Season 1, Episode 4: "Mark Makes a Friend"

Mark finds someone to care about, for once

In this one, Mark develops an unhealthy interest in Johnson.

Thoughts:

- This is the episode with the series of great "the bad thing" flashbacks. "Floss is boss!" etc. Again, these flashbacks are largely from a third-person perspective, and have an odd blue tint to them. So while they quickly moved away from using these, at least they were consistent the few times they showed up!

- The flashback also has this weird, non-diegetic music. Again, these little stylistic things don't make it too far past the first season.

- The boys are watching Morse on TV. This comes up a few times as a pedestrian sort of show that Mark unapologetically enjoys watching, sometimes with his mother. Additionally, when Mark gets the best of the burglar in the fifth season's first episode, he thinks "I'm wrestling with the white working class. Morse never did this. I'm better than Morse!"

Incidentally, my parents enjoy Morse.

- As Jez cleans the apartment, we get a POV shot from the vacuum cleaner. This is the only POV shot from an inanimate object that I can think of.

- Mark and Johnson seem only recently acquainted in this episode.

- Jez: "Mark likes Israel, I'm Palestine. Makes it more interesting when you pick it."

- Bizarrely, Jez can drive yet Mark can't. This little quirk comes up a few times throughout the series, particularly during the last act of the sixth season's sixth episode.

Is this sort of thing normal in the London area? Are otherwise accomplished men in their late-20s living lives without their drivers licenses? From my perspective it's amusing that Jez can manage a vehicle while Mark has no idea.

- Mark growing a moustache in emulation of Johnson is a really great gag. Subtle at first, and then just embarrassing. And nobody says a word about it.

- Whenever this show needs some 2nd party to look at the main characters talking (so that a scene doesn't become a series of bland shots of one character looking at the other), they're pretty clever to subtly set it up, like a pedestrian walking by, or a guy sitting at the next table or something. The show is pretty good about sticking to its POV rules.

From what I gather (off Wikipedia, of course), the actors and writers credit the POV conceit with the show's low-ish ratings. Maybe it's just me, but it's never really bothered me, and I didn't notice it until someone else pointed it out. But perhaps the common man just doesn't buy it.

- Johnson's drinking beer in this one. In the third season, he tells Mark that he's been sober 15 years. We could reason that he's drinking non-alcoholic beer, but I doubt any bars have that on tap. Maybe Johnson's just in denial about his alcoholism?

- Barbara is mentioned. The one who interviewed Jez in the second episode. She shows up again this season, but I don't know if she makes any appearances beyond that.

- The Stalingrad book is still on Mark's nightstand, where it was last episode. I really wish they'd kept hiding it throughout the series.

- There's a look right outside their apartment, from the living room window. In the first two seasons, they filmed in an actual apartment. Wikipedia tells us that starting in the third, it's a set in a carpet warehouse, making shots like that impossible. This is something I never noticed, and I doubt you could tell, either.

- Jeremy says that he's insured through his mom. First, if Jez is as old as Robert Webb, the actor, he'd be 31 here. Rather old to be on one's mom's insurance, no?

More interestingly, this suggests, perhaps, that Jez' parents are divorced. Indeed, when we finally meet his mom in the fifth season, they are. Maybe I'm reading too much into these little throwaway lines, but the show is fairly consistent about this sort of seemingly-minor stuff.

- This episode is the beginning of the antagonistic relationship between Jez and Johnson. It's pretty funny and begins to pay off later when Johnson steals Big Suze, among other things. It mirrors Super Hans' dislike of Mark.

- One of the main characters getting his dick sucked by a drugged-out male friend is one of those great, hilarious things you'd never see on an American sitcom. Obviously. It's part of Peep Show's appeal, but far from the only thing it brings to the table.

- One wonders if Mark's intense like of Johnson stems from a lack of a father figure he can love and care about. Perhaps his bizarre, almost homosexual attachment, is a reaction to his never having had a normal father-son relationship in his life. Perhaps.

"Floss is boss!"

UK References:
- Mention is made of "Clarkson," who I take to be Jeremy Clarkson, from Top Gear. I guess you can watch Top Gear on TV here, but I doubt you could go around talking about "Clarkson" and have people know who you're talking about. In the third season, Clarkson is mentioned approvingly by Mark's racist friend, Darryl.

- The VAT: Or "Value Added Tax." So far as I can tell, it's some tax in the EU.

Firsts:
- Johnson's first appearance. Oddly - unless I missed it - it's not really established here that Johnson is Mark's boss, necessarily. We get that he's a higher-up in JLB, but there's no indication by episode's end that we'll ever see Johnson again. Thankfully, we do.
- I think this is the first time Mark's last name, Corrigan, is mentioned.
- The truck horn noise that follows any mention of the El Dude Brothers, along with the arm pulling, makes its first, triumphant appearance.
- First mention of Mark's book, "Business Secrets of the Pharaohs." We never do get a good idea of what it might be about, but judging by the title, it seems, like Mark, too clever for its own good and destined to fail.