Press Gang: Photo Finish (AKA The One Where All The Adults Are Stupid)

Right-o. For those that want to play along at home JB HiFi are STILL selling whole seasons of this brilliance for $12.95 each. There’s no bonus features to get you all excited but there is plenty of Spike, a good amount of Lynda and yes, even some Colin and Fraz. And the DVD covers are delightfully amateurish.

Stupidly, they’re also selling the complete series box set – for $62.95 – which is a whole eleven bucks more than all the sets together, but, you know, if you like your TV shows all boxed up, you could buy that too. It might have features – who knows?

Anyway – on with the show. Roll credits. I fear my neighbours can hear how often the Press Gang credits play in my house. I’m not embarrassed, but, you know – I might be if they ever played anything other than UB40.

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Once the parade of turn-and-smile is done, we open on the newest member of the Junior Gazette – Lynda’s swear box. Lynda approaches, clipboard in hand, and drops a handful of coins into it – I’m guessing she swore up a storm earlier. Today’s outfit is a big BLUE t-shirt, black skirt and blazer.

I’m ashamed to say I still kinda love the way she dresses, even though it is really not all that cool.

Then there’s all the usual good stuff: Lynda criticizes Kenny. Kenny takes it. Lynda criticizes at arty girl who will henceforth be known as Julie. Julie pulls a bitchface. Spike pays out on Lynda. Lynda pays out on Spike. Sarah whinges. Lynda criticizes someone else in a witty way and yells at some other people, and Spike pays out on her some more. It’s all fairly generic and irrelevant but quite funny. Just get the DVD’s ok and then you can laugh too.

Lynda then tells Spike she needs him to get more info on the Disco story. Remember the disco story everyone? There were three men outside a disco. One was the owner. Danny took some photos and it’s the ‘big story’ for the first edition because there’s a rumour the disco might be sold off for a supermarket.

It may be their big story, but sadly I just don’t care: which sucks for me because it’s the main focus of this episode.

Oh wait, Kenny just offered to do a Hillwalking feature. Suddenly the Disco thing sounds way awesome. Hillwalking? Really? Even for Kenny that’s some unexcitement.

Spike offers Lynda sexual favours in a roundabout way and for some reason I don’t understand she turns him down. In favour of hillwalking. Freak.

Lynda needs Spike to get her some more info on the disco story and all I can think of is Disco night on Idol, which didn’t suck too bad. Sadly, they’re not discussing how Ben is the BB Zach of Idol and making me all squee-ey, because that would be interesting, unlike the three men outside some random disco, who are not.

Spike tries to use the disco thing to blackmail Lynda into going to see a band with him. It doesn’t come off too well – mostly because she’s already going and no, Spike, not with a girlfriend. Or her brother. Or her sister. Or her mother. Or her father. Or her dog, since he asked.

She’s going with James Armstrong. Who Julie – who is for some reason reading Lynda’s clipboard while all this goes on - thinks is mighty fine.

Spike does a sulk which is very cute but really kind of pathetic. Lynda has to do all sorts of ego flattery to get him out of the newsroom and on his way out he admits to Kenny in the most delightfully simpering way that he would drink Lynda’s bathwater.

Yes – her bathwater. Presumably after she had bathed in it. Now, that there is a crush. No wonder we all wanted to be Lynda when we were growing up.

Not that I want anyone drinking my bathwater … ew.

Probably.

Just then, a phone rings. This is exciting because they don’t have a phone, and so everyone goes hunting for it and it continues to ring for a really long time before someone finds it in a drawer and Lynda answers it with a buttload of unnecessary trepadation.

We cut to Spike walking up the High Street and into the local greasy spoon – Czars, which it truly greasy and awesome because it has arcade games and faux-wood paneled walls – like I wanted my room to be when I was seven. Spike and Czar exchange a little bit of banter and I’m thinking that this is truly a greasy greasy spoon. Too greasy for me even, which is a feat.

Back in the newsroom Lynda is putting coin after coin into her swearbox. I am kind of annoyed that we never get to hear her swear, given she seems to do it so often. Not surprisingly for anyone who’s seen more than an episode and a half of this, it’s Colin at the other end of the line and the phone is a dodgy fix that basically involves stealing phone line from Kerr over at the big Gazette -

Allow me some editorial comment here. I love this show but I have to call bullshit here. Kerr has given them a building and a shitload of photographic paper and is paying for the printing of their newspaper and he hasn’t given them a phone?? Were phone lines prohibitively expensive in the UK in the late 80’s? Is this like that TV license thing? Because we’re talking a phone line here – how the fuck would they function without one?

- None of which changes the fact that Lynda is furious and in the process of dragging Colin back to the newsroom so she can kill him.

Back at the Greasy, Spike and Fraz are bantering and it takes them all of four seconds to figure out that they’ve both been assigned to the disco story and that Lynda doesn’t think either of them will get anywhere.

They’ve been played, and Spike is none to impressed. He’s all ‘Are we going to let her get away with this?’ and ‘She thinks we’re stupid! Why does she think we’re stupid?’ – to which Fraz answers ‘yeah’ and ‘maybe somebody told her’ – which is why I love Fraz. He’s so adorably clueless.

I don’t love how high Fraz wears his tight blue jeans so much. I’m glad the 80’s are over. Why are you fashionistas insisting on bringing them back?

Spike makes an executive decision that they’re going to ‘show her’ and get disco info. Fraz rightly points out that that is exactly what Lynda wants them to do, and he’s right. I love Fraz.

As Spike perves on a girl in incredibly high mom-jeans, a couple of what I can only assume are his friends come around the corner. The jibe him for joining the Junior Gazette. He gets all macho and tries to take them on. There’s a very cute ‘who do you think you are? Rambo? Superman? James Armstrong?’ thing and the boys walk off, leaving Spike looking rather annoyed.

He does annoyed very very well.

Back at the newsroom – damn all this cutting between two concurrent scenes, it makes me very tired - there’s a bit of a panic because Chrissie is about to interrupt this whole argument between Lynda and Colin about the phone by bursting in and discovering it. They all play hide-the-phone, which is a much more frantic game than it should be.

Aaaand back in the street Spike and Fraz are interrogating a local shopkeeper about the new supermarket. Unsurprisingly the shopkeeper is none too thrilled as he thought the council had scrapped the whole supermarket plan. Sigh. I’m bored of the supermarket. I’d ignore all the dialogue and pay attention to the music but it is just so cheesy I need crackers.

Back at the newsroom (again) Chrissie’s awesome haircut is talking deadlines and I’m loving it. Lynda asks her to have a look at some stuff and Chrissie’s haircut reminds her that she knows the rule: they’re not looking at the paper until it’s printed. And – for the second time – I have to call bullshit. Surely a newspaperman as experienced as Matt Kerr – who is almost certainly going to be listed as the publisher of this little rag, is not as stupid as to print and release a newspaper written by a bunch of inexperienced teenagers without so much as reading over it to check he’s not likely to get sued? Riiight. I forget sometimes that this show was aimed at kids.

And then the phone rings. Stupidly everyone panics and Kenny unplugs it and so obviously Chrissie straight away picks that something dodgy is going on., and she freaks and reinforces to everyone that Kerr is going to be furious. Which is really kind of lucky because it means Chrissie isn’t going to tell him.

I mean really … it’s a phone!!!

Once Chrissie and her awesome hair and her even more awesome blue pinstriped jacket with rolled up sleeves take their leave, Lynda approaches Colin with something akin to murder in her eyes. Thankfully for him, Sarah pulls her of and the two of them go off to get more disco info.

You see where we’re going here? You see? That’s right. It’s Spike and Fraz versus Lynda and Sarah. The swots versus the rebels. The geeks versus the cools. It’s on.

Fraz and Spike are on their way to the council because Spike ‘knows someone’ whose dad is on the council. There’s a very cute phone call where this ‘friend’ – Debbie – goes on and on about new guy she’s semi-stalking who’s taller and better looking than Spike and whose name is – you guessed it – James Armstrong. Poor Spike.

So, Lynda and Sarah show up at the council and get turned away by their contact and they’re all furious and Lynda has obviously been swearing a lot off-screen because she’s going on and on about her swearbox. And, of course, they run into Spike and Fraz and there’s a whole competitive thing and then Lynda and Sarah leave and Fraz and Spike consider ways to get in to see the council contact and of course there’s a photo on the wall of the area’s ‘Young Person Of The Year’ who is – yep – James Armstrong, and Spike gets all huffy and has a brainwave and the next thing we know he’s in a Viking costume and charming the pants off a middle-aged council lady and getting the interview that Lynda and Spike couldn’t.

Victory. I’m still bored of the disco story but go Team Cools!

Back at the newsroom there’s a whole bunch of exposition about where we’re at with the disco story – which according to the swots is precisely nowhere. Fraz comes over and announces that he’s finally got all twelve star signs and the rest of them – rather predictably – start throwing a whole bunch of fake ones at him. I don’t blame them: there is something utterly alluring about his confused face. And of course it comes out that Spike got the interview that Lynda couldn’t get, and instead of being thrilled that someone’s got her anything that resembles an actual story, she’s furious that he’s not in the newsroom filling her in … about the interview. Obviously.

Minds out of the gutter people. Now.

Lynda and Fraz find Spike at Czars basically posing for a slacker tableaux. Five or six boys in tight high jeans and jackets are stage talking and laughing with ‘Czar’ while generic 80’s rock music plays in the background. Some of them are wearing sunglasses inside.

Lynda waltzes in, takes his arm and proceeds to humiliate him – calling him darling and reminding him about his ballet classes and even going so far as to threaten to read out some of his poetry to the group. Spike looks like his mom just checked his underpants for skid marks in the playground. Lynda looks almost unbearably smug.

He pulls her aside and there’s some hotness as they glare each other off in fury before he hands over the results of his interview: which are not much. An official denial.

All of a sudden, there’s some very exciting music and some even more exciting 80’s special effects and a newspapers spins onto the screen. Omg! They made it! It’s the first edition. And the owner of the disco and his two mates made the cover. Awesome!

We cut to Lynda looking nervous with Kerr reads the paper, and he tells her off for breaking the first rule of journalism and not checking her sources.

Which pisses me off. She asked for one of you adults to look at it before it went to print, and you wouldn’t, and now all this angry about these rules? Did you actually explain the first rule of journalism to her at any point? Or was she meant to figure that out for herself too?

Yes, I know. TV show. Calm blue ocean.

The next scene has Lynda at the town hall while the middle-aged council lady looks all sour and denies there will be a new supermarket and calls the paper a bunch of names and says they were wrong and irresponsible and alarmist and you know what – this is stupid.

If they used her ‘official denial’ – and I have to assume they did, what on earth is the problem? The extent of the story probably runs something like this:

‘A meeting between the owner of the disco and these two mysterious men on Friday is fuelling speculation that the site is being sold off for a supermarket. Such a move would anger local shopkeepers. Councillor Sour-Face has denied that a new supermarket be built on the site.’

… except with more words, from the look of that front cover.

And I just don’t get what on earth the problem with that is, or just how they managed to offend every single shopkeeper in town printing it (unless it makes them all look like wusses in the face of a bit of competition, which it kind of does). Local papers print this kind of crap every week around here and no-one goes nuts.

Lynda’s all nervous and anxious and it’s all looking very bad and she does a rubicks cube in anger because she’s given up swearing.

Is this the end of the Junior Gazette? Already? After just two episodes?

Pah! No.

And guess who comes to the rescue?

OMG! It’s Fraz! And he’s had a thought! A real one! If the supermarket isn’t being sold off for a disco – what were those two men doing outside the disco that day?

Good question, Fraz, and here we might get our answer, as we cut to two men being arrested and put in the back of a police car while an old detective-type dude looks all seriously but smugly at his copy of the Junior Gazette. It’s all serious, with ultra-serious music playing.

Thankfully, Lynda explains everything to Spike and Kenny outside the copshop after her unseen interview with the police. As it turns out, the two guys with the owner were professional arsonists!! And the arson squad recognized them from the picture on the cover of the Junior Gazette and figured out that they were going to torch the place for insurance money and arrested them!! It’s amazing! Not only is the Junior Gazette still in business but they’re superheroes!

I call bullshit, and the credits roll.

Credit talkies is a bit between Spike and Kenny about how Kenny has never been on a date. When did the ultra-cool dude become friends with the guy with no personality? Did I miss this?

Grade: C- and not a lot of Spike/Lynda hotness to make up for it. Sigh. I never said it was going to be all flowers and sunshine, kids.