*Episode premise spoilers*
It’s interesting—Twenty Twelve paints Ian as a well-meaning but largely ineffectual man trying to steer a massive ship. Faced with some crises, he just kind of dithers. At other times, he’s doing his best but hamstrung by idiots or unable to corral people pulling things in different directions for their own self-serving purposes. On the occasions when he does get a win, it’s often by the skin of his teeth. But on W1A, he’s gradually emerging as both a savvy and considerate leader. While this is partly just in comparison to some of the useless execs he’s surrounded by, it’s not only that.
Anna has been officially named Director of Better, head of the new BBC Better initiative. Pretty much everyone—Anna included—still doesn’t know what that actually means. But Siobhan is going full steam ahead on a lavish launch party anyway. Meanwhile, thanks to Will’s habit of attracting technical glitches, Ian gets a sneak peek at Simon’s planned restructuring of the BBC’s executives.
At this point, everyone is sort of playing chicken with the whole BBC Better thing, or maybe it’s an Emperor’s New Clothes situation. Nobody knows what it is, but nobody wants to admit they don’t know, so they all just kind of pretend to know what they’re talking about. This is trickiest for Anna, who’s supposed to be giving a speech at the launch. Since she’s vaguely aware that Better will have some oversight on the other departments, she resorts to asking other execs to type up “a few thoughts” and send them to her.
Our character of the week is entertainment format producer David Wilkes, played by Rufus Jones. He’s Lucy’s colleague with the trite, half-formed reality show ideas, and a regular dynamic between them is for him to casually compliment her hair/outfit/etc. while she waits to hear what he actually wants from her. She’s been his cleanup batter since the start of the series, taking his mess and making some sense of it, and now he’s failing upward on the strength of the help she’s given him. When it comes to race, Twenty Twelve doesn’t get much more advanced than “these white people don’t know what they’re talking about, but they’re desperate to prove they’re not racist,” but W1A is doing a decent job of quietly showing how Lucy is treated like an underappreciated workhorse at the BBC. She struggles to get her own projects off the ground but is always expected to come in and save other people’s.
Like I said, Ian has been kind of coming into his own on this show. Ever since the series 1 finale, when he figured out the magic formula to make things happen, he’s been doing pretty well for himself. More than once, we’ve seen him finagle his way around the managerial mud pit. Simon has taken to passive-aggressively calling him “Captain Values,” and when Ian gets a look at Simon’s restructuring, he’s able to get the jump on him. Additionally, Ian’s own title as Head of Values is sort of nebulous too, but he does take it seriously. His values are displayed in how he cares about others. Although, like the others, he can get caught up in jockeying for position, those concerns often fall away when someone really needs help. When that happens, he prioritizes just being there for them.
Here are my favorite David Tennant narration lines from this episode:
- Nice euphemism for Will accidentally swapping his schedule with Ian’s on their respective tablets – “In his new official capacity as assistant to the Head of Values, Will is already making a big difference to Ian’s working life.”
- More Syncopatico jokes, whose convenient “you can print from anywhere in the building!” is less convenient when it doesn’t tell you which printer it sent your document to – “Ian is one of the many people in New Broadcasting House who’ve been brought closer together by the BBC’s cutting-edge new Syncopatiprint technology.”
- Classic Twenty Twelve/W1A phrasing – “By 6:00, it’s time for the 6:00 news.”
No comments:
Post a Comment