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Yeah, so, I got so stuck on the specials that I decided to skip them. They're twice as long, which makes for twice the work, and all politicky, and I know there's some really awesome stuff in them so I might go back and do a combined highlights post or something, but for now I'm just powering forward so that I might just get this finished sometime this year. If nothing else, I put up the community rewatch posts every week over at ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
the_thickofit, and we've gotten through the specials over there, so now I have to watch the current episode every week so I can keep up since I've run out of posts here to refer to.
SO. SO SO SO.
Ladies and gentlemen, NICOLA FUCKING MURRAY.
So if you know one thing about me when it comes to The Thick of It, it should be this: I love Nicola. I love Nicola so much. As I get through these posts for series three, I will spend plenty of time dwelling on the many things I love about Nicola Murray. Hell, I'm gonna do it for a little while right now. This episode puts one of the major ones right out there: She doesn't take Malcolm's shit. She doesn't give in when she's supposed to give in. She's not impressed when he yells. In fact, she yells back.
And - and this is one of the things I love abut Nicola on a meta level - it's not presented as an "I am woman hear me roar" kind of thing. Nicola's career and the things about her the press focuses on are inevitably different from how it was with Hugh because of her gender, yes. But the show itself doesn't present her as A Female Minister any more than it presented Hugh as A Male Minister. It focuses on the job Nicola does and the occasional cross into her personal life, the same as it does with every other character on the show.
And she's allowed to be flawed. She isn't, as has been pointed out in places I can't be bothered to go chase down right now, the woman who's always right amidst a crowd of bumbling men. Rebecca Front's done that role before and didn't want to do it again. Nicola fucks up just the same as the men do, and I will happily note that even though she will give right back what Malcolm dishes out, she does what he says in the end. Because that's what the show is. Nicola is a politician, and that involves making the unpalatable choices, and she knows that. And time and again, she makes them, because the show is about politics and politicians first.
. . . all that said, I do think Nicola's being a woman has something to do with why she is less willing to let Malcolm steamroll over her. She's a woman in a traditionally male role, and a woman in that position has to prove over and over that she's tough enough and strong enough and not a weak little woman who can't handle it. So that's the game she plays, that's why Malcolm can't yell her into submission the way he can with the men he deals with, and that's why he has to turn his own game around when it comes to breaking through Nicola's resistance.
Hence: "IAM BENT." That scene needs rewatching to catch it, I think, but the shot of Malcolm studying the printout of the poster in his hand, followed by his casually mentioning that Nicola is too far to the side - and he doesn't say she needs to be in the middle, he says she's too far to the side - makes it pretty obvious on second look that Nicola isn't just being paranoid when she accuses Malcolm of deliberately cornering her.
Which, considering how the series will play out, is an interesting choice. We expect Malcolm to manipulate things to his satisfaction, after all, he wouldn't be Malcolm if he didn't do that. It would be natural for the audience to assume that Nicola is right; we don't need that shot of the lightbulb visibly going on in Malcolm's brain to confirm it. And this series is about Malcolm starting to flake around the edges, overplay his hand, to descend from his peak of awesome and become vulnerable and a bit out of touch. I think this would be an even more interesting story without that shot, if it were just a little more ambiguous. If, upon rewatching it, you could wonder: did he set Nicola up, or is this a first and very subtly played indication that Malcolm is losing his touch?
Don't get me wrong, the way it is is pretty great too. It establishes the dynamic that we'll continue to see playing out between Nicola and Malcolm throughout the series, as the show lets us know that Nicola is going to force Malcolm to play her game, and Malcolm is going to take that and turn it into part of his own, and the whole time it's really the same game.
Also, out of this whole first clash come not one, but two hooks for future episodes: Nicola decides to send her daughter to comprehensive school, and she confesses to claustrophobia. We'll see both these things again. (The claustrophobia, by the way, is a nice little bit of continuity throughout the series - we get lots of Nicola walking up and down the stairs, but we never see her in an elevator. You know how many shows would fuck that up within three episodes? I bet you do.)
. . . right, so there are other characters, too. Let's catch up with them, shall we?
One last mention of Hugh Abbot, tidily disposed of:
Glenn: "Well, that's Hugh gone."
Terri: "It's so sad, isn't it? Hugh."
Ollie: "You don't give a shit."
Terri: "No, perhaps I don't."
And Glenn doesn't seem too sad about it either; I'm assuming that 2x03 severed their friendship, and maybe Hugh's failure to contact Glenn for information in the specials as promised put paid to any chance of ever fixing it. And Glenn must be aware by now that working as closely with Hugh as they did in DoSAC just increases the number of knives he finds in his back. At any rate, that's the last we'll hear of Hugh, appropriately enough - he's irrelevant within the world of the show now, and so the show itself treats him as irrelevant too.
Now, of course, Glenn and Olly have their own problems: there's a new minister coming in, no doubt with their own pack of advisors, so what are they going to do now?
Here, though, the dishevelled state of the government is a piece of luck for them, as it means that no one with any experience will take DoSAC, and Malcolm has been forced to hand the department to Nicola. Nicola is so new that she doesn't have her own advisors, so Glenn and Olly still have a chance after all. I love the way Glenn ultimately ingratiates himself to her, by making sure to tell her that he spotted the IAM BENT problem and tried to fix it, but was overruled. He's just trying to let her know that he does have the experience to have been on the ball on that if he hadn't been interfered with; Nicola knows that, but she's also just had that nasty confrontation with Malcolm. So here's Glenn, presenting himself as experienced, reassuring, reliable, and unlikely to take her head off, and I think it's that she responds to as much as anything.
In short, Glenn timed this one perfectly without even trying, and his moment of triumph as he looks over at Olly is awesome and pretty much his high point this series, because without Hugh he's kind of a narrative loose end and the writers, unfortunately, don't always seem to know what to do with him. The stupid chair subplot is more along the lines of the stuff he's going to get stuck with. Which is too bad, because the bit at the very end where Malcolm quietly asks Glenn to spy on Nicola for him is intriguing. It probably does show up again and I'm just not remembering - hey, it's been a few months - but Glenn's demotion in this series to buttmonkey makes me wish they'd done more with it.
Olly's fate is, so far, technically undecided, and I honest to god don't know why Nicola ends up keeping him around, but then she doesn't know what we know. And Terri is a civil servant, so she's going nowhere, and at this point this fucking thing is longer than some actual papers I've written this semester (yes, I checked), so I'm going to wrap it up by saying: I love this series and I'm glad I decided to skip the specials for now, because I'm really looking forward to writing posts for the rest of these episodes.
the_thickofit, and we've gotten through the specials over there, so now I have to watch the current episode every week so I can keep up since I've run out of posts here to refer to.SO. SO SO SO.
Ladies and gentlemen, NICOLA FUCKING MURRAY.
So if you know one thing about me when it comes to The Thick of It, it should be this: I love Nicola. I love Nicola so much. As I get through these posts for series three, I will spend plenty of time dwelling on the many things I love about Nicola Murray. Hell, I'm gonna do it for a little while right now. This episode puts one of the major ones right out there: She doesn't take Malcolm's shit. She doesn't give in when she's supposed to give in. She's not impressed when he yells. In fact, she yells back.
And - and this is one of the things I love abut Nicola on a meta level - it's not presented as an "I am woman hear me roar" kind of thing. Nicola's career and the things about her the press focuses on are inevitably different from how it was with Hugh because of her gender, yes. But the show itself doesn't present her as A Female Minister any more than it presented Hugh as A Male Minister. It focuses on the job Nicola does and the occasional cross into her personal life, the same as it does with every other character on the show.
And she's allowed to be flawed. She isn't, as has been pointed out in places I can't be bothered to go chase down right now, the woman who's always right amidst a crowd of bumbling men. Rebecca Front's done that role before and didn't want to do it again. Nicola fucks up just the same as the men do, and I will happily note that even though she will give right back what Malcolm dishes out, she does what he says in the end. Because that's what the show is. Nicola is a politician, and that involves making the unpalatable choices, and she knows that. And time and again, she makes them, because the show is about politics and politicians first.
. . . all that said, I do think Nicola's being a woman has something to do with why she is less willing to let Malcolm steamroll over her. She's a woman in a traditionally male role, and a woman in that position has to prove over and over that she's tough enough and strong enough and not a weak little woman who can't handle it. So that's the game she plays, that's why Malcolm can't yell her into submission the way he can with the men he deals with, and that's why he has to turn his own game around when it comes to breaking through Nicola's resistance.
Hence: "IAM BENT." That scene needs rewatching to catch it, I think, but the shot of Malcolm studying the printout of the poster in his hand, followed by his casually mentioning that Nicola is too far to the side - and he doesn't say she needs to be in the middle, he says she's too far to the side - makes it pretty obvious on second look that Nicola isn't just being paranoid when she accuses Malcolm of deliberately cornering her.
Which, considering how the series will play out, is an interesting choice. We expect Malcolm to manipulate things to his satisfaction, after all, he wouldn't be Malcolm if he didn't do that. It would be natural for the audience to assume that Nicola is right; we don't need that shot of the lightbulb visibly going on in Malcolm's brain to confirm it. And this series is about Malcolm starting to flake around the edges, overplay his hand, to descend from his peak of awesome and become vulnerable and a bit out of touch. I think this would be an even more interesting story without that shot, if it were just a little more ambiguous. If, upon rewatching it, you could wonder: did he set Nicola up, or is this a first and very subtly played indication that Malcolm is losing his touch?
Don't get me wrong, the way it is is pretty great too. It establishes the dynamic that we'll continue to see playing out between Nicola and Malcolm throughout the series, as the show lets us know that Nicola is going to force Malcolm to play her game, and Malcolm is going to take that and turn it into part of his own, and the whole time it's really the same game.
Also, out of this whole first clash come not one, but two hooks for future episodes: Nicola decides to send her daughter to comprehensive school, and she confesses to claustrophobia. We'll see both these things again. (The claustrophobia, by the way, is a nice little bit of continuity throughout the series - we get lots of Nicola walking up and down the stairs, but we never see her in an elevator. You know how many shows would fuck that up within three episodes? I bet you do.)
. . . right, so there are other characters, too. Let's catch up with them, shall we?
One last mention of Hugh Abbot, tidily disposed of:
Glenn: "Well, that's Hugh gone."
Terri: "It's so sad, isn't it? Hugh."
Ollie: "You don't give a shit."
Terri: "No, perhaps I don't."
And Glenn doesn't seem too sad about it either; I'm assuming that 2x03 severed their friendship, and maybe Hugh's failure to contact Glenn for information in the specials as promised put paid to any chance of ever fixing it. And Glenn must be aware by now that working as closely with Hugh as they did in DoSAC just increases the number of knives he finds in his back. At any rate, that's the last we'll hear of Hugh, appropriately enough - he's irrelevant within the world of the show now, and so the show itself treats him as irrelevant too.
Now, of course, Glenn and Olly have their own problems: there's a new minister coming in, no doubt with their own pack of advisors, so what are they going to do now?
Here, though, the dishevelled state of the government is a piece of luck for them, as it means that no one with any experience will take DoSAC, and Malcolm has been forced to hand the department to Nicola. Nicola is so new that she doesn't have her own advisors, so Glenn and Olly still have a chance after all. I love the way Glenn ultimately ingratiates himself to her, by making sure to tell her that he spotted the IAM BENT problem and tried to fix it, but was overruled. He's just trying to let her know that he does have the experience to have been on the ball on that if he hadn't been interfered with; Nicola knows that, but she's also just had that nasty confrontation with Malcolm. So here's Glenn, presenting himself as experienced, reassuring, reliable, and unlikely to take her head off, and I think it's that she responds to as much as anything.
In short, Glenn timed this one perfectly without even trying, and his moment of triumph as he looks over at Olly is awesome and pretty much his high point this series, because without Hugh he's kind of a narrative loose end and the writers, unfortunately, don't always seem to know what to do with him. The stupid chair subplot is more along the lines of the stuff he's going to get stuck with. Which is too bad, because the bit at the very end where Malcolm quietly asks Glenn to spy on Nicola for him is intriguing. It probably does show up again and I'm just not remembering - hey, it's been a few months - but Glenn's demotion in this series to buttmonkey makes me wish they'd done more with it.
Olly's fate is, so far, technically undecided, and I honest to god don't know why Nicola ends up keeping him around, but then she doesn't know what we know. And Terri is a civil servant, so she's going nowhere, and at this point this fucking thing is longer than some actual papers I've written this semester (yes, I checked), so I'm going to wrap it up by saying: I love this series and I'm glad I decided to skip the specials for now, because I'm really looking forward to writing posts for the rest of these episodes.
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one of my favourite Nicola moments is in the Malcolm getting sacked episode when she goes I'M ONLY A CABINET MINISTERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRr in a wail