*Spoilers for episode 6*
The finale of Twenty Twelve doesn’t have much to offer in the way of Joel Fry/Karl, but luckily, we’re not quite through with the character yet. More on that in a bit!
Things are getting down to the wire for the commission. The start of the Games are rapidly approaching, and Ian is eager to take care of all the last-minute details before he hands the reins to the team that will be running the actual Games. Amid that mad scramble, the shortlist for the post-Games director of posterity position is released, which several members of the commission have applied for.
At the eleventh hour, things for the commission are as disaster-prone as ever. The fireworks at the opening ceremony are in danger of triggering Britain’s automatic ground-to-air defense missiles—so, you know, not good! Kay installed slow-charge stations for the fleet of electric cars to ferry athletes around the Olympic Park, but based on the 10-hour charging time, they’re projected to have zero cars available by day two. And Siobhan is auditioning composers for a piece to be played on church bells on the morning the Games start, and let’s just say she’s not finding the cream of the crop.
Some nice David Tennant narration today. Here are my favorite lines of his from the finale:
- Fun bit, in reference to the whole fireworks debacle – “In the last few weeks, a growing conflict of interest between the creative team behind the opening ceremony and the Ministry of Defense has become potentially explosive.”
- “Meanwhile, it’s a different day altogether, and just six days to go until handover” – hee!
- Love this line – “Despite how high the stakes are, Ian knows he has no option now but to keep thinking on his feet until he finds out where it is they’ve taken him.”
For some reason, Siobhan also needs a celebrity for this church bell thing. She’s promised someone on the level of Paul McCartney or Sting, and when she finds out Sting is in Tuscany and doesn’t want to come back for the Olympics, she shouts into her phone, “He can bring his fucking lute! You know, get over it!”
So, since her overly ambitious pitches aren’t available, it’s up to her team to track down a smaller-scale celebrity. This is perhaps the natural progression of the dynamic Siobhan and her team have with Karl, because Karl doesn’t even take part in this meeting despite being in the same room. While Barney and Coco fill Siobhan in on how their respective celebrity hunts went, Karl is sitting in the background, wearing headphones and looking at something on his tablet. It’s not clear if he realizes there’s a meeting going on behind him.
Which is fine with everybody else., Siobhan asks about him as an afterthought once she’s heard from Coco and Barney, but she balks at Coco’s offer to get his attention. “No, no, no, no, no, leave him,” Siobhan insists, adding, “Yeah, that’s like, don’t wanna know,” if he was able to secure his celebrity (who I’ve never heard of but who is evidently an embarrassing choice.)
As such, Joel Fry’s time on Twenty Twelve ends with a bit of a whimper, but it’s not the last we’ve seen of Karl! He also appears on a handful of episodes of the spinoff W1A. I don’t know much about that show. I just know it features some of the Twenty Twelve characters, including Ian and Siobhan (which makes sense, given Karl’s presence,) as well as some new ones, including a character played by Jonathan Bailey. And of course, W1A will also feature narration from David Tennant, so we’ll continue with the Other Doctor Lives posts too!
Still, we’ll wrap up Twenty Twelve, and there will be a bit of a break before moving on to the spin-off. I just found out Joel Fry’s new series Alice and Steve is coming out at the start of June, and I don’t want to drop those reviews into the middle of W1A, so until I’ve finished that show, I’ll pivot to something different for both Joel Fry-days and Other Doctor Lives.
Final thoughts on Twenty Twelve:
Accent Watch
David Tennant – Scottish.
Joel Fry – Southern British English.
Recommend?
In General – A soft maybe. It’s entertaining, but it’s not a knockout.
David Tennant – I don’t know if I would. While Tennant always gets the job done, I’m not sure if it’s worth it just for his narration.
Joel Fry – Yes! I don’t care that he’s only in one-to-two scenes for each of his episodes. Karl is wonderful!
Warnings
Language, smoking, and mild thematic elements.
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