Relationship Spotlight: Bertie Wooster & Reginald Jeeves (Jeeves and Wooster)

Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie got up to such wonderful work throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s that it’s hard to pinpoint the funniest stuff or the best moments, but their comedic chemistry in this Masterpiece adaption of P.G. Wodehouse’s stories is definitely up there.  Between the playful writing and the pitch-perfect performances, these two characters made the series something special.

Jeeves enters Bertie’s life when the blithely irresponsible rich man about town – plagued by meddlesome aunts and allergic to work – is brought before a judge over a drunken prank.  A “gentleman’s gentleman,” Jeeves is sent by an agency to be Bertie’s manservant.  His impact is felt the instant he arrives, thanks to his foolproof hangover cure, and despite Bertie’s insistence that he’s “not one of those fellows who become absolute slaves to their valets,” Jeeves is soon subtly running the show.

This is most evident, of course, in Jeeves’s many stratagems.  Between inheritance troubles, love woes, and social snafus, Bertie and his friends, all of whom have more gumption than sense, regularly get themselves into all manner of scrapes.  Pre-Jeeves, it seems Bertie has always been the one his chums turn to for solutions to their problems, and he prides himself on his overcomplicated, almost invariably-disastrous schemes.  So, it becomes a point of contention when Jeeves begins helpfully pointing out the flaws in Bertie’s plans – even worse when his friends start choosing Jeeves’s ideas over his own.  Bertie is both stubborn and self-assured enough that he always goes through with his endeavor first, despite Jeeves’s misgivings, but by mid-episode, he’s usually in dire need of Jeeves to save him from himself.

I like that Jeeves throws himself so devotedly and seriously into Bertie’s outlandish quandaries.  Unlike the silly, frivolous Bertie, Jeeves is a stiff, buttoned-up man who’s always interested in doing things properly, and his crisp, plummy diction sounds even more precise alongside Bertie’s easy, offhand slang.  Odd-couple comparisons are probably inevitable, but Jeeves doesn’t live eternally exasperated by the ridiculousness in which Bertie constantly finds himself.  Rather, he truly enjoys playing the strategist, no matter how inane the problem; sometimes, he even stirs the pot intentionally, bringing things to the brink of crisis before swooping in to save the day.

Often, this is to strike an advantageous deal with Bertie.  The two frequently get into minor battles over assorted issues; Jeeves takes particular exception to many of the less-than-gentlemanly articles of clothing Bertie buys in haphazard attempts to be in vogue.  (One of my favorite moments is when, upon discovering that Bertie has packed an especially offensive jacket in his luggage, Jeeves maintains, “I assumed it had got into your wardrobe by mistake, sir, or else that it had been placed there by your enemies.”)  As Bertie sinks deeper into a dilemma, Jeeves will hold on to the ace up his sleeve until Bertie is desperate enough to bargain away the sartorial affront.  In the end, the master is usually left scratching his head, wondering how the manservant wound up getting his way.  However, though Jeeves often lets Bertie flounder, he always comes through eventually, and like I said, I don’t think either would have it any other way.  When they clash to such an extent that they temporarily part ways, Bertie misses Jeeves’s stability and advice, and Jeeves misses Bertie’s predicaments and maneuvers.