Season 4, Episode 2: "Conference"

“Great, now I’m getting an angry lap dance. Brilliant.”

Mark tackles “Project Zeus” while Johnson makes a move for Big Suze.

- This is a fun one, perhaps in large part because it does a good job of integrating secondary characters like Big Suze and, best of all, Johnson. Also, Mark and Jez have distinctive, amusing plots of their own.

- Project Zeus is inherently an unworkable, terrible idea. This is, perhaps, a hint at the unhinged Johnson we encounter in season six.

- This episode introduces us to Gerrard, who plays minor, yet amusing, roles in upcoming episodes.

- Lisa first shows up here. She’s an employee at JLB who shows up in a very limited capacity from time to time.

- Jez and Johnson, obviously, still hate each other. This is the first time they’ve had any sort of meaningful confrontation, and it’s very appropriate that it leads to Johnson stealing the love of Jez’ life.

- This episode continues to portray Mark as a character who reacts very poorly to stress. With Project Zeus a shambles, he alienates everyone around him, including his fiancée, with his poor behaviour. Once it all starts falling down around him, he tries to make a desperate escape from civilization. In previous episodes, we’ve seen him pissing on a supervisor’s work and cutting his forearm to get attention, in reaction to stress.

- Mark is such a complete cock when dealing with people when his job is at stake. That’s funny.

- Suze’s place isn’t the same one as seen in season three, episode one. I suppose she’s moved out from Michelle’s.

- Again, this show is very very good at casting incidental characters. Johnson’s friends that go to the strippers’ are very believably, as Mark says, “literally the worst men in the world.”

- There are actual tits in this episode. Real-life tits. Such is UK TV.

- This is perhaps not entirely a huge surprise, but I quite like the stripper who gives Mark a lap dance. Some bizarre part of me would like them to end up together. Moreso than most other women he meets, she, bizarrely, seems his intellectual equal.

- Jez and Soph kiss briefly in this one. This becomes a minor issue in the season finale, and is a precursor to them actually having sex later on.

- Jez calls Mark “Captain Corrigan.” This is the nickname Mark has for his penis.

- Jez, evidently, has been with more than four men.

- There’s a good Jeff scene at the end, where he gives Mark the finger after Mark comes to him in desperation. It reminds us that Jeff hasn’t had much to do in a while.

- Johnson stealing Big Suze from Jeremy is inspired. Their domestic life is fairly amusing, in season six.

Quotes:

- Johnson, providing motivation for Project Zeus: Hi guys. I just want to drop by and say “have fun.” Tonight should be a free-fire idea zone. Watch a DVD, eat some pizza… fuck each other. I’m serious. Fuck a chicken if that’s what it takes. Watch a chicken fucking a horse.

“That’s a great piece of real estate you’ve got there.”

- Johnson: In business, Jeremy, you learn that every man has his price and I judge yours to be, what… 530 pounds?
Jeremy: What?
Johnson: I’m not going to beat around the bush, Jeremy. I want to make you a real life… indecent proposal.
Jeremy: An indecent proposal?
Johnson: I want to sleep with your girlfriend, Jeremy. But I don’t like playing the game with women. I don’t like listening to them, I don’t like talking to them, but I do like some of the things… they do, so…
Jeremy: 530 pounds? To sleep with Big Suze?
Johnson: That’s my… indecent proposal.
Jeremy: Certainly is an indecent proposal!
Johnson: You have a property of which I which to make a use. Is that so very different from hiring a solicitor, or leasing out a Spanish villa?
Jeremy: Well it is a bit different because you’d be putting your dick right-
Johnson: What’s your answer, Jeremy?
Jeremy: Maybe you could finger her for 300?
Johnson: I’m not going to bargain with you, Jeremy.
Jeremy: He obviously thinks I’m some sort of skag addict bedroom DJ who can be bought off. But… no-one’s going to give me a medal for saying no, and I am pretty broke and… Okay, it’s a deal. Is this a terrible idea? It can’t be, it’s in a film. They wouldn’t put a terrible idea in a film, they’d get sued.

- Mark, expressing reservations about the strippers: “Wasn’t the last one a bit… thin?”

- Jeremy: What’s Johnson done for Black people lately?
Suze: You mean apart from his mentoring and charity work?
Jeremy: Yeah, apart from that.

- Mark says that his getting an erection during his lap dance is “grimly predictable.” That’s a saying I’ve come to adopt as one of my own.

- Mark, coming in on Sophie and Jez about to make out: "Why are they being so nice? Maybe they’ve been having a big chat about me and they’ve suddenly realized that I was right about North Korea, I was right about the European constitution, and by god I think I’m right about the congestion charge."

UK Stuff:

- Skag: Heroin! Who’d have thought?

- Bernie Winters and Schnorbitz: Bernie Winters was a comedian, and Schnorbitz was a St. Bernard in his act.

- Congestion charge: A not-insignificant toll on vehicles entering downtown London.

- I have a feeling that Jez and Big Suze are watching the UK Apprentice on TV in the hotel. With the oft-mentioned Sugar!