The BEST episodes of Waiting for God
Every episode of Waiting for God ever, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of Waiting for God!
When Tom Ballard moves to Bayview Retirement Vilage, he meets Diana Trent, a fiesty old woman who complains about everything and wants nothing more than just to die. Much to the dislike of Harvey Baines, the head of the home, the two form a friendship and eventually a romance, helping each other out of tight situations. Tom's son, Geoffrey, and daughter-in-law, Marion (whom Tom doesn't particularly like) are constantly stopping in and Jane, a worker at the home, is Diana's worst nightmare being constantly cheerful. Together, though, Tom and Diana make it together while they are waiting for God.
#1 - Cheering Up Tom
Season 1 - Episode 3 - Aired 7/12/1990
Tom really thinks that he won't have to wait for God much longer when he says he is dying and is rushed to hospital. He is discovered to have had a heart attack but he becomes very depressed and talks about suicide,writing 'die on Thursday' in his diary. In order to talk him out of what she believes to be his plan to end it all Diana threatens to join him.
#2 - Welcome to Bayview
Season 1 - Episode 1 - Aired 6/28/1990
Tom Ballard is put in Bayview retirement home by drunken daughter Marion and her weak husband Geoffrey. Many of the residents are very passive but not retired journalist Diana Trent, whose mission in life is to annoy 'the idiot Baines' - Harvey Baines, the home's manager. Initially she thinks Tom is rather dotty but when he tries to organize the residents into action against the home's poor food she knows she has found an ally.
#3 - Daisy Takes Charge
Season 2 - Episode 3 - Aired 9/19/1991
Baines threatens Diana with expulsion unless she removes the partition but they both have more pressing matters to consider as Daisy becomes completely domineering, taking over the home with her ideas and threatening to get current staff sacked. Finally, Tom organizes a revolt against her, causing her to leave . . . and Diana to remove the partition.
#4 - Politics
Season 3 - Episode 8 - Aired 10/29/1992
Diana decides that she would like to enter politics and stands as an independent candidate for the Residents' Party. Baines has been asked to stand for the Tories so Tom decides he will have some fun and join in the race too. Diana is forced to stand down when Baines threatens to sack care worker Jenny but Diana makes sure that this is used against him too and his political career is a non-starter.
#5 - A Double Wedding?
Season 5 - Episode 8 - Aired 10/27/1994
After confiding her doubts about marriage to Sarah, Diana has a raucous hen night with male strippers whilst Tom's stag night is a very staid affair. The befuddled Dennis Sparrow is to conduct the two wedding ceremonies separately but due to a double booking involving a funeral, a double wedding is on the cards after all - despite Marion's efforts to sabotage Tom's marrying Diana. She need not have worried because, whilst Jane becomes Mrs. Harvey Baines, Tom and Diana happily agree not to marry after all but to live in sin.
#6 - Sleeping Pills
Season 3 - Episode 9 - Aired 11/5/1992
Diana collapses and is rushed to hospital where Baines tries, unsuccessfully to cop off with the lady doctor. Diana, wrongly, gets it into her head that she is dying of cancer and asks Tom to get her some sleeping pills so that she can end it all quickly. For Tom, however, there are limits as to what he will do for his best friend.
#7 - Great Aunt Diana
Season 3 - Episode 10 - Aired 11/12/1992
The residents are getting wet waiting for a bus but when it arrives the driver claims that they cannot get on for free for another four minutes as they are too early, so Diana hauls him off the bus and Tom hi-jacks it on behalf of the residents. Later this will come in handy when a very pregnant Sarah arrives, seeking Diana's reluctant help to deliver her baby. Ultimately a girl arrives, unsurprisingly, Sarah calls her Diana.
#8 - Financial Difficulties
Season 4 - Episode 1 - Aired 9/9/1993
Diana is horrified to find that she is unaccountably in the red and goes up to London to cause a fuss, only to discover that all her investments have gone into receivership. Back in Bayview, Tom's room is suffering from severe rising damp so Tom comes up with a solution that will sort things out for them both. They will live together in one large room. Diana accepts this but draws the line at being carried over the threshold.
#9 - Living Together
Season 4 - Episode 2 - Aired 9/16/1993
To Jane's disapproval, Diana and Tom are now living in sin, or rather together, but already they start arguing, since they can't decide whose furniture they should be using. A new resident, Mrs. Kent from Gwent, arrives. She is withdrawn and nervous so Tom and Diana put on an act of being very happy together in order to bring her out of her shell. As it happens they do get a result - but only when she sees what they are really like.
#10 - Living in Miserable Sin
Season 4 - Episode 3 - Aired 9/23/1993
Living together is not the bed of roses that Tom and Diana were expecting. He criticizes her sloppiness and her funny little ways, such as feeding acorns to squirrels with a sling-shot. She decides to move out and goes to stay with Sarah to be a nanny to baby Diana but this is not her forte. Tom misses her, especially when Geoffrey decides to move in with him again.
#11 - Shelves
Season 4 - Episode 4 - Aired 9/30/1993
Geoffrey is getting on Tom's nerves with his obsession with shelves, which he keeps putting up all over the unit and it's a blessing when he gets a call from Marion, asking him to get back with her. Tom is not the only resident missing Diana as she is seen as a source of advice, but Diana herself, a thoroughly incompetent nanny, is missing Bayview and, after ruining a fashion show goes 'home' to Tom.
#12 - The Seance
Season 4 - Episode 5 - Aired 10/7/1993
Whilst Mr. Kwok demonstrates karate to the Bayview males, who vie with each other to impress Jane, Tom is introduced to Jane's psychic, Marjorie Evans, and asks to be put in touch with his dead wife. A seance is duly organized, but Marion has bribed the medium to give a fake message, saying that Tom's wife disapproves of his relationship with Diana. Diana,however, exposes the plot.
#13 - The Promotional Video
Season 4 - Episode 6 - Aired 10/14/1993
A promotional video is being made to extol the virtues of Bayview and several residents are to have speaking parts, including Basil, who sees himself as the new James Bond, Tom and Jenny. The excitement is such that few will heed Diana's view that it is just another money-making scam by the idiot Baines - except Tom, who joins her in sabotaging the project by substituting footage of Marion and Geoffrey giving a rather more realistic look at life.
#14 - Adult Education
Season 4 - Episode 7 - Aired 10/21/1993
When Tom and Diana's life drawing art classes at the local college are terminated and complaining yields no joy, they decide to instate their own at Bayview. Baines is to be the model, posing as Julius Caesar, bare beneath his toga for authenticity (or so Diana tells him). When an inspector calls at Bayview, Diana unties the knot holding the toga in place and leaving Baines publicly nude. As a result, he has to go to a clinic where Jane reports that he has had a breakdown.
#15 - Sent To Coventry
Season 4 - Episode 8 - Aired 10/28/1993
A strange reversal of fortune overtakes Bayview with the hospitalised Baines seen as the victim and Diana his tormentor. She is sent to Coventry and there are threats of staff strikes unless she goes. Help comes from a most unexpected source - Marion, whose pharmaceutical knowledge leads her to see that Baines is faking his condition. Diana is vindicated though Tom has made her apologize to Baines in order for her to be allowed to stay. He knew Baines was faking it but thought the humility would do her good.
#16 - Waterworks
Season 4 - Episode 9 - Aired 11/4/1993
After drinking a lot at a reunion, Tom has trouble passing water and becomes very sensitive about it. He tries to keep it from Diana but his secretive behaviour initially leads her to believe that he is seeing another woman. Ultimately, he sees a doctor and goes to hospital and she is upset that he had not told her the truth.
#17 - The Conference
Season 4 - Episode 10 - Aired 11/11/1993
There is to be a conference on the needs of the elderly held, and Diana is asked to be the local representative. At the same time Tom is waiting on tests to see if he has prostate cancer, and so Diana researches the subject for the conference. Although the results of the test are as yet undisclosed, Tom declares his love for Diana.
#18 - After the Operation
Season 5 - Episode 1 - Aired 9/8/1994
Diana visits Tom in hospital. His operation to clear his prostate cancer has been a success and he returns to Bayview with her. Unfortunately Geoffrey, who has had yet another falling-out with Marion, decides he wants to move in with them again. Baines is rejected by an exclusive golf club because he is unmarried.
#19 - The Bayview Conservation Society
Season 5 - Episode 2 - Aired 9/15/1994
Baines is hiring Mr. Nakamura, a Japanese hotel consultant, to advise on the building of a new,space-saving wing to be built at Bayview - thereby enabling him to pack in more residents. Tom starts the Bayview Conservation Society, eventually enlisting Diana, to demonstrate that any such building would damage the wildlife and the natural environment, thus stopping the plan from going ahead. Jane and Geoffrey get close, Marion and Baines get intimate, more down to her desperation than his enthusiasm as she initially mistook him for Geoffrey.
#20 - A Royal Visit
Season 5 - Episode 3 - Aired 9/22/1994
A letter from the mayor's office suggests that a royal personage will be gracing Bayview with a visit. Diana, already even more crotchety than ever, due to a painfully swollen foot, does not share Tom's monarchist views and holds forth on the pointlessness of the royals. Just as predictably the royal visit turns out to be very much less 'royal' than expected.
#21 - Diana's Diet
Season 5 - Episode 4 - Aired 9/29/1994
Diana's foot shows no sign of healing and Tom is anxious for her to see a doctor. For all of her brash facade she is reluctant to seek medical advice in case she is given the worst possible scenario. However, she complies and is told that she has diabetes and must alter her diet. A relieved Tom proposes. Baines also proposes to Jane, in order to get his golf club membership, but she turns him down.
#22 - Trouble with Men
Season 5 - Episode 5 - Aired 10/6/1994
Diana and Jane are both taken aback by the bizarre ways of men, following their respective marriage proposals. Tom's proposal to Diana has brought on a shock and she collapses and is taken to hospital. Jane's decision that she will become a nun after all has tempted Harvey to consider joining the priesthood.
#23 - Harvey the Priest
Season 5 - Episode 6 - Aired 10/13/1994
A combination of genuine feelings for Jane, whom he is used to having around, plus the desire to still join the golf club, causes Baines to become a priest of the Order of the Flaming Sword of Las Vegas - by post. He proposes and Jane accepts this time. Jane thinks Diana should accept Tom, who is now taking driving lessons to impress her. However, he has an accident and Diana has to go and bail him out, causing confusion when she meets arresting officer Sergeant Watt. With Diana still refusing to marry him Tom considers very drastic action.
#24 - Bungee Jumping
Season 5 - Episode 7 - Aired 10/20/1994
Whilst planning his pre-nuptial agreement with an eager Jane, Baines is told that he is not a proper priest and that any attempts he makes to get money from his ordination will lead to fraud charges. Diana is of course delighted but she has more pressing matters - Tom's threatened bungee jump. She agrees to marry him if only to stop the jump from going ahead but insists on her own pre-nuptial conditions.
#25 - Glamorous Grannies
Season 2 - Episode 7 - Aired 10/17/1991
Tom has a bet with Diana that she can't be nice to people for a week. Such untypical actions only lead to confusion. Baines wants to organize a glamorous grandmother contest for the old ladies in the home, the prize being a cruise for two. Since Basil wants to marry Betty, Tom approaches his son-in-law Geoffrey, whose firm are sponsoring the contest to let Betty win, but when Betty gets cold feet and refuses to enter, Diana, having made sure a journalist friend is present to expose any 'fixing' the contest; replaces her and wins. She lets Betty and Basil have the prize.