Am I Being Unreasonable? ending explained: The plot twist finale of Daisy May Cooper’s BBC comedy mystery

Did that really happen or was it all a dream? We are here with the answers.

A show of hands please for everyone who didn’t see that ending coming in the BBC One Am I Being Unreasonable season finale? Daisy May Cooper’s newest series manages to dip into every genre possible, and pull it off effortlessly. There’s outrageous laugh-out-loud absurd comedy, dark comedy, mystery, and intrigue. Overall, it is a work of writing genius from its stars - Cooper was ably assisted in pulling off the brilliant script by real-life best friend and Jen actress, Selin Hizli. But if that ending left viewers baffled and wondering if Nic was dreaming, traumatised, or both when the final shocking moments were shown, let’s break it down. 

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Am I Being Unreasonable? ending explained

At the end of episode 6, viewers found out Alex hadn’t died in a tragic accident at all, he’d really been murdered by Nic. 

Flashback’s throughout the series showed Nic and Alex as a pair of star-crossed lovers, unable to be together because they were both already married. Nic’s husband also being Alex’s brother Dan, made the situation even more unpalatable for them both. In most of Nic’s flashbacks, she and Alex have shared an illicit date, and he is waving her off on the train. They are constantly professing their love for each other. Going in for a final kiss before the train doors close on Nic, Alex’s coat gets caught and the train starts moving again. Nic eventually gets the train to stop and it appears all will be well, until a train hurtles from the opposite direction, killing Alex instantly. Viewers spend the entire series believing Nic is unable to grieve for the love of her life, because she can’t reveal their affair to her husband and son.

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Accompanied by flashbacks, Nic has experienced hallucinations of a young couple. The two pop up in her wedding video, outside the window of her house, and everywhere she seems to turn. Nic claims she doesn’t know who they are, asking others if they know them and beginning to imagine the pair are ghosts haunting her. In the closing moments of episode 6 when Nic is trying to say something about Alex at his memorial, the reason for the couple’s strange appearance becomes clear. Nic has been remembering her final moments with Alex completely wrong, probably due to guilt, trauma, and denial. While viewers have always seen her and Alex embracing, and desperate not to say goodbye to one another at the train station, Nic’s real memory from that night is that she was sad and alone at the station - clearly miserable.

The couple haunting her are the real ones who were canoodling and making grand statements of love that night - Nic has swapped their story for hers in her mind. The same couple witness a sordid argument between Alex and Nic, where he tells her he never loved her and only slept with her because he hated his brother Dan. A clearly devastated Nic is dealt an even worse blow when Alex cruelly adds that sex with her was passable, but she really needs to lose weight. Having this argument while Nic is on the train and Alex on the platform, she grabs his coat - deliberately trapping it in the door as it closes.      

Nic could easily have pulled the trian’s emergency cord to bring it to a halt and free Alex. Instead she stares at him frozen, the part of his coat wedged in the door clasped in her hand. His body disappears when he’s hit by a passing train, and a horrified Nic is left just holding the remaining part of his coat. The couple whose story she imagined was hers in her head, witness the entire incident. They begin by laughing at her boldness, but their faces quickly turn to abject horror when Alex dies and the situation is different altogether. Not only has Nic murdered her brother-in-law and former lover, there are witnesses.

Who is Jen in Am I Being Unreasonable?

After viewers were led to believe Jen could be a sinister figure, it turns out she is just a lonely single mum, looking for love and friendship.

Jen’s entry into Nic’s life appeared far less than random, and mystery surrounded her and her motives. When she deliberately got Nic drunk and recorded her confession about her relationship with Alex, it seemed Jen was for some reason out to destroy Nic’s life. More red flag flags - which were actually red herrings - came about when Jen was seen hiding from Nic’s cleaner Viv, whom she evidently knew. 

Nic later lost her coat, and Jen showed up to the school gates apparently wearing it. After an aggressive confrontation where Jen vehemently denied the coat was Nic’s, Nic went home to find Viv had picked up the missing coat from the dry cleaners. However, when an embarrassed Nic went to the house she’d seen Jen come out of - assuming it was hers, an elderly lady answered the door. When shown a picture of Jen, the lady shouted “that’s not Jen, that’s Katya!” A hugely confused Nic now once again believed Jen has something to hide, fresh from believing she was innocent.  

It transpired that in her old life, Jen worked at a supermarket and had a best friend who worked there named Becca. Becca’s husband was abusive and controlling, and Jen constantly tried to intervene to help her leave the relationship. Jen’s intervention made Becca’s husband worse, and Becca was forced to get Jen sacked to stop her coming near her. The storyline was depicted as Jen being obsessed with Becca, when she was trying to help her all along. 

After she was fired Jen took her son and left her old life, moving into emergency housing and getting a cleaning job for Viv’s firm. Too embarrassed to tell Nic where she was living, when Nic saw her leaving a client’s house, Jen was happy to go along with Nic believing it was her house. The elderly lady referring to Jen as Katya, was just confused that her old cleaner was called Katya, and was mixing her up with Jen.

When Jen met Nic at the school gates and Nic showed her kindness, the lonely Jen was just desperate to be her friend. Jen looked up her new friend on social media, and noted her husband Dan. When Jen was later scrolling Tinder, she saw Dan had a profile and arranged a date with him. Horrified that her new friend’s husband would do that to her, she arranged a date with him to confront him. When she later arrived in his house as Nic’s friend, Dan was seriously rattled and did everything he could to destroy the friendship.

By the end of the series, Jen and Nic are firm friends and Jen is supporting Nic through the difficult memorial for Alex. Jen had also never recorded Nic’s affair confession to be malicious - her stepfather had abused her as a child and her mum didn’t believe her. She had then taken to recording interactions as a defence mechanism. She later deleted the confession when she felt sure of her friendship with Nic.

Am I Being Unreasonable? Alex and Suzie

Suzie appeared to know Nic and Alex were having an affair, and became increasingly aggressive to Nic throughout the series.

During the season finale when Nic and Dan had Alex and Suzie around for dinner, it became clear Nic and Alex's relationship wasn't as it appeared. Suzie announced she and Alex were trying for a baby, which devastated Nic. Suzie - possibly realising she was ovulating, then pulled Alex upstairs for sex - and he went willingly. It seems a person hoping to run away with another - as Alex had constantly told Nic he wanted to do with her do - wouldn't make an announcement of trying for a baby with his wife, or sleep with his wife in his lover's house. 

The entire situation appeared callous to Nic, and not what Nic's flashbacks had led viewers to believe her relationship was like - it had appeared tender and caring. Things get worse when to make it up to Nic, Alex has sex with her in the utility room - moments after he's finished with Suzie. Viewer levels of feeling uncomfortable over this so-called loving romance, are then questioned even more. Although we don't know the precise moment Suzie found out about the affair or if she just had a feeling, Suzie remains loyal to Alex to the end. At some point Alex had ended his affair with Nic, and forged ahead with his plans to have a baby with Suzie. Alex even told Nic she was a terrible mother and had never been a good mother to Ollie in the seven years he'd been alive, during their final argument before his death.  

Am I Being Unreasonable? Dan and Alex  

The ending of Am I Being Unreasonable? revealed that Alex had always hated his brother Dan, and began an affair with Nic purely to spite him.

However, not only does it transpire Dan had been on a Tinder date with Jen, he'd also been dating the 19-year-old Kelly from the local shop where Nic buys her alcohol. Kelly is always distracted by her love life when Nic is in the shop, often chatting to her co-worker about someone she is seeing called Dean. It can be assumed Dean is actually Dan, and Dan is very pleased with himself for sleeping with her. He even unashamedly shows Alex pictures of her on his phone, when Nic is in the next room.

This could've been when Alex ended his affair with Nic. It had only ever been carried out to upset his brother and if Dan was cheating on Nic anyway, someone else sleeping with his wife wouldn't upset him. The finale even dealt the shock that Nic knew about the Tinder dates all along. It transpired Alex hated Dan's success, job, and large home. In his wedding speech he had alluded to Dan being being good at everything, although any animosity wasn't evident at the time.   

Am I Being Unreasonable? Ollie and Mr. Meowgi

The series started with Nic's cat Mr. Meowgi missing, and ending with her finding out Ollie killed him by putting him in the tumble dryer.

Having collected a cat she thought was Mr Meowgi from the vets at the start of the series, Nic is shocked when Ollie isn't happier about him being home. She later finds the real Mr. Meowgi dead in a drawer in ollie's room. Confronting Ollie about it, Ollie says the cat must've climbed into the tumble dryer and it had been put on by someone not knowing he was in there. Ollie suggested he'd found the cat's body, didn't want his mum upset and hidden him.

Nic later finds a home video Ollie made of himself telling Mr. Meowgi he's a "greedy guts" and deliberately putting him the tumble dryer to "get rid" of him. Nic then realises that Ollie was stood outside the utility room when she and Alex emerge from it having had sex - Ollie had overheard them. Nic recalls saying they were in there feeding Mr. Meowgi because he's "a greedy guts" at the time. Not knowing how to respond to what he'd witnessed, Ollie reacted by killing the cat, almost like he was getting rid of the evidence. She still hadn't let Ollie know she knew what he'd done, when the series came to an end.    

Am I Being Unreasonable? ending: Fan reaction

The overwhelming fan reaction to the ending of Am I Being Unreasonable? is that they didn't see that particular ending coming. 

Once fan wrote on Twitter "#bbc Am I Being Unreasonable is so intoxicatingly brilliant with a gut-punch ending. It’s so exciting to see this kind of brutal female comedy, more please!!"

Another fan added "'Am I Being Unreasonable?' is outstanding. it jumps across genres for fun and you never know where it will land. dark, hilarious, edge-of-your-seat tv and the ending is [gasping emoji]. Daisy May Cooper and Selin Hizli are utter geniuses & Lenny Rush as Ollie steals every scene he's in".

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