"Hurray!! ... And you killed him!" - Baldrick

In our previous episode, I was describing one of my favorite episodes of Blackadder.  Again, I'm going to start on a totally different topic, but you will eventually see how it all relates back.

So in church, the Pastor is currently doing a series on the book of Acts.  In the past month or so, he's been preaching on the section of Acts 3:1 - 4:4.  Each Sunday, generally, between the songs and the sermon, someone reads aloud the passage of the day.  And, this is a whole chapter plus, so it took several weeks to get through it all.  So each Sunday someone would get up and read Acts 3:1 - 4:4.

Anyone who knows me knows that I can be easily distracted - by dust motes, something sparkly, anything really.  So you won't be surprised to hear that every Sunday during the reading of this passage, and specifically these three verses:  

¹³ The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus. You handed him over to be killed, and you disowned him before Pilate, though he had decided to let him go.  

¹⁴ You disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. 

¹⁵ You killed the author of life, ..... (Acts 3:13-15, NIV).

So in my mind I would hear "And you killed him!"  Which brings me back around to Blackadder.  At the end of their incarceration, Blackadder and Baldrick are, in fact, rescued by the Scarlet Pimpernel who, it turns out was one of Prince George's idiot friends with whom Blackadder made the original bet.  By means I'm not going to go into, (you can read the entire transcript of the episode here: Nob and Nobility) Blackadder gets his hands on some suicide pills and this happens - [watch the video]

 

It would be all I could do, those mornings in church, to not repeat, "And you killed him!" in my best Baldrick-like voice and giggle.  Fortunately, during that month, I was in the sound booth, so if I had giggled, no one but the others in the sound booth would have known, and they already know I'm weird.

So as you can see, since the early 80's, the Scarlet Pimpernel has affected my outlook on life.  I even have a tattoo of the Scarlet Pimpernel - the flower, not the person, of course.  People assume it's a rose because of my name, and if I care about their being informed, I'll advise them what it truly is, but otherwise...   And there's [REDACTED] at the office who has made less than appropriate comments about it, considering its placement (over my heart, so to speak), but that's another story.

I guess this wraps up my Scarlet Pimpernel story.  I'll try to come up with something new for next time.  Just let me jump in this corner first....

"Yes, I shall certainly choose revolutionary France for my holiday again next year." - Baldrick

As we continue in our historical perspective on the Scarlet Pimpernel and its moulding (note the British spelling) of my life, we zoom forward to the early 1990's.  In this chapter of the story, the sister that wasn't involved in the repetitive viewing of the movie plays an integral part.  (Although her comment to the last blog entry was that she "came home over summer!" and that yes she was a party of the viewing.  My bad, remember, I was only 13 at the time, and I can barely remember yesterday!)

Picture the scene.  It's my birthday.  Or maybe Christmas.  I don't remember that part exactly.  Either way, Haley integrally gets me the video(s) of a heretofore unknown (to Rose at least) British television show - Blackadder.  As I recall the story, she tried to get me the first season, but it was on back order or something, so she gave me the third season first, I don't recall why or if the second season wasn't an option.  Eventually she got me all four seasons.  Again, I had never heard of it, but she assured me I would enjoy.  So I settled down on a cold winter's night (or hot summer's evening, depending on when this took place), and my life was transformed.

The show, starring Rowan Atkinson as the eponymous character, Blackadder.  In the first season, set in the 1480's, he's Prince Edmund, second son of the King.  In the second season, set during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603), he's Edmund, Lord Blackadder - an adviser to the Queen.  By the time the third season comes around, set in the late 1700's and early 1800's, Blackadder is now butler to Prince George,
the Prince Regent, played by Hugh Laurie.  If you're a fan of House, but have never seen Hugh Laurie as Prince George, be warned, the characters are NOTHING alike.  (See pics below this paragraph.)   The fourth and final season takes place during World War I, and Blackadder is just a Captain in the trenches on the western front. 










In each season he has this servant/underling/general dogsbody named Baldrick ("I'm having dung for dinner tonight!") who usually in each episode will come out with "I have a cunning plan..." and usually the plan is incredibly stupid - for example, at one point when they are in prison, his plan for them to escape is:  

Baldrick:  We do .. nothing.
 
Blackadder:  Yep, that's another world-beater.

Baldrick:  Wait, I haven't finished.  We do nothing until our heads have actually been cut off...

Blackadder:  ... and then we spring into action?

Baldrick:  Exactly!  You know how, when you cut a chicken's head off, it runs round and round the farmyard?

Blackadder:  Yes-s-s-s-s....

Baldrick:  Well, we wait until our heads have been cut off, then we run round and round the farmyard, out the farm gate, and escape.

As you may or may not know, the Brits don't have the usual 20-ish episodes in a season like we do.  Therefore, each season of Blackadder consists of only six 30-minute shows.  I would kill for there to have been more!  The third season is my all-time favorite.  I'm not sure if it's because it is the best, or because it was my first exposure to it, or what, but although I own the entire Blackadder collection on DVD (having bought them to replace the VHS's that Haley got me 20+ years ago), the only season I have bought and downloaded to my iPad for the occasional comfort-viewing, is season 3.

I realize that all of this has had nothing to do with the Scarlet Pimpernel, but bear with me.  Episode 3 - Nob and Nobility takes place during the time of the French Revolution and it seems the English people are enamoured with the Scarlet Pimpernel (or, as Baldrick calls him, the "Scarlet Pimple").  Our hero, Blackadder, doesn't understand, commenting, 

...What has this fellow done? -- apart from pop over to France to grab a few French knobs from the ineffectual clutches of some malnourished whingeing lefties, taking the opportunity while there, no doubt, to pick up some really good cheap wine and some of their marvelous open-fruit flans...  Doesn't anyone know? We hate the French! We fight wars against them! Did all those men die in vain on the field at Agincourt? Was the man who burned Joan of Arc simply wasting good matches?

So Blackadder ends up making a bet with some of Prince George's idiot friends that he can sneak into France and rescue an aristocrat, and show up with him at the French embassy ball.  However, Blackadder doesn't intend to actually go to France ("...it's incredibly dangerous there!"), he intends to hire an obviously French aristocrat who's down on his luck to pretend that he rescued him.  Blackadder and Baldrick spend the following week enjoying themselves - Baldrick points out that he "... shall certainly choose revolutionary France for [his] holiday again next year."  Then they go to find their "rescued" French person - hilarity ensues and they end up jailed by an "evil [French] revolutionary", during which time the aforementioned conversation regarding Baldrick's "cunning plan" to get them out takes place.

This looks like I can either stop here and finish up in part three, or I could wrap it up too quickly in this entry.  I'm going with the first option so...

TO BE CONTINUED......

Sink Me!

Back in the halcyon days of 1982, the Barger family had been on the VCR bandwagon for a while because Dad worked for RCA and when VCR’s first came out in the mid-to late-70’s, he was able to get one and pay for it through payroll deduction.   Consequently, when the “Made for TV” movie of the book, The Scarlet Pimpernel, starring Anthony Andrews and Jane Seymour was advertised, we set said VCR to record the movie.  I’m guessing that we were away from the house for some reason the night it was on because I don’t know why else we would have recorded it – I doubt we had a premonition of the vital importance the movie would play in our lives – and it wasn’t like now where I record everything just in case I’m not going to be able to watch it live. 

Now, some of you out there may know the story.  We recorded this movie, mostly because at the time I had a thing for Anthony Andrews similar to the thing I currently have for Gerard Butler.  We watched it - it’s a really enjoyable movie!  And we watched it again.  And again.  When I say “we,” I’m pretty much referring to me and Holly, who was, even though she was “away” at UE, she was close enough to be home every so often, and you have to remember, kids, this was back in the days before cable.  There were literally the three networks and PBS.  So if there was nothing on, “Hey, let’s watch the Scarlet Pimpernel!”

For those of you who either a) know that I have another sister; or b) are savvy enough to have read my Cast of Characters on the right of this page, yes, there is another sister - Haley.  But she went “away” to school at DePauw in Greencastle and I know from my own painful, personal experience, having attended DPU for a couple of years myself, it was too far for casual visits home (or vice versa – humpf!).  I’m sure we shared this Masterpiece-of-Made-for-TV-Moviedom with Haley, but I don’t recall that she quite appreciated it (at least not at the time) for the work of art that it truly is.  I am sure that she has since drunk the Kool-Aid and adores the movie like the rest of the family, but…  My point is, I’m not purposefully excluding her from this story.  Back to the main plot.  

Now, for a little background, as it were, regarding The Scarlet Pimpernel:

The Scarlet Pimpernel is a piece of “classical literature.”  As we’ve discussed previously, I’m shallow, so I don’t really like “deep” thoughts or the type of literature that inspires them.  But this is my kind of “literature” with “the odd death-defying leap and a modest amount of dental torture” along with beheadings and such.  Written by the Baroness Emma Orczy.  It takes place during the French Revolution.  Oddly enough, another of my favorite pieces of “literature” takes place during this time period – A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens – so I’m thinking that makes me a blood-thirsty thing.  Hmm.. another topic for therapy?  Or, maybe I should just start a list of words that describe me.  I’ve got two so far:  “shallow” and “blood-thirsty.”   

Anyway, the hero is Sir Percy, an Englishman, who disguises himself and his band of merry men and traipses into Revolutionary France and rescues some of the French aristocrats from getting their noggins knocked off on the guillotine.  Meanwhile he meets and falls in love with a French actress, marries her, thinks she had someone sent to the chopper, so he has to hide his true (?) identity from her lest she send him to the chopper.  Misunderstandings ensue until it all comes out in the end.  (NOTE: I do NOT like books/stories/movies, etc that do not end happily.)

Enough background, back to the future!  Or, 1982.  Holly and I, and probably some varying combo of the ‘Rents proceed to watch this movie time and time again.  I can’t really say how many times we watched it through completely, I’d guess about 20 times, knowing that it was probably more like between 5 and 10.  At some point, Dad said that enough was enough and decreed that we were going to tape over this movie.  Now, keep in mind, it was a three hour movie (with commercials).  At first, we might have taped over the first hour (say, for example, an episode of Magnum PI).  Later, we would watch that episode of Magnum, and when it was over, the movie would pick up an hour into it, and we’d watch it to the end!  I have no clue how long this went on or how many times we proceeded to watch the continuously shortened.   I do know that at one point, there was only 15 minutes of the movie left.  The thing was, after enough time went by, it got to the point where we didn't realize which tape it was, so whenever we came across those precious 15 minutes, there was joy and happy laughter, and we’d plop down immediately and finish the movie.  Ultimately, the whole movie was taped over or the tape shredded or whatever.  Obviously I now own it on DVD.

I’m not the type of person who can quote movies or television shows.  I’ve always been sort of in awe of people who can.  I have a lot of esoterica in my brain, but there's no room for memorizing stuff like that.  However, this is one movie that I can quote – one of my favorite quotes being, “..the north country in the middle of the night?  How bizarre.”  (I realize that probably meant nothing to most of you, but certain members of my family were chuckling as they read that.)

One other cool aspect of the movie is that it stars an incredibly young looking Ian McKellen.  To many, he may be Gandalf and/or Magneto.  To me he's the baddie who gets outwitted by the Scarlet Pimpernel!

There is more to my epic tale of the Scarlet Pimpernel, but I'm thinking this may be better as a two-parter, so I'll just end it here with a final quote from the movie:

They seek him here.   

They seek him there. 

Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.  

Is he in Heaven? Or is he in Hell?  

 That damned, elusive Pimpernel!