Episodes: Series 2 - Episode 9 | Television

Episodes: Series 2 - Episode 9

Posted by: S.P. Young • July 7, 2012 @ 4:52pm

"I may be a man of the year, but right now I feel like the luckiest man in the world. Thank you."

The series two finale of Episodes centered around the Man of the Year Award ceremony that was honouring Merc. All the screwings and fumblings of the last two seasons have finally caught up to everybody in this episode. What was supposed to be a pleasant evening, turned into a complete nightmare for Merc. To be fair, Merc did bring a lot of it onto himself.

It started off innocently enough, with a classical singer performing a song. As this was going on, everybody was giving each other these funny looks (as one of the cats had been let out of the bag). But not Jamie, as she was not aware of what was happening. This was a fine example of cruel British humour.
As Merc gave an inspiring and emotional speech (title image), he had no idea what was going on in his office. Last episode, Elliot Salad had talked about firing Merc, and cleaning out his office while Merc was at the ceremony. The contrast between the two scenes was well done, and conveyed a complete sense of harshness The choice of music was also effective for both an award ceremony and a tragedy.
While in the men's restroom, Merc could not help but take a look at Matt's wiener, causing Merc to think of the affair his wife had with Matt. Merc then confronted Matt about the affair. As mere words were not enough for Merc, he turned to face Matt, and took a leak on him.
Not being content with just having urinated over Matt, Merc continued to come after Matt. Matt responded by pointing out that Merc had an affair with Carol. Merc got angry, and charged at Matt with hypocritical anger.
While Merc was restrained, he accidentally clubbed Beverly in the face, which caused Sean to jump in the fight. This act of defense actually turned into the first major step of a reconciliation between Sean and Beverly.
Merc resorted to flailing a gift bag around as an act of violent offense. Before he could do some real damage, he was wrestled down by Matt. Merc got the upper hand and deliberately kicked Matt's dislocated shoulder.
While this was happening, Jamie had no idea what was going on. But Jamie was not the only that was in the dark.
As Merc was storming off in a rage, Carol took him into a room to break him the worse news. Carol told Merc about losing his job, and how Elliot offered her the job.
Carol tried to console Merc as she gave him a ride. She even offered to let him move in with her, but Merc declined. He said that he did not want to lose half his money to Jamie while he was out of a job. Carol blew up over this, and kicked him out of the car and into the rain.

This episode was a great finale, that took almost all the bad things that have taken place, and dumped them all into one disastrous setting. What made this work even better, was the background classical music that stressed the irony and ridiculous drama that was going on. On top of that, the acting, timing, and script were all superb. In the end, everybody suffered to some extent. As for Sean and Beverly, they managed to find themselves, in spite of all that had gone wrong.

Tags: Episodes, Matt LeBlanc, Friends, David Crane, BBC, Stephen Mangan, Tamsin Greig, John Pankow, Kathleen Rose Perkins, Showtime