Emmerdale: Moira’s alive, but Cain needs to go. And who is Steph?!

This week’s Emmerdale review is brought to you from a place of deep despair, with cries of “WHHHHYYYY?”

We are most definitely not on board with Cain and Ruby doing it. In fact, we’re so horrified by it that we’ve had quite an extreme realisation about Mr Dingle – more on that later.

The awfulness of Cain and Ruby’s hook-up has tainted the whole of this week’s Emmerdale for us, but when we put our minds to it, we can remember some moments of brightness among the gloom.

Here’s what we thought in this week’s Emmerdale review.

Moira and Holly’s reunion

Let’s start with the good stuff: the build-up to Moira’s op, her fear about leaving her kids, and the op itself.

We’re not always a fan of quirky tricks in soaps, but having Moira see daughter Holly Barton was a really lovely touch. And her leaving Holly to go and check on the boys was a clever way of showing us how much she wanted to live.

It was sweet and emotional, and really moving. Natalie J Robb, who plays Moira, really knocked it out of the park too, showing us Moira’s terror about her operation in a very understated way. It was great.

Sweet supportive Sam

And do you know what else we loved? Sweet Sam turning up at the hospital to support Cain, even when Cain left the hospital.

We’ve been watching Sam and Alice’s sad journey on Classic Emmerdale, so probably because of that we felt a bit teary seeing Sam arrive with his Tupperware of pasties, ready to step up for his family. What a sweetheart.

We’ve got questions for Steph!

We quite like what we’ve seen of Steph so far. But one thing we can’t get our heads round is her parents’ complete lack of interest in her life outside Emmerdale. They’ve not  spoken for more than a decade, but they haven’t asked her where she’s been living, or what she’s been doing, or if she’s single.

Caleb assumed she didn’t have a job – which she apparently didn’t, but then how has she been supporting herself until now? Caleb also assumed she had the skills to be his second-in-command at the factory without checking.

Maybe she’s a doctor or a lawyer or a stripper or a fighter pilot – he wouldn’t know because he didn’t even ask. It’s all a bit odd.

Big thumbs down for Will and Kim in our Emmerdale review

Just get back together already and stop all this exhausting brinkmanship.

We need to talk about Cain and Ruby in our Emmerdale review

We suppose we need to talk about the huge Cain and Ruby shaped elephant in the room. But we don’t want to! Because it’s actually just awful, isn’t it? Nothing about their weird five-minute bunk up in the garage makes sense. And it’s hard to know where to start with listing everything about it that was so wrong. But let’s have a go.

First up, Cain and Ruby have never even showed the tiniest bit of interest in one another. They’ve barely spoken. In fact, they barely spoke in the garage before they were suddenly snogging. It came so out of the blue that it was bewildering. If Cain had to cheat (though we question why) then we’d have perhaps gone for Ella, as they have a bit of a rapport. Not Ruby.

Another objection we have to this whole sitch, is that Ruby has won our hearts over the last few months. We’ve seen her vulnerable side, got to know her, loved seeing her forge an awkward friendship with Moira, and now this. It’s just not Ruby. She makes mistakes undoubtedly, but she is loyal and fierce and – we reckon – a real woman’s woman. This dalliance is so out of character, it might have changed the way we feel about her forever, which is a real shame.

Plus, Ruby is a smart, funny, clever woman who then messaged Cain and left her emergency contraception box in the top of the kitchen bin. Riiiiiight.

We have a lot to say about Cain here too, but actually he deserves his own section, because WHAT ON EARTH is going on there?

Cain needs to go

We have always loved Cain Dingle. We’ve forgiven him so much over the years. But we’re about ready to say enough is enough. You’re 50 years old, mate. It’s time to grow up.

We were disappointed in the way Cain reacted when Moira’s behaviour first started to change before her diagnosis. He let her down then. But, we thought, he’ll step up. He’ll make amends. It’ll be fine.

Except he didn’t and it wasn’t.

First he whinged about being left to look after things at the farm when Moira went to see her son Adam TO SAY GOODBYE, in case she died. Then he refused to talk about any of the important stuff Moira wanted to sort out IN CASE SHE DIED. And then he slept with Ruby while Moira was ON THE OPERATING TABLE. (We apologise for all this shouting but it really feels like Cain’s behaviour warrants a bit of shouting!)

He even punched Jimmy (to be fair, Jimmy did quite deserve it but still there’s a time and a place) and got himself arrested.

And now he’s being utterly VILE to Ruby too. Almost as if he’s blaming her for his own shortcomings.

Suddenly, our Cain Dingle love has vanished. Gone. And we’re seeing him for what he really is – an abusive, stubborn man who’s too set in his toxic ways to ever change.

And for that reason – and frankly we can’t believe we’re saying this but we are – we think it’s time for Cain Dingle to go.