Press Gang: One Easy Lesson (AKA The Sarah Is Crap One)

I never really thought I’d say this but there were some really boring episodes in the first season, and this is one of them. Not surprisingly, it’s a Sarah episode. Stupid whingy Sarah.

But at least the credits are still awesome – although I don’t know why they feature Spike. Is he even in this episode? It doesn’t feel like it.

So, Lynda is standing outside a mens toilet. Is she waiting for Spike so they can banter and be adorable? No. She’s waiting for Sullivan – the ‘Stashe from the first episode – who owes her an article for the paper. He wants an extension and she’s not willing to give him one, until he points out that she owes him an English essay.

She says she’s busy. He says he’s busy.

She asks how busy he can be if he’s just spent eight minutes on the toilet, which is two minutes longer than yesterday and I kind of die a little inside at the fact that one of my TV idols is actually kind of … weird. And is wearing a polka-dot skirt. Yech.

Sullivan ignores Lynda to poke his head into an out of control classroom and ask the hapless teacher at it’s head if everything is ok – despite the fact that it’s obviously not – before wandering off. If you don’t know that this is going to be relevant later, it makes no sense. Thankfully – you have me to tell you. So you know.

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And … cut to newsroom. Today’s scene-setting montage goes like this: Kenny is hiding the phone. Colin has a huge box. Julie is suggesting an acne advice column. Fraz is training a bunch of new recruits while demonstrating his adorable dopiness. And a younger girl in a school uniform is watching it all through some bookshelves.

Sarah is looking mysteriously annoyed and Kenny tries to cheer her up by doing an impression of the teacher we saw earlier trying to quiet his class down. It doesn’t work and Sarah yells at him and runs away. Ok, so it was the worst impression I’ve ever seen and Kenny was really just talking like Kenny, but there was no need for yelling. Really. It’s just going to encourage him.

Meanwhile, Spike – who thankfully does have at least one line in this episode – asks Colin about the boxes. Which are full of half ping-pong balls that Colin spent a whole bunch of Junior Gazette ad money on. He says it was because it was a bargain and he couldn’t resist, but I’m sure it was just to give Lynda an opportunity to threaten to kill him and the episode a Cheesy Colin B-plot.

And … yes. He suddenly decided he’s going to sell the half-ping pong balls as ‘Pings’. Cheesy Colin B-plot – here we come.

These newsroom scenes are non-stop action as the younger girl in the uniform now parks herself at Sarah’s desk and starts typing on a blank sheet of paper. ‘The Junior Junior Gazette’. It’s a start, I suppose. At least she can spell ‘Junior’ – unlike Julie.

Lynda asks Kenny where Sarah is and he tells her she stormed out after he did his impression of Mr Knowles – the hapless teacher. He does the impression again and it’s still bad, and this would have been much funnier if Lynda had yelled at him and stormed off too. Which maybe she did because we don’t get to see her reaction as we’re suddenly in Knowles’ class …

He’s doing this pathetic whimpering ‘now settle down class’ thing and everyone is ignoring him except Sarah, who is shooting death stares at everyone who is ignoring him. The bell goes – which makes me think that he’s been saying ‘now settle down class’ for the past forty minutes, because why would he start a minute before the end of the class – and everyone runs out. Except Sarah. And Knowles. Who slumps in his chair. Sarah is seemingly hanging about to hear the homework assignment.

No, wait: it seems like Sarah and Knowles know each other. But are not getting it on – sadly. In fact, their relationship seems to consist of Knowles being pathetic and Sarah feeling sorry for him. Sigh. Secret student-teacher sex would be way more interesting.

Sullivan comes in and asks for a word. Sarah leaves to go and eavesdrop at the door as Sullivan reminds Knowles to believe in himself and various other advice that is really dumb. I’d be suggesting an AK47 fired into the ceiling. That would shut the little fuckers up.

Sarah’s eavesdropping is interrupted by Colin - who is covered in half-ping pong balls – asking her if she pings. And of course there is a cheesy ‘ping’ sound effect - just in case you didn’t know this was the Cheesy Colin B-plot.

Colin tries to sell her some ping headphones, for lovers of silence. It’s cute, but she’s all touchy this episode so yells at him to go away. Sullivan comes out of the room and gives them both filthy looks – even though Colin wasn’t even eavesdropping.

In the classroom, Knowles has his head in his hands and his glasses off. Diddums.

And …. more newsroom. Where Sarah is trying to sell Lynda on the idea of ‘Teacher Features’ – which will give everyone the opportunity to better know their teachers, except sounds a bit too much like ‘creature features’ for me to think it’s going to be flattering. Lynda right away picks not only that this is about Knowles, but that he’s Sarah’s cousin – which she worked out from the fact that Sarah got upset when Kenny did the impersonation. Right. Because Lynda is psychic now, but not psychic enough to know that this is a bad idea. So she agrees.

Incidentally, the potplant is covered in pings painted to look like ladybirds. Ping!

Fraz comes over and asks Lynda to tell her sister to stop using his typewriter. Lynda of course doesn’t have a sister but it looks like the younger girl in the uniform is busted …. She explains: her name is Tiddler and she thinks the Junior Gazette needs a kids page because there’s nothing in it for under 12s and she thinks writing such a page will put her in good stead to take over as editor when Lynda leaves school in a couple of years.

Lynda looks stunned … but what can she say to her twelve-year old self?

Julie interrupts to show Colin a poster she’s designed for his pings. Except she’s called them pongs so the poster says ‘do you pong?’ which isn’t quite the right question. It’s also really ugly. Julie is an idiot. I really have no time for her until Season Five.

Back at the school, Sarah is interviewing Knowles and he’s making all the usual statements about how he’s always wanted to be a teacher so he can shape young minds and improve the future and blah blah blah I don’t care. He also collects butterflies … which anyone with a brain would know will not endear him to your average fifteen-year-old kid.

Thankfully, Sarah is writing the story, so no such thought occurs to her.

Somewhere offscreen a newspaper gets printed, and in the next scene we see Kerr reading it while Lynda stares at him, longing for approval. He tells her it’s not bad, which she doesn’t like but then Chrissie’s mullet reminds her that not bad is good, by virtue of being … not bad.

You’d think these newspaper types would have a broader vocabulary … says me whose fallback word of the month is ‘awesome’.

Back at the school, Lynda does her creepy toilet thing with Sullivan and he also tells her the latest issue of the paper is not bad. Just out of shot, we hear a kids voice exclaim ‘butterflies?’ Hee.

In class, Knowles is showing off his butterfly collection, all proud and hopeful-like. Surprisingly, it seems to be going well. Not surprisingly, it doesn’t last and the kids start playing catch with some rather valuable specimens and – shock horror – they get broken.

Knowles looks devastated but as one of the kids rightly points out: it’s ok. They were already dead. Hahaha! Shitheads.

In Sullivans office Lynda and Sarah are getting a telling off for their Teacher Features, and for Knowles’ new nickname of ‘Butterfly’ – which isn’t really their fault. They’re smart, they would have come up with a much better nickname had they been given the chance. Especially if Spike was allowed more than two lines in this whole episode.

Sullivan starts making his lunch as he dismissed them. He has ping-sized portions of butter. Ping!

Sarah decides the best plan here is to talk to Knowles and say sorry, but he’s doing this whole ‘oh, the Junior Gazette did me a favour and made me realize I could never be a real teacher’ which – sure, there was no engagement of brain but – doesn’t strike me as fair. He was always a crap teacher. That’s not actually Sarah’s fault. The butterfly thing: Sarah’s fault. The crap teaching: not.

And believe me, I wish I could blame Sarah for all the evils of the world, so admitting she’s not responsible is kind of tough.

Sarah doesn’t take all this very well and tells him off for his defeatist attitude. This episode is so full of guilt-trippery I’m starting to feel bad for both Knowles being a crap teacher and for giving up on my dreams.

And then Sullivan called Kerr to complain about this whole Knowles mess – because Kerr is also responsible for Knowles being a crap teacher – and to tell him that the Nameless Headmaster is now having doubts about Knowles’ teaching ability and is going to pay a surprise visit on one of this classes next week to decide if he has a future in the job. Which Kerr of course passes onto Lynda, so she can do ‘something’. She leaves to go do her something and Kerr looks out his window and spots the totally obvious phone cable running between his window and the Junior Gazette office. Well done, Colin’s cousin. Subtle as fuckery.

Anyway, back to Knowles. Or, more accurately, back to Lynda and Sarah running into each other at the newsroom and doing an extremely cheesy simultaneous ‘we’ve got to do something!’ – because for some reason they are now solely responsibility for the success and/or failure of some guys teaching career.

And they call a meeting which involves lots of strategizing. Because between school and homework and actually putting out a newspaper, they now have to same a crap teachers career as well. So Danny has to pretend to take photos of the school admin assistant while surreptitiously taking photos of the master timetable, and then they have to figure out which class the headmaster is visiting and Sarah has to volunteer to help the admin assistant and sneakily photocopy a copy of the class list and then Spike and Fraz have to lean on all the students in that class to make them behave – but not look like they’re behaving because they’ve been leaned on, but because really Knowles is an awesome teacher. It’s all very very tedious.

Except maybe the last part. Because yay! Spike finally gets to do something!

So then we get a shot of Knowles, standing outside the classroom full of noisy kids and looking all apprehensive. He’s been let in on the plan but he’s all ‘is this right?’ – the answer to which is actually ‘no, of course it’s not. If you can’t teach, you’re just wasting everyone’s time’ but Sarah lies and tells him it’s all good.

So he walks in, sits down at his desk and goes to open his mouth with this weird scary wobble. But we don’t see what happens because we have to cut to Sarah and Fraz and -Yay! - Spike sitting in the hallway being all worried the plan hasn’t worked.

And we have to cut away to them at that moment, because otherwise we wouldn’t see two kids run past who are supposed to be in Knowles’ class and we wouldn’t find out that they leant on the wrong class!!!!!

Oh noes!

So they all run to the classroom in a panic and Sarah walks straight in and through some sheer miracle all the kids are being good and the headmaster is all impressed and Sarah is gobsmacked and calls Knowles out of the room to find out what the fuck is going on.

And as it turns out – Knowles believing he could control the class suddenly meant that he could. Because teaching is really like walking on hot coals! It’s all about self-belief! And probably The Secret!

Right.

So Knowles believes the kids will listen to him and suddenly they are little angels and at the end of the lesson the headmaster is happy and Knowles tells the class that he hopes they learnt a valuable lesson and then we get a close-up on his face as he mumbles ‘I know I did’ and smiles.

And … he’s really, really unattractive. Them British teeth and coke-bottle glasses don’t really work in close-up and for the first time in ages I’m glad I don’t have a plasma screen.

Back at the newsroom Sarah does a bit of exposition to sum up the moral of the story and then everyone leaves and Lynda is all alone when – shock! Horror! - the phone rings. She goes looking for it as the camera pulls back to that awesome birds-eye view of the newsroom that I honestly love – because I’m a nerd – before she finds the phone in the toilet. She answers it.

It’s Kerr. Obvs.

Roll credits. This time with stills! Thankfully the cheesy stills don’t last for long and we get the credit talkies and Lynda telling Sullivan his article was flabby. Yeah. Whatevs.

Grade: D. Needed More Spike. And Less Sarah. Even the Cheesy Colin B-plot wasn’t very interesting.