Other Doctor Lives / Joel Fry-days: W1A: Series 2, Episode 1 (2015)

Onto series 2 now, and with it Joel Fry’s only appearance in the season. I wish we were seeing Fry/Karl again sooner, but this hour-long season premiere is pretty decent all around, beyond just his couple of scenes.

The BBC is gearing up for a visit from Prince Charles ahead of their licensing renewal. But as they prepare, they also have to deal with the possibility of the BBC losing their exclusive airing rights to Wimbledon. Lucy is still trying to help Dan get Home Truths off the ground, and when Will’s ID badge stops working to let him into the building, an awkward realization comes to light about his internship.

Our character of the week is Izzy Gould, Simon’s PA. Will has an obvious crush on her—he likes to swoop in and volunteer to do her busy work for her, but unfortunately, he has a tendency to fumble the assignments. Izzy is diligent, competent, and kindhearted. Will often manages to just create more work for her, but like Ian, she’s concerned to learn why his pass isn’t working and is nice to him through the whole thing.

Ahead of Prince Charles’s visit, a minor security concern triggers an automatic lockdown. The whole thing kind of reminds me of the early Twenty Twelve episode with the disastrous bus trip to the Olympic park. Similarly, this storyline features a bunch of British people in suits who have an important appointment that they’re valiantly trying to be on time for, but events outside their control keep conspiring against them. As Ian and the others struggle to find a way out of the building, they’re blocked at every turn.

I think the show does a good job with how frustrating it is to get the BBC to commit to picking up a script. The meeting Lucy and Dan go to is just painful. It’s obvious that the exec they’re talking to barely knows anything about the project at all and basically just wants to put his “stamp” on it to feel like he’s done something. This amounts to him demanding random script changes from Dan, who’s anxious to comply with anything that’s asked of him, while Lucy’s frustration mounts.

A few good bits from David Tennant’s narration today:

• I like the phrasing here, nicely executed with Tennant’s matter-of-fact delivery – “Producer Lucy Freeman has arrived with just enough time to snatch a quick breakfast on her own. But nevertheless, entertainment format executive David Wilkes is keen to ask her advice about an idea he’s been asked to have.”
• Here’s our introduction to Dave, the BBC’s head of security, who’s in charge of managing Prince Charles’s visit safely – “Dave is not only responsible for the fail-safe security system that completely surrounds New Broadcasting House, but also personally devised much of the Syncopaticurity software that makes it theoretically effective in almost any theoretical circumstance.”
• “By the end of the day, it’s time to go home” – The show does lines like this a lot, but they still make me smile.
• As the shit is hitting the fan, lockdown-wise, we get, “But suddenly, as can sometimes happen on days when nothing can go wrong, it does.”

For the Wimbledon situation, Siobhan suggests a brand mashup, making Wimbledon synonymous with the BBC. That’s where today’s pitch session comes in: Siobhan gets her team to play a game of “mashup (table) tennis,” hitting the ball back and forth as they offer their ideas. As usual, poor Karl! Siobhan has a team of three, and as soon as Karl picks up a paddle, Barney complains, “No, but it’s like a singles. Otherwise it doesn’t work.” Karl, confused, tries to join Coco’s end of the table, but Barney doesn’t want him there, either. Finally, Coco suggests he be the ball boy instead.

As usual, Barney is doing way too much, jumping straight to criticizing Karl and excluding him for no reason. Nobody is playing an actual table tennis match here, so it doesn’t matter if it’s two-on-one. But Barney makes sure Karl is pushed off to the side. And when Karl points out the flaw in Barney’s idea to have David Attenborough referee the matches, saying, “Because what if, er, David Attenborough doesn’t know the rules of tennis, or, like, how to score?”, Barney argues briefly before coldly telling Karl, “You’re a ball boy, okay?” Shut up, Barney!

God, the way Joel Fry plays Karl is just so painfully real. The way he tries to chip in but all his suggestions fall flat, and even innocuous comments are derided or dismissed. The way he can’t read the room well enough to keep up with the fast-paced pitching. The way he stands, holding his arm behind his back as he tries to speak. I like watching his episodes because Karl is so funny and sweet, but they also make me sad because he’s treated so badly at work.

Y tu Luna también: Maya and the Three: Episode 8 – “The Bat and the Owl” (2021)

*A few spoilers.*

This one doesn’t quite bring Big Penultimate Episode Energy, but it’s still pretty darn good. Rather than being the episode to ramp up the drama higher than ever, it’s more like the calm between storms—our heroes got knocked around hard in the last episode, and now is the moment for them to gather themselves and consider the final battle to come.

After getting rescued from Lord Mictlan by an unexpected source in the last episode, Maya and her friends are scrambling to catch their breaths. Maya blames herself for their losses, and she’s at her lowest point. With doubts creeping in, she doesn’t know if she can bear to put her friends in danger again. But Lord Mictlan is coming for her one way or another, so she has to decide what she’s going to do.

That summary is very Maya-centric, but that doesn’t mean the other characters don’t get in on the action. We learn a lot more about Lady Micte, which deals a lot with Maya’s past but also gives us further insights into Lady Micte herself There’s also some lovely friendship stuff between the gang—Chimi’s ferocious protectiveness really gets me—and we get a pretty awesome tag-teamed speech rousing the troops for war.

And despite the well-earned heaviness going on here, there’s still some humor as well, especially back in Teca. We get this fun modern-family dynamic going on, where the king and queen have the goddess of death over for dinner and Maya gets a glimpse of what having two mothers is like. The jokes are welcome, because there’s a lot of pain here, regret and doubt and mourning. Luckily, this miniseries is about nothing if not the fact that people are stronger together, and Maya’s friends do their best to encourage their not-quite-fearless leader to lean on them.

Really nice scenes for Zatz in this episode. In addition to getting the opening flashback, there’s a beautiful scene between him and Maya. Both suffered harsh losses in the last episode, and both comfort each other here—as warriors, friends, and maybe more, relating to each other about grief and saying goodbye. For his part, Zatz is still sad but less raw than Maya, and Diego Luna brings a nice sensitivity to these moments of Zatz quietly coming toward peace and trying to help Maya find it as well.

He also gets in on the rousing battle speech, and there’s a delightfully cute bit between him and Maya near the end of the episode. As a general rule, I’m always prepared for a show/film to give me more Luna, but Maya and the Three has done a nice job of optimizing Zatz’s screentime—he’s not always on screen a lot, but the scenes he has are consistently strong.

Joel Fry-days: Diggers (2023)

This is an odd little short, more about mood/notion than tangible story. It’s also the shortest one I’ve watched so far, with the credits starting right around the six-and-a-half-minute mark. So yeah, this review may very well be longer than the short itself.

Two men walk into the woods to dig a hole. In between their work, they discuss their lives.

As I said, not much in the way of a story here. Certain questions are left ambiguous, and certain surprises pop up late in the game. For the most part, though, this is just a little piece between these two characters, with the question of the hole they’re digging widening amid their gentle banter. Joel Fry and Cary Crankson (the other actor in this short) both get a story credit alongside the writer/director. Not sure if that means they were actually writing it together or if it means a fair amount of the dialogue is improvised.

But for all that there’s not a lot here, I still found myself liking it. It put me in the mind of Shakespearian grave diggers, or maybe Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Watching them dig and talk, there’s some softly pleasant humor as they misunderstand each other, and they hint a little at the philosophical of the mundane. Not I think this approaches the feat of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, obviously, but that’s the vibe I got.

Joel Fry plays Griffin. From the banter, we know more facts about him than we do about the other digger, Michaels. Griffin’s been saying for years that he’s going to quit smoking, he’s a relatively new dad, and his wife makes him put piccalilli on his sandwiches. These small details give us a bit of a snapshot of this man, while the tone and tenor of Fry’s performance gives some texture to those details. 

Griffin is dwelling heavily on how being a dad changes things for him, but he balks when Michaels asks him about fatherhood. “Well, when you say ‘fatherhood,’ it makes it sound like I’ve been doing it for ages,” he counters. “It’s only been six months.” He’s not able to engage with the question until Michaels amends it to “dadness.”

Accent Watch

London.

Recommend?

In General – Maybe. I like the feel of it.

Joel Fry – Maybe. It’s not a must, but I enjoy what he does here.

Warnings

Thematic elements.