Coupling – The Office – Enterprise – dvd 97

For once, the discs are in the right order, and at least two of these episodes follow straight on from yesterday’s disc.

First, Coupling – Unconditional Sex. The ‘Previously On’ is surprisingly long, over three minutes.

Jane pops into the bar. She’s been having trouble parking, particularly the reversing. “You spent 20 minutes reversing into a parking space?” “So far.”

Wilma offers Jeff Unconditional Sex. Steve: “It’s the unthinkable. It’s Satan with breasts.”

Wilma: “How can you possibly say no to a night of unconditional sex?” Susan: “Tell him, Steve. Tell him how.” Steve (after much pausing) “Jeff, no! It could be a trick.”

Jane comes back in from the parking. After a while someone asks. “Where is Patrick?”  Jane: “He’s standing behind my car, “guiding it in”. I don’t know how he expects that to work.” She looks at her keys. “Oh, now I get it!”

Enter Patrick, soaked, accompanied by a policeman. “Jane, could you please explain to this gentleman why I’ve been standing in the rain behind an empty car, shouting, ‘Park, you stupid bitch!'”. “Sorry, Officer, I forgot he can’t park on his own.”

Thanks to confusion from Jeff’s advisory council (mainly Jane actually) Jeff has told Wilma that his girlfriend is dead, so she’s backing off. But she gives him a lift home, then says she needs to use the toilet. More farce ensues as Jeff has to hide a picture of Julia. Wilma goes to the toilet, and Jeff listens to a message on his phone. It’s Julia saying she’s cancelled her trip as her flu is getting worse. “Can I crash at your place? It’s closer. See you shortly.” Now he has a time limit.

But he doesn’t realise that Julia is already there, asleep in the bed, and Wilma, walking out of the bathroom, notices her feet sticking out from the bottom the bed, and freaks out. To add to the comedy, Jeff hasn’t noticed them.

BBC Genome: BBC Two – 7th October 2002 – 21:30

Next, it’s The Office – Appraisals. “When IS the charity wank-athon?”

It’s time for appraisals. “We’re not trying to find out who the WORST people are.”  “We know who they are already. I’ve written them on my form.”

Brent tells Tim that going back to university is a waste of time for someone in his 30s. He’s so inspirational.

Dawn tells him about her aspirations to be a children’s illustrator. “Keep up the doodling…always, you know? Pipe dreams are good.”

There’s a fire drill, and Brent and Gareth take charge of a woman in a wheelchair. But halfway down the stairs they give up and leave her. “This isn’t worth it. In a real situation, we’d take her, but this is a drill.”

“Under weaknesses you put ‘eczema'”

Brent talks to the Swindon intake, and discovers that they prefer Neil to him. He takes them out to the pub so they can see how funny he is. The casual way he just wheels the woman in the wheelchair out to get to his chair is a nice, horrible bit of comedy.

The lunch is a bust for Brent and he returns to the office, to find Neil and the others having fun. He’s not happy about that. “Want to be popular, as the new boss? “Love me!” Pathetic!”

So Neil has to have a word with him. Neil: “Don’t speak to me like that in front of staff. Like a kid.” Brent: “Young at heart.”

Brent, of course, assures his people that he had the upper hand.

Gareth asks out the new girl, but she’s already got a date with Tim. Gareth is particularly revolting here. “I don’t usually do sloppy seconds.”

BBC Genome: BBC Two – 7th October 2002 – 22:00

The last recording on this disc is Enterprise – Shuttlepod One. Malcolm and Trip are returning to Enterprise after an away mission. Enterprise was mapping an asteroid field, and they’re a few days early for the rendezvous. They spot some debris on one of the asteroids, and it looks like it might be Enterprise.

Back on the Enterprise, which hasn’t crashed, an alien ship had suffered some catastrophic damage from an unknown source, and had taken out one of their launch bay doors.

On the shuttle, they too have been almost totally disabled by being hit by something unknown. So Trip is trying to repair the comms so they can communicate and possibly call for help. They can maybe survive on the shuttle for a couple of weeks.

Malcolm is leaving a log entry for posterity, as he’s convinced they’ll never be rescued in time. Trip is getting annoyed at his pessimism.

After arguing again with Trip, when he’s dictating a letter to his family while Trip is trying to sleep, Malcolm goes to sleep, and wakes up back on the Enterprise. He doesn’t even find it odd when T-Pol starts coming on to him. “Mol-Kom is the Vulcan word for serenity”. But obviously it’s a dream.

When he wakes up, Trip has repaired the radio, but they still can’t hear anything. Then the ship is hit again, and starts leaking air. They find two leaks, where whatever hit them entered and exited the pod, but they need to seal them. So as a temporary measure, Malcolm uses Trip’s mashed potato.

As time goes on and things grow cold, they drink some bourbon to help keep warm. A drunk Malcolm starts talking about how much he fancies T’Pol. “She’s got an awfully nice bum.”

They’re down to less than a day of air when they get a message from Enterprise. Initially they’re overjoyed, but the message says they’ll rendezvous in two days, and they don’t have enough air to last. Malcolm suggests jettisoning the Impulse drive and blowing it up to attract their attention. Trip, as an engineer, ins unwilling to blow up their only engine. But eventually he agrees.

 

Malcolm and Trip argue again when Trip decides to get into the airlock and flush it, to give Malcolm double the time for Enterprise to arrive.

But they do both get rescued. Only Malcolm’s a bit sad that T’Pol isn’t in love with him really.

Here’s the TiVo details. This was recorded on Sunday 6th October 2002.

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