The Slap: What Anouk and Manolis have to do with all this drama

Catching up on “The Slap”, they have shown two episodes since our last post, one about the Anouk, one of the Three Musketeers — Anouk, Rosie and Aisha; and one about Manolis, Hector’s father and Harry’s uncle.

Anouk wanted Rosie to stop pursuing legal charges against Harry for slapping her bat-wielding brat, but Rosie wasn’t having it. Criticizing her free-spirited child is a big no-no. Anouk went to see her mom, Virginia, a psychiatrist. Judging by Anouk’s appearance, Virginia thought she might be pregnant, which turned out to be true. Virginia wanted to meet Jamie, the younger TV star boyfriend.

Anouk told her mother what went down at Hector’s birthday party — the slap and seeing Hector get cozy with Connie, the underage babysitter (more upsetting to Anouk than the slap). Virginia advised her to talk to Hector about what she saw. Anouk dropped in on Hector, exhorting him to refrain from destroying his marriage because “This is the only house I can show up at without calling first, and I don’t want to lose that.” Self-centered much?

At Virginia’s dinner party, Anouk learned that her mother sold her home and is moving to Edinburgh and was just appalled that was the first she heard of this fait accompli. After another round of tossing her cookies, Anouk took a pregnancy test but Jamie had already figured it out. He proposed marriage and the name Olive for the baby. Anouk rejected both the proposal and him and went to Aisha for an abortion referral.

Anouk told Aisha that she didn’t want to be a parent because she has always known that her own mother didn’t want custody of her when she divorced Anouk’s father. Virginia only ended up with her because her father died. Aisha told her that people do the best they can and revealed that her own son was checking out internet porn.

Later Anouk did some snooping at Virginia’s and found out her mother is dying of a brain tumor. Her treatment center is in Edinburgh so she gave Virginia a suitcase as both an early birthday present and a sign that she accepted the decision.

Anouk decided to keep her baby and she paid Rosie a visit to apologize for her earlier stance. “The way you love your son is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen in my life,” she said, “Don’t ever let anyone tell you it isn’t.”

Manolis was having all kinds of anxiety over the fallout from the slap and the terminal illness of Demetrios, one of his best friends. He felt he had to do something to defuse the situation and paid a visit to his other best friend, Thanassis, a successful shark — oops, we meant lawyer. Thanassis takes Manolis, Harry and Hector to lunch at his private men’s club and wowee! Thanassis turns out to be the answer to Harry’s prayers. He’s got the goods on Rosie and Gary and Harry’s other lawyer is out of a job. Hector and Manolis don’t want any mud-slinging but that’s tough luck now. This turn of events almost gives Manolis a heart attack and he goes to Aisha’s clinic.

There he learns that Harry beats his wife, Sandi, and that Aisha and Rosie had a hand in covering up one episode that left Sandi with a scar on her face. Little things add up if you can remember them — like Rosie demanding to know in “Harry” if he beats his wife, and the pregnant glances exchanged between Rosie and Aisha during their talk with the assistant prosecutor over whether Harry has history of violence. Manolis confront Harry who cops to just grabbing Sandi hard. Do you think Sandi would stay with him if it was true? After Manolis pays a visit to his sick friend, Demetrios, he returns home to be totally absolved from guilt by Koula, who tells him that they have done their best and their children don’t need them anymore. But Manolis better follow up with his own doctor for his heart, because Thanassis is on the case now and things are going to heat up for the unstable Rosie in the next episode. We might have to devote a whole post just to Rosie.