Season 1, Episode 6: "Funeral"

Jez' finest hour

In this, the first season finale, Jez deals with his own mortality while Mark gets some traction with Sophie.

- There's a shot of Jez on Toni's bed while she speaks to him, reversed as she's looking at him from her mirror. Very clever. Jez is wearing a t-shirt with numerals (which show up clearly in reverse) to highlight this.

- Uncle Ray's favourite book, an excerpt from which was read at his funeral, is "Scorpio Patrol." Peep Show has always had a very interesting outlook on the working class.

- Jez' aunt Liz officiates at Ray's funeral, but his parents (one would expect his mother to be there, at least) are nowhere to be found. Obviously the producers felt that adding Jeremy's parents in an episode that didn't really deal with them would detract from the story they wanted to tell. This is perhaps why we don't really see Mark's parents at his wedding, too.

- Liz gives Jez a disappointing look when he begins his Enya speech (surely one of the best Jez moments). One gets the impression that she expected him to make a spectacle of himself at the funeral. Perhaps Jez is the black sheep of his family? Not hard to believe.

- Awaiting the results of his test (to see if he has the same genetic disorder that condemned his uncle to an early death), Jez becomes fatalistic and takes up smoking, just like Mark in the previous episode. In the fifth season finale, Jez similarly takes stock of his life and adopts uncharacteristic personality traits in response.

- Mark refers to his penis as "Captain Corrigan" for the first time.

- After many episodes, Mark's irregular testicles are dealt with. As it turns out, he has a "large hydrocele," which seems to be an accumulation of fluid in his balls. It's implied that he has this dealt with ("I intend to have an operation"), and I can't remember one way or another whether it's ever mentioned again in the show.

- Big Suze's dildo is mentioned, which Jeremy evidently still owns. The Big Suze that we eventually meet in the third season doesn't strike me as someone who, necessarily, owns a dildo. But maybe that says more about me than anything else. I'll have more on this next episode.

- Jez tells Sophie that Mark calls her a "sausage muncher." This is the same lie that he tells Kallie in the fifth season's "crystal skull" episode.

- Jez making a pass at Sophie foreshadows his "snogging" her in Kettering, which itself precedes their having sex at the start of the sixth season.

- Just what is JLB's logo? I get the globe thing, but what is that blob that sort of surrounds it?

Robert Webb puts in a convincing performance as a man who doesn't want his stomach pumped

Some choice quotes, all from Jez this time:
- Jez, while trying to come up with a topic to talk about with his dying uncle: "Uncle Ray. Football... ciggies..."
- Jez, trying to use Ray's death to his advantage, with Toni: "Nothing could make me feel better about Ray's death, except maybe... one thing..."
- Jez: "Well, Mr. Dalai Lama, I suppose you've got to be a suck up if you haven't got your own country."
- While Jez is getting a hand job off Toni, after telling her he's got six months to live, he thinks to himself, "I am going to feel so low just as soon as this is over."

UK Stuff:
- Biro: Evidently, this is just what they call ballpoint pens.