The Thick of It: Series 4, Episode 5 (2012)

 

Final three episodes of The Thick of It.  Just as a heads up, it’s going to be like the last few days of Neverwhere around the ole blog, in that the details will be much harder to come by.  More than any other, the show’s last season follows a very definite trajectory, and there are major plot developments flying left and right.  I’ll try and be as River Song as I can about spoilers.

 

The day of reckoning Malcom launched in the last episode tremors through the whole of this one, sending aftershocks as everyone begins to realize things about to get much worse.  Jamie once likened the British political machine to “plague pits,” the implication being that no one’s hands are clean and no one has the right to act superior.  However, getting one’s hands dirty in plague pits also has the nasty tendency to get one killed by the plague.  While no one’s life is physically in danger in this episode (although I wouldn’t have been surprised if Malcolm had had a heart attack,) all of their careers are very much at risk.  The stakes keep piling higher and higher until they’re all anyone can see by episode’s end.

 

Another character added for series 4 is Fergus Williams, junior minister.  I’ve not mentioned him before because most of his screentime so far has been in the Malcolm-less episodes I didn’t review.  But everyone is around for the remainder of the series, so I can talk about him now.  He’s a member of a third party that has formed a coalition with Peter Mannion’s crew.  He’s smug, thinks of himself as “innovative,” and can’t stand Peter (of course.)  The two spent a good part of episodes 1 and 3 trying to undercut one another.  Also, he has an incredibly goofy run that he wishes was as effortlessly hilarious as Malcolm’s.