Episode 4. "Battles"

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"Skip to the end..."

The one where Tim goes paintballing and Daisy gets a dog.


Introducing...

Peter Serafinowicz as Duane Benzie
('Star Wars episode 1' 'Shaun of the Dead' 'The Calcium Kid' 'Black Books' 'I'm Alan Partridge' 'Little Britain')

Rochenda Carey as the woman at the dog kennel
('The Darling Buds of May' 'Kavanagh QC' 'Only Fools and Horses' 'Upstairs Downstairs')

Paul Rutner as the business man.

Ada the Dog as Colin.


First appearance of...

Mike actually engaged in violence Colin the dog Brian's fetish about dressing dogs up in period costumes Duane Benzie


References

'The Guardian' 'The Fugees' David Bowie 'Oasis' The 'Tomb Raider' series of games Lara Croft 'Rembrandt' Evil Dead 2 (disembodied heads talking to Daisy, Mike saying "Groovy" after he tools up and the film poster behind Tim) 'The Exorcist' 'Rhubarb and Custard' (theme tune) The gay club 'Heaven' 'Star Wars episode 1' ( "We put them down, all of them." ) 'Predator' Marvin Gay ( "...sexual healing." ) the 'Baywatch' theme tune music from 'Psycho' 'Lethal Weapon' ( "...I'll count to 3 and then stand up..." ) 'The Killer' 'Rambo' 'Hard Boiled' Every Vietnam war film ever made Terminator 2 (although see below for Mike's attempt at Spanish) there are posters of 'The X files' and 'Tron' in Tim's bedroom.


"...thumping tunes, kicking bass..."

  • 'Heads and Tails'
  • 'Dance of the sugar plum fairy'
  • The theme from 'Rhubarb and Custard'
  • The theme from 'Baywatch'


"...a super race of mice-spiders..."

Daisy is dreaming that she is the one who dumped Richard, telling him that she's just far too busy to be bothering with him any more. Tim then imagines himself leaping through the window of the Meteor Street house after cackling about wreaking Daisy's relationship with Richard ( "I'd do it again in an instant! Bwah ha haaa!" ). Daisy and Tim discuss how dogs reacted to them when they were kids. The young Daisy chased the local dogs around shouting "Play with me! Oh please play with me?!" while a young Tim ran away from said dogs. Tim then tells the story of a Dog that tried to kill him when he was young, he talks about "... eyes lit by the fires of Hades' eternal damned kingdom..." . The story is very good although a little unbelievable, as it ends with the dog being hit by lightening.


And I quote...

Tim on the difference between love and war: "One is lots of physical and psychological pain and the other one's war."

Daisy implores Tim that they should get a dog: "I'll do everything for it, I'll feed it and I'll walk it and I'll change it's little hutch; and if you still don't like it... we'll kill it."

Duane Benzie: "Hi; Dom..."

Mike: "This place a swarming with 'A's; they aren't just in the jungle, they are the jungle!"
Man: "What do you think this is? Vietnam?"
Mike: "Yeah!"

Tim on Duane Benzie: "Now it's personal!"
Mike: "I think he made it personal when he slept with your girlfriend."


"What a bitch!"

Apparently Tim advised Daisy to tell Richard that she was sleeping with other blokes. Quite how much of this conversation is imagined and how much actually happens isn't clear, but Daisy calls Tim "... evil..." and tells him "...you're so damaged!" after Richard dumps her. Tim then 'comforts' Daisy by telling her "I'm not the deceiver here, I'm not the cheating harpy."

Tim describes the letter he received three months late from Sarah as being "... designed to make me feel better while appeasing her sense of guilt for running off with a slimy city boy called Duane."


"Do you rent downstairs?"

Tim and Mike are holding hands at the paintball; Mike also comments to Tim that "I've always fancied you" , Tim quickly responds "Not here!"


"Today's youth... okay young adults."

The reaction of Mike and Tim to the businessman playing paintball with them shows what a delicate age both characters are at. Mike calls the man a 'kid' when it is revealed that this is his first time at paintball. When he complains that he's actually 36 years old Mike corrects himself, referring to him as 'old man'.


"Ooh Mamma!"

Marsha and Daisy share some wine after Richard dumps her, but not as much as might be expected with Marsha in the house. Brian tries to borrow a tea bag off Tim, Tim points out that you can't borrow a tea bag and offers to give him one for free.


"Fuck off Twist!"

Very few swears in this episode, Marsha tells Amber: "I don't give 2 shits if you come back or not!" Tim insists "We're going to kick some serious arse 'mofo'." and also describes the dog that attacked him as a kid as "... this fucking great Alsatian..."


"Timmy: fetch me my tools!"

Duane Benzie tells Tim that it's OK to shoot someone with a paintball gun from point balnk range in the back of the head, but not the face.


"Get off your arse!"

Daisy, in her youth, was too lazy to have a proper dog, so she had a box instead. When she gets her dog in this episode and calls it Colin she explains to Twist, "That's what I called my box."


"...he's just a bit pretentious."

Brian has a couple of very weird fetishes, one of which seems to revolve around dressing pets up in Elizabethan costumes and making them dance around while he takes photos. Brian also has photos of his dead dog (which got run over by a truck) with him, "... such vibrant colours!"

Brian gets quite excited by making people think he isn't in his flat while in fact he is hiding covered in paint (brilliantly described on the DVD commentary by Nick Frost as 'paint-o-flage'). Is this some kind of incomprehensible avant-garde art? Anyway Mark Heap does a wonderfully lame and timid "Err, help me. I'm stuck." when he can't get out. Daisy has an attack of slimy goey-eyes around Colin when she makes Brian say "I didn't mean it." in a silly high-pitched voice after Brian accidently sits on the dog.


Mike's Spanish.

In an apparent homage to the finale of the classic science fiction film 'Terminator 2', Mike says ""Viano tormenty"" which is meant to be Spanish and meant to mean "A storm is coming." Unfortunately the phrase is "Viene tormenta."


"...wreaking your petty vengeance on womankind!"

Tim's character takes a very macho turn in this episode as he literally takes his break up with Sarah out on Daisy (he told Daisy to tell Richard about her infidelity) and then Lara Croft (the letter from Sarah ""... made me wanna drown things!"" ). He then goes on one of modern society's ultimate forms of testosterone over-loads, paintballing. This feeds into Tim's subconscious prevention of Daisy getting a job, see 'Art' and 'Leaves'. Is he in fact a bit of a chauvinist?


"Let's play!"

The paintball sequence gives Simon Pegg and Nick Frost the chance to go overboard in this episode. Mike asks Tim what he's going to do when he sees Duane again (after they first meet at the paintball and Tim is cool as a cucumber), "I'm going to set fire to him." he says. Tim's introduction to the paintball as Mike tools himself up is fabulous. "It's not war, it's just an exercise in teamwork and tactics. If you go too far you will get banned." Mike pulls on a belt of machine gun ammunition, checks his grenades, sheaths a knife and cocks his gun: "Groovy!" (in a reference to Bruce Campbell's suiting up 'Evil Dead 2'), Tim: "Shit." Mike then uses the event to pretend that he's some kind of all action soldier boy, while pinned down by enemy fire he tells a business man on his team: "Last time I was in this situation I wasn't using a paintball gun." , Man: "You've seen combat! Where?" Mike: "Err? on the television?" Man: "But you said the last time you were in this situation you didn't use a paintball gun, what did you use?" Mike: "Err ... a big stick."


How's that for some Fried Gold?

Mike's conversation with the businessman at the paintball (see "Let's play!" above) is pure fried gold. Mike's 'death' scene, mimicking just about every war film that has ever been made, is really well acted and touching as well as being funny. Nick Frost recons, on the DVD commentary, that his mother got all upset when she saw the scene. Note that Mike has eaten one of the paintballs in order to simulate blood; the scene carries the distinct impression that Tim and Mike act out this 'death' scene every time they play paintball.


"Hawk the Slayer's rubbish!"

Duane Benzie tells Tim that he left a load of boxes full of "... comics, and toys..." at Sarah's place.


"That was kind of unbelievable..."

A lot of what Brian does makes no sense in this episode. He sits on Colin but doesn't injure the dog at all. Then when he starts taking photos of Colin with a massive ruff on, strangely Marsha and Daisy join in instead of asking him what he's doing. Finally he appears in the flat holding a load of bamboo sticks just at the right moment to scare the bejesus out of Tim. Why?


"Big's in this year."

Brian's flowery shirt and rainbow bandanna certainly make him look stupid. Tim wears a chequered shirt when he isn't at the paintball while Daisy has an uncharacteristically feminine frilly pink top and a pair of very large grey trousers. Twist has an odd pink headband with lilac furry bobbles on the top. Mike is in his element at the paintball, packing ammunition belts, grenades, knives, face camouflage and his usual army surplus gear.


Finally, a word from your author.

Tim and Daisy are forced to deal with the failure of their past relationships and so turn to what comforts them the most. That's an alternative synopsis for this episode; which in some senses is very disjointed as Tim and Daisy go off and do different things without coming back together at the end, while in another sense is very solid in term of plot as both characters are dealing with the same problems in different ways. Tim spends the entire episode trying to convince himself that he still has some testosterone left while Daisy, as usual, looks for the quick fix to her emotional problems by finding something else she can love now her boyfriend is gone.

I think the sequence at the paintball is perhaps the funniest set-piece they ever did in 'Spaced', mainly because Nick Frost is utterly brilliant as Mike. This episode is the first time that Mike really gets to be a full-on nutter in terms of loving guns and violence while at the same time knowing nothing about being in the army. Note that Duane Benzie's car is actually Simon Pegg's car in real life (ooh get him with his Jag!).