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cloudsinvenice"I just got a strong feel!"
- Maddy Magellan, predating Tumblr by about fifteen years.
Ah, House of Monkeys. This episode hangs weirdly in my memory - I've always thought it was from much later in the series, but here we are, fifth episode: and Jonathan and Maddy end up in bed together. But I'm getting ahead of myself: it starts with a prostate exam and some monkeys.
We meet Dr. Ingrid Strange (oh, Mr. Renwick; you and your character names!) and her husband Elliot, a doctor and a research scientist who are also old friends of Jonathan's parents. When Dr. Sally Creek (first really personal detail we've learned about his family) and her husband emigrated, she asked her old friend Ingrid to give Jonathan "a full MOT" every couple of years. There's more implied in this, somehow, than measuring his cholesterol - you get the feeling that Sally Creek foresaw a need for someone to take an occasional quasi-motherly interest in her son and intervene if he turned into a complete hermit, perhaps by arranging therapy or a marriage or something. I can't help but think of a family friend's somewhat Jonathan-esque (in nature, not occupation) son, who orbits family life like a distant and unknowable satellite, causing intermittent consternation, and suspect that Sally was very wise.
During an excruciating medical interlude involving Vaseline and coughing, Ingrid invites Jonathan to visit her/Elliot's country home (in the full "stately home with a flagpole and an impressive driveway" sense of the term), but the visit coincides with Elliot's murder in a (stop me if you saw this coming) locked room with a (Cluedo-like but not really) sword in a (here's one the police don't see every day) house full of monkeys and apes.
Ingrid turns out to share the house with (in order of the respect she accords them) not just the late lamented Elliot and the animals she studies, but her salesman son Jordan and actor daughter-in-law Cathy, both of whom seem like poor excuses for functioning adults. However, this is in the fine tradition of murder mystery extended families in general and Jonathan Creek in particular, so we won't complain.
Jordan appears to spend all his time with the monkeys, while Cathy is a witless wet blanket. Their marriage seems rather one-sided, if that, and it's impossible to imagine the chain of events that led them to meet, fall in love and marry. Possibly one of Ingrid's experiments in the field of primatology? If so, then she seems to be regretting it. (Ingrid, by the way, is played by David Renwick alumnus Annette Crosbie, also of One Foot in the Grave fame.)
Another of Ingrid's experiments involves Jonathan and Maddy, in a classic sequence where she tells each individually that old thing about how our pupils dilate when we're aroused - and she tells each that the other displays this and other signs of attraction in their presence. It's very naughty of her, but it works like a charm, at least on Maddy - though the bedroom action consists of Jonathan offending her (his current obsession, perhaps engendered by the visit to Ingrid in her professional capacity, is a monitor which clips to his ear to measure his heart rate) so badly that she evicts him. The fact it's his own room makes no odds, and to be honest this is one of the times when I think she pulls real dick moves with Jonathan. (Though he gives as good as he gets, both later in this episode and elsewhere in the series with his aforementioned Nice Guyish expectations.)
And yet, Maddy gets her subtle moments too - I was really struck by how she reacted to Ingrid's stoic grief and Cathy's hysteria. Ingrid said something about how she was second-guessing her own reactions/the unreality of it all, and Maddy just smiles and nods in a way that suggests she's been there, while her response to Cathy is equally sensitive - surprisingly so for someone who, you suspect, wouldn't normally have much time for the Cathys of the world. More about Maddy's past will be revealed in future episodes, though...
Teylaminh has outdone herself in her cap-filled post on this episode - like her, I'm going to avoid commenting on the Big Reveal, except to inform you that it involves the confession: "We set it to maximum tilt - the hydraulics were wonderful!"Excitingly, you can join the rewatch even if you don't have the DVDs, because as she discovered, a YouTube member, "Instrumentuls", has uploaded the lot! Enjoy. :D
You can check out teylaminh's post here: http://teylaminh.livejournal.com/828444.html
- Maddy Magellan, predating Tumblr by about fifteen years.
Ah, House of Monkeys. This episode hangs weirdly in my memory - I've always thought it was from much later in the series, but here we are, fifth episode: and Jonathan and Maddy end up in bed together. But I'm getting ahead of myself: it starts with a prostate exam and some monkeys.
We meet Dr. Ingrid Strange (oh, Mr. Renwick; you and your character names!) and her husband Elliot, a doctor and a research scientist who are also old friends of Jonathan's parents. When Dr. Sally Creek (first really personal detail we've learned about his family) and her husband emigrated, she asked her old friend Ingrid to give Jonathan "a full MOT" every couple of years. There's more implied in this, somehow, than measuring his cholesterol - you get the feeling that Sally Creek foresaw a need for someone to take an occasional quasi-motherly interest in her son and intervene if he turned into a complete hermit, perhaps by arranging therapy or a marriage or something. I can't help but think of a family friend's somewhat Jonathan-esque (in nature, not occupation) son, who orbits family life like a distant and unknowable satellite, causing intermittent consternation, and suspect that Sally was very wise.
During an excruciating medical interlude involving Vaseline and coughing, Ingrid invites Jonathan to visit her/Elliot's country home (in the full "stately home with a flagpole and an impressive driveway" sense of the term), but the visit coincides with Elliot's murder in a (stop me if you saw this coming) locked room with a (Cluedo-like but not really) sword in a (here's one the police don't see every day) house full of monkeys and apes.
Ingrid turns out to share the house with (in order of the respect she accords them) not just the late lamented Elliot and the animals she studies, but her salesman son Jordan and actor daughter-in-law Cathy, both of whom seem like poor excuses for functioning adults. However, this is in the fine tradition of murder mystery extended families in general and Jonathan Creek in particular, so we won't complain.
Jordan appears to spend all his time with the monkeys, while Cathy is a witless wet blanket. Their marriage seems rather one-sided, if that, and it's impossible to imagine the chain of events that led them to meet, fall in love and marry. Possibly one of Ingrid's experiments in the field of primatology? If so, then she seems to be regretting it. (Ingrid, by the way, is played by David Renwick alumnus Annette Crosbie, also of One Foot in the Grave fame.)
Another of Ingrid's experiments involves Jonathan and Maddy, in a classic sequence where she tells each individually that old thing about how our pupils dilate when we're aroused - and she tells each that the other displays this and other signs of attraction in their presence. It's very naughty of her, but it works like a charm, at least on Maddy - though the bedroom action consists of Jonathan offending her (his current obsession, perhaps engendered by the visit to Ingrid in her professional capacity, is a monitor which clips to his ear to measure his heart rate) so badly that she evicts him. The fact it's his own room makes no odds, and to be honest this is one of the times when I think she pulls real dick moves with Jonathan. (Though he gives as good as he gets, both later in this episode and elsewhere in the series with his aforementioned Nice Guyish expectations.)
And yet, Maddy gets her subtle moments too - I was really struck by how she reacted to Ingrid's stoic grief and Cathy's hysteria. Ingrid said something about how she was second-guessing her own reactions/the unreality of it all, and Maddy just smiles and nods in a way that suggests she's been there, while her response to Cathy is equally sensitive - surprisingly so for someone who, you suspect, wouldn't normally have much time for the Cathys of the world. More about Maddy's past will be revealed in future episodes, though...
Teylaminh has outdone herself in her cap-filled post on this episode - like her, I'm going to avoid commenting on the Big Reveal, except to inform you that it involves the confession: "We set it to maximum tilt - the hydraulics were wonderful!"Excitingly, you can join the rewatch even if you don't have the DVDs, because as she discovered, a YouTube member, "Instrumentuls", has uploaded the lot! Enjoy. :D
You can check out teylaminh's post here: http://teylaminh.livejournal.com/828444.html
