Season 1, Episode 3, Part 1: "Tim's Birthday"

Part 1: “Tim's Birthday”

We open on an empty office. It's early in the morning. Joan is working, which I did find realistic, because cleaning staff usually comes before or after the other employees. Tim is already at his desk. He voice-overs that he is thirty today, and his Mom got him up really early to give him his present. That sounds kind of rude. I would have told her to wait until I've had my sleep. Overall, I feel really sorry for Tim in this episode. Imagine having to work on your birthday, get up extra early, and after that, having to go to the pub for the office quiz. I doubt anyone dreams of spending their birthday with David Brent. Tim introduces his present, saying how he loves ballet, the novels of Proust and the films by Alain Delon. And that's why his Mom got him.. HatFM, a lame blue cap with a radio in it. It's actually pretty cute, as far as novelty gifts go, and Tim seems to think so too, he just seems amused by it. “I think it's a pretty sweet present,” he says. He looks cute with the hat on, maybe because his style is otherwise so low-key.

David is already in his office. He tells the camera he's calling Finchy to make sure he'll be there in time for the quiz. He smirks widely as he tells us they've won six years in a row. Oo, might the writers be setting things up for his first failure in the quiz? On the phone, Finchy makes a joke, so David repeats it to the camera: “What's black and slides down Nelson's column? - Winnie Mandela?! Oh yeah, that's good, no, it's not racist, is it?” Noo, not at all. How could that be racist? David gets flustered and starts babbling, “It's because she's black and Nelson's column because he's.. and she's married, so it's not even, ok, bye, see ya.” Don't make it worse by explaining the meaning of “nelson's column”. And “she's married”, as if that makes the joke more acceptable. David's knowledge of Nelson Mandela is, of course, limited, as we will learn in the Christmas special. But for now he only looks at the camera kind of embarrassed, then takes a more confident pose and smiles, probably thinking of the quiz.

Joan asks Tim what he's doing there so early, “shit the bed?” Tim jokes that he hasn't done that in weeks and tells her it's his birthday. Joan congratulates him and asks what his Mom got him. Tim tries to tilt his head to signal the hat, but then has to give her a clue: “Something you can wear?” Then she finally gets it – after thinking a bit. As if Tim walks around with the hat on every day. It's like coming to the office with a wild new hairdo and no one even noticing.

Sheila and Keith come into the office. Gareth walks in, looking at the camera a bit self-consciously. Malcolm and Dennis set up at their desk. Malcolm is staring out the window as if he's thinking, “Another day wasted at the office...Oh well, only [X] years til retirement.” Phones start ringing.

Dawn comes in and gives Tim a birthday card. It has a childish balloon theme in the front. “That's all in order,” says Tim. Inside the card, it says: “What's the difference between your wages and your penis? I could find lots of women who will blow your wages.” Lame. Dawn giggles at it, but Tim doesn't seem all that amused by it. The worst part of birthdays is the stupid joke cards. Half of them are dirty and the other half are all “Ha ha, look how old you are”. David comes to Tim's desk and tells the camera, “Lock up your daughters..Finchy's on his way in for the quiz. Chris Finch.” Yes, you mention him most every day, people will remember who he is. David is giggling childishly, as always, and asks Gareth for confirmation. Gareth just says “yeah”, because yeah, Finchy's coming, but so what?

Then David says the documentary crew can keep about 20 % of the material they shoot of him and Finch. I think they wanna keep it all in – they want embarrassing moments. “Innit, Gareth?” he says again. “Yeah,” says Gareth quietly. See, David, you and Finchy is fun for you and Finchy, not others. And it would be normal to act like this at 15 years old – I'm sure I bragged about how funny my best friend and I can be when we get going, but in reality it was always just the two of us giggling childishly and everyone else looking annoyed. At least at my age, ten years younger than David, I realize that inside jokes are inside jokes. David looks at Tim and says lamely, “...hat...” He's that guy who notices glaring differences with people, but isn't that interested in knowing why they're there. It's not a question, just an observation. I don't think he'd ever compliment Dawn on a nice dress or new hairdo. Speaking of which, Dawn has her hair in braids today and it looks really cute. She might have wanted to look a bit cuter than usual because of Tim's birthday. Dawn tells David it's Tim's birthday and David just kind of goes, “Oh yeah...” but they don't show him congratulating Tim. Maybe he just doesn't.

David interviews about how the documentary crew is crazy to let him and Finchy on TV. He says they're like “Morecombe & Wise”. I've never seen their stuff but I can imagine they're comedians. But then he says they're not really, “cos there's no straight man, so there's no dead wood.” OK, I can see what the writers are doing here. David has no concept of comedy. He has no idea what is funny and why, and that's why he thinks a straight man is dead wood. The straight man is, of course, absolutely necessary in good comedy. The straight man represents the viewer and balances the wackiness of the other guy. If he isn't there, it's not as funny. Of course David wouldn't know this. He's the dumb silly character, while Tim is the straight man.

Hilariously, he starts explaining how his and Finchy's humor is different: “I'm sort of a more character..based.. and he's more of a gag man.” Character based? He does impressions of characters made by others. That's not character based, that's just lame and unimaginative. “I do gags as well, but you know..good together..by now. We're just reading each other's minds and then we start cracking up, and people go, 'Why is that funny?' and we tell them and they go, 'Oh yeah yeah yeah...You are the best.'” So they have to explain their comedy to people? Because they, um, read each other's minds? So it's more like telepathic humor, I guess. Not at all because it's bad and makes no sense to anyone but them. If you have to tell people why something is funny, it isn't funny. Or they're just too dumb to get it, but I think in this case the possibility for that is rather slim. Of course people feel compelled to laugh when you're already laughing, or they'd hurt your feelings. I think almost all the “laughs we have in the office” happen because of that. That's a really sad kind of laughter. It's not even a “sad clown” laughter, it's just... well, actually it is, if David is the sad clown. David adds, “Their opinion,” as if a fake quote from vague “people” is some kind of scientific proof that he is in fact funny, and also, he's not bragging at all, because it's other people who say it. Right. I dunno about you, but he really convinced me.

Now we see David coming to Tim and saying, “Happy birthday, by the way.” It's like he forgot to congratulate Tim and came back to say it as an afterthought, but today is really about him and the quiz. David tells him 30 – of course he has to add “the big three-oh” - is the worst, because you think your life is rubbish and you haven't achieved anything. He admits to thinking it on his 30^th birthday, “but...” he points at the office around him as if his life had vastly improved. Really, when he was 30, he was probably doing Tim's job. And when you think about it, he isn't that far ahead now. It's not like he's the vice president at Harrod's. He adds that it could be worse: his neighbour, Kelvin – he seems to find the name a bit amusing - “is 32 and still lives with his parents”. Followed by a giggle, which soon dies as Tim admits to living with his parents. David switches straight to, “Cherish them, because you will miss them when they're not around.” He switches the topic to his own life, because he's David and can't help but. He says both of his parents are dead, but then corrects that his Dad is in a home, "so as good as”. You can add ageism and healthism to David's many prejudices, if he thinks being sick and old is as good as dead. He tells Tim that he got a call from the home one night, 3 am, because his father thought there was a Japanese sniper on the roof of “Debenham's”. Gareth says that's a good spot, “That's where I'd be if I had to take someone out. That lived there.” Coming from anyone else, that would be really creepy. But with Gareth, you know that's just one of his many military daydreams. Also - what kind of a home calls a family member at 3 am just to inform them that their demented parent is having a hallucination? If you call at that hour, it had better be an emergency, and I don't think that qualifies. The reason he's in a home is that the nurses will handle situations like that, right? David claims he went there to convince his Dad there was no one on the roof. So – he got up at 3 am, even if he had to work at 9 am the next morning. And he drove to his Dad's nursing home just to tell him there was no sniper on the roof? And only he could convince his Dad, who he just called “as good as dead”? I strongly doubt David's story. Gareth, of course, doesn't. He asks instead who was up on the roof. David actually has to tell him it was the fathe'rs imagination. Gareth says that's lucky, because if there was a sniper, you couldn't see him. “He'd be like.. oh, no one there...” He makes an explosion sound and a hand movement that mimicks a person's brain coming out of their skull. That was disgusting. He acts like my brothers did when they were ten. The lack of intellect, the whole army obsession, the gross details... He's mentally ten. David closes with a rather depression conclusion: “Anyway, he is a vegetable now, and that's something we've all got to look forward to. So... happy birthday.” He pats Tim in the back. If that's his birthday wish, I don't want to hear his.. eulogy.. to his dead father.. OK, that joke turned out a bit David-esque. I think he's rubbing off on me. Tim looks at the camera with a smile on his face, like he's just trying to see the bright side, but his birthday is off to a rather depressing start.