Joel Fry-days: White Van Man: Series 2, Episode 2 – “The Break Up” (2012)

*Episode premise spoilers*

Oh my god, what a fantastic episode! Soooooo funny—I was howling! Some really terrific stuff here for Joel Fry/Darren.

When Ollie discovers that Darren is moonlighting for a rival handyman, he’s deeply hurt by the betrayal and forces Darren to choose between them. Darren chooses Andrzej, though he quickly learns it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Meanwhile, Emma tries to convince Ollie he’s just unloaded “dead weight” and promises to help him hire a much better assistant.

Many a sitcom has mined humor from framing a platonic relationship between two straight men as if it’s romantic, and this episode follows that trope pretty closely. After all, the episode is called “The Break Up,” and when Ollie bursts into the hardware store, angry that he’s been “cheated on,” Liz initially thinks he’s talking about Emma. There are only a couple of pointed gay jokes—Liz makes a Brokeback Mountain reference, then tries for Top Gun when Ollie doesn’t take the bait—but there aren’t any “no homo” moments.

There’s a major difference here compared to, say, J.D. and Turk or Cory and Shawn, and that’s that Ollie and Darren aren’t actually close friends. They’re a coworker comedy duo who spend a lot of time getting on each other’s nerves, and their most common dynamic involves Ollie failing to convince Darren to do any work. The “break up” between them is more about both guys not realizing what they had until it was gone, with the added “betrayal” aspect for Ollie. This brings a different tenor to the storyline. There’s less emphasis on “lol, Ollie and Darren are gay for each other!!” and more on using overt romantic beats to show Ollie missing his slacker assistant and Darren missing his cranky boss. The soundtrack gets in on this big time, and I love a wistful shot of both of them leaning against opposite sides of a fence.

This is such a fantastic episode for Joel Fry. Right from the start, Darren makes me laugh when he’s poking around a client’s pantry for food and asks Ollie, “Do I like oxtail soup?” He’s also really great in the scene where Ollie tries to get him to admit he’s been moonlighting, and I love Darren’s increasingly unsettled reactions to Andrzej’s over-the-top cheerfulness about his punishing work ethic. Also, Andrzej goes from zero to sixty in an instant—he tells Darren he’s like a son to him, which puts Darren in the crosshairs of his other assistant Jan. When Jan tells Darren it took six months for Andrzej to think of him as his son, we get this excellent exchange:

DARREN: “Six months isn’t so bad, you know, to be thought of as his son.” 

JAN: “I am his son!” 

DARREN: “What, biologically?” 

JAN: “Yes!!” 

DARREN: “Oh, right.”

The lines themselves might not seem like anything special, but when you pair Darren’s lowkey, slightly nervous energy with Jan’s manic agitation, it’s just great!

Side note: I’m glad to be reaffirmed here in my belief that, although Darren has a talent for avoiding work, he is actually a good handyman. I’ve said before that Darren is sharp and observant, and he used to work for Tony, who I don’t think would’ve put up with any shirking. I doubt Andrzej, who starts his work day earlier every time we see him, would put up with that either, so he wouldn’t have hired Darren unless he was good at his job. And losing Darren makes Ollie reflect on his skills, like when he tells his new assistant, “Darren had loads of mad tips like that. He’s like a…like a crazy genius.”

And holy crap, Joel Fry’s physicality! The man moves his body like a cartoon character, and I love it so much. This episode gives us 1) Darren standing stiffly bewildered while Ollie hugs him, 2) Darren scrabbling in vain to hoist himself over a fence, and 3) Darren literally “so pissed [he] can barely stand up,” staggering into a forward roll and then lying on his back with his legs in the air. Absolutely amazing, I adore it!

Y tu Luna también: 3Below: Season 2, Episode 7 – “Asteroid Rage” (2019)

*Episode premise spoilers.*

Every genre show eventually needs a good “forced to work with the enemy for a shared goal,” right? That’s what we get here, and the circumstances of the threat this time around mean it’s an excellent showcase for Krel/Diego Luna.

Slight issue: a massive asteroid is heading towards Earth, and it’s on track to hit Arcadia Oaks. Toby insists, “Ah, please, this is Aja and Krel! They can handle a flying space pebble, right?” The problem is, Mother’s systems are too damaged to deal with the asteroid. Meanwhile, Arena 49B has the necessary technology to build something that would do the job, but they don’t know how to use their stolen alien tech. Needs must when the devil drives, so our heroes agree to (temporarily) work with Area 49B in order to save the planet.

The uneasy alliance here is well done. Area 49B’s ignorance of their own scavenged technology reminds me of the Ninth Doctor examining the “weapons” in Van Statten’s collection in the new Who episode “Dalek.”: “Broken…broken…hairdryer….” Col. Kubritz is way out of her bigoted depth here, but to put one teeny shred of a point in her favor, at least she’s not too proud to admit that and reach out to the Akiridions for help.

Krel is at the center of this episode, but we get some good material from the other characters too. Aja has a really strong scene where she attempts to appeal to Tronos; the bounty hunter has made his own uneasy alliance with Area 49B, but the Tronos’s hatred of the Tarron family runs deep and he’s not eager to cooperate with them. And Toby and Eli tag along as Krel’s “team,” naturally bringing along the camera to keep shooting their movie. “Think about the production value!” Toby exclaims, before adding, “You know, if we survive.”

Briefly, our character of the day is Luug, voiced by Frank Welker. Luug is Aja and Krel’s pet. They call him a dog, and in his Earth disguise he looks like a Corgi, but he’s in fact an animal with glowing green eyes, a mouth that splits open like a Demogorgon, and laser farts. While he’s rarely instrumental to the plot, he’s a regular presence on the show and is always good for a bit of fun.

Since Area 49B needs help using their own advanced tech, Krel is the one they really want to ally with—everyone else is just part of the package deal. While Krel agrees with Varvatos and Aja that an alliance feels dicey, he points out, “But we’re out of good options here, and if the colonel has the resources we need, she may be our best bad choice.”

Krel is so much fun in this episode. I especially love his annoyance at Area 49B’s ineptitude. He interrupts an agent proposing an Armageddon-style solution with, “Please, stop! You’re embarrassing your entire species.” And as the agents offer tools for him to work with, he calls a wrench “an engineering abomination!” There’s also a really delightful montage of him working his technological magic, and we get appearances from Superior Krel and Stressed Out Krel, which is fun.

At this point, Luna’s vocal delivery is just so utterly Krel. He can take neutral or unremarkable lines and make them zing, and he never fails to entertain. I genuinely love his work on this show. 

Other Doctor Lives: Horrible Histories: The Movie – Rotten Romans (2019, TV-PG)

Okay, so Horrible Histories was a British kids’ show that did comedic sketches about various historical events. This is a feature-length movie they made about five years after the series ended. I haven’t seen any of the sketch show, so I’m not sure if the film included some of the same actors—I just know that Ncuti Gatwa only appears in this movie.

In ancient Rome, a studious young man named Atti is forced to join the army after he accidentally gets on Nero’s bad side. He’s sent to Britain, where the Celtic warrior Boudicca is urging the different tribes to join together and defeat the Romans. When Atti is captured by an aspiring young warrior named Orla, wouldn’t you know it, the two discover they might not be so different after all.

Knowing that this is an offshoot of a show geared toward kids makes sense. The comedy is fairly broad, relying a lot on character archetypes, easy jokes, and some gross-out humor. It’s fairly silly, and the story is flimsy. There are also a handful of so-so musical numbers that don’t add very much to the proceedings.

There are a number of Roman numeral jokes, like the trainer urging all the gladiators to “give it CX percent” in the arena. There’s a running gag of Nero trying to murder his mother—she’s ruled as his regent since they murdered Nero’s father, but now that he’s come of age, she’s reluctant to step aside and let him take his full power as emperor. One joke I do like is when someone explains to the Celts what a cat is: “It’s a Roman thing—like a small furry dog, only it doesn’t really like you. It just pretends to like you to get food.” Hehe!

A handful of familiar faces here, as there is with most anything British. Orla is played by Emilia Jones, who I first saw as a kid in the Eleventh Doctor story “The Rings of Akhaten,” but who more recently played the lead role in CODA. Her father is played by Nick Frost, while Katy Wix (Barbara from season 3 of Ted Lasso) appears in a small role as a “reporter” covering the Celtic warrior’s growing following. For the Roman characters, we’ve got Rupert Graves (who I know best as Lestrade on Sherlock) as a general who makes very self-important speeches with a lot of contradictory commands, and Warwick Davis pops up briefly as the gladiator trainer. And in another bit I like, Derek Jacobi has a cameo as Emperor Claudius, which is (I assume) a winking nod to his iconic role in I, Claudius.

Ncuti Gatwa has a small supporting role as Timidius, one of Atti’s pals in the army. For most of his screentime, he’s paired with another soldier named Dimidius. They’re the ones who notice Atti’s missing after he’s taken by Orla, and whenever we check back in with the soldiers, we mainly follow Timidius and Dimidius.

In their dynamic, Dimidius is the dumb/dim one—hence his name—so he gets the brunt of the jokes. This leaves Timidius as the slightly long-suffering straight man. But as we’ve seen from Doctor Who and Sex Education, Gatwa can definitely go big, but he can also go small and still be really effective. When they’re looking for Atti and Dimidius frets, “You don’t think he was eaten by a tiger?”, I like Timidius’s gently deadpan response, “I’m not sure there’s tigers in Britain.” He gives good Did you really just say that? face!

Accent Watch

Sounds like his usual Scottish to me.

Recommend?

In General – Eh, not really. Kids who are into historical comedy might be into it, but it wasn’t for me.

Ncuti Gatwa – Not a must. Gatwa’s performance here is cute and fun, but it’s a pretty small role and he doesn’t have that much to do.

Warnings

Violence, gross-out humor, and thematic elements.