essentially out of character.
Good analysis, Andrew. I was just thinking the other day how Rob went from “Kind of old fashioned about women” to “sorta controlling” to “deeply sinister manipulative monster” since his arrival. Did the scriptwriters plan it that way? Or did they find the actor just played the villain so well they wrote to that? Who can say?
But going the way it has had taken the listener on a similar journey to Helen. If he’d acted the way he does now when they first met, she’d obviously have had nothing to do with him. He’s moved little by little to what he is now – and Jess herself told Helen that’s his MO. As the listener with the God’s eye view, we’ve seen things Helen hasn’t, so knew before her that he has a dark side, but mostly we’ve been on the same learning curve as her about him, which is the way it happens in real life too.
“A discussion between Libby Purves and the astrophysicist Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell on this week’s Radio 4 Midweek programme has brought to the front of my mind something that has troubled me about Rob”
That’s one Hell of a first line Andrew! Ha ha – sign of a true Archers listener!
See your point, and Ursula’s reaction to the prospect of another “Little Prince” was indeed weird. But she is nonetheless of her generation not of the generation which may or may not have held her down.
My reaction to hearing her, and to the obvious implication, which we also got when he was talking to Jess a while back, that he is in more regular email contact with her than he would have Helen believe, is that he’s basically a Mummy’s boy who wants to please. I think she put him on a pedestal when he was her “little Prince” and at some point he fell off it. Probably by wanting to do something ill thought out with their farm. He is clearly privately educated, probably has good qualifications on paper, and thinks highly of his own abilities, but as he lacks empathy or ability to think he is ever wrong, he is just a bit rubbish at all his jobs in the long term.
As some kid once said about Hamlet, He’s just a Mummy’s boy and should get over it.Sorry to lower the tone. 🙂
When, I wonder, was the astute listener supposed to pick up on ‘the dark side of Rob’? I ask because I felt there was a lot of deliberate ambiguity at the beginning, and certainly I wasn’t sure there was anything amiss until the dinner party with Adam and Ian, when Rob started subtly belittling Helen e.g ‘Little Miss Giggly’ etc. Even then, I thought there was a chance of redemption. Clearly, with those vile machinations at the wedding and the ‘our date night’ (which was more like a rape night), not to mention many other despicable acts, there’s no going back now. This time two years ago, in the run-up to Xmas, I was rooting for Rob to ditch Jess (who sounded like a pain in the neck) and go back to Helen. This seems highly ironic now.
Thanks all for the considered responses.
Becky – I’ve read somewhere (and also think Roif/Lucy have mentioned) that he wasn’t brought in as a villain but the SW changed his character trajectory at some point.
Jennifer – the tone isn’t lowered at all and I’m glad you like the first line. The public school thing is another factor….growing up without sisters and being educated in an all male environment his mother would be his only real female role model. I remember when girls arrived in the 6th form at my school we had a strange few weeks working out how to interact with these exotic creatures, very different sense of humour.
Katie – this is the question I keep coming back to. When…I think, possibly, Andrew, the moment Rob said he was going back to Jess and was bringing her to Ambridge we were supposed to ‘smell a rat’, as they say (although I didn’t. I thought people in the grip of affairs often felt torn between their first partner/spouse and the new person.) Then there was the scene where Rob shouted at Jess that ‘he didn’t want to live in bloody Ambridge’ and accused her of being passive-aggressive, and the one where he told her to clear up the salmon she’d dropped after her ghastly house-warming party. Some people immediately thought ‘Ah-hah, an abuser’; whereas naive old me simply thought, ‘Oh good, he’s gone off Jess and really loves Helen’. I suppose I wanted Helen, despite all our faults, to be happy. My feeling now is that she never will be, at least not with a man.
I think from what has been said by the team, that in the first part of the affair he was planned as a player rather than a full on baddie, but I think by the time Jess came to Ambridge and threw the salmon gate party, the plan had already been changed.
When Helen was having the secret affair at first, Kirstie and Tom were horrified and expected him to use Helen then dump her, as did I, and as happened.
But even during that very first stage, there was one red flag sign of him wanting to control her. Helen turned up at work and Kirstie said she looked pale and wasn’t wearing her normal concealer and make up. Helen said Rob didn’t like her with too much make up, so she’d stopped wearing it. Kirsty was appalled. I think that was the first sign of something odd and I wonder if it was a last minute addition to the script after the long term plan had been changed.
He was dreadful with Jess at the party and that was, I think, the first time we heard his temper.I never believed he was genuinely in love with Helen, and was surprised when he broke up with Jess and got together with her properly. I thought he was going to continue vacillating between the two, but suddenly found Helen much more appealing when Peggy announced she was going to leave her The Lodge.
All this was well before “Little Miss Giggly” on the night she was preparing tuna but he changed it to manly steaks. By that time she was already enthralled in the web and doing whatever he said.
A well presented viewpoint, Andrew, as are the follow-up posts. Because our feelings about Rob have evolved into unambiguous hatred, it’s illuminating to review all the signposts that we have passed on this now most uncomfortable journey. I had forgotten about the great salmon mishap and the more subtle request to remove make-up, as well as “I’m a steak and rugby guy” statements.
Rob would have been a much more interesting, ambivalent and challenging character if were only a very controlling, uber-traditional male in his relationship with Helen (and all women) but a decent guy otherwise. Also, remember the hunt photographer-I refuse to call him a “sab”- and let’s not forget the worker at the dairy-I’m still concerned that a terrible fate befell him. Why did the scriptwriters decide to make Rob manipulative, scheming, misogynistic, homophobic, rageful and assaultive? I don’t know. And in a show such as The Archers no really bad deed goes unpunished forever. We are waiting and are expecting a conclusion, if for nothing but to relieve our own anxiety.
Also, it’s now clear that Helen’s anorexia has returned. This will certainly be a major part of the denouement of the story.
The answer’s simple: Sean O’Connor decided to take his character in that direction:
And as for love, Rob wouldn’t recognise it even if it did knock at his door. Helen’s attachment to him isn’t love – there will have been something within her that responded subconsciously to what and who he is. They ‘fit’ psychologically, and it’s clearly a deeply dysfunctional relationship. A parasite needs a host, after all.
Titchener is a domestic abuser, homophobe and sociopath, period. I read a letter in the Guardian this week from a woman who had never been physically abused, but her husband had belittled and controlled her in similar ways to Titchener for years. He even threatened to kill her and her child if she left.
I’m not in the business of ‘trying to understand’ what motivates an evil sh1t like Titchener. Probably because I’m a woman, but mostly because this kind of behaviour towards any human being in any relationship is beyond the pale and not to be rationalised.
IMHO, it can only be cured with the acknowledgement of that individual to recognise their behaviour, and their unreserved willingness to change it.
And an addendum: Helen’s lack of eating could also be from severe nausea secondary to pre-eclampsia.
Does anyone remember when he had not long been in the village and he was at a little soirée with Ian and Adam? This was when Helen first clapped eyes on him and bemoaned the fact that the ‘good ones are always married or gay.’
Looking back on his description of her as ‘impressive’ seems very creepy with hindsight. Why would any man describe someone in that way unless they were lining up number two? What gets me about this is that he has seemingly got so obsessed with his mission of having her incubate HIS son that he doesn’t notice that she is no longer gushing with happiness, and raving over his every movement.
But that’s the mindset of a sociopath who doesn’t empathise I guess. Not really pleasant listening.
I well remember all the little clues to Rob’s controlling personality very early on: the ‘no make-up’, the tuna, Little Miss Giggly – and remember last New Year’s Eve she had ‘Little Miss Giggly’ well in mind and was anxiously making sure she didn’t drink more than Rob allowed her to.
There was one other, chilling episode when he had planned a special evening, I think it was the night before Valentine’s Day 2014 and she got the unspoken dress code wrong, in what way we were never told but later evidence would point to a too revealing dress being rejected. That little voice she used when she appeared with the next outfit for Rob’s approval still gives me chills. She said something like, ‘Is this better?’ And this was a mere week after he had made that fateful visit to Jess when – and he admitted this to Jess later – he had sex with his estranged wife.
There was also a gift of a watch that he was extremely annoyed Helen didn’t wear on one occasion and I remember the ‘snap’ as he fastened it on her wrist.
I think it was made clear pretty soon what Rob was going to be like.
One thing that still puzzles me is why, if as Rob himself said, Jess was apt to go in for ‘alcohol-fueled one-nighters’ (his very words) and Jess did not deny this, why did he not mention this to Helen when the question of the parentage of Ethan came up? You’d think he’d say if his wife was in the habit of having sex with strange men. It has the marks of a storyline reversal. I think it’s pretty likely Rob was going to be Ethan’s father but because that would mean the break-up of his and Helen’s relationship and because the Rob/Helen storyline was getting such a lot of attention, they changed the story. Which is why to me it doesn’t ring true.
I don’t think Jess was in the habit of having drunken one night-stands with strangers ; this was just Rob’s rhetoric and exaggeration, used after she’d admitted to a ‘fling’, i.e probably just the single occasion. Jess did turn up a little drunk at Blossom Hill Cottage, hoping to see Rob and was disappointed to find Helen installed there. I suspect it was just after that meeting, when she realised her marriage was definitely over, that she had the fling.
I don’t think so either, but it was an odd phrase to hurl at her and not have her deny it. ‘One fling, Rob, because my heart was broken!’, you’d think she’d have said at the very least. During that conversation, she was doing her best to explain to him why she had been so convinced the child was his so you’d think that she would at least deny that it was ‘one of her’ alcohol-fueled one night stands as if that were her habit.
Just to add: the language Rob uses to Pat about Helen, things like ‘we must be firm with her’ – it’s very infantilizing and ought to be making Pat bristle that her daughter is a grownup and should be able to decide for herself whether she should stay in bed or not. Of course, Helen is reinforcing this treatment by both Rob and Pat by acting like a child who tearfully protests she is well enough to get up when she clearly isn’t.
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