A face for the ages.

Dan, step away from the copper carbonate!

This is last week’s recap – I had hoped to get it out last week but I had a really busy week and rather than scrapping the half written recap that I was quite proud of, I figured I’d try to get it out as soon as I could this week and Bathroom Week should be up by Thursday at the latest!

I apologise for missing a couple of weeks, I’d been feeling pretty grim because my heart has essentially been pumping glorified Diet Coke (it turns out the food pyramid isn’t optional, who knew?) but after a few weeks of mainlining high dosage vitamins, it’s… at least Cherry flavoured Coke Zero now. And then I will admit, last week’s After School Trauma Special was just a little too much to recap – it was all one big Trigger Warning and I couldn’t see a fun way to mine humour out of it, except for the term “Trauma Tagliatelle” that the wonderful AJ gifted to me and I owe it to them to use it *somehow*

perfect with a bit of melancholic marinara.

So in the space between Water Sports Week and this week’s Aren’t The Victorians Weird? Week we have sadly lost Cadi and Sophie in what I can only describe as Incidents of Dan who has some sort of plot armour smithed of mithril and dragon’s breath

and at this point I have to declare myself a full on Impervious Dan stan.

Filter Skelter

This week’s main make was another biggie with the potters having to make a “vintage style water filter” which they were selling as a precursor to the office watercooler – I question this because not once in Pride and Prejudice do I remember anyone gossiping around their water filter so actually it’s more of a precursor to those big vats of water filled with lemons that sit on the counter of a cafe that’s trying a little too hard and always give me the squick for no real reason

I just want to be able to verify how old the lemons are.

There were quite a few specifications with his challenge – their vessels had to be at least 55cm and decorated as a nod to their favourite Village, Town or City (the legality of hamlets was left unspecified) and in order to achieve this, they had to decorate it with sprigs but shop bought offerings were strictly off limits so they had to make them themselves, a challenge that felt perfectly suited to Dan who seems to have made a habit of MacGyvering together a plan while several gins to the wind in his hotel room the night before the challenge

he’s very the kid that never revised and still managed to get nothing lower than a B which annoys everyone but you have to keep him around because he’s three months older than all of you and could buy you beer first. Consider this recap *my* Trauma Special.

Dan was one of two potters attempting to throw their vessels in one go along with Dave. Dan’s went much more successfully (in many ways) although his first attempt fell just short of the 55cm rule

he probably could have got away with it because not ONCE did Rich or Keith whip out a ruler but Dan was too self-conscious and promptly killed his vertically challenged filter

and the lump of clay sat beside him as a reminder of his erectile deficient watercooler, like Poe’s heart under the floorboards but sadder

but he was very happy with the growth of his second attempt

his Water Filter was going to be a nod to Weymouth and in order to achieve this he was going for a seaside motif including waves, a lobster and a seagull knob (careful how you read that)

the actual body of the filter wasn’t going to be glazed, instead it was going to be dipped into a salt solution that they assure us made a difference but I could not discern anything so I’ll just trust them, but the sprigs could be done in oxides with Dan hoping to achieve a brilliant red lobster with the use of a copper carbonate… a tale that sounds eerily familiar…

You know that gif of Sideshow Bob walking into rakes?

Dan is Sideshow Bob and the rakes are copper carbonate.

Dave had also attempted to throw his in one piece but gave up on that endeavour and resorted to a joining two pieces together for his Birkenhead inspired water filter as a constant reminder to Birkenhead lagging behind in the average amount of eyes per capita

you know the myth about the ancient Greeks originating the cyclops because of elephant skulls? Please join in me in trying to spread the rumour it’s because of the Birkenhead populace instead

everything seemed to be going swimmingly for Dave and then tragedy struck as he rapidly accelerated his wheel and in the blink of an eye his filter became one of the most dangerous projectiles since that time I accidentally brained someone with a water bottle because I forgot how gravity works (I never did GCSE physics for a reason)

and in this moment, Dan spoke for us all

I have to applaud Dave on his reaction speed though, if that were me that pot would have been gone and taken Siobhan with it and they’d have to get Ellie Taylor out of the emergency host cupboard again.

So while last week dealt with Traumas Past, this week was Dave’s Trauma Present (I can’t wait to see how Traumas Future manifests in Bathroom Week) as a shellshocked Dave could only sit there cradling the slightly misshapen form of his filter

which is both an incredibly heartbreaking image but also oddly beautiful because he does look like the Madonna and Child

hang it in The Louvre because Duccio WISHES.
Although the most beautiful part of the whole ordeal was Dan having to sadly stroke out a handle

Nobody has ever been caught in a more compromising position.

The biggest victim to Dave’s Rapid Acceleration was the footring of his filter which he was going to have to do again and just to make sure the same thing didn’t happen again, Emergency Empathetic Keith was deployed

the cautiousness of his approach was both because there was a very real risk Dave’s pot would come flying at him and because the universally agreed upon way to approach someone having a mild panic attack is like a lion tamer who lost their whip and chair.

Against all the odds, Dave did at least end up with a fully sprigged, if perhaps slightly oddly shaped, pot but he wasn’t the only one to have a few construction issues, as Steven’s halves didn’t quite align as well as one would have hoped

that is at least a slightly easier fix than trying to iron out the death grip Dave left in his. As for Steven’s inspiration, he was the only potter going abroad with a touch of Venice for his water filter

“How romantic, he must have gone there for his honeymoon” you might think to yourself and then you find out it was a routine location for his school trips

romance is dead and the education system is the culprit. I will make a T-shirt for his wife that says “My husband went on Pottery Throwdown and all I got was a Gluggle Jug that looked like me”. You’re on thin ice Steven, you better make her the most beautiful bespoke toilet next week.

Jan and Donna were both going for hometown inspirations, the latter of course doing a nod to Belfast and reading us the Economy section of its Wikipedia page

she wasn’t however going to be covering her filter in a relief of Gallaher Deluxes and Thompson’s Breakfast Tea (COWARD) instead she was going for a much more aesthetically pleasing nod to their linen and rope manufacturing

she did have one minor incident (not be confused with Dave’s history of Miner Incidents) as she knocked her drying room nametag into her filter

however she couldn’t make too much of a fuss about it because Dave was in the other room cradling a pot that was threatening to collapse in on itself like a dying star.

Jan’s location of choice was the Gower Peninsula where she enjoyed many a glorious day of her childhood *checks notes* doing water quality tests with her father

once again, I cannot make fun of her because I had a brief and short-lived fascination with aquifers as a child – it came in handy precisely once when a question about them won my team a general knowledge quiz at school.

Right In The Coffees

This week’s Throwdown Challenge involved the potters having to make a Coffee Pot and Filter which much like the Victorian Shaving Scuttle of Episodes Gone By, I’m not entirely sure of the logistics of it

but the potters had 25 minutes to figure it out and much like anyone under the age of 40 on Pointless claiming they can’t answer questions about 80s music because they weren’t alive then, (SHUT UP AND JUST SAY FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD OR QUEEN, THOSE ARE THE ANSWERS 90% OF THE TIME) everyone promptly started playing their tea drinking reverse cards

and sucks to be them because Rich promptly made both Jan and Dave pick up 4

I was going to say Donna identifying only Dan as her main competitor was harsh but… she’s not wrong, the one reliable constant in this world is that Jan cannot be bothered with a Throwdown Challenge and I personally find her insistence in placing at best 5th (of 9) to be wonderfully inspirational – like me pretending I was doing ANYTHING as the Wing in the C-Team they cobbled together from the outcasts and leftovers for an inter-school rugby tournament. I would say that was trauma but having an infuriated PE teacher shout at me for “mincing like a girl” from the sidelines was more eye-opening than it was effectively degrading.

So as the war between Donna and Dan waged, Steven was struggling with a protesting potter’s wheel

unseen was Dave having war flashbacks in the corner to several hours ago when he could have done with a wheel protesting against going a mile a minute – and despite Steven making the most noise in the pottery, or at least the mics didn’t pick up Jan muttering curses upon Rich and Keith, he was the tortoise to Donna’s and Dan’s warring hares as he snatched first place from them

leaving Donna in Third

and Dan in second

Don’t worry you two, there’s a water filter coming to humble him.

An Official Coffee Filter Ranking
1. Steven, The Coffee Drinking Tortoise
2. Dan, You May Have Won the Battle but You’ll Never Win The War!
3. Donna’s Tactical Quarterfinal Loss
4. Jan’s Anti-coffee Stance
5. Dave’s Covfefe Filter

Twisted Fire Filter

The next day the potters had to pick up their filters after their first firing and things did not bode well given that Rose was dressed for a Victorian filter funeral

and like the personification of a fan in a room with closed windows (shout out to Korean omens of death) Rose gradually produced a series of filters with increasingly large cracks

and one detached knob

if only we could all be so lucky…

And then there was Saint Donna’s which was absolutely pristine and practically bathed in the light of heaven

God doesn’t have favourites but I don’t think he ever made Donna climb up a mountain with the intent of sacrificing her child only to yell “PSYCH!” as she was about to do it. Although they did all still have to submerge their filters into the salt solution in a scene that teetered the line of over enthusiastic baptisms and a recreation of that scene from Fatal Attraction

and to ensure he was getting maximum salt for his buck, Dave was doing a risky double dip

and with that all taken care of and everyone definitely sure they knew what they were doing…

it was time for the second firing which was being done in an oil drum kiln that they were trusting the potters to construct themselves

I want to know how they passed this through the insurance without the presence of Firestarter in Chief, The Enigmatic Kevin and the only protective clothing being aprons and sunglasses that made everyone look like they were at once competing in a pottery throwdown and for the role of Trinity in a reboot of The Matrix

and then there was Jan who had more of the vibe of one of the mice from Wallace and Gromit’s Grand Day Out watching the rocket take off

she’s perfect and we must protect her at all costs from her natural predator: supermarket freezers

if I had £1 for every time I have absolutely lost it over a woman being stuck in a supermarket freezer I’d have £2, which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it’s happened twice

I think about her every time I buy oven chips.

The potters were fully in charge of the firing process with the temperature being gauged by the return of my favourite recurring characters, The Cones of Impotence

I just think they’re neat and I enjoy that when they start melting they look like that scene from Pingu that traumatised me as a child but even more apocalyptic

Your honour, she’s needlessly bringing up Pingu and her childhood trauma again. NOOT NOOT!

The firing process went mostly to plan, Steven had a little bit of trouble and ended up pushing his time longer and longer because he’d accidentally knocked his cones over and couldn’t tell what temperature he was at which everyone watched him doing fully knowing this was a bad idea

and as his kiln was cooling down it let out a little pinging noise that was at once very satisfying and extremely threatening – a bit like a Tinder notification

and sure enough upon opening it up the next day, his whole base had detached from his filter

but he wasn’t the only one because Jan’s was losing appendages faster than the inhabitants of Spinalonga

and Dan was feeling a little bit left out and decided to take things into his own hands

we’ve all succumbed to peer pressure before – like highschool me thinking I was serving McFly by straightening my hair and all I looked like was Pauline Quirke.

Once again, Donna’s came out perfectly and because she had the only filter which could actually be considered a vessel they did not end up testing any of the filters for their water carrying ability, so instead they were keeping their water tests for Bathroom Week’s toilets that flush like a tsunami.

So with 80% of the water filters being incapable of actually holding water, judging came down mostly to aesthetic and who had the best sprigs and less of an egregious faultline with Donna unsurprisingly out in front with utter perfection

the judges had no choice but to lavish her with praise and in my favourite instance of editing, as they commented on the lack of cracks they cut to my favourite recurring character of this series: Dan’s sceptical eyebrow

No cracks you say? That can be changed…

but despite Dan handling his water filter with the delicacy of the average Evri courier, the judges were quite taken with his filter, particularly the shape of it showcased some very talented throwing ability

the lobster hadn’t come out quite as intended but Dan had a Get Out Lobster Jail Free card

lobsters also pee out of their faces so when you think evolution screwed you over with the ability to feel empathy, just remember things could be worse: your bladder could be in your head. My mother is right, I should be a therapist.

The judges were also impressed with Jan’s throwing in this challenge considering it’s a part of the show she’s struggled with at best and actively rebelled against at worst – their praise was slightly faint and damning but the sentiment was there

and in order to lessen the blow that the base of her pot had a crack bigger than the Mariana Trench they spent a lot of time praising her sheep

you know what they say: every cloud Vintage Water Filter has a silver lining.

Dave’s socially risky double dip had paid off with his water filter being a really beautiful warm toasty colour

as well as the front sprig making it look a bit like Birkenhead is a side quest location in a D&D campaign that’s been overrun by kobold occultists, the shape, colour and single eye do also make it look like a Beamos from The Legend of Zelda

10/10 – I would drink water out of him any day.

Steven wasn’t quite so lucky with the saltwater effect as his knob was just too big to close the drum on so he’d had to invert it (I promise I’m talking about his water filter and not bottom sur-[ARIADNE YOU ONLY GET ONE TRANS KNOB JOKE PER RECAP]) but it does at least demonstrate the difference that the heat makes on the process so… that’s nice for us pottery plebeians who still think pottery puts the craft in witchcraft

look, I just want to see if Donna weighs more or less than the average Bakewell mallard because I’m beginning to have my doubts. (speaking of witches, First Boot Andrew is currently in The Crucible in, well, Sheffield’s Crucible and I’m very excited to see it later this month! – see, I’m cultured, I’m not just Pingu and the same Simpsons references!)

A Vintage Water Filter Ranking:
1. Donna by Virtue of Everyone Else’s Cracks
2. Dan’s Jar of Lobster Facts
3. Dave’s Thirsty Beamos
4. Jan’s Very Good Lamb
=. Steven’s Extremely Vertically Blessed Venice

Somehow the most wholesome show on TV (Throwdown and Sewing Bee will have to virtuously mud wrestle for that title) has sparked a series of conspiracy theories, Janspiracy Theories if you will, as rather oddly the judges’ deliberation was left out between the judging and the reveal of who was going home – the logical reasoning behind this is that the oil drum firing segment required a bigger chunk of the episode’s runtime than the average second half of a main challenge but where’s the fun in logic? It’s much more fun to get out the pegboard and twine

WHERE ARE THE BODIES DAN, WHERE ARE THEY?

I kind of wish they’d just called the episode a wash and taken everyone through but alas, someone was going home and given that Jan had once lost a fight to a bag of peas and a supermarket freezer, they couldn’t risk Death by Toilet next week so it was time up for her in the pottery

and thus departs the Emotional Support Potter of the series so expect everyone to be utterly unhinged for the next 2 episodes, perfect for Bathroom Week!

Potter of the Week came with much less suspense given that only one filter actually did it’s job

Donna stop! They’re already dead!

See you in the Bathroom Week providing my vascular system doesn’t have other ideas!