'Emmerdale' action week review: Meena murders again, plus Priya badly burned

After this week’s disaster-strewn week in Emmerdale, we can be sure of one thing: the Hop’s TripAdvisor rating really is screwed.

It couldn’t have gone any worse for the outdoor pursuits company, right? They go to the trouble of organising a survival challenge and what happens? A rope bridge collapses, people almost drown in some river rapids, and then the maize maze catches fire. Andrea, for one, should be asking for her money back. But she can’t because she’s now dead.

To be honest, the risks were in plain sight for anyone who cared to notice. I mean, what was David thinking when he signed up to take part in the event? Just a couple of weeks ago, he almost bled to death after being shot in the stomach.

And yet here he was a mere fortnight later, hanging high up from a snapped rung like Indiana Jones at the end of Temple of Doom. The guy is obviously cursed. Just don’t let him out from behind the counter of that shop ever again.

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Then there’s Meena, who nobody seems to notice is a complete psychopath. Come on, people! She spent the entire week acting like Villanelle in a safety helmet but has somehow managed to evade justice yet again.

Andrea did, of course, come close to exposing those murderous misdeeds after observing Meena trying to drown love rival Victoria. But rather than running in the direction of the nearest police station, Andrea inexplicably hot-footed it into a maze. Because that’s what we’d all do when fearing for our lives, right? Hide out in a place that’s been deliberately designed to confuse and trap us…

So, yes, Andrea met her maker. Though it seemed to take an age for her to die. First, Meena almost impaled her with a Dead End sign, then she had her head bashed against some wooden steps before finally succumbing in the blaze that had broken out thanks to a misfired flare gun.

It was an awfully protracted demise for a character who hasn’t exactly made much of an impression in the two years she’s been on screen. Quite frankly, I felt more anguished when her pet dog Princess got trapped in an overheated car earlier this year.

Someone else who was inadvertently caught up in this conflagration was poor Priya, who in the space of an episode went from a sneaky bunk-up with Ellis to being horrifically burned. No one will have seen this trauma coming, though I do worry how Priya’s plight will be covered in the weeks ahead, as burns and scars do seem to heal quite miraculously on soaps.

Remember the apparently life-changing injuries that Kat Slater on EastEnders sustained during a 2014 house explosion? The writers obviously don’t. And Todd Grimshaw’s facial scar had vanished by the time he was recast and actor Gareth Pierce made his Coronation Street debut.

Others, too, found themselves dicing with danger, with vicar Charles stretchered off to hospital, where a saturated Victoria is now also currently an inpatient. Charity will have no doubt riled #Vanity fans even further by declaring her feelings for mischievous Mack after he put himself in peril. Plus, Marlon and Paddy did what they always do during a crisis and got lost in the woods. Next time there’s a high-profile week of Emmerdale episodes, someone should buy those two a compass in advance.

As for the future, we now have an inkling of how Meena might end up being caught. She’s currently supremely confident about getting away with her crimes. But there’s the not-insignificant matter of flickering CCTV having captured the moment where she held Vic beneath the depths. Everyone at the Hop remains oblivious, but it surely won’t be long before an employee scans the incriminatory footage and realises what they’ve witnessed. At which point, the game may well be up.

Or Meena will just gleefully dispatch another victim, of course. After all, when it came to the survival challenge, she perversely was the ultimate winner…

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