The Only Way is Essex (TOWIE) Season 36 Episode 9 Recap

The cold open of TOWIE Episode 9 is Elma Pazar standing in the middle of a field with Saffron Lempriere, screaming “I HATE THAT I LOVE DAN EDGAR” into the open air as part of something called scream therapy. Twenty-five minutes later, with zero buildup and no setup, the universe hands Dan Edgar to her at a chip shop counter. He is buying sausage and chips. She is buying sausage and chips. The dialogue that follows is so dry and awkward it loops back around to being one of the better TOWIE scenes of the year. Everything else in the episode is bookkeeping.

(The following is a recap of Season 36, Episode 9, with full spoilers.)

The chip shop scene is doing all the work

Let us not pretend reality TV does coincidence. Elma’s chip shop run-in with Dan Edgar is producer-engineered down to the receipt, but the genius is that the show does not bother to dress it up. There is no music swell. There is no slow-motion lock-eyes shot. She walks in. She orders (“a small portion of chips, a sausage and a pickled onion, please”). She steps to one side. Dan walks in. They both look like they would rather be anywhere else on Earth.

“Couldn’t you go to the other chip shop down there or something?” Elma says, and that is the funniest line in the episode by a country mile, because she means it. There is, in fact, another chip shop down the road. She is genuinely annoyed that he picked this one. Dan, to his credit, gamely agrees that he should have picked the other one.

The whole exchange runs maybe ninety seconds. Most of it is Dan asking if she is staying out of the drama. Most of her answers are one word. The chemistry between them, the thing that powered roughly three seasons of this show, has been replaced with the awkward energy of two people who used to date and now wish they could legally cross the street if one of them is on it. The most romantic thing they say to each other is “How’s the dog?”

Then she says “Mwah, see you later,” and walks out with her chips, and the camera holds on her face for one extra beat in the car. That extra beat is the whole point. The episode opened with her screaming Dan’s name at the sky. The middle of the episode put him in front of her holding a pickled onion. By any honest read, she is not over him. Lock it in.

This is the kind of beat TOWIE has been running for sixteen years. They put a long-running couple in a chance-encounter scene with a low-stakes prop, let the body language tell the audience what neither party is willing to say on camera, and move on. It still works because the cast member sells it. Elma sold this one.

The Amber and Elma cold war thaws, then refreezes by closing time

The B-plot is the Amber Turner versus Elma Pazar fallout from Ella Rae Wise’s Rate My Plate dinner last week, and most of the episode is two women trying very hard to resolve it like adults. Amber goes to Elma’s new house with what amounts to an extended legal defence about whether she “showed” or “told” Harry Derbidge about Elma calling him weird in a group chat. There is a two-minute riff on the difference between “shown, seen” and “told.” It’s the kind of forensic Essex argument that makes you understand why this show has lasted as long as it has.

By the end of that scene, they have agreed it was a misunderstanding. Elma even sends Amber flowers. Peace is breaking out. Then, in the closing-bar scene, with everyone reunited and singing “Would I Lie to You,” it all goes again. Amber accuses Elma of being a bad friend, gets shushed, and the shush makes her angrier than the original argument did. “Judge fucking Amber Turner and her jury,” Elma snaps, and then keeps snapping “boring, boring, boring” into her face.

I lied earlier when I said everything outside the chip shop was bookkeeping. The Amber-Elma fight is real, it is doing work, and the show is clearly setting up a much bigger split next week.

Jordan Brook’s last birthday before he becomes a dad

The episode’s softest plot is Jordan Brook turning 31 on a private chef weekend with a heavily pregnant Sophie Kasaei. She has arranged a remote retreat, a hot tub, and a beef-croquette tasting menu, and the whole thing is genuinely lovely in a way TOWIE rarely commits to. They eat. They flirt. Sophie says “can’t get pregnant twice” with the matter-of-fact glee of a woman who has earned that line.

Then she hands Jordan a birthday card from their unborn son. “Happy birthday, Daddy. This year, I’m snuggled up in Mummy’s belly.” Jordan, to his credit, fully cries. “I ain’t gonna be able to read this. Fucking hell.” It is the second most honest moment in the episode after the chip shop, and it does not get smothered by slow-motion B-roll, which is a small miracle.

The card is signed “Baby Brook,” which I am choosing to read as a placeholder rather than a commitment, since they explicitly admit in the next scene that they have not picked a name yet. Sophie wants to talk about it. Jordan does not. That argument is being saved for later.

What is the closing scene of TOWIE S36 Episode 9?

The closing scene is the Amber and Elma blow-up at the bar, but the actual final note is Diags trying to be the better person and shove Junaid Ahmed across the room to make peace with Elma, just as Amber starts in on her again. It’s the standard TOWIE finale structure: someone tries to do the right thing, somebody else cannot help themselves, and the screaming starts before the credits hit. Elma’s “boring, boring, boring” is the last line of dialogue before the theme song lands.

What you take away from this episode depends on which scene you let yourself sit with. If you stay with the bar fight, this is a recap about Amber and Elma’s collapsing friendship. If you stay with the chip shop, this is a recap about Elma not being over Dan Edgar no matter how loudly she screams the opposite on a hillside. I think the show wants you to take the second one. The bar fight is the noise. The chips are the signal.