Season 3, Episode 6: "Quantocking"

Mark and Soph get engaged on a romantic weekend retreat, while Jez and Super Hans tag along.

- This is a great episode, although I tend to watch it too often. Even the talky bit when they’re lost on the moor is a good scene.

- Jez aiming for the bullseye while playing darts is completely in-character.

- Mr. Patel is once again mentioned. He saves hotel vouchers in newspapers for Mark.

- Super Hans calls Mark “the abdominizer,” whatever that means. In an earlier episode, he gave Mark the nickname of “Professor Yaffle.”

- The scene of Mark and Sophie having a very bland, mildly passive-aggressive conversation while trying to find a restaurant is fairly true to life.

- Super Hans doesn’t particularly affect the plot, but he does bring the laughs.

- Mark’s gay feelings for Johnson are mentioned here, and in the previous episode.

- There’s a long-distance shot of both Mark and Jeremy walking along the moor, yet… from whose POV is this shot? In the commentary, they thought they might set things up so that it’s from a cow’s perspective, but they figured that bringing animals into the POV mix was a bit much.

Of course, we all know that in season one’s “Dream Job,” there is a brief shot from a dog’s POV.

Regardless, this is the one shot in the entire history of the show whose POV I can’t account for.

The shot in question

- This episode establishes that Mark doesn’t actually love Sophie. This is a key turning point in the show and colours many episodes to come.

- Sophie mentions the juice bar in Bristol where her friends from the previous episode work.

- It looks like, strangely, Mark is drinking booze when he finally gets back in the morning.

- Jez giving recovering addict Super Hans the crack at the end is actually kind of sad.

Quotes:

- Super Hans calls a can of beer a “sauce bottle.” I’ll have to start using that term.

- Super Hans, tied to the bed, trying to convince Jeremy that he’s in a rational state of mind:

“It’s all becoming very clear to me now, Jez. I want some drugs.”

- Jez to Super Hans, who is rolling up a joint with his feet: “Are you trying to skin up with your feet again? Because it doesn’t work, does it? It just makes a mess.”

- Mark, exasperated: “Why won’t that stupid bitch let me propose to her?!” Not unlike his reaction to stress in the first season, when he peed on Barbara’s files and had to go into therapy.

- Mark, after having a straight drink at the hotel bar: “Ahh, that smarts! Stupid… whisky.” Very understandable reaction.

- Mark: “Nobody dies in southern England, Jeremy. That just doesn’t happen, okay?”

- Super Hans, feverishly chasing after a bag of drugs taped to a thrown Frisbee: “Drugs! Drugs! Druuuugs!!”

- Jeremy to Mark, upon discovering that the engagement is on, after all: “So… what the fuck?”

UK Stuff:

- Quantocks: Via Wikipedia, the Quantock Hills are a range of hills in Somerset. That makes sense.

- Super Hans says that Mark gets his “morning horn off on the FT,” or, the Financial Times.

- Peter’s Friends: A British comedy/drama from the early 90s. Wikipedia tells us that “the film deals with themes of friendship, marriage, fidelity, materialism, and coping with death and loss.”

- Sugar and The Apprentice (see last episode) get mentioned. See, now you get the joke! Unless you’re from the UK, in which case it’s not a big deal.

- Des Lynam: A TV and radio presenter.

- Jimmy Carr: A dark humourist, it would seem.

- Public right-of-way: Those paths through farmers’ fields that anyone can use.

World War 2 Stuff:

- When looking for a restaurant, Marks says that they must “push on to Moscow,” perhaps mindful of how futile the search has become.

- Jez makes a rare reference to WW2 in this. After discovering that Mark has been stingy with the chocolate rations, he sarcastically remarks that the “spirit of the Blitz lives on!”