Before we get started, an unfortunate note about The Awful Stuff: I'm gutted that Joel Fry is involved in the Harry Potter audiobooks. It doesn't matter that his role is small, and I'm not here to make excuses for him or speculate about how much he did/didn't know about JK Rowling when he said yes. It sucks, I hate it, and I will never listen to him in it. I would've hoped that none of the Our Flag Means Death folks would ever be involved in that world, and it's so bitterly disappointing that it was him. For me personally, I see him as a phenomenal actor who made a very bad decision, and for now, I'm going to continue enjoying his work and hope this trash move was a one-off that he'll learn from.
Man, I know I sound like a broken record, but this show is just so good. To date, I’ve seen one episode that was “eh” and one that was “come on, show, I know you can do better than that”—the rest have all been superb! What’s more, these episodes are all pretty consistently great for Joel Fry. Early in the show, I’d be like, “Ooh, a Darren-centric episode!”, but honestly, Darren nearly always has some excellent focus, and this latest episode is no exception.
When Ollie runs into an old ex and agrees to meet up for a drink later, he doesn’t realize at first that he’s accidentally made a date. Tony, meanwhile, is preparing to go on his first date in decades, with a little help from Emma. And while everyone else is dealing with romantic drama, Darren is dealing with an intense relationship of a different kind: the teacher who tormented him as a teenager is now their client.
First of all, as an aroace who almost never knows when people are flirting with me, I feel for Ollie here. After he makes plans to get together with his ex Jasmine, there’s a great bit where they part ways and Ollie steps out of frame, then comes back in and just stares after her for a moment like, Wait, did we just…? Finally, he shakes his head and says, “...No,” to himself, although he isn’t as convinced as he thinks he is. I also love how, once he realizes that this is a date, his attempts to fix it just keep making it worse.
Of course, this poses an added problem for Ollie that I don’t have to deal with in these kinds of situations. Emma is his girlfriend now (did I ever mention that? They’re officially dating this season,) and he definitely doesn’t want word about his “date” to get back to her. In his flailing efforts to get ahead of his mistake, Ollie’s storyline intersects with the Tony-Emma plot in delightfully farcical ways. The show does a nice job with the classic “two people don’t realize they’re having two different conversations” gag without pushing the dialogue too far outside the realm of plausibility.
Another byproduct of Ollie running around trying to fix his misunderstanding with Jasmine? He winds up having to “pop out” for a bit on the job, leaving Darren alone with his former teacher Mr. Smolcock. This is very definitely a recipe for disaster.
Much of the focus here is on Darren’s desire to get revenge on his “vindictive bastard” of a teacher. As soon as he hears the client’s name, he warns Ollie, “If this turns out to be Patrick Smolcock who taught me in school, I’ll smash his face in, man.” And yep, he does just that. While Ollie is still at the house, he chews Darren out and warns him to calm down, and before he leaves, he tells Darren to “be good.” The tension becomes about whether Darren can keep it together or if he’ll lose it. There’s a kinda cheesy recurring bit where Darren’s anger at Mr. Smolcock is shown through a soundtrack of evil laughter and facial expressions that suggest Darren’s trying to avoid hulking out—it’s a rare instance where it feels like Joel Fry’s performance is going for the joke of the emotions rather than the honesty of them, though he’s clearly doing what he’s meant to in these moments.
Really, though, Darren comes by his hatred for his old teacher very honestly. Mr. Smolcock himself admits, “I caused Darren hell,” and, “I pretty much used him as a punch bag for my frustrations.” Darren specifically says that Mr. Smolcock bullied him in high school, not that he was strict or overly punitive, and what we see of them together bears that out.
Because for all of his apologies and peace offerings, Mr. Smolcock quickly falls into his old patterns once they’re alone together. Darren is really trying his best here: he repeatedly urges himself to calm down, he takes deep breaths, and he even calls Ollie when he needs “talking down off the ledge.” Mr. Smolcock, though, isn’t trying at all. He nitpicks and second-guesses all the work Darren does, and he insults Darren’s taste in music after reminiscing about confiscating Darren’s Walkman in high school. For a man who just got punched by one of his former students, who admitted that Darren has a very good reason to still be angry with him, Mr. Smolcock is making no genuine effort to be anything other than a bully.
Besides the goofy “trying to resist hulking out” bits, I really love how Fry portrays Darren’s emotional reactions throughout this episode. When he first confronts Mr. Smolcock, we see the same pent-up anger that Darren displays during his argument with Ollie in the series 1 finale, restlessly pacing like he just doesn’t know what to do with it. And also like the series 1 finale, we see how much that anger is threaded through with hurt: the way he flinches a little when Mr. Smolcock touches him, his thousand-mile stare when his old teacher is making fun of the music he likes. Plenty of people in this episode, Darren included, are concerned about whether or not he can “control himself” around Mr. Smolcock, like Darren’s behavior is the chief issue. But I can’t help feeling bad that he’s put in this position at all, especially when Ollie leaves him to deal with it on his own.
One good detail I haven’t mentioned in all this is that Mr. Smolcock is a wheelchair user. Ollie has a trademark Nondisabled Person’s Awkward Reaction, complete with trying to force unwanted “help” on Mr. Smolcock and calling him brave. But while Darren hates the man with a fiery passion, he 100% just treats Mr. Smolcock like a person, which Ollie certainly doesn’t. When Ollie says that, because Mr. Smolcock is disabled, it makes Darren punching him even worse, Darren argues, “Oh, that’s discrimination, that is!”” He goes on to add, “If Osama bin Laden had been in a wheelchair, would you have been like, ‘Oh no, special ops, don’t shoot him in the face, he’s in a wheelchair!’”
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