Season 4, Episode 6: “Wedding”

UK airdate: May 18th, 2007.

"I’m going to be one of those men women read about in their magazines!"

Mark and Sophie’s wedding day has finally arrived.

Special note: This episode shares a title with season 2's finale, if you keep track of that sort of thing.

Again, solid episode and in many ways the culmination of the first four years of the show.  Thinking about it now, this could have served as a series finale if the show hadn’t continued.  It takes care of the long-running Sophie plotline, and nicely cements Jez and Mark’s friendship.

Observations:

• This episode makes reference to Mark’s very first scene in the first episode, where he says he prefers brown toast to white.  Being the best friend that he is, Jez knows Mark’s preference.

• Reference here to Jez and Nancy’s marriage.  I can’t recall if that has ever been properly dealt with since, although Jez suggests at the end of this episode that he might divorce her.

• One of many episodes where Jez faces a life living without Mark.  This seems to come up more often in later seasons.

• This really has to be heard to be appreciated, but Super Hans’ puking noises are probably the best I’ve heard on TV.

• Jez drives his car to the wedding.  The car shows up now and again, but I’m only now wondering just how he pays for it.

• The woman at the coffee shop Mark proposes to is reading Jenkins’ Churchill.  I believe this is the last time the book shows up.

• Speaking about the woman in the coffee shop, DVD commentary will let you know that at one point she was supposed to have been either Mark’s school reunion friend Sally Slater, or the student he nearly hooks up with at Dartmouth.

• One of the very few instances where Mark shows any initiative, he tries to get hit by a car.

• Jez and Sophie’s kiss from earlier in the season is brought up by Jez as a way for Mark to get out of the wedding.

• Ever so briefly, a knowing look between Jez and Sophie’s mom, Penny, is exchanged.  Right after, she seems genuinely hurt to discover that he kissed Sophie.  I really thought they would make more of that little affair the two had but this is the last time it comes up.

• Sophie in her wedding dress, crying, is one of the series’ most memorable images.

• Sophie’s brother shows up for two seconds to throw rice at Mark.  There must be some deleted scenes with him somewhere.  Come to think of it, her dad (surely one of the better secondary characters) doesn’t say anything in this episode, either.

• Mark’s parents are in the background of a few shots, played by different actors than the ones we finally see in the later Christmas episode (if indeed standing in front of a camera can be considered “playing” a role on TV).  Obviously Bain and Armstrong wanted to save Mark’s parents for another episode, but it would have been very odd not to acknowledge them at his own wedding.

Mark's parents that we never see again

Quotes:

Super Hans, being kicked by Mark to get up: Alright, keep your wig on.

Jez, to a puking Super Hans: You said you were on the dry heaves!  That wasn’t a dry heave, that was a wettie!

Mark: Ugh, this isn’t how I imagined it: scrubbing my puke-stained wedding wear in a public toilet.

Mark, looking around in desperation at all the people at Sophie’s parents’ house: Oh god, look at all the wedding stuff.  Everyone’s getting ready for a wedding.

Jez: Well, you did basically arrange a wedding.

Jez, on how to stop the wedding: Personally, I think we should just leave a note and get the fuck out.

Jez, looking for a place to pee in the church: Let me piss in that prayer bucket.

Mark: “Prayer bucket”?  There’s no such thing.  That’s just a bucket.

Jez, protecting Mark from the rice throwers: Come on!  He got married, didn’t he?  Leave him alone!

UK stuff:

• Wikipedia says that Dr. Jonathan Miller “is a British theatre and opera director, actor, author, television presenter, humourist, and medical doctor [as well as a] … well-known television personality and familiar public intellectual in both Britain and the United States.”

• Mark: I actually find it quite comforting that our entire relationship can be reduced to an online speech template.  I mean, Kenneth Halliwell and Joe Orton couldn’t do that.

Once again, Wikipedia puts it very clearly: Kenneth Halliwell was a British actor, writer and collagist. He was the mentor, boyfriend and eventual murderer of playwright Joe Orton.

• Super Hans pukes in a public washroom beside a parking lot.  I cannot think of any such public facilities here outside of a park or a beach or something.

• Mark: Tell them I’m doing a Stephen Fry.  We’re in Brussels, I’m eating chips and mayonnaise… I’m on the edge!

This isn’t a UK thing really, since Stephen Fry is known in North America, but less well-known (at least to me) is that he suffers from bipolar disorder and has on at least two occasions tried to commit suicide.  

• Women wearing large, elaborate hats at weddings must be some UK thing, because you certainly don’t see it here.  

• Mark tells Sophie that getting married is serious business, “not applying for a Nectar card.”  A Nectar card is a loyalty card programme (or “scheme,” as they delightfully call things) in the UK.

War stuff:

• Mark: Nobody wanted to drop the bomb on Hiroshima, but in the end it probably saved more lives than if they hadn’t!

A rare Pacific theatre reference from Mark.