Desserts (Best Served Cold?)

The opening gag of Jeff Stark's 1999 comic horror Desserts is so deliciously subtle that it doesn't even register the first time we see it. The credits promise us "a stark film", a term that obviously denotes its writer-director, but slyly underscores the nature of the experience to follow, when Stark's name turns out to be no misnomer. What is immediately striking about Desserts is its bluntness. At a concise four minutes in length (a good chunk of which is occupied by credits), it presents a scenario that's part unbridled nightmare, part macabre joke, and above all a story of sweet, sweet revenge. Its execution is so unabashedly punchy, in fact, that it's not hard to imagine it being repackaged as a public information film, albeit one of the sicker-minded ones. A man (played by Scottish actor Ewan McGregor and identified in the credits as "Stroller") goes for a ramble on the beach and happens upon an unattended chocolate eclair, possibly left behind by some absent-minded picnicker. Looking around and seeing no one else in sight, he decides that the alluring pastry is up for grabs and stuffs it into his mouth. This, needless to say, turns out to be a huge mistake, and the outcome is swift but brutal. Concealed within that humble eclair is an enlarged fish hook, which pierces straight through Stroller's gob and gets him yanked (by some unseen force operating other end of the line) into the depths of the ocean to his presumed doom. A ghoulish twist that convincingly evokes the heavy-handed visual language of a PIF looking to shock viewers away from any number of situations in which they may be tempted to put something into their bodies that could bring them trouble down the road. The presence of the young McGregor might immediately put us in mind of Trainspotting and heroin addiction (the actor's participation was secured by producer Jill Robertson, who had worked as part of the crew on Trainspotting), but Stroller's demise works just as aptly as a metaphor for the pitfalls of developing too much of an appetite for sugary junk food. Or even a straight-up warning about not eating random food items you find lying around in the middle of nowhere, if you don't know where they've been or who might have tampered with them.

At the same time, there is an obvious an animal rights subtext to the short, one that naturally appeals to my vegan sensibilities while warmly recalling the ending of the "Gone Fishin'" episode of Tales from The Cryptkeeper, the younger-skewing animated spin-off of the HBO series Tales From The Crypt. Adapted from a Vault of Horror comic published in 1951, it concerns a grossly irresponsible fisherman who ultimately falls foul of a race of intelligent piscines that like to hunt for humans, in their case by using money as hooked bait. It was a story that had a very profound effect on me, in that even today, if I see any banknotes lying about on the ground, of any value, I'll walk straight past them. I'd like to say it's because I'm honest and want whoever dropped them to have the chance to get them back, but nope, it's because a cartoon show I watched when I was 10 hard-wired my brain to automatically suspect discarded banknotes of being traps (it made graspingness seem unappealing, and that's no bad thing, surely?). The point is that the twist in Desserts is in no way original (it also shows up in the "A Little Fishy" segment of the 1986 anthology film Escapes, and I'm sure there are other instances still), but that doesn't matter. It is a particularly slick, particularly efficient variation on an old theme about nature turning the tables on humanity by pinpointing our own weaknesses, raising questions about what constitutes a worthy survivor.

In the case of the Tales From The Cryptkeeper installment, the character's fate was clearly karmic - he was a bully who regarded fishing, much like everything else in his life, as an opportunity to revel in power over other living things - although ironically the talking fish that finally snagged him hadn't consciously plotted revenge, with its dialogue indicating that their culture did not tend to look on humans as individuals. Basically they echoed the same perspective the character had applied to them, with the distinguishing virtue that they abhorred wastefulness, leading to this awkward but fabulously morbid bit of wordplay: "A good manner-fish never catches more than he can can!" With Desserts, it's the film's title that carries the most weight in that regard, referring to the pivotal pastry while conveying a playful pun on the notion of getting what's coming to you. Stroller is, on the surface, an innocent. We see no evidence that he has ever personally wronged a fish, or indeed anybody. Even his name speaks to his guilelessness, suggesting someone who is going about their business in an entirely casual manner, as opposed to actively looking for trouble. And yet the title insinuates that the outcome should be seen as karmic. He is the only human who apparently exists in this time and space (although we do see a shape in the sand that resembles another footprint close to where he finds the eclair, suggesting that the process is potentially cyclic), and as such he becomes an everyman who pays the price for humanity's sins against the ocean. The sins, in this scenario, are not born of wilful malice, but of unwary consumption and the belief that whatever resources he happens across are his for the taking. The rapaciousness that compels him to bite off more than he can chew becomes a shorthand for humankind's reckless plundering of the Earth, something that's shown to be just as mindless as a fish's compulsions to chomp at any bit of bait that's dangled its way, and as likely to drag us toward our own destruction. 

It is hard to shake the sense that Stroller has been the victim of a grand conspiracy, as opposed to a random victim unfortunate enough to have stumbled upon the baited eclair. The opening credits show the underwater, distinctly inhuman perspective (its cold eeriness anticipating the alien gaze of Jonathan Glazer's 2013 feature Under The Skin) of our unseen aquatic angler as it identifies its prey approaching along the sands. Notably, it surveys Stroller's form up close (and with the waves visibly behind him), suggesting an omnipresent intimacy that feels at odds with the implied distance between the hunter and the hunted within the body of the short. To me, this indicates it is not vengeful fish per se that have targeted Stroller so much as the collective forces of nature all around him. Desserts imagines a world in which nature successfully eliminates humanity and then begins wiping away all traces of its existence; not content with merely swallowing Stroller whole, the ocean must subsequently wash over his footprints and begin the process of rubbing them out. There is something almost comical about this, as though the tides are consciously removing the evidence from a crime scene. One of the film's most vital ingredients is its puckish sense of humor, which is further accentuated when we fade to black and are greeted by a incongruously buoyant instrumental rendition of the music hall favourite "I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside".

But even if Stroller represents the failings of an inattentive human race, his fate still feels like a paradox. Throughout the short, a great deal of emphasis is placed on his insignificance in relation to his surroundings, with its opening wide shot making us particularly aware of the vastness and seeming infinity of the barren shoreline, against which he initially appears as nothing more than a tiny blot on the horizon. It underscores how nature will always be a fundamentally bigger force than man, but has the effect of making him seem like rather an unimposing entity, and thus a curious target for such a magnificent scheme. It recalls the 1972 Spanish television film La Cabina, with its protagonist who is at once too much of a nondescript everyman to appear in any way important, and yet has clearly been the victim of a plot purposely designed to consign him to oblivion. Stroller is established as a little fish in a big ocean, and we suspect that it is precisely this insignificance that makes him so vulnerable. It's here that we may be able to mine one further pun from the title, playing on our uneasy feeling that the wider world might have deliberately deserted him. Desserts grapples with the issue of mortality, touching on the extent to which humankind is as assailable as the creatures it is accustomed to exploiting, the fine line between life and death, and the helplessness of the individual fated to be removed from the picture sooner or later, only for the picture itself to shrug and carry on as if nothing much occurred. Stroller inhabits a landscape of endless and oppressive emptiness, with the opening illustrating how he is, unbeknownst to himself, already inside the belly of the beast before he's even been dragged into its depths. The barrenness of his space conveys the indifference of his own (non-existent) people, who have effectively abandoned him to his demise - we sense that the lack of anyone in sight who could potentially have deterred him from destruction or assisted him when he became caught on the line was likewise not a matter of mere misfortune, but of nobody caring to intervene. The world reacts to his obliteration with much the same coldness, as the tides wash over his footprints, negating what meagre imprint he might have left behind, and the absence of onlookers means that his vanishing does not even go acknowledged. There is no regard afforded to the little guy, and that might as well be the conspiracy in itself. 

Logo Case Study: Pixar's Luxo Lamp

2026 marks the fortieth anniversary of Pixar's founding (when the Graphics Group, a special effects team that made up part of Lucasfilm's Computer Division, was acquired by Steve Jobs and established as an independent company), so what better time to pay tribute to the plucky little desk lamp who's been attached to their output for as long as they've been making feature films?

I can remember a time when the existence of Luxo Jr. was a secret, an intriguing little Easter egg you'd be rewarded with should you make it all the way through the closing credits on the VHS release of Toy Story. Nowadays, we're fully accustomed to the lamp popping in at the start of each Pixar release as well as after, but that wasn't the case with their premier feature. Although Toy Story was heavily touted in its marketing as the first completely computer-animated feature film, Pixar themselves had essentially no brand recognition among the general public in the mid-1990s, and there does seem to have been a mindset that it should be packaged foremost as a Disney film - as something bold, new and exciting, but under the warmth and familiarity of the Disney banner. On the original print of Toy Story, the Disney logo had the opening all to itself, while the Pixar logo was tucked away discreetly at the tail-end of the picture. And quite frankly, that's where little Luxo thrived. For me, the hopping lamp was poetic, a perfectly quirky manifestation of the fact that we were venturing a little far beyond our comfort zone and were getting dangerously close to the spooky oblivion that awaited at the end of every VHS tape. He came bounding into view, eager to play with the I in the text that spelled out the company's name, only for these larks to be cut short by the I's inability to withstand his rambunctious thumping atop it, before some unseen power turned the lights out on him. Luxo Jr., now substituting for the ravaged I, would direct his bulb toward the camera (his eye, for all intents and purposes, so a possible visual pun), emitting a final warm glow into the abyss, before that too was extinguished with a genial click. At the time, Disney were in the business of inserting extra previews at the end of their tapes, so we still had a couple of items to get through before we would also be plunged into total blackness (in this case, a promo for the few blessed Disney releases that got to live permanently outside of the vault, and an ad for an interactive Toy Story CD Rom that supposed that Woody and Buzz might emerge from your PC screen as soon as you left the room), but the refuge and excitement of the main feature was now behind us. I can think of few closing logos that quite so slickly captured that feeling of "Show's over, eject" as the frisky desk lamp that saw out Toy Story.

Of course, as Pixar's stature in the entertainment industry grew there was no reason to keep Luxo confined to the pictures' sign-offs, and he became a familiar, reassuring sight in their introductions as well (including updated prints of the first Toy Story). For the most part, the sequence works as aptly as an opener, with the enthusiasm the lamp exhibits at the prospect of getting to tamper with the Pixar lettering mirroring the audience's anticipation for whatever experience the studio is about to serve up next. All the same, an important distinction was maintained between the opening and closing versions of the logo, indicating that the powers that be were entirely aware of the special power the lamp's antics had exuded at the end of their original feature. In the standard opening version of the logo, the sequence simply fades to black as Luxo's gaze turns directly toward the cinema. The intense glow in the darkness and the concluding click happen only in the end version, preserving their association with that sense of finality. I will admit to being a total purist when it comes to the latter version of the logo, meaning that I strongly disapprove of any variant in which music from the end-credits continues to play as little Luxo makes his entrance. I don't mind one iota when the reverse occurs, and the opening version of the logo is overlaid with the score from the film's beginnings, but as I see it, the sound design is too quintessential a part of the closing experience to jettison. It wasn't just the click and the total immersion in darkness that signalled that we'd reached the end of this particular journey. Every last thud and squishing sound that accompanied Luxo's movements, in addition to making the logo feel all the more alive, also emphasised the vast emptiness of the space around him, like he was hopping around a deserted venue after everyone else at Pixar had packed up and gone home for the night. The narrative I always projected onto the sequence was that Luxo was looking to eke a scrap of added enjoyment from the experience, not wanting the thrill of the feature we'd just watched be over, but his efforts were brought to an abrupt halt once he'd obliterated the I, at which point he was left shut inside the Pixar studio as the last of the employees switched off the lights. Which perhaps sounds a little bleak, but I was fairly confident that the last click was voluntary, and that Luxo was embracing in the darkness, signifying the completion of this particular Pixar project, and the promise of the next one to come. The lamp wasn't deserted, merely dormant.

I know that there are a number of folks out there who report finding Luxo Jr. unnerving in their school-aged years, on account of that fourth wall-breaking moment where he surveys you with his glowing, inhuman "eye", but in the main I think his impact on viewers was overwhelmingly disarming. I was utterly fascinated by the character - never mind toys, there was something innately beautiful in the suggestion that desk lamps could be brought to life and exhibit playful personalities. It all made sense, for you could look at a desk lamp and pick out the outline of a creature, with a head, elongated neck and foot, and Pixar were really able to make the most of that, imbuing their subject with a convincing heart and motion without the need to implement additional anthropomorphic features. It's all in the movements and the gestures - the eager spontaneity as he races into the picture and the lettering appears to catch his attention, the frantic confusion as he attempts to pinpoint the flattened I, and the stunned abashment with which his displacement of the unfortunate letter sinks in. Meanwhile, the various little creaks and clangs emitted by Luxo's metallic form are assertions of his fundamental otherness; in working within the limitations of something as inanimate and inhuman as a lamp, Pixar managed to give him a vitality and expressiveness that is uniquely his own. The patch of light that accompanies Luxo and is carefully matched to his every movement (a demonstration of Pixar's capacity to have light and shadow interact with their computer-generated landscapes) is another invaluable touch. 

At the time, I was vaguely aware that the character had originated from a short film, Luxo Jr. (John Lassester, 1986), thanks to a documentary I'd seen close to the UK release of Toy Story in the spring of 1996. I'm pretty sure Luxo Jr. came up somewhere in that, although my main interest in said documentary had been in getting glimpses of the upcoming feature and a lot of the background information went over my head (still, I've distinct memories of gasping when they played the test footage Lasseter had prepared for a proposed adaptation of Where The Wild Things Are, and being properly gutted when they subsequently indicated that the project had been canned). Like many people, I didn't see the short in its entirety until it did the theatrical rounds, attached to Pixar's 1999 release Toy Story 2 (though it had previously been available on the 1996 VHS release Tiny Toy Stories), with added text explaining that "This is why we have a hopping lamp in our logo", as if it had been a matter of serious confusion beforehand. Originally created as a technical demonstration of what the Pixar Image Computer could do, it creates an irresistible narrative, cramming a lot into its efficient two minute running time - the bond between Luxo Jr. and his "parent" lamp Luxo Sr., Luxo Jr.'s education on death, or at least consequence (thankfully, the ball he flattens doesn't actually appear to be alive), and the endearing visual punchline where Jr. rebounds from his setback and with the renewed confidence to take on an even bigger escapade in the form of that beach ball. Some of the narrative detail from the short was transplanted directly into the logo - notably Junior flattening the I in the same manner in which he does the smaller ball, although in the original short it was Luxo Sr. who made the fourth wall-breaking gesture of looking directly to the camera. The electrical cord that trailed Luxo Jr. in the original short (another crucial feature in establishing the characters' "lampness") was not incorporated into the logo, presumably in the interests of greater fluidity.

The logo worked its magic, implanting the Pixar brand name firmly inside my skull and getting me genuinely excited for what might be next on the studio's horizon. It offered such an intriguing contrast to Disney's logo - one was elegant and grandiose, while the other was quirky and ultra-modern - making it clear early on that Pixar's output was going to have a touch and character quite distinct from that of the Mouse. It was likewise a much busier logo than the grey shape that had accompanied Pixar's preceding projects, boldly announcing that a new dynamic era had begun. Mind you, the Beveled Square with a Dent still has its charm. It seems like such a primitive piece of computer animation now, but once upon a time it was the future.

Bitsa: What On Earth Was Going On At The Last Stop Cafe?

I'm not exaggerating when I say that the most baffling quarter-hour of television I ever watched in my life was an episode of a children's art show that aired on CBBC in the mid-1990s. If that was also your era, then I'll wager that tucked away near the back of your brain are at least a few memories of Bitsa. The program started life in 1991 and enjoyed a healthy run into 1996, yet it never attained the cult status of its CITV counterpart Art Attack - presenters Caitlin Easterby and Simon Pascoe were both on fabulous form throughout, but there was ultimately no challenging the legendary Neil Buchanan as the champion of after-school creativity. Nonetheless, I reckon Bitsa would have a much more prominent following if people were to look back and appreciate how balls to the walls weird the thing was.

The premise of Bitsa was that Caitlin and Simon would demonstrate various methods for flexing your creative muscles, guiding you the processes of making exciting knick-knacks out of sticky tape and Mr Kipling boxes. Assisting them in in their endeavours was a robotic being named Hands (a puppet operated by series co-creator Paul Goddard) who did not talk and communicated solely by humming. Episodes were made to a formula, where Caitlin, Simon and Hands would each get their turn in showing you how to make something, the children from a selected school would show off an art project they'd been working on, and we'd get the really manic part where Caitlin and Simon were challenged with making something within a time limit and with specified materials - although not all necessarily in that order, however. The connective tissue between each of these segments is where the series permitted itself to get truly weird, a quality that only became more pronounced the deeper it got into its lifespan. Whereas earlier installments had tended to have Caitlin and Simon assembling their creations from the confines of their studio, there was presumably enough of a budget boost in the show's later years for more filming on location. The vibe of the series felt more expansive, and with it the framing narratives seemed to get more ambitious, following an almost dream-like flow of developments - that is, if dreams were intermittently put on hold to allow room for crafting tutorials. I've likened it to Art Attack, but truthfully it was more like an arthouse version of Blue Peter.

The episode of Bitsa that stood out to me as being particularly incomprehensible aired in 1995 under the title of "Last Stop Cafe". It involved Caitlin and Simon being on location in London and having bizarre encounters (though never with one another) in various dining venues. I have distinct memories of watching it and immediately regretting that I hadn't taped it because I wanted so desperately to go back to the beginning and see there was any lick of sense to be squeezed from the entire demented affair. I settled for the next best option I had available at the time, which was to describe the events of the episode from memory to my eternally patient mum in the hopes that she would be able to explain it to me, as I so often did whenever something I'd seen on television (or advertising billboards) had left me totally disconcerted. But just you try describing the events of any Bitsa episode, not least this one, in an even vaguely coherent fashion. What chance did my mother have? My confusion was there for the long haul, with the image of Caitlin sitting in her squalid little cafe, surrounded by mannequins and indifferent waitresses, vexed by the time and by Simon's failure to show, being all set to nibble away at my brain for the ensuing three decades. Caitlin was permanently stuck in that moment, and so was I. It was only in 2025 that I found any prospect of release, with the discovery that "Last Stop Cafe" was finally up on YouTube. On getting reacquainted with it, I was surprised at just how much of the episode had stuck with me over the years. The only part that I had more or less completely forgotten was the entire sequence with Simon at the train station, but the rest of it still felt so fresh and vivid in my mind, as if I'd viewed it only a few weeks ago. Clearly it was something that the younger me had made a real effort to hang onto, in the hopes that my persistence would eventually pay off, and I would suddenly be in on the elusive joke. The punchline to that joke was always self-evident: "Three minutes to four...Simon should be here soon". It was the set-up that I couldn't make head nor tail of. The question is, am I any better equipped to do so 30+ years on, or is this rabbit hole darker and more interminable than the younger me had ever imagined?

"Last Stop Cafe" opens with Caitlin at the titular establishment, a run-down, bohemian-looking coffee bar that seems unlikely to pass its next hygiene inspection. The time is three minutes to four, and she's expecting Simon to meet up with her very soon. We find that Simon is enjoying coffee and a late lunch from quite another source, a food truck run by Hands, before becoming aware of the time and making a mad dash across London in an effort to keep the scheduled appointment with Caitlin. It initially appears as though Simon is having a much better time of it than Caitlin, who's stuck with the Last Stop's signature beverage of stale coffee (a distinctly unappetising-looking black sludge), while Simon gets an ordinary-looking espresso. I'm not so sure that the rest of the menu Hands is flogging compares so favourably to that of the Last Stop - the waitress's practice of serving spaghetti with her bare hands (and into a kidney dish at that) is wont to raise some objections, but at least it looks like actual edible spaghetti, as opposed to the pasta Hands offers Simon, which looks more like a plate of wires. More troubling still than the dubious food items on offer is the temporal mismatch between Caitlin and Simon's respective worlds. Simon takes his cues from Big Ben, which gives the time as quarter to four, and this does not align with the clock in the Last Stop Cafe, where it seems to be perpetually three minutes to four. The contrast established in these parallel narratives is one of frenzy versus inertia. Simon will spend the episode rushing from venue to venue while Caitlin never leaves the Last Stop (until the very end), and only moves from her seat to participate in the challenge segment. Caitlin looks to have settled in a place where time has ground to a complete halt, while Simon is constantly on the move.

My first question, on revisiting "Last Stop Cafe", had to do with whether time in the titular venue had literally stopped, or just the clock adorning its decrepit walls? After all, it seems perfectly in keeping with the broader theming of the cafe for it to put up a clock to give the appearance of broken time, with the joke being that Caitlin never quite cottons on. But then the very name, "Last Stop", feels particularly ominous in that regard. It could mean the last as in "last resort", meaning that it's right at the bottom of establishments you would consider trying. Alternatively, it may indicate the end of progression and that we have nowhere else to go from here. The distortion of time within is further hinted at via a sneaky visual gag that I certainly hope was not unintentional. Positioned on the saucer that holds Caitlin's cup of gloopy coffee is what looks to be an out of shape biscuit. The way that biscuit hangs over the side of the saucer puts me in mind of the melting clocks from Salvador Dali's 1931 painting The Persistence of Memory, commonly interpreted as signifying the nebulous nature of time within human perception.

It wouldn't be any more inexplicable than what unfolds at the end of the episode, when Simon, realising that he will not keep his appointment with Caitlin, attempts to buy additional time by scaling Big Ben (or rather a mat mocked up to look like the face of the clock) and turning back the hands. In doing so, he appears to do damage to the space time continuum, for rather than simply going back in time the entire scenario resets, with the participants rearranged. Simon is now seated in the Last Stop Cafe, being served stale coffee and observing, from the clock on the wall reading three minutes to four, that Caitlin should be here soon. Caitlin, meanwhile, has been transplanted to Simon's starting point, standing at Hands' food truck and receiving a plate of wire-spaghetti - which, unlike Simon, she is discerning enough to reject. The process seems set to repeat itself with the roles reversed (a la the Twilight Zone episode "Shadow Play"), but for the fact that Caitlin still seems to be caught up on some kind of time loop at the other end, with the moment of her pushing the plate back Hands' way repeating over and over.

All of this puzzled me immensely as a child, but I suspect that "Last Stop Cafe" wouldn't have stayed with me and haunted me to the extent that it did if not for the one additional serving of discombobulation that comes in the form of our post-credits stinger. Once the names have all rolled we get a brief moment with Caitlin, who is back in the Last Stop, watching the clock and anticipating Simon's impending arrival as if the final role reversal never occurred and she never strayed from her temporal prison. That bite-sized epilogue threw pretty much everything I thought I'd fathomed about the episode (which was already on shaky enough ground) into total disarray. What are we to make of it? Should we assume that Caitlin eventually made it to the point when she was able to restart the process, as Simon did before her, causing the scenario to reset and their roles to reverse yet again? Have we gone backwards in time, to before Simon's resetting of the narrative? Or is this just a humorous bit of repetition for repetition's sake, the preceding ubiquitousness of the statement ("Three minutes to four...Simon should be here soon") having transformed it into a running gag in its own right? Nowadays I feel most inclined toward option 3, but it's still an unsettling way to close out the episode, by giving the final word to Caitlin's inertia and that state of limbo in which it's always three minutes to four and an appearance from Simon is imminent but never arrives. In 1995 it was the teasing punchline to a joke largely lost on me. On a subconscious level, I think it something in Caitlin's bemused delivery that I responded to - she never explicitly grasps her inability to progress beyond 15:57, and that she's been making the same observation about Simon ad infinitum, but at the same time she seems far from immune to the absurdity of her situation. Her tone, when referencing Simon's supposed coming, is one of wavering certainty, as if she recognises that something has gone awry but can't quite put her finger on what. Her quiet befuddlement at the end of the episode so perfectly articulated by own confusion on having sat through it. Much like her, I'd spent the last 15 minutes waiting for clarity to rear its head and it had never quite materialised. As it turns out, clarity would not be forthcoming for quite some time. After more than 30 years, I'm still not sure that I quite have a hold on it. But at least I was able to take another crack at revelling in the Last Stop Cafe and its grimy mysteries. The place is so beguiling that it's as if I never left it at all. 

Actually, a more morbid interpretation did cross my mind upon revisiting the experience, having noted that Simon falls from Big Ben while attempting to turn back its hands. Is it possible that he's dead, and that the Last Stop Cafe is really some bizarre metaphor for mortality? It all goes back to what I said about the name of the cafe being particularly ominous. It is specifically the last stop, cobbled together around a theme of inertia, decay and expiration. Time never moves, the coffee is stagnant, the television screen shows a static image, a proportion of the occupants are motionless mannequins, and in one sequence we assume the perspective of a fly buzzing around the tables. Arguably undermining this interpretation is that Simon is not reunited with Caitlin on the other side. Rather, she's been restored to the land of the living, perhaps signifying the renewal of the cycle of life and death (with the former being as futile as ever). Crucially, Simon and Caitlin are always where the other party isn't. Their scheduled meet-up never occurs; even during the challenge portion of the episode, where each creates a makeshift telephone using the materials available, they are unable to make the all-important connection, as if blocked by the automatic incompatibility between their respective realms (that, and their phones are made out of cheese graters and cardboard). And yet they might not be as far removed as the aggressive contrast of frenetic motion and uncanny stillness would imply - there are a number of echoes in their parallel predicaments, which seem equally evocative of the fundamental tensions between existence and oblivion. Both protagonists find themselves up against the tyranny of a clock; Caitlin is held captive by a stopped clock that keeps her in a stationary moment, while Simon has Big Ben looming over him all throughout his journey, an omnipresent reminder that his time is in short supply. Each is in search of some deeper meaning or understanding that is expected to be revealed through the anticipated union with the other. Caitlin, who has already reached the end of the line, has taken the more passive position, hoping (much like Vladimir and Estragon awaiting Godot) that everything will finally come into perspective when Simon waltzes through that cafe door. Simon, meanwhile, is in pursuit of a purpose that perpetually eludes him. He cannot keep his appointment with Caitlin, in part because the world he has to navigate is too overwhelming, but also because he lacks the discipline to prevent himself from being sidetracked along the way. "I've got to meet Caitlin", he tells himself, shortly before wandering into a burger bar for a bite to eat. He's well aware that the clock is ticking, but convinces himself that he can put things off for a little longer. Sure, who can't relate to that?

Fundamentally, Bitsa is a show about artistic endeavour, and amidst the existential insanity we get demonstrations on how to craft smashing items out of household refuse. Caitlin shows you how to make a fashion wheel that switches the clothing on pictures of mannequins as it rotates. Simon makes a snapping monster out of the discarded straws and sweet boxes he gathers at the station. Hands blesses a two dimensional figure with three dimensional arms that are given motion when a cord is pulled. There's the aforementioned challenge segment, where Simon and Caitlin each create phones in an unsuccessful effort to get through to one another. The most curious demonstration comes with no explanatory narration, and is the contribution from our featured school (identified in the credits as Grange Primary School, London). It is the creation of the titular cafe - in a temporal trick reminiscent of Pulp Fiction, we go backwards in time to the point where pupils from Grange Primary were tasked with assembling those mannequins, arranging bottles and misshapen baguettes in offbeat displays and affixing tiger patterning to the side of the counter, before seguing back into the centrepiece moment, with Caitlin present and pondering aloud about Simon's whereabouts. I suppose this is the episode's great paradox - the Last Stop Cafe might signify stagnation, but it is itself a work of beautifully vibrant expression. The dubiousness of the menu aside, it doesn't seem like a deadening place to hang; the eccentricity of the establishment is simply too charming. 

What's also striking is the omnipresence of uncanny mannequins throughout the episode, with them popping up not just in the cafe itself, but at various stages of Simon's journey. In one skit he finds himself hampered by a queue of undressed mannequins (and clearly nobody saw anything overly risqué in having so many naked mannequin bossoms paraded around in a children's timeslot). Another mannequin is seated at the counter of the burger bar, prompting Simon to make the inevitable "don't be a dummy" joke, followed by a pun about the (then relatively novel) frustrations that come with using mobile phones, which he figures the static mannequin must love. As part of the backdrop in the Last Stop Cafe they feed into the overall aura immobility, but as far as Simon's interactions go it seems more pertinent to regard them as playful shorthands for consumerism and an eroded individuality, in an environment that's faster-paced but ultimately no less stifling than the one Caitlin is mired in. We might detect a similar critique of non-stop consumerism in the wastefulness of the commuters, who litter the station grounds with copious amounts of rubbish that Simon is wittily able to use as an outlet for his own creativity. Ultimately, my takeaway from the Last Stop Cafe is that artistic expression is the greatest power we have in a society structured to to leave us bombarded and overwhelmed. As is wonderfully befitting a series like Bitsa. All of those sessions in fashioning funky curios from materials otherwise destined for the tip weren't mere distractions designed to fill up a bit of empty time outside of school hours. They were lessons in preventing detritus, both literal and figurative, from getting on top of us by turning it into the tools of our own artistry. The clock is ticking, and precisely why we should allow those idle hands of ours a little mischief.

The Man Who Blew Away (One Foot In The Grave)

 Content warning: Suicide

The Christmas of 1994 was a Christmas quite unlike any other, all on account of what was happening at Victor Meldrew's house that year. 

One Foot In The Grave was then riding high among the cream of the contemporary Britcom crop. The previous year's special, "One Foot In The Algarve", had been a major ratings success, and you can bet that the BBC were eager to maintain that momentum with another festive special in 1994. Series creator and writer David Renwick didn't have time to devise a stand-alone special from scratch, but suggested that one of the scripts he'd been working on for the upcoming Series 5 could potentially be expanded to 40 minutes. The episode in question was "The Man Who Blew Away". Legions of Meldrew devotees tuned in to BBC One at 21:00 on 25th December, eager for another extended round of wacky hilarity with the irascible sixtysomething, and by 21:40 were sitting there in stunned silence, struggling to wrap their heads around what they had seen and keep a day's worth of Yuletide dining down. The episode garnered immediate notoriety, guaranteed to come up in conversations to the tune of "Can you believe THAT went out on Christmas Day?" for years to come.

If you are unfamiliar with this episode, then I fear that the content warning at the top of this page might have given the game away. The plot involves Victor and Margaret accommodating a house guest with suicidal tendencies, and having to talk him out of his latest attempt, which involves him climbing around naked upon their roof. Then in the epilogue they receive news that he made a subsequent attempt soon after leaving their company and on this occasion he succeeded. The episode promptly ends. Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas!

In fairness, One Foot In The Grave had dabbled in some gloomy subjects in previous Christmas specials. "Who's Listening?" from 1990 contained a subplot dealing with the Yuletide struggles of a bereaved young family (albeit one that ended happily, by way of a deus ex machina). Pippa's pregnancy arc in "The Man in The Long Black Coat" from 1991 ended on a note of immense pathos, with her being injured in a bus crash and suffering a miscarriage. The thing is, neither of those specials had aired on Christmas Day itself. There was traditionally a safe enough buffer between the peak of the festive celebrations and Renwick's morbid indulgences. Even the ambitious, feature-length (and relatively breezy) "Algarve" had to make do with a Boxing Day slot. "The Man Who Blew Away" was the first One Foot In The Grave special to have the honor of going out on 25th December, and it yielded what has to be one of the show's most unapologetically downbeat endings ever (bested only by the final episode, "Things Aren't Simple Any More", which at least had mercy enough to sign off to the triumphant sounds of The Travelling Wilburys). It all makes a little more sense when you consider that it wasn't originally written to be a Christmas installment, but at the same time, there was something incredibly on brand about the series using that prime Yuletide slot to leave the nation not merely depressed, but seriously perturbed into the bargain. The ending to "The Man Who Blew Away" isn't only tragic, it's also deeply unsettling. A large part of that has to do with the song that accompanies the closing credits, "The Laughing Policeman" by Charles Penrose, a classic music hall song from 1922 (itself an adaptation of "The Laughing Song", recorded by African American singer George W. Johnson in 1890). The song had shown up at an earlier junction in the story, where it was nothing more than an insomnia-inflicting irritation to Victor and Margaret, but it acquires much darker overtones when it's repeated in the outro. Renwick remarks on the DVD commentary that he's always thought there to be something terribly "macabre" about the song - not because of the hysterical, borderline-crazed laughter that makes up the chorus, but because of the clicking noises going on in the background, which he reckons are evocative of something you'd find in the horror comedy series The League of Gentlemen. 

The irony is that I vividly remember watching the episode's festive premiere as a child and not finding the experience anywhere near as dark or disturbing as I should have done, on account of "The Laughing Policeman". I should explain that my school's Christmas show for that year had been themed around music hall, and "The Laughing Policeman" was one of the songs we'd performed. A really fun song to perform it was too. So when it cropped up in this episode, I was positively buzzing. It was something that I knew, and the excitement of that performance was still very fresh on my mind, so naturally I gravitated straight to it. When we heard the news at the end that Victor and Margaret's friend had died, I did think it was a weirdly sad way to cap off the episode. But then "The Laughing Policeman" started up again in the credits and it cheered me right up. It was only when I revisited the episode in the early 00s that it hit me what the real intention had been. You weren't supposed to laugh at the Laughing Policeman. The Laughing Policeman laughs at you. "The Man Who Blew Away" feels, more savagely than any other edition of One Foot In The Grave, like a story where the last laugh is squarely on the viewer. Which makes it all the more ballsy that it went out on Christmas Day. 

The circumstances of the episode's airing is a detail that will forever colour it, giving it a greater infamy than it would have acquired had it aired according to Renwick's original plans. But looking at "The Man Who Blew Away" thirty-one years after the fact, it holds up as more than just a twisted joke that rattled some 15 million people on the Christmas of 1994. The thing that always made it worthy of that coveted Xmas slot is that it stands out as one of the very strongest installments of One Foot In The Grave. A lot of that is down to the doomed character, Mr Foskett, and how wonderfully portrayed he is by Brian Murphy. He is one of the most hauntingly complicated figures ever to grace the series, at once ridiculous and tragic. Creating a character who is both soul-crushingly tedious and uproariously hilarious can be a challenge enough in itself, but Murphy pulls it off effortlessly, all while imbuing Foskett with a multi-layered pathos that has us running the whole gamut of emotions. On the one hand, we empathise fully with the Meldrews in finding the man unbearable and in wanting to give him as wide a berth as possible. On the surface his behaviour is beyond infuriating. He shows up on their doorstep and expects to be immediately accommodated, then talks at mind-numbing length about every nondescript detail in his own life, never letting anybody else get a word in edgeways. At the same time, we become increasingly aware that Foskett's rabid neediness stems from forlorn desperation; that this is a deeply damaged man teetering on the edge, and his various imposing tendencies amount to cries for help that the Meldrews are ill-equipped to provide. We become uneasy about where this story might be headed, and rightly so. We're still able to get in plenty of laughs at Foskett's expense, but this is all turned back on us in the final scene, when we are implicated, along with the Meldrews, as part of the wider unsympathetic milieu that consigned this poor fellow to oblivion. 

Mr Foskett is the narrative centrepiece of "The Man Who Blew Away", but the funny thing is that he doesn't appear until 22 minutes in. That's over midway through the episode. What's more, his arrival comes completely out of the blue, making it every bit as jarring for the viewer as for the Meldrews. There hadn't been so much as a throwaway mention of the character in any of the preceding scenes, so when Victor receives a telephone call and hears Foskett on the other end, we have no context for who he even is, other than that the mere sound of his voice is enough to make Victor jolt upwards in terror. His being there represents an intrusion from a terrible chapter in the Meldrews' past they had considered long buried; it's revealed to be such an absurdly minor chapter at that, but one that's left deep psychological scars on them both. Foskett was a fellow guest at a boarding house the Meldrews had stayed at during a trip to Weston-super-Mare seventeen years ago, and the bulk of their interactions came from him having to walk through their bedroom every night to access the bathroom. Obviously he talked their ears off then, and demanded their contact details so that they could keep in touch when their holidays were over. The Meldrews gave him a false address and hoped that would be the end of it. Foskett has tracked them down anyway. He might not manage this until the latter end of the story, but what's clever about that first half is that you can look back and identity how it's been building toward his appearance through its artful use of foreshadowing. The opening sequence has Margaret returning home to find that Victor has neglected to bring in the washing, and their clothes have blown all over the snow-covered garden. Among them are a pair of socks frozen into the shape of a boomerang. "I'd throw these socks away," Margaret grumbles, "Except they'd probably keep coming back."

On the commentary, Renwick states that one of the modifications made to his original script was the inclusion of snow in the outdoor scenes, to give the impression of a festive setting. Even so, "The Man Who Blew Away" does not actually appear to take place at Christmastime (which was not at all unfitting, since "Who's Listening?" was the only OFITG Christmas special that did - the specials were more an opportunity to tell stories on a grander scale than your regular episode). The only direct artifacts of the festive season are the box of Christmas crackers and reels of wrapping paper that feature in an early sequence, recent purchases from the Happy Shopper (a defunct convenience store brand that has since been supplanted by Premier), suggesting that the events of the special fall somewhere close to Christmas, although there is ambiguity regarding the precise proximity. Does it take place in the early winter, before the decorations have gone up, or in the aftermath, with Margaret having purchased marked-down crackers and paper in the January sales, so as to have cheap supplies ready for the following Christmas? I lean toward the latter, largely on account of the box of Milk Tray chocolates Victor is seen working through at the start (and in such a classy fashion, by skewering them with cocktail stick and dunking them in his tea), as it seems like the kind of seasonal gift that you might still have left over in the early days of January. Such details feel like arbitrary concessions thrown in to make an otherwise disconnected story a little more superficially Christmassy, although a great gag is mined from the presence of the crackers, when Victor opens one to find that someone has slipped an insulting joke inside - "What's the difference between Victor Meldrew and a chef who keeps dropping his pancakes? Answer: They're both useless tossers!" (Adding insult to injury is that the pranksters have failed to construct the joke correctly; as Victor points out, it should be "Why is Victor Meldrew like a chef who keeps dropping his pancakes?").

Renwick's other major modification was to pad out the initial sequence in the Meldrews' living room, and if "The Man Who Blew Away" has any real shortcoming, it's that the story takes a long time to get going. Even so, the protracted opening doesn't feel like time wasted, with the slowburn enabling the more outlandish material to land with greater impact - notably, when Victor casually approaches a drawer and pulls out an arm, a weird and macabre gag that falls within a sequence of lower-key moments and is not immediately explained. As it turns out, Victor has lately been the target of a string of bizarre pranks, with false limbs being left around his bin and garage to give the appearance of bodies stuffed within. Not only does the resolution of this narrative strand dovetail with Foskett's arrival, the repeated emphasis on disconnected body parts neatly foreshadows the grotesque visual on which the episode will end.

In spite of the misadventures with the clothes, the limbs and the crackers, the Meldrews are in an overall buoyant mood, because their car has been stolen. This is a very good thing, because if you watched "The Beast In The Cage", you might recall how much Victor struggled with their dsyfunctional Honda. As we join the Meldrews, the car has been gone for three months and they are planning which new vehicle to buy with the anticipated insurance settlement. That is, until their good cheer is interrupted by a telephone call, bringing the bad news that their Honda has been found, in one piece...and in Finland. This prompts a truly uproarious reaction from Victor: "FINLAND??? That car couldn't get to FINCHLEY!!!" The events of the Honda narrative, which occupies the first half of the episode, have no direction connection to anything that later goes on with Foskett, but we can see how the seeds are being sown for his eventual appearance. Coupled with Margaret's observation about the frozen socks, a running theme is being established regarding unrelenting nuisances finding their way back to Meldrews as they think they are rid of them. Meanwhile, there is a subplot unfolding next door with Patrick and Pippa, as the former prepares for an engagement with a couple of prospective business contractors. It's a relatively small part of the story, but it climaxes with the episode's most hysterical visual gag, which occurs once Foskett has made it out onto the Meldrews' roof, and which I wouldn't dare spoil here.

Between the unwelcome intrusions of the Honda and Foskett, there is a further bugbear to contend with in the form of Mr and Mrs Aylesbury, an unseen couple who live across the street from the Meldrews, and who apparently have a penchant for throwing raucous parties into the early hours. It's here that "The Laughing Policeman" first comes into play - right after a deceptive silence in which the Meldrews think the party has died down and the ordeal is finally over. The really nerve-grinding part is during the chorus, when the party guests all join in with the deranged laughing (before, as per Victor's account, spilling out onto the front lawn to do Chuck Berry duck walks). For as hilarious as this entire sequence is, I will say that it is the part of the episode that requires the greatest suspension of disbelief (yes, even more so than the stolen Honda showing up in Finland), on account of Victor's observation about no one else on the street is remotely bothered besides themselves. That much is a bit hard to swallow. I could see the Swaineys maybe shrugging this off, but there's no way that Patrick and Pippa wouldn't be just as wound up and inconvenienced as Victor and Margaret, particularly with it coinciding with Patrick's important business preparation. You just to have buy into the premise that this is another instance of universe conspiring purely to make life harder for Victor (and by extension Margaret), and that the Trenches are somehow impervious (since they are typically only affected wherever it will make Victor look worse). In this case, the universe's malice manifests as delirious laughter, permeating the Meldrews' walls and mocking their futility in the face of such unabating chaos. The one consolation for their sleepless night is that it's followed by Sunday morning, and under normal circumstances they would have no obligation to get up early. Under normal circumstances. This is of course where Mr Foskett chooses to rear his head, the seismic disaster in relation to which all other grievances - the inescapable Honda, The Laughing Policeman - have been mere rumblings on the horizon. This is also where the episode really shifts into full gear, with every last moment hitting with utter precision. Time could so easily have diluted the impact of that one joke where Foskett is revealed to be calling on a mobile from outside the Meldrews' front door, coming as it did from an age where mobiles were less prolific and this would have been more unexpected, and yet the timing and the delivery are so perfect that it still feels every bit as fresh as it did back then.

Foskett claims that he'd happened to be in the area visiting his sister-in-law and, having looked up the Meldrews' real address in a telephone book, had decided to call in on them. During the extended, one-sided game of catch-up he has them play, he reveals that his first marriage broke down soon after that holiday in Weston-super-Mare, resulting in the loss of his job and in thirteen separate suicide attempts, but that he's since picked his life up, remarried and has two wonderful sons. Foskett's gushing about his newfound familial bliss brings its own extraneous misfortune for Victor and Margaret. When Victor opens the door, he finds Foskett accompanied by two pre-teen boys and, assuming them to be the sons in question, the Meldrews let them in and offer them breakfast, only for them to take advantage of their hospitality and eat well beyond their fill of jam tarts and roast potatoes. And then it turns out that they aren't even Foskett's sons, but local children who were responsible for the pranks with the fake limbs (and also the Christmas cracker) and were sent by their father to apologise. As the dust settles from that misunderstanding, Victor finds Foskett in the hallway, looking very pale and shaken. He'd gone to make a telephone call to his wife Loretta, who'd declined to come to the Meldrews' on account of having a migraine, only to discover that she and the boys have taken the opportunity to make a bolt for it and abandon him for good. All of his talk about having found happiness with a new family was a sham; they couldn't stand him any more than anyone else he ever encountered.

Following a further mishap, where Foskett retreats to the kitchen for a class of water but ends up collapsing onto a pile of scattered rubbish, the Meldrews allow him to clean up with a bath, but are all the while thinking of how to awkwardly get rid of him, with Margaret suggesting they ring for a taxi. It dawns on her that it maybe wasn't a good idea to let Foskett lock himself inside the bathroom and out of their sight, given his extensive history of suicidal behaviour. Victor thinks she's overreacting, until he goes outside and sees Foskett out on the roof wearing only a towel, threatening to throw himself off. He ultimately has second thoughts, but not without slipping, losing the towel and having to dangle naked from the roof gutter. This is the narrative's major set-piece, with the tension and comic absurdity exquisitely nailed by Susan Belbin's direction, so that even the admittedly rather naff-looking night sky effects don't take us out of the moment. 

In the epilogue, set a short while after the ordeal, we learn that Victor and Margaret are making a habit of leaving their Honda unsecured, in the hopes of it being stolen again, although Victor is questioning the purpose, noting that any keys left in the ignition have been invariably returned by would-be Good Samaritans. Foskett, on the other hand, will not be back, at least not in the flesh; the Meldrews receive a package containing an update on their old friend, and it's revealed that he made his fifteenth and final suicide attempt after leaving with the police and sadly succumbed to his injuries in hospital. Before his death, Foskett shared that there was one thing that brought him comfort in his darkest hour - his friendship with the Meldrews, the kindness they had shown him on that day, and how pleased they had evidently been to see him after all these years.

Foskett remains something of a puzzle, and we are left wondering if he was perhaps considerably less oblivious than he let on. He comes off as a man in deep denial, commenting on how strange it was that the address the Meldrews had given him turned out to be bogus but convincing himself that he'd written it down wrong. This raises the question as to what really precipitated his arrival at their door - did his family's total abandonment of him come as such a surprise to him, or was it the result of a much more prolonged marital breakdown? It dawns on us that Foskett might have deliberately sought out the Meldrews because he knew that something like this would be coming and felt the need to be with friends when the dreaded news broke. The knowledge that his first marriage had ended soon after the holiday in Weston-super-Mare underscores the likelihood that he was having marital problems back then too, and that his interactions with the Meldrews had amounted to much the same thing. On both occasions, he'd been reaching out to Victor and Margaret, and while they'd sat and endured his company through gritted teeth, all they'd privately desired was to have him out of their lives. That a couple he'd known for a brief spell seventeen years ago should be the only people he could think to turn to tells its own desolate story. The most haunting thing about Foskett? We never even learn his full name. He talks at great length about his vast collection of antique dentures and his allergy to sticky tape, yet that one all-important detail never slips through. The Meldrews were all he had left in the end, and they weren't even on first name terms with the man. He is of course the figure alluded to in the episode title - the opening sequence, in which the onscreen title was juxtaposed with a discarded newspaper page with coverage of local weddings, had foreshadowed Foskett's marital woes as the factor that would drive him over the edge, while also subtly implanting the image of him as a soul drifting feebly upon the breeze, briefly fluttering into people's lives only to be swept out again into the ether. He is a man with a knack for alienating every single person he comes into contact with, with no lasting ties or connections to keep him grounded in any particular social setting. Much like that stray newspaper page, he is discarded rubbish, professing to carry joyous news but totally unwanted and destined to shortly become nothing. It is a haunting allusion, calling to mind how little the Meldrews, or indeed we the audience really knew him, in spite of the tremendous deal he had to say about himself. To The Meldrews, he was an annoyance that came into their lives for a day, while to us he was a momentary diversion to be laughed at, but the gravitas of Margaret's final reading impresses the sobering notion that this was a life, now lost because nobody cared enough to hold onto it. He can also be likened to the scattered washing found by Margaret in the beginning, with the lack of eyes upon him (both literal and metaphorical) leading to his terminal ruin. 

Foskett's belief that he'd found camaraderie with Victor and Margaret is by far the episode's cruellest irony, but of course Renwick isn't going to bow out without inflicting one further instance of cosmic misfortune upon the Meldrews. They open up the package to find that, as Foskett's last remaining allies, he has entrusted them with his legacy in the form of his collection of antique dentures, in which Victor had politely feigned interest in an earlier scene. The final visual of those assorted cabinets of lovingly displayed pearlies creates an uneasy connection between smiling and death, for these are not merely the worldly remains of Foskett himself, but the synthetic snickers of countless owners long departed, all grinning mindlessly from beyond the grave. An underlying theme of "The Man Who Blew Away" is the idea of laughter as a reflexive coping mechanism geared toward masking grim realities and staving off the omnipresent darkness of life. The knowledge that we're all going to die and the likelihood that life is absurd are as inescapable as the Meldrews' Honda; we have to find a way of keeping the pain at bay somehow. The episode ends with Victor expressing newfound sympathy for Mr and Mrs Aylesbury, for he now understands their need to stay up laughing with Charles Penrose into the early hours, and suggests that if he and Margaret cannot follow their example, they too risk sinking into suicidal despair. The final moments, naturally, produce no laughter from either party, only an awkward silence followed by a characteristically morbid punchline, in which Victor asks Margaret where she's keeping the sleeping pills. We linger on one last shot of Foskett's collection before dissolving into the closing credits, where the familiar tortoise footage is accompanied by a reprise of "The Laughing Policeman" in lieu of the usual Eric Idle-sung theme song. Previously a manifestation of the universe's mockery of Victor and Margaret, it now becomes something altogether more sinister - our own laughter and craving for escapism has been implicated in this process of addled diversion, making these hysterical wails of irrepressible anguish an eerie caricture of our own damnation. The presence of those tortoises only adds to the final uncanniness; their significance was explained by Renwick on the commentary for "The Beast In The Cage", where he notes that they are specifically giant tortoises, which are one of the most long-lived of animal species and thus symbols of longevity. Juxtaposed with Penrose's howls, they suggest suffering of a particularly interminable variety, of having lived so long and seen so much lunacy.

Which was certainly an uncomfortable point at which to leave us in the late hours of Christmas, although it should be noted that it did little to sour the public's appetite for further seasonal installments with Victor and Margaret. A festive edition of One Foot In The Grave Christmas would remain an annual event for the duration of the mid-90s, with three further specials, "The Wisdom of The Witch", "Starbound" and "Endgame" airing in the succeeding years (of which only "Starbound" missed out on a Christmas Day slot). Renwick would never again attempt anything with quite the same bitterly downbeat flavour as "The Man Who Blew Away", however, at least not within the festive specials. The upsets of Series 6 were still to come (including an echoing of the themes of "The Man Who Blew Away" in the episode "Tales of Terror"), but those were a good few years away yet.

Finally, since I'm such a VHS nerd, I've spent an unhealthy amount of time scrutinising the Meldrews' living room cabinet to see if I can identify which tapes they have in their collection. I'm not 100% sure, but I think that's The Addams Family there on the bottom right. Neat, the Meldrews have good taste then.

The Homer They Fall (aka Fustigation Aside)

Season 8 of The Simpsons was the series' Death Period, a time when the atmosphere in Springfield seemed unhealthily fixated with the notion that all things must pass. The show's anxieties regarding its own presumed-imminent demise wouldn't become totally transparent until the latter stages, with the aggressively meta trilogy of The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show", "Homer's Enemy" and "The Simpsons Spin-Off Showcase", but even long before then you got the whiff of a certain tension in the air. One of the season's earliest offerings, "The Homer They Fall" (4F03), which debuted on November 10th 1996, opens with a vicious nugget of satire regarding the decline of once formidable television institutions and the pitfalls of hanging onto the glories of yesteryear. A public reunion between the surviving cast of 1960s juggernaut Bonanza promises nostalgic diversion but instead becomes a depressing memento mori, as two ageing Native American actors perform to a modest turnout amid the grubby consumerism of the Springfield Mall. "On the series we were always trying to kill the Cartwrights," one of the performers quips. "But it looks like Father Time took care of that for us, right?" A nonplussed Marge notes that the dingy display represents a downgrade from last year's rendition, where three Native Americans at least managed to show up. Already we can picture how much more diminished the set-piece has yet to become on subsequent years, with the lone man standing feebly gesturing to an audience of even lesser size and enthusiasm. Elsewhere, the episode's title might have conveyed its own degree of ominousness. It is a nod to the title of the 1956 Humphrey Bogart boxing picture The Harder They Fall, itself taken from the saying, "The bigger they come, the harder they fall" - this is often attributed to welterweight champion Jersey Joe Walcott, and describes how those of greater stature are doomed to suffer the most mortifying of downfalls.

To some fans, Season 8 represented the first step on on the series' own inevitable descent from greatness, even if it was a far smaller step than what was to come in the Scully era. Or perhaps that's the price it paid for taking as many risks as it did. Season 8 is something of a contradiction - a wildly cynical chapter in the show's history that, by its end, had outright admitted that it had nowhere to go whilst encompassing some of the boldest and most experimental Simpsons stories since the series' beginnings, back when the mere idea was hot and radical. Naturally, not every risk taken was to everybody's tastes (the aforementioned meta trilogy, in particular "Homer's Enemy", seemed purposely designed to sit uneasily with a chunk of the viewership), and might have amounted to the feeling of there being a disturbance in the Simpsons equilibrium, the tipping point before things fatally gave way. Season 8 may not be the cosiest of seasons, but it is the one that I find the most infinitely fascinating, an era combining razor-sharp writing with an intrepid determination to push as many envelopes as it could. "The Homer They Fall" is a relatively unassuming example of what No. 8 had to offer, and while nowhere close to being its most contentious entry, strikes me as another terribly undervalued one. Notably, Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood went down surprisingly hard on it in I Can't Believe It's An Unofficial Simpsons Guide, offering this assessment: "A pastiche on Mike Tyson's return to the boxing circuit after his time in jail, and his conversion to Christianity. Sadly, this makes for the dullest, one-joke episode of the entire series." Which was about as negative as they had been about any episode up until this point. I'd be curious to know what they consider the story's one joke to be exactly (they're also wrong - Tyson was raised a Christian and converted to Islam). I will say that the episode potentially did itself no favours in coming so soon after Season 7's "Homerpalooza", another episode centred on Homer's freakish ability to withstand the kind of extreme bodily trauma that would kill or severely cripple the average person. Both stories climax with Homer discovering that there are limits to his superhuman abilities, and defiantly putting himself in a situation that will not end well while his family observe powerlessly from the sidelines. If you were worried that the series would be running short of ideas after 150+ episodes, "The Homer They Fall" might not have been the installment to put your fears to rest.

"The Homer They Fall" is also another in the long line of "Homer Gets A Job" episodes that originated with "Dancin' Homer" of Season 2 and, as Marge deftly puts it, lands somewhere in the middle in terms of plausibility. On the DVD commentary, the production crew share that they had fully anticipated the Frank Grimeses in the audience scoffing at the notion of Homer becoming a boxer and finding himself in the same ring as his universe's equivalent to Mike Tyson, and so went to great lengths to justify it within context. It was not, though, considered outlandish enough to occupy the gallery of unlikely Homer adventures that had the actual Frank Grimes so incensed in "Homer's Enemy" - because let's face it, you're not going to get much sillier than Homer being sent into outer space. A question that often hangs over the "Homer Gets A Job" stories is how Homer is able to pursue his latest occupation and retain his regular job at the plant (excepting "Dancin' Homer", which explicitly addresses this), but here I don't find it much of a stretch to suppose that boxing is just an avocation he's doing outside of working hours. The set-up has Homer discovering that he possesses a unique condition in which his brain is cushioned by an extra-thick layer of fluid, meaning that his skull can endure an insane amount of punishment. On witnessing this, Moe suggests that he try his hand at boxing, revealing his own history as a budding young boxer who ultimately didn't have what it takes to enter the big leagues, and offering to be his manager. He quickly establishes that Homer has no aptitude for delivering punches, but that needn't matter - Moe trains him to follow a fool-proof strategy that involves allowing his opponents to expend all their energy and then making them keel over. It's a strategy enables Homer to rise to the top of the local leagues, fighting hungry young hobos in Moe's bar, but things take a more precarious turn when Moe is approached by his former manager Lucius Sweet (guest voice Paul Winfield), who's willing to offer a substantial sum to have Homer go up against heavyweight champion Drederick Tatum. Moe knows this is a fight Homer couldn't hope to win, but is tempted by that opportunity to get close to the prestige that was denied him in his own boxing career.

Despite the familiarity of the premise, I would argue that "The Homer They Fall" is as bold and experimental as many of the more prominent Season 8 installments, but it's bold and experimental in low-key, deceptive ways that perhaps don't register right away. For one, it is only nominally a story about Homer. He's front and centre throughout, but it doesn't take a great deal of interest in what being a boxer actually means to him. "Homerpalooza" makes for a handy comparison, since it handles what is essentially the same set-up entirely differently. There, becoming a roadshow freak who routinely took a steel ball to the gut offered something of real personal value to Homer. It was a chance to reconnect with his youth and to be a part of the hip and happening culture of the 90s. To be idolised by his children, who had earlier rejected the notion of par-taying with him if he were the last dad on Earth. To be someone of influence, and not just another ageing fogey left in the dust by the fickle nature of fashion. In "The Homer They Fall", becoming a semi-professional boxer is essentially a means for Homer to lead a marginally swankier lifestyle, getting to eat his salad dressing of choice, upgrading from Premium mode to Mega Tycoon mode at the car wash and, possibly, enjoy those blue cupcakes they sell sometimes. It's a hobby with some neat perks, but not something Homer seems to be staking his sense of self-worth upon. The episode keeps him in a very passive mode, blankly going along with whatever Moe imposes on him, and showing virtually no initiative of his own. There is a point, early on, where Jonathon Collier's script betrays its lack of interest in Homer, and in the Simpsons as a whole, and this is where it possibly comes off as a little cold to some - in the first act we've the basis of a very convincing personal struggle for Homer, when Bart acquires a space-age utility belt from Comic Book Guy, only for it to be stolen by Jimbo, Dolph and Kearney. Homer attempts to get the belt returned by taking the matter to the parents of the bullies, but unfortunately they're also bullies who would just as happily whale on him. Homer withstands their attacks but fails to get the belt back, and subsequently laments to Moe that all he seems to be good for is taking beatings. We see the sliver of an emotional stake in his recognition that he was unable to rectify things for his son, but this is swiftly forgotten - and, even more egregiously, so is the entire narrative thread involving Bart's belt. Apparently Jimbo, Dolph and Kearney are allowed to keep it. First act conflicts that are essentially nothing more than extended build-ups to the main event weren't necessarily anything new (remember Homer's trampoline in "Bart's Inner Child"?), but what makes it feel a little unsporting here is that we're given just enough insight into how taken Bart is with the belt to care that he gets it back. Often life doesn't have happy outcomes and the bullies do win, but the fact that it isn't even mentioned again threatens to get the episode off on a slightly bum note. As it turns out, the bullying material does have thematic significance later on, but nothing that pays off any emotional investment in Bart's plight specifically. 

The Simpsons themselves are effectively ciphers in "The Homer They Fall", with the arguable exception of Marge, who gets to be the voice of reason and decency as we descend into the cut-throat insanity of the third act. But even so, her anguish at the prospect of watching her husband be pummelled into a bloody pulp is only secondary to the real emotional thrust of the story, which is on Moe and his desire to be more than a sleazy bartender serving crummy liqueur to Springfield's most downtrodden clientele. Moe is given a more overtly sympathetic treatment here than he was the last time this conflict was the focus, in "Flaming Moe's" of Season 3, even though his treatment of his best bud is on a whole other level; his theft of Homer's cough syrup cocktail might have been scummy as hell, but at least he wasn't endangering Homer's life in the process. Yet Collier's script offers even greater insight into Moe's deflated soul, his determination to cling to whatever meagre scrap of eminence might come his way, and his final realisation that some things in life take priority over personal glory. And that's the hidden genius of "The Homer They Fall" - it purports to be a story about Homer's rise and fall within the boxing arena, but it's really a story about Moe's fall from a much broader kind of grace and his triumphant rise again (to an absurd degree that basically ends up in quotation marks, but we'll get to that in due course). 

Honestly, it's one of the things that I most admire about Season 8. Far from merely being a season of flashy gimmicks and biting anger at its own viewership, there was a genuine effort to flesh out a selection of the supporting cast and give compelling new context to their place within the show's dynamics. The premise of Moe as a man of broken dreams, who'd once had the opportunity to really make something of himself but had tragically blown it, was previously trialled in "Radioactive Man" of Season 7, albeit for a single scene that had no bearing on the overall story. There, it was revealed he was part of the Our Gang ensemble (somewhat questionably, given that that would have made Moe, what, 70 in 1995?), but had obliterated his acting career after inadvertently killing one of his co-stars (the original Alfalfa, aka Carl Switzer, who in reality died at age 31 under circumstances no less dark). Ultimately, it played less like a sincere expansion on the character's backstory than a protracted, nostalgia-wrecking joke about the industry's exploitation of child actors ("Luckily Alfalfa was an orphan owned by the studio"), but there was a real pathos to the idea nevertheless. The reasons for Moe's failure as a boxer are more mundane, but also more relatable - in the end, he simply wasn't good enough, getting knocked out 40 times in a row (that plus politics). Who hasn't known the sting of desperately wanting something, only to have life feed you a bitter reality sandwich? Moe put his all into boxing, going through a range of monikers (Kid Gorgeous to Kid Presentable to Kid Gruesome and finally to Kid Moe), and having nothing to show for it but a collection of faded memories. These memories remain a great source of fondness and pride for Moe, and he keeps the various artefacts from his boxing career on display to remind him of a more prosperous time, but they are all crucially squirrelled away inside a toilet (could there be a clearer metaphor?). Then Sweet strolls back into his life and offers him a Faustian bargain - the chance to bring those dreams out into the open, where the entire world will be watching, and to demonstrate that he isn't a failure by producing a fighter who can put up a decent stand against a champ. Moe states the obvious - "Homer's no boxer, he's just a freak" - but Sweet already knows that Tatum's victory is a foregone conclusion. He just needs Homer to "sustain verticality" for three rounds, in order to create a crowd-pleasing display for Tatum's comeback fight. If Moe can achieve that, then Sweet can secure him a future in the boxing scene. The sequence ends with a fabulous piece of direction from Mark Kirkland, as Sweet puts on a crown and walks away, leaving the toilet door to slam and conceal Moe once again inside his den of squalid ruination. He does a lousy thing in accepting the terms and sending Homer to the ring with Tatum like a lamb to the slaughter, but our sympathies are with Moe nevertheless. We understand his yearning to escape that despair, and to follow Sweet to the glory of which he'd once dared to dream.

Truthfully, "The Homer They Fall" has a heart of gold, not unlike Moe himself in the end, although it hides this behind its somewhat rough exterior. As with "Flaming Moe's", the friendship between Homer and Moe is shown to be parasitic in nature, with Moe cunningly manipulating Homer into giving him the lion's share of his earnings, even if the money isn't what he's truly seeking from the arrangement. He also insists that Homer put complete trust in him as his manager, only to exploit that trust by setting him up to fight Tatum (whom Homer initially assumes to be just another hobo). But it proves overall to be far less cynical about the relationship than "Flaming Moe's", demonstrating that there are grounds for a fundamentally supportive affinity between these two non-achievers. Moe's entire arc is cleverly bookended with him needing to make sound moral choices, both of which involve stepping up to defend Homer from the barbarism of adult thugs - first, the parents of Jimbo, Dolph and Kearney, and finally a thuggishness of a whole other magnitude.

A more subtle, possibly coincidental way in which "The Homer They Fall" harks back to "Flaming Moe's" is in the reintroduction of Drederick Tatum, who in the Season 3 episode was seen giving a television interview in which he had this to say about Springfield: "That town was a dump. If you ever see me back there, you know I really [bleep]ed up bad!" And [bleep]ed up he clearly did, for he's back in Springfield in this very episode, looking to restart his boxing career after a slight blip in his personal life. Tatum was established as a character all the way back in Season 2, in "Homer vs. Lisa and The 8th Commandment", but had never received a starring role up until now, having been largely restricted to throwaway cameos, and having appeared to go a bit quiet around the middle of the decade (I guess now we know the reason). As noted, Tatum is a thinly-veiled parody of real world boxing champion Mike Tyson, right down to speaking with Tyson's trademark frontal lisp. Like Tyson, he'd also been through a spot of legal bother, having served a term in Springfield Prison on a charge of assault against his mother. Tyson was actually in prison on a rape charge, but that's somewhere The Simpsons were obviously never going to go - Tatum pushing his mother down the stairs is ostensibly meant to be a more comical-sounding equivalent, although when you think about it, it's perhaps not significantly nicer, given the presumed age and size difference between the two parties. Still, the episode manages to sell us on the humor of the circumstance, mainly in Tatum's half-assessed expression of remorse: "If I could turn back the clock on my mother's stair-pushing, I would certainly reconsider it." Despite the stain on his record, Tatum certainly hasn't fallen from grace in the eyes of the public, who are all too happy to buy into his anticipated pulverising of Homer as a narrative of righteous revenge. Sweet, meanwhile, is based on Tyson's then-manager Don King, and in his case the script even draws a big bold line under the allusion, in Homer's oddly gratuitous remark that Sweet is exactly as rich and as famous as King, and looks just like him too. The casting of Winfield as Sweet was a cunning allusion in itself, since Winfield had played King only a year prior in the HBO biopic Tyson (although for yours truly he is first and foremost the wisecracking Mirror from The Charmings, one of those "forgotten" 80s sitcoms that I remember all-too vividly). Winfield is wonderful in the role, perfectly nailing Sweet's flamboyance and quirkily ostentatious vocabulary, and keeping him charismatic enough for us to feel the lure of the transparently slimy bargain he's selling.

For as passive as Homer is in all of this, he gets one really good and revealing scene, when his family learn of the impending match-up and challenge him on its wisdom over the breakfast table. Lisa cautions him that the odds against him winning are a thousand to one, according to the casinos in Vegas, to which Homer responds with his most quotable line of the episode: "Alright, I think we've all heard just about enough from Mr. Newspaper today." Implicit in his delivery, and in the churlish manner with which he crumples the offending item and disposes of it out the window, is a definite sense that Homer isn't as clueless as he might seem about his situation. He knows deep down that he hasn't a snowball's chance in Hell of coming through this intact, but is desperately trying to convince himself otherwise. This is reinforced in a later sequence, where Moe instructs Homer to visualise how he can possibly triumph and the best Homer can come up with would be for Tatum to be felled by a congenital heart defect moments before the fight begins. Why is Homer so obstinately insistent about putting his life on the line? Is he really that won over by the pipe dream of owning a plug-in room deodoriser? Has his success against all of those brawlers from the boxcars given him an inflated sense of confidence? Or is he like Moe, and susceptible to the prospect of participating in the glitz and glamour a heavyweight match, even as a pawn sent out to be brutally fustigated? We don't get a ton of insight into Homer's perspective, but we get just enough hint that there is something of a little more substance going on.

The final act where Homer goes up against Tatum is a surprisingly gut-wrenching affair. It's peppered with lots of smaller gags, the funniest being when Homer enters the ring to "Why Can't We Be Friends?" by War, but it's startling how much the tension is allowed to dominate. The sequence before the fight where Marge confronts a visibly anxious Moe is played almost exclusively for drama - as we touched on when covering "Flaming Moe's", Marge and Moe are typically positioned as opposing forces in Homer's life (even with Moe's pitiful crushing on Marge), with both in constant, if indirect competition for his devotions, but this is as life and death as their rivalry has gotten to date. The closest thing to a joke in the exchange is the way Moe brusquely attempts to blow off Marge's concerns with his insistence that, "I'm not the villain here, okay? If Homer gets killed in the ring tonight, it'll be because of your negative attitude!" Marge manages to force a promise from Moe that he will throw a towel into the ring the instant that Homer is in any kind of danger, and leaves - the way the camera then lingers on Moe's conflicted expression, to the sound of Marge's receding footsteps, is almost eerie in its disquietude, a small moment in which we find ourselves trapped in Moe's lonely dilemma, culminating in him emphatically discarding the towel altogether (thus regulating his moral compass to the trash). The episode's second guest voice, Michael Buffer, shows up to play himself doing his familiar announcing duties (and as a child of 90s Britain, I cannot overstress how flat-out impossible it is for me to hear him holler "Let's get ready to rumble!" and not immediately have PJ and Duncan ringing in my ears^[1]), before Tatum proceeds to beat the living shit out of Homer. There are clear limits on how far the episode is willing to go with this brutal display - we don't see any blood or real injury detail - but every last thud from Tatum's hulking fists against Homer's malleable skull lands with an ice-cold shock to our own systems. As well it should. Moe had earlier raised an interesting point, when he'd disputed who ought to be seen as the villain of this flagrantly messed-up scenario. Is it Tatum, who's doing the actual pummelling of a man he blatantly outclasses in strength and stamina? Is it Sweet, who procured the whole dubious arrangement? Is it indeed Moe himself, for putting his personal ambition above the interests of his best friend?  Or maybe it's the entirety of Springfield, for so vehemently cheering the atrocious spectacle on? 

What's clever about the climax is that although it's Homer receiving the pummelling, the character whose endurance is really being tested here is Moe. How long can he stand by and do nothing before it dawns on him that it again falls on him to save his pal from being massacred by mindless bullies? In this case, the bullies are filling up the entire stadium, shaking their fists and urging Tatum to make the finishing blow. We suspect that their motivation isn't altogether different from that cited by the parents of Bart's tormentors, in that they need the bread and circuses as distractions from the crummy lives they've had to live. They collectively get in on the carnage, baying to see Homer offed for their own gratification, and Moe finally summons the gumption to stand up to them all, thanks his moral centre getting its second wind - that, and a device pilfered from an audience member known as the "Fan Man". Introduced by Buffer as a "ruiner of events worldwide", the Fan Man was a real individual (actual name James Miller) who'd gained notoriety when he'd interrupted a heavyweight title fight in 1993 by riding a powered paraglider into the ring, and went on to pull off a series of similar stunts in both the US and the UK. (Reading about him, I was put heavily in mind of Larry Walters, the man who attached a bunch of helium balloons to his lawn chair and went for a flight over part of Los Angeles, in that their lives sound like funny anecdotes to share at dinner parties, until you click on the relevant Wikipedia pages and discover how tragically they ended.) Moe lifting Homer to safety with the powered paraglider is a nod to that disrupted heavyweight fight, but it's also a cheeky bit of symbolism in its own right, signifying Moe's ascent from the depths of depravity. It's an allusion so transparent that the script once again can't resist having Homer underline it, asking in his semi-conscious state if Moe is an angel. "Yes Homer, I'm an angel," Moe dryly responds. "All us angels wear Farrah slacks." Tatum is awed at how much Homer's manager evidently cares about him, and shows some vulnerability of his own when he asks Sweet if he would have done the same for him. Sweet insists with his usual leer that he would, then packs Tatum coldly off to the van, giving us the sense that he too has been exploited for the sake of public spectacle. Sweet pays Moe a check for $100,000 but condemns him as an incurable loser and will have nothing more to do with him. Moe seems to have no hard feelings about this outcome; when Marge thanks him for giving up his prestigious new path for Homer, Moe replies, "What do dreams matter, Marge? I was able to stick up for a pal." Moe enters the story thinking he needs one kind of redemption, but exits having attained quite another.

The ending is, admittedly, a little suspiciously naked on the sentiment, especially given that we're dealing with a scuzzbag like Moe here, and The Simpsons being The Simpsons insists on tempering it with a dose of sly humor, sending us off what has to be one of the most bewildering outros in all the series. Having gained his angel wings, Moe is unable to stay grounded and leaves Springfield behind, insisting that he needs some time to think. His seraphic exit is tempered by the sudden reappearance of the Fan Man, who yells at him to return the stolen paraglider (there is something nicely cyclical in how this story begins and ends with pilfered contraptions), undercutting the melancholy with a reminder of the sheer absurdity of what we're looking at. It only cranks that weirdness up to 11 for the closing credits, taking Moe's redemption motif to more dizzying heights still by showing him using the paraglider to help people in various crises around the globe - we witness him saving a mother and baby from a flooded village, lifting an explorer from a quagmire, extinguishing a forest fire and distributing boxes of aid to the needy. And all to the sounds of "People", a song originally performed by Barbara Streisand for the 1964 musical Funny Girl, here delivered with haunting precision by regular Simpsons vocalist Sally Stevens. It is specifically a song about the value of managing to get beyond "grown-up pride" and to bare vulnerability, something that we know Moe would ordinarily be averse to. Honestly, this whole sequence gets to me in ways that it probably shouldn't. The joke is that it pushes the notion of Moe the saintly humanitarian to such a degree that it doesn't seem quite sincere, ultimately putting his redemption in quotation marks. And yet I could shed honest-to-God tears at it. Stevens' performance is just that achingly beautiful, and I profoundly regret that it wasn't included on Songs In The Key of Springfield, or either of the sequel albums. If you'd told me at the time that The Simpsons would be ending with Season 8 and this was to be Moe's personal adieu, I would in all odds have believed you, and declared it one of the most poetic character send-offs of all-time. In that parallel timeline I'm sure the thought of paragliding Moe still being out there, encircling the globe and helping every desperate soul he happens across, would be weighing on my mind even now.

Sky 1 edit alert!: This might actually be the single most baffling edit that Sky 1 ever implemented. For some reason they always used to remove the couch gag and jump directly to the credits on the TV set. Sky 1 were occasionally known to cut couch gags from Halloween episodes, if they depicted anything too grisly for their standards (the family being hung in "Treehouse of Horror VI" for example), but this particular couch gag was assuredly as inoffensive as they come, depicting the family in cowboy gear, and the couch bucking like a horse and carrying them off into the sunset. What's even more peculiar is that they later had no problem with showing that exact same couch gag before "Homer vs. The Eighteenth Amendment", so I've no idea what was going on here. Sometimes Sky 1 were just screwy. Also gone (less bafflingly, if austerely) was Moe's "Future down the crapper" remark.

[1] Fun fact: there is a trademark on Buffer's signature "Let's get ready to rumble!" announcement, hence why Ant and Dec had to title their single with the looser "Rhumble" variation.