Press Gang: Deadline (AKA Not the One Where Someone Dies)

It’s Press Gang time again, and I know you’re all excited.

Ok. Maybe it’s just me that’s excited. But that’s the most important thing, right? That I’m amused?

Right.

So, on with the show!

This evening we open on the entire junior gazette staff crammed into a bathroom as Danny spies on Lynda and Kerr with his camera. His camera that looks like an SLR with about a 50mm lens, but that is actually a special zoom lens. The cynic in me would suggest that the camera is only in use to a) give Danny something to do (and why? He’s not in the credits – why does he need anything to do? Why can’t Spike do more?) and b) give us those funky ‘the screen is the camera lens’ shots with the centrebox and the focus point marked out on the screen.

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So they’re spying on Lynda and Kerr and Lynda is pulling on her left earlobe which apparently means it’s good. Which makes everyone cheer. Especially Sarah who has been edgy to leave because she has a date with Garry Morris after this. At least it’s not James Armstrong, I think. Whatever happened to him? Spike is counting Sarah’s mentions of her date and he gets up to 266.

Colin is on the phone selling advertising to someone based on a story their running of the opening of their shop the next day.

Everyone is dispersing but Danny is still looking in his magical camera and he’s noticed something strange happening. Lynda and Kerr are going into another room. With two guys. Who look like printers! Because you can pick a printer just by looking at them in 1989! And now Lynda is tugging on her right earlobe. Which is bad news.

How bad, you ask? Very bad, Lynda explains to the group (sans Sarah). The printers are going on strike at midnight and there will be no Junior Gazette next week until they can have it ready to print by 10.30 tonight.

Everyone is all confused and I’ll admit – so am I. Can’t they just get another printer? It’s not like there’s only one. Or maybe in 1989 there is. Who knows? Anyway, it comes to this: they have three hours to write next weeks news.

And cue funky music and frantic typewritery and the title of the episode: Deadline. Damn. I was hoping that meant it was one of the controversial one where someone dies.

Kenny tries to convince Lynda that this whole thing is really stupid. I think it’s far more entertaining that a ‘teacher feature’ so far, so I’m willing to go with it. Lynda is convinced it will be fine, and points out to Kenny that this is what a ‘rainy day file’ is for. Kenny is pretty sure that the rainy day file is full of wet stories (heh), and that they can’t lead with the story of a little old lady with 27 cats if she’s planning to make a coat out of them.

I disagree. I think that would be hilarious, but I am just one (1) girl.

In the meantime, Spike seems to have been charged with finding Sarah and dragging her back to the newsroom to write something. His first attempt achieves nothing but alerting Sarah’s mother to the fact that her daughter is at a party she was banned from going to with a boy she was banned from seeing. If I liked Sarah, I might feel bad for her. But I don’t, so I’m amused.

More amusement comes from the bewildered look on Fraz’s face as he wonders how he’s going to do the horoscopes a week in advance. Spike tells him to make it up, which just bewilders him more – how is he meant to know what he’ll make up a week in advance.

Spike points out that it could be worse and that someone has to report on the football a week in advance.

And picking up yet another of the bazillion plotlines we’re going to have to follow through this episode, Colin is pointing out to Lynda that they can’t afford to do this whole thing. Remember how he sold that ad based on the story about the shop opening? Well he guaranteed the advertiser that he would get a photo of some local celebrity called Tommy Anderson at their shop opening the next morning to seal the deal. And now that they’re printing tonight they can’t get the photo. And if they don’t get the photo, they don’t get the ad.

Lynda doesn’t really care. She just wants the whole thing fixed. And I don’t blame her. Colin can be amusing and cute, but he’s a bit of a shitheel at times.

Spike’s next move in Operation-Find-Sarah is to drop her in it with one of her friends – who thought that Garry Morris was her boyfriend. Poor Spike. Poor Sarah (heh).

Awesomely, Kenny has found a story. Not awesomely, it’s about Mr Sullivan’s sewage-infested garden, which sounds about as interesting to me as the one about the lady with the cats called ‘pocket’ and ‘collar’. Awesomely, the story is going to see this episode littered with poo jokes, and I love me a good poo joke. Not awesomely, they never say the word ‘poo’.

Awesomely, Colin’s got a plan to get Local Celebrity Tommy Anderson to go down to the shop tonight so they can get the photo they need. Not awesomely, Colin has sold Tommy something dodgy in the past and Tommy tells him to get bent.

Awesomely, Tiddler has a suggestion for the football story. Not awesomely, Fraz doesn’t think it’s going to work. Or – is that awesome because he pulls his cute cynical face?

So Kenny goes off to see Mr Sullivan and Colin grabs Danny and goes off to see Tommy Anderson and Mr Sullivan ditches Kenny to go on a date with some hottie and Tommy Anderson slams the door in Colin’s face. This is all not boding well for the Junior Gazette.

Meanwhile, Sarah is out on her date. She looks like she borrowed her grandmothers floral church dress, tore it into pieces and layered it over a black cropped singlet and tights. With a topknot. And black boots. With white socks. And she still looks way better than Garry Morris, who is short. And wearing a suit. With a stupid hat. And a red waistcoat. And a slight Mr Bean accent.

Obviously, he’s not wearing the hat. If he was we wouldn’t be able to see that he’s pulled his mullet back into a ponytail with a little coloured scarf.

He’s holding the hat, and being all aloof while Sarah does this whole sickening overenergised chatty thing.

Spike catches up with them and tells Sarah about the printers strike. She gets all pissy because she’s on a date with Mullet Man, and Mullet Man gets all pissy and Spike gets all sarcastic to Mullet Man and I love him just a little bit more with every cutting insult that comes out of his beautiful rubber-lipped mouth. But Sarah’s not falling for it. She points out that not everyone does everything that Lynda wants, because not everyone is nuts about her and she stomps off in her black boots with her white socks. But she does take her notes. So small victory.

Spike looks kind of shocked and wounded and denies that he’s nuts about her. Hush, Spike. She’s just jealous. Remember when she was looking you up and down in the first episode? Yeah. She’s jealous. Don’t let the jealousy bring you down.

As for the denial … I have one word: bathwater. Liar.

Back at the newsroom, Lynda is doing her best to sabotage Sullivan’s date. Tiddler and Fraz are working out team lists and strategies and he’s still looking all cynical. Spike arrives back with news of Sarah. It’s all happening, as usual.

Damn this show is hard to recap. There is so much going on. Stupid show.

I mean, er, I love this show. *hugs show*

Colin and Danny are back at Tommy’s house, trying to get him down to the store with tales of a this-is-your-life type surprise. It doesn’t work and Tommy slams the door on them again.

Sarah is at the party, pashing on with Mullet Man. No, I lie. She’s on the phone to Kenny. Because I know that when I am at a party trying to have a good time with a boy I like and avoid some people who assume I have no life and am available to do anything they want wheever they want, I too will sit in the hallway and talk to them on the phone instead of trying to charm the pants off my date.

No, not really. You?

Anyway, she’s on the phone to Kenny. Telling him over and over she’s not writing the story. But not hanging up. Julie grabs the phone and guides Sarah to the little black book in Mullet Man’s pocket. Predictably, the little black book contains ratings out of ten and a list of all the girls he asked to the party first.

Sarah is a four. She hangs up.

At the newsroom, Julie tells the boys she was a nine. Kenny is still confused as to whether this means Sarah will do the story. Julie says yes. Spike suggests she will sooner attempt suicide. I’d pay to see that – and I’ll take the one-way ticket to hell as well. Thx.

Lynda accosts Sullivan at what is apparently a fancy restaurant but looks more like a cheaply decorated faux-swiss chalet. There’s a bit of banter about Sullivan’s virility and his date and his French. It’s very nearly flirty, and they’re standing in this rather couply pose and she’s looking up at him with these big Lynda eyes, which is kind of icky due to the whole Lynda-is-sixteen-and-Sullivan-is-her-teacher thing, but it seems to do the trick because she manages to blackmail him into letting her join him and his date for dinner.

At the party, Sarah is sitting on the bathroom floor. Her wrists are intact, which is – good, I suppose. She gets out her pen and her notes and grabs the roll of toilet paper. Everything’s coming up Junior gazette, but I’m still fascinated by her white socks. I mean, I get it. It was the 80’s. We all did it. But … I still hate her.

Mullet Man is knocking on the door. Sarah tells him off with one of her patented lectures about being a dickhead and her not standing for it. And yes, I know he’s a dick, but I still want her to shut up.

Happily, she gets her comeuppance when Mullet Man interrupts her self-righteous rant to tell her he only wanted to use the bathroom. Take that, Sarah.

And we’ve been away from the newsroom for a while so it’s about time we cut back there, yeah? Tiddler and Fraz are finishing up a game of tiddlywinks and I can’t help but notice that she has the stupidest crush on him, despite the fact that he can’t tiddlywinks for shit.

Over at Tommy’s house, some little old lady has interrupted his evening to ask for help. He picks her as a patsy right away, and she drops the little-old-lady voice and goes all ‘you rumbled me’. He replies in a bogey-esque ‘That’s right, shweethart’ and that’s kinda why I love this show. Even the old lady and the Local Celebrity play well off each other. Not that it’s going to help Colin with his photo, especially after Danny shows up to point out that it’s all useless because even f they could get Tommy down to the store, the sign isn’t up yet.

At the restaurant, Sullivans poo story has put his date – who never got told the one about the red hair and purple satin not being the best of friends – into a bit of a huff. He’s not getting lucky tonight. Unless … you know. Lynda.

Eh. Make that one-way ticket on the Helltrain first class. Ew.

Back to the show.

Sarah is on the phone to Kenny and he’s all chuffed because she wrote her story and she’s all chuffed because … I don’t know why. She hang up and hugs her writer-all-over roll of TP as Mullet Man calls out for the bathroom because he’s obviously done a big sloppy one (I’m sorry … I’m 12 really - and immature at that) and there’s no paper. So she passes him his little black book and is all amused with herself.

Ok. I’m a teeny bit amused with her too. But just this once.

See how everything is coming together? Can’t you just hear that background music? That music they play any time things come together for my favourite bunch of malcontents? Sarah’s back at the newsroom typing up her story, and Lynda’s approved the write-up of the football game, and Lynda’s got the poo story.

Now all they need is Colin’s photo.

Thankfully, Colin has yet another idea. It’s not even a terrible one. And it works – for the next time Tommy Anderson opens his front door he may be in his pyjamas and looking all bleary-eyed, but he’s also standing under the temporarily relocated shop sign and in front of a photographer.

It’s almost beautiful, never mind that it’s very obviously nighttime.

So then we get the typical shots of the printers and some really cheesy hurrah music and Lynda and Colin and Kenny are standing at the presses with big cheesy smiles and Kenny is all ‘We did it!’

And it would be a fine and dandy bit old pile of cheese if they ended it there. But no, Kenny has to turn to Colin and ask ‘Tommy Anderson? Wasn’t he the one who …?’ and Kenny and Colin have to smile and nod and I have to not get it at all. I didn’t mind that Spike was the one at the school dance who … but at least that was a running joke. This is just completely and irritatingly random.

And because obviously they couldn’t end the show on that big pile of wtf, now it all goes back to where it started, and they’re spying on Kerr with the printers. Tiddler wonders what Kerr would do if he found out they were spying on him, and of course everyone is all like ‘he wont find out’, just as Kerr looks out the window and … pulls on his right earlobe.

Too funny.

And that’s another episode. Done and dusted. Except for the Credit talkies, which are Sarah inviting Garry and a whole bunch of his girlfriends to the same place at the same time. I hate Sarah.

But it is a teeny bit funny.

Grade: Oh, C+ I've been too hard on you show *hugs show*