Pulling

On her hen night, as she watches Louise stage dive into a crowded dance floor and Karen recreate the Bacardi ad on the club bar, Donna realises with absolute drunken clarity that single girls have more fun. In this state of inebriation she declares the wedding off. What she doesn’t see is Louise nursing two broken finger-tips and Karen desperately begging her random shag for something more than one night. Donna confronts Karl the next day, knowing that he’ll be reasonable. He responds by rationally running into the kitchen wall and begging Donna not to leave him. Donna turns up at Karen and Louise’s with everything she owns in bin-bags. Karen can’t remember offering either advice or a place to stay. She clears out the windowless dump room for her. And so life begins.

Louise falls in love. Unfortunately it’s with thingy, Karen’s conquest from last night. She can’t believe that Karen has been so soul-less as to not get his number but spots an opportunity to bag herself a man. Donna is out on the jobs market and, determined to re-start her life, she persuades Karl to set her up with an elite employment agency. Karen quits teaching to live the life of a free-spirited alcoholic but the realisation that hanging out with old men and wearing random strangers’ knickers quickly results in a change of heart. Donna starts work for an international media company, earning in excess of two hundred grand a year. She is finally doing it; she is finally in the big time. Well, for about an afternoon before being kicked out on her blagging-it arse. Louise gets herself ready for her shag with thingy but takes too long ‘preparing’ and Karen steals her man back.

Karl tries to kill himself but changes his mind at the last minute; however the noose is already around his neck and choking the life out of him. Fortunately Donna discovers him, but vows to keep an eye on him. This vow is made before she remembers that they are going to a party that Louise has got them invites for, a really good one. Karen is being stalked by her sometime shag, Mark, who she really cannot stand (not when she can see single, anyway). Eventually the girls persuade Donna to let a friend, Tanya, of Louise’s look after Karl. The party is a disaster, and Donna returns to find Tanya’s relationship therapy session with Karl has been less than helpful.

With the electricity turned off Donna wonders how this will affect her thirtieth birthday, and with Karl no longer sounding miserable she begins to feel insecure. Karen gets Louise to organize Donna’s present on the internet, but Louise accidentally gets addicted to online porn instead. Karen is owed money by Mark, but when she tries to get it she finds that he has inconveniently died. She gets bladdered and goes to the funeral to get the cash, finding herself searching Mark’s corpse. Louise meets a nice man in an internet chat room and arranges to meet in a car park. Unfortunately there are lots of other nice men there, all with their penis’ in their hands and staring in through the car window. Donna tracks down Karl and finds he has started seeing someone. Because of all this her party becomes a miserable affair and she consoles herself by getting back together with Karl, who never stopped loving her. Unfortunately she wakes up the next morning with Steve, the partially deaf barman and Karl is back to square one.

Everyone knows that Richard, Louise’s boss at the restaurant, is gay. Everyone, it would seem, except Richard, as Donna finds when she shares her bed with him. This is particularly irritating as Donna has just met a really, really, really perfect man, Sam. Louise decides that it’s time to take the bull by the horns and have sexual relations with a human man. Tonight. She asks out Oleg (dish pig from the restaurant). Karen gets run over and decides to give up drinking. This turns her into a demented, sweaty, man-repellent. Donna takes Sam for a drink in the local pub but unfortunately she finds herself flanked by a sexually-charged Louise and her date for the night Oleg and Karen who has less-than-helpfully invited Richard in for a reunion with Donna.

Louise’s mum, Eileen, turns up and announces that she’s moving in. She has just been dumped by Skinzo, her seventeen year old boyfriend and Karen is far from happy because Eileen is an alcoholic slag bag. Donna is trying to make an impression on Sam’s friends which seems to manifest itself in her insulting them. Louise and Karen go out with Eileen who makes a show of herself by doing lesbian dancing with her daughter to attract men. Although Sam is mister Right, more and more Donna finds herself eating beans on toast and watching DVD’s round at Karl’s. Karen tells Louise to get rid of Eileen, but when it comes to it Louise is finally won over by Eileen and they make their peace and embrace, Eileen vowing never to let a man come between her and her daughter again. This lasts for about five minutes because when Skinzo turns up to reclaim her she dumps Louise like a sack of hot s**t. Sam gives Donna an ultimatum. It’s Karl or him.