Other Doctor Lives: W1A: Series 1, Episode 4 (2014)

*Spoilers from episode 3, as well as the end of Twenty Twelve*

Okay, you know what? The series 1 finale is actually pretty good. Stuff happens! Some good narration from David Tennant too. Might be a low bar, but I enjoyed it. And while I think it makes a difference that we get more direct ties to Twenty Twelve here, that’s only part of it.

The newspaper article about Ian is more than just harping on his (apparently exorbitant) salary. It also details allegations that he misused funds when he was on the Olympic Deliverance Commission, and the whole thing is turning into both a professional and personal shitstorm. Lucy is languishing on Britain’s Tastiest Village, which has become a bit of mess, when she really wants to be working on the comedy-drama script she pitched alongside the show’s writer in episode 3. Siobhan brings Barney to the BBC to present their ideas for the logo rebrand.

When Ian’s time with the commission was nearing its end, he’d mentioned to Sally that he was interested in taking a holiday in Italy when it was all over. Sally being Sally, she went above and beyond, planning the whole trip for him—that’s where the allegations came from, because she all did this while she was on the clock. What’s more, at the last minute, Ian invited Sally to come with him to Italy. Now the whole story is being dragged through the press, including pictures of Sally, and reporters are waiting outside the BBC for Ian every morning.

Ian responds to this with some of his usual fecklessness. His attempt to send Sally an apology bouquet backfires in a big way, and there’s an entertaining scene where Ian has to sit listening to all the higher ups spitball figures on reasonable reductions to his salary. But at the same time, this experience helps Ian discover a bit of backbone and ingenuity. We see him taking some much-needed proactive steps here, on behalf of himself and another character.

Our character of the week is Simon Harwood, played by Jason Watkins. Simon is the BBC’s Director of Strategic Governance—he’s who most characters in the show report to on a day-to-day basis, although there’s a Big Boss who gets namedropped. His main quirks are 1) passing duties onto someone else and 2) enthusiastically agreeing with the person who last spoke, regardless of how much they contradict the previous person he agreed with.

It’s clear that Britain’s Tastiest Village has all but collapsed due to its various complications, yet it’s still limping along. If Lucy’s heart was ever in it, she’s completely over it now. And Siobhan and Barry’s presentation is amusing. They manage to accidentally reinvent the Star of David, so Siobhan evidently doesn’t know any more about religions than she did on Twenty Twelve.

After being a little down on David Tennant’s narration in the first three episodes, this is honestly a good episode for him. He’s got some funny lines in the season finale! Here are my favorites:

• When Ian gets to the BBC in the morning, a gaggle of reporters are waiting outside for him – “He’s already late for work, but he’s about to discover he’s not as late yet as he’s eventually going to be.”
• There’s a minor subplot about concerns over the wardrobe of a female news commentator “who’s been accused of wearing clothes that are inappropriately watchable” – good line!
• This sums up the state of affairs with Britain’s Tastiest Village – “Despite Lucy’s concerns about the basic premise of the show itself, the question of who’s going to present it is much more important than that.”
• This line cracked me up – “Elaine Pearson walks Ian through some of the advantages of cutting his current salary (which we are unable to reveal here for ethical reasons) to a level comparable with someone who earns a lot less than that.”

Y tu Luna también: Maya and the Three: Episode 7 – “The Divine Gate” (2021)

*Episode premise spoilers.*

I didn’t review episode 6, which doesn’t have Diego Luna in it, but I still recommend watching it, especially for its terrific fight sequence. But moving along, episode 7 comes at you hard. It brings emotion, action, and comedy, all served up with fantastic animation and strong character work.

Maya and the Three are finally prepared for the great task the prophecy has called them to: passing through the Divine Gate to do battle with the gods. Despite worries and nerves, all the warriors have faith in each other and their own skills, and Maya is champing at the bit to take on Lord Mictlan. But the god of war is like nothing they’ve ever faced before.

Even before we get to the big fight, this episode has all kinds of goodness going for it. Just getting the Divine Gate to open for a group of still-corporeal mortals is a tall order. I love the various ways the gang tries to open the gate, from Picchu pummeling it with a “puma punch” to Rico trying to bribe it open, and the true key to opening the gate is wonderfully done.

This is also as good a time as any to mention Ah Puch, a forest spirit voiced by the incomparable Rita Moreno. Ah Puch provides guidance to Maya throughout the miniseries, but her kookiness and architectural feat of a hairstyle keep her from feeling too much like a wise/spiritual plot device. After popping in and out of the story a lot to check in on Maya, I like seeing her meet the others here, approaching each of them on their level.

Onto the main event. When the heroes face off against the Big Bad in episode 7 of a 9-episode miniseries, you know things aren’t going to go awesome. The crew takes a hard hit in this one, and the stakes are very real. As Lord Mictlan wages war against Maya and her friends in the way that only he can, it’s interesting to see some of the interplay between the gods. Lord Mictlan has always been one to rule through fear and intimidation, and in private, plenty of the gods aren’t as loyal as they profess to be, instead looking out for themselves above all else. As such, I like watching their reaction to seeing this demigod and her human friends taking on the big boss.

Some nice Zatz material in this one. When our heroes get to the underworld, it’s time for Zatz to decide once and for all who he’s fighting for, and that leads to some strong interactions. (He’s so goth and so chivalrous, I love it.) The battle has very personal stakes for him too, and Diego Luna imbues his lines with so much feeling.

On another note, a very young Zatz makes a cameo in the opening flashback, which deals with the circumstances of Maya’s birth. As Lord Mictlan rages to Lady Micte about why she brought this demigod into the world, it’s affecting to see little Zatz hiding behind his dad. He already has his eyepatch, so you know this kid’s been through it.

Other Doctor Lives / Joel Fry-days: W1A: Series 1, Episode 3 (2014)

We’ve made it—we’re at Joel Fry’s first episode of W1A! By the time he showed up on Twenty Twelve, he was in most of the rest of the series, but here, his appearances are a little more scattered. Unless things pick up, I’m guessing this is mostly gonna be a “go through the motions between Joel Fry scenes” series.

The BBC gets wind of a forthcoming newspaper article dealing with executive salaries—namely, Ian’s salary, and he’s dismayed to learn that he’s the one who’s supposed to write a statement in support of himself. Lucy has been working with a young writer, Dan, on developing a new dramedy, and the day has come for them to meet with the higher-ups and see if they can get the BBC to move forward with it. Will the intern’s plan to get closer to the PA he has a crush on backfires on him.

Will is our character of the week, played by Hugh Skinner. He’s a pretty quintessential intern character, inattentive and useless. He has a very obvious crush on Izzy, one of the PAs, and in this episode, he jumps at the chance to help her with a tedious but crucial job. Unfortunately for him, it turns out he’s not volunteering to work on this with her. Rather, he’s freeing her up for other tasks she has to get done. Womp womp!

There is some amusing stuff here. I enjoy the humor about the wildly impractical BBC office—in this episode, we see people perching on precariously-high chairs and sitting down to talk on one of the random colorful seesaws(???) in the office. And I feel for Lucy as she tries to get Dan through this painfully circuitous meeting. When one of the higher-ups tells Dan that his script seems “a bit long,” we get this exchange:

LUCY: “I mean, do you want to put a bit of detail on that, Matt?” 

MATT: “No, sure.” 

LUCY: “Just to help Dan get a sense of, you know, what you mean.” 

MATT: “Yeah, no, sure.”

And after he talks entirely out of his ass for a while, she points out that the script he’s holding is actually two episodes. Lucy is definitely giving off “only grownup in the room” vibes, and she’s a person who’s trying to make things happen.

As opposed to most everybody else, who’s largely trying to act as if they know what they’re talking about. About a month in, it’s still not entirely clear what Ian’s job as head of values actually is. And that’s part of the joke, of course, along with part of the reason his high salary is such a sticking point. But he’s far from the only person who takes a “fake it ‘til you make it” approach to busking their way through a meeting.

And while I get that the show is skewering needless bureaucracy—Twenty Twelve did too—it can be really frustrating to watch numerous conversations where no one is actually saying anything. So far, it feels like W1A has even less physical plot to hang onto. Twenty Twelve, on the whole, has the more tangible goal of the Olympics that it’s building towards, although that show gets very recursive by the end as well. With W1A, we’re starting at the level where Twenty Twelve ended, and the whole thing threatens to turn into a big dialogue ouroboros.

The same sort of applies to David Tennant’s narration as well. While he still gets some clever lines, more of his dialogue is feeling repetitive or self-explanatory. Here a couple bits I liked, though:

• “By 10:00 at night, New Broadcasting House is virtually empty, except for those people who are still there” – See what I mean?
• “If it hasn’t exactly been a good day for producer Lucy Freeman, for Ian it’s been worse than good, and it’s about to get worse than bad” – But this is a genuinely fun one!

And then, we have Siobhan and her team. She brought up the idea of refreshing the BBC logo, and now, it’s time for another pitch session. These too are also fairly predictable, although Siobhan’s team is less likely to say nothing than they are to say nonsense, albeit with lots of “likes” thrown in as fillers.

So the team’s BBC logo pitch isn’t dramatically different from their Olympics/Diamond Jubilee collaboration pitch or their women’s football ad campaign pitch. But the important thing is that these scenes—just the one in this episode—give us Karl. Call me a hypocrite, but I don’t mind that the same joke gets hammered over and over again when Joel Fry’s line deliveries and reaction shots are involved.

As usual, Barney and Coco are talking the whole meeting, and whenever Karl tries to speak, he’s either shot down or stared at. His notions are often a little out of step with his colleagues—when Coco is riffing on, “What if the BBC were a fruit?”, imagining what kind of fruit it would be, Karl tries to offer, “Yeah, maybe a kind of cheese.” He also tends to be a bit behind, chiming in right as everyone else comes to the unspoken agreement of, we’re not doing that anymore. There’s a great moment where Barney is talking about how the BBC needs to lose all the letters in its logo to look more like an app, saying, “Yeah, it’s like, it’s not Jane Austen here, guys. Get real. It’s an iPad, get an iCon.” Karl is so pleased with himself for adding, “That’s why we had an iDea,” so much so that he repeats it for emphasis when Barney tries to move on. He’s just darling, and I love him!

Also, look at this man’s shoes and socks! I’m “meh” on W1A, but Karl is as perfect as ever.