I thought it started slowly, but when goofy-looking Stephen Merchant showed up I knew it was going to go somewhere. I bet this is his biggest exposure in the US, and I wonder what might come out of it.
I laughed out loud several times in spite of myself.
Overall we liked the episode. But our knowledge of Vegas ruined the tag.
1. Mandalay Bay is only 43 stories tall. 2. It, like most other resorts who cater to Chinese customers, omit any floor level with a “4” in it. There is no 4th floor, no 14th floor, and it goes straight from the 39th floor to the 50th floor in the elevators. This makes it next to impossible to count floors from the outside. 3. So there wouldn’t be a 64th floor under any circumstances.
The mandarin for 4 is a pseudo-homonym for death. Pseudo, because the tones are different. Like the difference between an affect in speech vs affecting change.
For some reason I predicted almost every punch line in this episode at the set up. I don’t think I’ve ever done that before with an episode. For how fast-paced it was, it seemed like their timing was off.
Actually, many of these can be traced back to operettas and comic operas. Some of them just lifted the entire plot from French or Viennese operettas. The only thing missing is a gazebo, in which a couple secretly meet, unaware that the other person is actually their lover in disguise.