Inside No. 9 - Series 3 Page 7

Whatever floats your boat Zooo.

Thanks for the C4 link. I haven't gotten it to work yet, but it hasn't flat out rejected me for being American just yet (granted I have a VPN and registered with a different postal code). The registration screen keeps timing out though.

I had an interesting discussion with a fellow Shearsmith and Pemberton enthusiast friend of mine yesterday about the infamous hare. And he brought up the hidden hare in the 'Masquerade' picture book by Kit Williams (beautiful artwork in it!). Apparently the author hid clues in the book and buried a golden statue of a hare somewhere in England. People went mad looking for it. He said there were lots of red herrings in the art, like something about a football pitch with a numbered grid or something, and the numbers on the grid corresponded to atomic numbers, whose corresponding atomic letters spelled out a phrase, something along the lines of "Nice Try. Look somewhere else". And even after the hare was found people still persisted in coming up with their own theories of where it was buried or where it should have been buried based on their interpretations of the clues, and one place was such a popular digging spot it became known as "Haresfield Beacon" where they had to put up a sign to tell diggers to stop digging holes...but they dug anyway. Which is exactly what I find myself doing with No 9s. There are so many clues, so many red herrings, so many ways the pieces could fit together, and I can't help but keep digging. I'm pretty sure Reece and Steve will always be 10 steps ahead of me (9 at the very least). They're in a league of their own. I'm just another fanatical hare seeker. Happy to keep searching even after it's found. If that makes me a fool, at least I'm a happy fool.

Going off-topic a bit here but I remember the Masquerade book although I never read the book. Also recently someone hid a few pieces of gold, most of which have been found - some by accident - although I can't remember details. I know that there where were clues to their whereabouts.

(Waits to be greyed out!)

Really though this series no longer should be included as a sitcom. There are hardly any laughs.

I think it fits well enough here in the "other comedy" section. It's definitely not a sitcom. I see it more as straight up drama that has comedic elements...and elements of horror...and other things. It doesn't fit nicely in a box, but I like that about it. Maybe not a laugh out loud, high gag-per-minute comedy, but I certainly don't think it lacks comedic sensibility.

Quote: Chappers @ 10th March 2017, 5:51 PM

Really though this series no longer should be included as a sitcom. There are hardly any laughs.

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And that's why when I started this thread I put it on the "Other Comedy" board. >_<

Who said it was a sitcom?

Chappers

Unusual episode. I don't mind that there were hardly any jokes, I expect very different styles ep to ep from No9, but I felt that the drama was squeezed into its 28 mionutes, and sort of leapt from plot point to plot point. This is possibly a side effect of having to have "plot stasis" points where they sang songs. I agree with those above, the songs were well chosen, so I don't think they should have been dropped, but perhaps it would have breathed a bit better in a 45 min run time.

I also felt that the "I have skills, I can lipread" line was good, but redundant, because she didn't need to lipread to identify what was going on, she'd seen enough, really. The UV light bit was a clever cap on this, though.

Aside from being uncertain that the corporate maths added up relating to redundancies, the bit that I didn't like was the pill roulette. Yes, they weren't really drugs, but it still means a whole room full of provincial middle-aged admins and salespeople were all happy to be taking ecstasy or ketamine. What sort of people are these? That's nothing like any office I've ever come across. I had to rethink who they all were at that point. I mean, they'd even done it before "I hope I don't get the K again"). And that would have been fine too, except it became irrelevant almost immediately, and they wen't back to their little squabbles.

So, the set up was excelelt as ever. I liked the characters and the arc of the plot, and I liked some of the lines, but I just felt that it was a bumpier ride than I would have liked.

I felt the same way about the songs the first time through, but on subsequent viewings I decided half the plot is really actually IN the songs themselves. I think the "plot stasis" as you put it, is only an issue in that you don't quite know what the point of the songs are when you first encounter them, which ideally would be what draws the viewer in by keeping the episode unpredictable and surprising, I don't think it quite panned out that way though. Karaoke songs aren't the best plot devices for building up suspense/intrigue. But that wasn't the point of this episode.

The drugs things didn't bother me, then again, where I live people you might not suspect really do do a lot of drugs. I've noticed no 9 gets a lot more scrutiny over the plausibility of various plot points than say a studio sitcom or something like that, does. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I suppose it's good in that people care enough to think about it, but at the end of the day it is drama. Dramatic things are very often not particularly plausible. Like, take Not Going Out. I'm guessing no one would complain about things like the implausibility of the situation with the height of the bike on top of the car going into the ferry in the recent "Car" episode. It's totally implausible. But it gets a pass. Is it because No 9 isn't a "straight comedy" that it gets put under the microscope in that way?

Quote: Hercules Grytpype Thynne @ 11th March 2017, 7:02 AM

And that's why when I started this thread I put it on the "Other Comedy" board. >_<

Who said it was a sitcom?

View original

OK - me but I meant it's not really any form of comedy any more.

Quote: Davida Grimes @ 12th March 2017, 4:17 PM

I felt the same way about the songs the first time through, but on subsequent viewings I decided half the plot is really actually IN the songs themselves. I think the "plot stasis" as you put it, is only an issue in that you don't quite know what the point of the songs are when you first encounter them, which ideally would be what draws the viewer in by keeping the episode unpredictable and surprising, I don't think it quite panned out that way though. Karaoke songs aren't the best plot devices for building up suspense/intrigue. But that wasn't the point of this episode.

The drugs things didn't bother me, then again, where I live people you might not suspect really do do a lot of drugs. I've noticed no 9 gets a lot more scrutiny over the plausibility of various plot points than say a studio sitcom or something like that, does. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I suppose it's good in that people care enough to think about it, but at the end of the day it is drama. Dramatic things are very often not particularly plausible. Like, take Not Going Out. I'm guessing no one would complain about things like the implausibility of the situation with the height of the bike on top of the car going into the ferry in the recent "Car" episode. It's totally implausible. But it gets a pass. Is it because No 9 isn't a "straight comedy" that it gets put under the microscope in that way?

View original

Good points. I would say, however, that IN9 is definitely *not* a sitcom, which is why it's scrutinised more. Plus, as you say, it's a mark of respect, I would say (why scrutinise something rubbish for subtleties?).

My point about the drugs wasn't that it was unfeasible, exactly, it's just that it caused me to re-evaluate the characters, apparently for no reason, as it wasn't referred to again. If I see a show about provincial office workers and their salespeople and their little personal/business intrigues, and they suddenly start necking K, it throws me out of the story: just as you'd spent a lot of time asking yourself why if a dark comedy comedy about arms dealers suddenly broke off so they could go for ice cream and watch a production of Annie. it's not that this couldn't happen, or even shouldn't happen, but you'd certainly wonder why it did...and if you couldn't come up with answer, and it was ignored form thereon, you'd feel confused.

But, perhaps it's just me. Perhaps outside of my experience people do just drop pills willy-nilly. I only mention it because apart form this I felt I knew the types very well, and they were excellently drawn.

Point taken. I think the scrutiny must be a mark of respect, as you say. I've found loads of little things, lines or plot things that are slightly baffling or leave me confused, and enjoy finding and pondering those sorts of things. In the pill roulette case, I think you're probably right that it's a little odd that a group of seemingly normal office workers would have ketamine and ecstacy on hand. I think it does kind of put you as the viewer into a heightened suspicion that this group of people has some kind of dark secret waiting to be revealed. But it's a red herring. It's supposed to lead us in the wrong direction, and it does, and feeling confused about it in retrospect makes sense. I think it was put there intentionally to confuse. You're right though that that detail is the one thing that look is a bit out of place in an otherwise excellently drawn set of characters. I think we're pretty much one the same page with this one at this point

In any case, can it be tomorrow yet? I am so looking forward to Diddle Diddle Dumpling. I've stopped watching the teasers though. I want to know as little as possible going into a new episode. I watched the teaser for Riddle and instantly regretted it. It's really hard to restrain myself from getting into press stuff for No 9s before they air though. I really want to read that interview with Keeley Hawes that's on this site, but I'm going to wait until after tomorrow's episode for fear of spoilers.

This weeks episode kind of went over my head. Got the twins and shoes belonging as a pair reference, but the revelation of the shoe being his and him putting it on the grass to find after his run... no idea. Is it just me?

My head is spinning. I need to rewatch this. I really really really liked it though. I have theories, but I'm still processing.

I'm super excited both Reece and Steve answered one of my questions on twitter in the Q&A they're doing at the moment.
I asked Reece if he thinks they ever overthink their writing. His response was: "Yes - but only because we know thats what pedants watching it will do. And we have to have an answer for everything." Which is exactly the slightly grumpy answer I was hoping for. Made my day.

And I asked Steve what episode(s) they would most like to take on stage and he said A Quiet Night In, but not with real dogs, maybe puppets, like war horse. That would be amazing!

Ooh, Reece answered another one of mine. This is fun!

Okay, so here's my guess about what happened. (SPOILERS btw)

Reece's character is definitely obsessive, and also traumatized by past events to the point of blocking out the memories of his son's death (I'm thinking he either killed the son, or unintentionally was responsible for him dying), and then blocking out the violent act he committed at the end. The end was ambiguous between him having killed the guy to get the shoe back, and him having killed the daughter so that the twins can be together. The shoe guy was in Norfolk, and Keeley Hawes' character made it sound like that was far from wherever they were, but the blood on his hand was still wet. So he could have killed the shoe guy AND the daughter to reunite the twins, or he could have just killed the daughter, or just killed the shoe guy. I'm not leaning toward one of those three options in particular at this point. I think it's supposed to be ambiguous.

And yeah, he put the shoe out there, then forgot he put it there, then obsessed about it being apart from its other half. But "it's not about the shoe, is it?" I think it's a parallel with him having been the one to cause the son's death, then being traumatized by that happening to the point of kind of blocking it out of his memory, and then becoming obsessed in sort of an OCD/PTSD way with restoring symmetry and resolving the trauma by reuniting the pair in the only possible way, through death. All of the stuff with the two jam jars, and the symmetrical cocktails, and the shoes, and the house being so full of symmetry kind of added to that.

Two smaller things were they live at number 22 and the first drawing by the child on the fridge was held up with a double letter score (twins) and S1 (one shoe) scrabble magnet.