Other Doctor Lives / Joel Fry-days: Twenty Twelve: Series 2, Episode 7 – “Loose Ends” (2012)

*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.

Other Doctor Lives / Joel Fry-days: Twenty Twelve: Series 2, Episode 6 – “Inclusivity Day” (2012)

*Spoilers from the end of episode 5*

We’re at the penultimate episode of the series and things are ramping up, albeit in a very bureaucratic British way. Matters are coming to a head on several fronts.

So in the last episode, during a security review involving the doctored starter pistols, Ian accidentally got shot in the foot (literally.) Now it’s 24 days until the Olympics, he’s stuck in the hospital, and his boss just poached his PA. Back at the office, the rest of the commission plans for the rapidly-approaching Inclusivity Day while Siobhan’s team partners with a professional footballer to address the lack of interest in women’s football.

One of Ian’s character quirks has been to describe a dismal state of affairs and top it off with, “No, so basically it’s all good,” and we get a lot of that from him here at the hospital. As he struggles to get things done, everyone from the commission who stops by to visit him is mainly there for their own self-interests. I like where the episode takes this storyline, though.

Part of the problem with Inclusivity Day is that the Olympics is also hosting Diversity Day at the same time, so 1) the commission isn’t clear on what the difference is between the two, and 2) some of their ideas for special guests are already occupied appearing at Diversity Day. On top of that, there are arguments over who’s running the morning meeting when Ian isn’t there and Kay’s clashing with Fi is worse than ever. I laughed out loud at this line, from Nick: “If we get this wrong as well, we’re in danger of running out of feet to shoot ourselves in.”

Here’s what we’ve got for David Tennant’s narration today:

• The wording of this cracked me up – “Back over at Perfect Curve, Siobhan Sharpe and her team are about to get creative with the idea of Carey Taylor.”
• I loved this description, when Kay meets with someone on site to discuss the plan for Inclusivity Day – “...And in the spirit of inclusivity, head of legacy Fi Healey has decided to join her, in case anything happens.”

Our character of the week is Coco Lomax, Siobhan’s trend analyst. Played by Sara Pascoe, she’s the last member of Siobhan’s team. While Barney remains at the top of my shitlist, I’m not thrilled with Coco, either. She’s not openly/relentlessly critical of Karl, but she takes part in the whole office’s pattern of excluding him.

In addressing the problem with women’s football, which is opening the Games but has hardly sold any tickets, Ian isn’t confident in Siobhan’s ability to fix it. “For all I know, they’re trying to rebrand it as men’s basketball,” he gripes. “I wouldn’t put it past them.” And to be sure, Siobhan and her team aren’t exactly on top of it. The more they talk, the clearer it is that footballer Carey Taylor is thoroughly unimpressed with their “brilliant” marketing idea.

Thankfully, Barney doesn’t pick apart Karl’s ideas in this episode, but he’s still not having a good time. The theme of Karl’s presence in this episode is very definitely exclusion, and we see that throughout. There’s a whole thing with everyone in the office loving Brazillos—Siobhan tosses one for Barney to catch in his mouth, and after everyone claps for him, he high-fives just Siobhan and Coco. Then when Karl asks for a Brazillo, he leans back and opens his mouth, ready to catch, but Siobhan just pushes the bowl over to him. Even when everyone is meeting Carey, he tries for a high-five and ends up with a handshake. His input is met with silent stares from everybody.

And listen, I’m not saying that Karl is a fantastic PR person who’s being unfairly maligned by his colleagues. I’m saying he’s awkward, anxious, and doesn’t really thrive in the fast-paced atmosphere of a pitch session, but he still doesn’t deserve the way his colleagues treat him. He regularly miscalculates things, jumping in at the wrong time or saying the wrong thing. The women’s football campaign is called “Who’s That Girl?”, and as Coco is explaining the pitch to Carey, Barney chimes in with a singsong,” Who’s that girl?” to punctuate each beat. But when Karl tries to join in, he winds up singsonging, “What are those lips?” to everyone’s bewilderment. (It makes sense in context but is still ridiculous—I laughed so hard.) And I love this moment where Coco assures Carey, “You’re Wayne Rooney, only it’s like, you’re a woman,” and Karl leans in to clarify, “She doesn’t mean that like literally.” Oh, honey!

Joel Fry is great in this role. Even though he’s only in one or two scenes per episode and Karl is a bit of a one-joke character, he’s still both funny and endearing. Justice for Karl!

Joel Fry-days / Other Doctor Lives: Twenty Twelve: Series 2, Episode 5 – “Catastrophisation” (2012)

Look, I’m not ashamed to admit that my interest in Twenty Twelve shoots up dramatically when Joel Fry is in the episode. No disrespect to David Tennant, whose narration is always enjoyable, but I’m 100% in this for Fry/Karl from here until the end of the series.

We’ve done a time jump—it’s now four weeks out from the Games, assorted characters have different hairstyles, and last-minute concerns are being addressed. Ian and Graham attend planning meetings on security and “catastrophisation,” headed up by high-ranking members of the Metropolitan police and recently joined by an American delegation there to iron out security arrangements for Michelle Obama. After previous bids fell apart, Kay is now scrambling to find a permanent use for the Olympic Stadium after the Games, and Siobhan and her team are tasked with rebranding an information packet to assist with public transit during the Olympics.

Shoutout to Ian as he tries to lead a distracted commission through a busy breakfast meeting. He tells them, “I just wanted to get ahead of the game a bit, or should I say ahead of the Games?”, after which he pauses and glances around the table, then awkwardly continues with his agenda when nobody acknowledges the joke. He has his hands full with the catastrophisation committee as well. Not only are they trying to reassure the Americans that all security issues are under control, they’re also dealing with a rash of incidents involving starter pistols that have been doctored to fire live rounds. And Graham’s presence at important meetings has never been all that helpful.

Several episodes ago, Kay and Fi were fighting over the future of the Stadium from a sustainability vs. legacy perspective, but now it’s the hot potato that no one wants. Kay is scraping the bottom of the barrel, variously courting a rinky-dink football club and a dog track. When she informs one man, “Sustainability isn’t actually about easy solutions, it’s not about being popular,” he replies, right on cue, “Oh, you might be all right then.”

Some nice David Tennant narration lines today. Here are my favorites:

• “Aware of the crucial importance of the occasion, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Crane has come up with what amounts to nothing short of a statistical breakdown.”
• “When Walthamston Greyhound Racing Track finally closed in 2008, it was the final straw for lifelong Irishman Brian McLoughlin” – I just love that character description!

Our character of the week is Barney Lumsden, played by Alex Beckett. He’s another member of Siobhan’s PR team, her “information architect.” I hadn’t realized it, but he actually appeared back at the start of the show too, with the launch of the Olympics website. I’m highlighting Barney today because he’s on my shit list for his treatment of Karl.

The dynamic with Siobhan’s team is much the same as it was in episode 3. They’re in two scenes instead of one this time, but we follow similar comedic beats: the team pitches their ideas to Siobhan, riffing as they go, until they hit upon something she likes. Barney explains the problem with the information packet, saying, “What we found is, with words, you get too many of them, what happens is, you get like this blehhhh.” Meanwhile, Siobhan reassures them that the whole point is coming up with a catchy enough title that people don’t feel the need to actually read the packet. She likens it to airplane safety instructions: “They’ve got shit like buckles and, I dunno, whistles and stuff. And they’re having a good time, everything’s cool. I don’t need to listen to this—I’m good.”

Karl’s dynamic within the team is the same as well. Barney and Coco, the third member of the team, energetically riff, complimenting each other’s ideas and feeding off each other, while for the most part Karl just quietly repeats key words and tacks on the odd “yeah.” Because every time he does timidly put forth an idea of his own? Barney immediately dismisses in a faux-nice way that feels condescending. Here, when Karl offers a different spin on one of their branding ideas, Barney turns to him and says, “Yeah, that doesn’t actually mean anything?” (He always shoots Karl down with this lilting “statement in the tone of a question” voice.)

This is Karl’s second episode, and I’m not saying I’ve reached the “I’ve only had Arlo for a day-and-a-half” stage, but I have a lot of affection for this guy. Joel Fry’s performance is endearing and quietly funny and the way Barney treats Karl is already making me mad. While it’s true that his ideas aren’t always good, Barney and Coco’s aren’t either—they just have the good fortune to be the sort of bad ideas that Siobhan loves. But Barney never critiques anything Coco suggests, only Karl and always Karl. This man can’t add a single thing to the conversation without Barney telling him it doesn’t work. Contrast that with Siobhan, who actually is a semi-helpful manager during this pitch session. She recognizes ideas she likes, and when she hears things that are off the mark, she steers them in a better direction: that’s too many words, that’s too short, that’s too serious. In this scene, she encourages creativity by using the wrong idea as a jumping-off point to find something better. But whenever Karl tries to speak, Barney stops the idea in its tracks so there’s nowhere for it to go.

Which leads me to an important point: critiquing Karl isn’t Barney’s job! Barney’s not his boss, Siobhan is, and Siobhan doesn’t talk to any member of her team, including Karl, like that. I can’t tell if Karl’s actually an anxious person or if he’s just had it drummed into him because Barney jumps down his throat every time he plucks up the courage to open his mouth. Also, I imagine the show’s not intending this, but I don’t ignore the fact that Karl is the only Black person in the room—the only recurring BIPOC in the show, in fact—and it’s a bad look for Barney to incessantly nitpick his Black coworker. Just let my man talk, good grief!