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o-uncle-newt · 1 year ago

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Cabin Pressure Advent Day 19: St Petersburg

I fucking love everything about this episode. When someone asked me for a top 5 a while back, after a great deal of VERY difficult determination this came up at the top and has been unassailable there ever since.

The only flaw in it, and it's one that JF says was left out for time, is that we never find out what Douglas means by saying that Gordon tricked Carolyn into letting him book the office in her name. But that's so minor that it really doesn't count.

Everything else from here on down (and there will be a LOT) is going to be unmitigated gushing, so get ready:

The thing that makes this episode really great is the stakes. Stakes that have been unspoken until now- or at least, since Douz, to which this episode is a fantastic mirror- are explicit, but they're also bumped up a level.

The stakes, of course, are the continued existence of MJN Air. This is something that was first established in Douz, when Carolyn tells Douglas that she runs the airline on a deficit, they're always one bad day away from folding, and she's basically holding on to preserve her dignity and self-image. At that point, we see Douglas realizing that his job is on the line, and he becomes the "Douglas saves the day" guy. This recurs over the course of the show, with things like needing to pass the training in Ipswich and needing to get the contract from Mr Alyakhin, among many others, implicitly important because without them the airdot will fold. Douglas needs to either a) get over his massive ego or b) come up with a clever plot, as the case may be, to help out.

As I noted in my Douz post, Douglas realizing that he will be unemployed if he can't solve the problem is not just him getting his act together, it's him deciding that saving the day is more important than fucking with Martin. And, in the end, it's also him (even if only incidentally) taking Carolyn's feelings and dignity into account. And while we still definitely see him taking selfish moments to get back at others, especially Martin (see Qik, though he does kind of tone things down when Carolyn asks him to, in his own deeply weird way), the well-being of the airline is more important most of the time, if they're in a real fix.

Martin, interestingly, is getting there also, but in a very different way, and he's not QUITE there yet. He is very crucially NOT privy to the conversation between Carolyn and Douglas in Douz, and he's also not aware that Gordon keeps trying to buy Gerti, even though WE know that from Fitton (and Douglas presumably knows that from years prior). But he doesn't need to know any of this, because his motivation is to be a captain, and he knows that nobody but Carolyn will let him do it. He just tries to make things work each time because it's in his interest. But the way that he's grown over the course of the show, he's mellowing out a bit, trying to reclaim his dignity and control over his finances, etc... he's about to hit the point where it's natural for him to want to leave the nest even if it means he's no longer a captain, as shown in Newcastle, where we see him looking for a job opportunity elsewhere for the first time since Boston. So he's, in theory, going to get less invested in staying with MJN, and that's a good thing... except that like Douglas, he's been learning to value these other people who he works with and the airline that they are holding together "with gaffer tape and string." That way, in S4, when Martin hears about Swiss Airways going international he is concerned about the fate of MJN if he leaves- something that never crossed his mind in Boston or Newcastle.

In other words, Douglas grows because he is forced to care about the well-being of the airline, and Martin grows away from the way that he started off caring about the airline. But they still both grow in the same direction, which is their mutual care for the airline, Carolyn, and Arthur.

Because that's how we get to the genius of this episode, which is Gordon Shappey.

Arthur is someone who has taken a lot of shit from basically everyone else at MJN basically forever; it's why I don't find Ottery St Mary to be too much, and it's why I find the ending of Ottery St Mary to be so satisfying. We know they care about him, but they're not always great about showing it. But faced with Gordon Shappey, saving MJN isn't just about the airline, Douglas's job, or Martin's (still-important to him) captaincy- it's about defeating Gordon. He's a proper mustache-twirling villain, partly because of how he treats Carolyn but mostly because of how he treats Arthur. THEY can be mean to Arthur, but not HIM, not like THAT...

That's another way that this episode is a great mirror to Douz. There are a surprising number, actually- the hot desert vs the freezing Russian winter, a hairy landing with Martin landing rather than Douglas (which has such DELICIOUS parallels of its own)... and of course the existence of an unmitigated bad guy who they must foil. The other episodes actually mostly don't have that- they have situations with people who may be annoying, but ultimately they have to please or mollify or just plain deal with. Yves Jutteau and Gordon Shappey they can just defeat.

The thing is, with Jutteau they defeat him in order to save MJN. Those are the stakes. He's held them hostage and they manage to escape. In St Petersburg, they've already basically confronted the fact that MJN is over, and that they'll have to sell Gerti for parts. It's when Gordon sneers at Arthur, and they see why Arthur is so freaked out about him, that he becomes the enemy. (He also smears Martin and Douglas, and they're clearly none too pleased. But do we really think that's the motivation?) When Douglas saves the day, he does it for Arthur.

And I think that happens in two ways. The first is that when they're in that flight deck with Gordon, the (beautifully, BEAUTIFULLY laid out and Chekhov's-Gunned) plan circles around Arthur- they manage to make their point about how they've seen the way he treats someone they love, and they are taking revenge. But in a more metaphysical way, Douglas has clearly, even after he sees no way forward, put some thought into how he can solve this. He knows that Arthur is relying on him, and thinks that he can do it- and we'll see in Zurich that this will continue to be a motivator for both Arthur and Douglas, that Arthur believes Douglas can do anything and that Douglas (a bit in loco parentis) therefore has to do it and take responsibility.

Martin is along for the ride, but his growth doesn't come from the scheme against Gordon- his is manifested in the landing. He's panicking but he's technically sound, he takes control and Douglas accepts it, and he manages to land competently in dangerous circumstances. He's grown so much! He's been pushing his captain-ness because it makes up for all the ways he's not the pilot he dreamed he'd be (a paid one, a cool one, a skilled one...) but this is proof that he's gotten so much closer than he's been. And I love how at the end he manages to not just get a point in the rhyming journeys game, he rhymes MULTIPLE cities and they're so proud of him- this isn't him being helped out (as in Gdansk) or winning and then being undercut (as in Limerick), it's him just being able to be competent at something, even if it takes a while and he's not as good as Douglas. He's just allowed to be happy about that and that's beautiful. Overall- this episode, he is able to just be GOOD, and not to feel like he needs to be the best (and fail). That's going to be vital next season.

You'll notice that I haven't brought up Carolyn and Arthur here. Arthur, well, the main thing here is that this situates his happiness at MJN- and what he'll lose when it's gone- as a contrast with the way others in his life treat him. Arthur may be teased at work, and his mother works him hard, but we've known since Fitton that this is where he wants to be. His fear of Gordon, and the contempt we see Gordon show him, show us another one of the stakes that we need to bear in mind moving forward.

With Carolyn, though, I think it's a bit of a moment of learning. She knows that Douglas, and to a lesser extent Martin, are there and helping her because they want to be and they're invested, not because she's the alpha dog or because she scares them into it or because she's bribing them (mostly Douglas). They're doing it because they care about her, her son, and her business- and their places in it. She already had to show vulnerability in Douz to Douglas by revealing why she keeps MJN running, but there's another layer of vulnerability in realizing that people care about you and accepting it,. It's the same vulnerability she'll have to learn to express in Zurich to Herc.

By the way, if you notice that a lot of these are similar to- in the sense of being prior versions of- what JF wrote in his magnificent Zurich post as what the characters need for sitcom graduation... you can believe me or not but I promise I didn't realize until I was doing Carolyn's. It's just a sign of how seamless and strong his character work and forward planning are, that's all I can say.

And on that note, actually- I'm really curious to know at what point JF decided on the actual ending of the show, as in what the mechanics would be. There are three years between when S3 came out and when Zurich came out, so presumably about the same amount of time between the writing of each, and I really want to know when he made the decision about the mechanics of the ending. Because I found the moment when Gordon corrects himself about why he wants Gerti back to be FASCINATING, because we know why he does, and that it has nothing to do with getting back at Carolyn, but the dialogue still makes it seem totally natural that he corrects himself. Did JF have in mind the gold-lined airplane, or just some more general plot?

(Incidentally, and I was going to wait for this til Zurich but may as well do it here because it fits... I also want to know because the S5 finale of Community came out in April 2014, about eight months before Zurich, and it also included a plotline with a machine made with gold wiring. I've been dying for years to know whether JF had the idea first or not- he uses it very differently regardless, but still something I've been so curious about. If he HAD already planned this out years in advance, to the extent of planning the mechanism... I can imagine he'd be very annoyed to see it on screen months earlier lol, though I don't know whether Community was really popular in the UK and if he'd have known.)

Anyway... obviously, besides for all of the above, the episode is perfectly written, amazingly plotted, hilariously funny (and the COLD OPEN IS BACK!), and just all around amazing.

#cabin pressure #cabin pressure advent 2023 #cabin pressure advent #john finnemore #st petersburg #incidentally #i should add that i love how this episode created a sherlock meme #that to this day people still think was ACTUALLY in sherlock #it's just really funny

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