Season 1, Episode 2: "The Interview"

Jez enjoys a drink in the tub

In this episode, Mark leaves an embarrassing message on Sophie's machine, while Jez deliberately tries to fudge an interview with JLB. Jez also takes a detour in the definitely not pyramid selling business.

- Mark tries to get Jez a job at JLB. This exact same setup recurs in the sixth season premiere, with different results (mainly, it works the second time).

Some firsts:
- Big Suze is first mentioned, though she won't show up till the third season premiere.
- First mention of the El Dude Brothers. Specifically, Mark refers to he and Jeremy as "Jez and Mez, the El Dude Brothers." This odd nickname for Mark never comes up again, so far as I can recall. Though I always understood that the "El Dude" moniker first came up while they were at the fictional Dartmouth University together, no mention of ole Dartie is made here.
- It's established here that Jez and Super Hans' "band" doesn't have a name. Or, it doesn't keep a name for any length of time. Names mentioned in this one include "The Hair Blair Bunch" and "Momma's Kumquat."
- During the JLB interview, we find out that Jez used to be a nurse. That's a very strange job for him to have had. This experience rarely ever gets mentioned again, though it does pop up once or twice after this.

- Quite often, Mark makes reference to the Second World War (and, more often than not, specifically, Germans and Nazis). Hitler also comes up regularly. In this episode, I counted five occasions on which Mark made some crack about WW2, or drew a swastika, or was reading a WW2-related book. If we include his bit about the Treaty of Versailles and its inevitable backlash, we have five and a half.

- Mark says that while brown toast is savoury, white is the treat. The joke is on everyone else, Mark thinks, as he, in fact, prefers brown. This is a perfect example of one of Mark's prosaic little thoughts that - in their own way - reveal a lot about us and how we deal with ourselves and social expectations. It's pretty much the meat and potatoes of the show. I mean, brown toast really is better, and you really do feel as though you're pulling one over on the universe for preferring it. Once Mark (or, less often, Jez) vocalizes thoughts like this for you and you realize you're not the only one who has them, the show begins to grow on you.

- Incidentally, Jez mentions the brown savoury/white treat dichotomy in a later episode. Mark's stag party, I think?

- Jez mentions his mom and dad. While his mother shows up in the fifth season's "Gunny" episode, his father has yet to be seen.

- Bob Ross - the guy with that giant head of hair who painted on PBS - shows up here. Well, his TV show does, at any rate. Mark and Jez watch it at least one other time, I think, in the fourth season's "Gym" episode.

- Mark's Stalingrad book from the previous episode is on his desk at JLB. I'm not certain if it ever shows up again.

- Mark has a fantasy magazine in his closet. This is one of the few instances - aside from an occasional Star Wars mention - where it's implied that Mark is an all-out nerd. Years later he plays a Wow-like MMO with Dobby and Gerard and goes Larping with them, but I suspect this was mostly to woo Dobby. Between the magazine and the MMO, I can't think of any particularly nerdy things Mark engages in, even though we might expect him to do such things often.

- This episode has one of two scenes (that I can think of) where we're inside Jez' head as he jerks off. In both cases, he's creating a bizarre fantasy based on whatever imagery he can get his hands on at the time. Here it's the fantasy elf girl in Mark's magazine, and years later it's the picture of the Queen on a bank note.

- Evidently, Mark has at this point not yet met Big Suze. This is bizarre, since a later episode establishes that Jez lived with her for a year and a half; if the El Dude Brothers have been such great pals since university, how did Mark not meet Jez' girlfriend and housemate during those eighteen months?

Obviously this is a case of writers inadvertently coming up with stuff that is at odds with previously-established other stuff. Still, if you run with it, it presents interesting possibilities. Did Mark and Jez have a falling-out sometime after Dartmouth? And how long have Mark and Jez been living together at this point, anyway?

- Another reference to Mark's strange balls.

- Says Mark of Jez' expectations in life: "Nothing you want is ever going to happen."

- Sophie is really nice and almost demure in these first two episodes. She's not quite the fun-loving, self-destructive Sophie she eventually becomes.

- Jeff himself shows up in this one, after being briefly mentioned in the first episode. He seems like just a normal guy in the office, until his last line (he sings the song Mark left on Sophie's machine), which hints at what a grade-A prick he's going to be throughout the series.

- At the end of the day, a pretty decent episode that does a good job of properly setting up the Mark/Jez relationship (after their odd dynamic in the first one), as well as the Mark/Sophie plot. There are quite a few clever lines in this one that I was surprised to find were from so early an episode.