Well, it’s over. I guess we all saw that this wasn’t going to be a good season starting from episode 1. It did get a little bit better at times, but then ended rather poorly. (Here’s a link for reference purposes.)
So, jump in, bitch, moan, throw out your odd compliments if you have any.
My notes:
Jeff. “Coupling” without Jeff is like “The Simpsons” without Homer. The one-sided phone call in Ep. 1 and that “Jeffina” in Ep. 6 doesn’t make it any better either.
Susan pregnant. We all know what direction the shows taking from now on. Feh. Plus there was just too many unbelievable aspects of this. Including the size and position of the bulge before delivering. Susan is rail thin. A 9 month-old fetus would practically double her size.
Oliver. Not much going on there. Finally started to develop a personality in Ep. 5 but then retrograde in Ep. 6. Plus Townsend seemed unnecessary.
Jane. I always thought Jane is too unlikeable for any of them to want to hang around with her at all. In particular, that she would have been Steve’s ex. He’s not the brightest bulb, but even he wouldn’t have dated such a shallow stupid person for long.
But in Eps. 5 and 6, Jane gets a rewrite. She’s a sensitive smart person. And pigs fly. No way could she have come up with that story she told Steve at the end of Ep. 6, let alone that nice line about her boyfriend. While I think I would like New Jane more, it’s just not consistent with her past behavior.
Patrick and Sally. No point of discussing one without the other now. I didn’t see what Patrick saw in Sally, but I was willing to chalk that up to personal preference. But Patrick is a long term ladies man. There should have been more between officially dating and a surprise ring appearance. He needed more time for a realistic change.
Sally has major alcohol problems (which Patrick has known about from day 1), but neither he nor anyone else seems really concerned about this. Getting regularly smashed would seem to be a deal breaker from Patrick’s point of view. I.e., “I’m giving up The Bachelor Dream Life for an insecure drunk?”
I had hoped that having Patrick would have changed Sally some. But as Ep. 4 showed, she still has major problems.
One of the best aspects of the show has been the “interwoven/alternate view” story method. The first few episodes kept that going but it pretty much went away by Eps. 5 and 6. Certainly nothing comparable to the opening of the “Spiderman” episode. It was becoming a conventional sitcom, and what’s worse, a conventional British sitcom.
Note that I’ve don’t have memorable quotes or scenes to bring up. No “I loved that Reservoir Dogs bit.” Sigh.
So, maybe the next set of shows will be better. Maybe Jeff will come back (and Oliver will go). Maybe the baby won’t kill things. Maybe …
Was it ever explained why Jeff left? (I know that the character supposedly went to Lesbos, but what was the real story?) BTW, my favorite Jeff moment was the scene with him in the leather mask, and his eventual realization that he was still wearing it.
I haven’t seen anything about the reason for Jeff’s absence. But then I haven’t been trying hard. I was afraid that if I Googled the wrong site, I’d get a spoiler. I wish there were some active Coupling fans from the UK around who could fill us in. They’d presumably have more & earlier info.
(And now I’m afraid that if I Googled I’d find out that Jeff is permanently gone and that would be too much of downer. I’d prefer naive hope.)
OTOH, it did really sound like Jeff’s voice when Steve’s dream started, but then switched over to “Jeffina”'s voice.
Richard Coyle has built up a good record for himself as a character actor on British TV (notably as the Iago character in the ITV version of Othello, amongst other parts) and didn’t want to be typecast as Jeff. With the possible exception of Jack Davenport, what with that pirate movie he did, his career’s possibly in the best shape of the six of them.
Not obvious from a British perspective. Sally drinks more than the other girls because she’s insecure. But she doesn’t have a “major alcohol problem” by local standards. Her drinking is (broadly) on a par with Bridget Jones. Heavy, but entirely to an extent that the other characters expect her to handily cope with it.
The series? It had its moments, but it was weak overall.
It never works to replace a character with a new character as close to the first as one can possibly manage in a world without cloning. It was a bad decision that kept on not working.
The baby was another bad decision. Was there any difference between the way Steve behaved from the way Dick van Dyke did a full 40 years ago? Every nervous father-to-be joke was so tired that they dragged the show to a complete halt.
Good call about Jane. That last conversation was brilliant, but it wasn’t Jane.
Moffat is a clever writer and he does come up with numbers of good individual jokes and situations, enough to keep me watching. This whole season was a creative mistake, though, and I can’t believe there could possibly be a fifth series.
It’s only just started over here, at least on proper terrestrial BBC anyway, but it’s pretty easy to see it’s not the same without Jeff. It still has funny moments, but it’s like comparing Red Dwarf V or VI to earlier seasons - the funny moments are more of the “smirk slightly” type rather than the “milk-spurting” type. I’ll keep watching it to the end of the series because there are so few other remotely worthwhile sitcoms around, but I’m hoping they don’t make many more or else it may become Red Dwarf VII…
And I wanted to make a comment about ‘Unbelievable Jane’. I think it’s perfectly hilarious! Remember in the first season (or maybe second) she says that she used to play a crazy shallow selfish woman named Jane and Susan said “But your Jane”? There’s your explanation. It’s all been an act. Well…obviously not the crazy part.
I thought they had long since decided that there wasn’t going to be a Season 5, due to the impossibility of getting all the cast members together. However, they are supposed to be doing one last Christmas special or something. Or have things changed?
About Jane’s transformation: I’ve got to agree with the posters that have said it’s not too believable. However, a lot of sitcoms do that. You have the stupid/shallow characters like Jane, Joey and Phoebe from “Friends”, and Jack and Karen from “Will & Grace”, who maintain their stupidity and/or shallowness most of the time, unless it suddenly becomes convenient for them to do otherwise. So you have these otherwise stupid/shallow characters suddenly saying and doing intelligent/sincere things out of nowhere. I think “Coupling” deserves credit for resisting the temptation to do that with Jane until the last few episodes. And as far as I can remember, they never did it with Jeff.
Mine was him telling the woman on the train that he was missing a leg.
When I opened this thread, I didn’t realise it was a ressurection. I thought maybe the 4th season was being broadcast again. Well, I watched the 4th season last year. Not impressed. Jeff is by far my favourite character – probably because I sometimes think as he does. Coupling without Jeff just doesn’t work as well.
I haven’t decided if I’ll buy the 4th season DVD. I have the other three, and it would be good to ‘complete the set’; but season 4 is really weak.
I did a little Googling and found the same data. Moffat posted about this to a Dr. Who board in Feb. and this was picked up on the Coupling/BBCAmerica board and TVTome.
And if I start posting Jeff jokes I’ll be here all day. The two-part “date” with Wilma is full of them.
BTW, fav: (not thinking of looks, you know my opinion on that) Susan. She reminds me so much of me (with men). Accept that she’s so skinny. I’m not that little.
