For The Uninitiated
Set in the fictional offices of Reynholm Industries, the show revolves around the corporation’s CEO Douglas Reynholm and the three staff members of its IT department: the computer genius and socially inept Maurice Moss (Ayoade), the work-shy Roy Trenneman (O’Dowd), and their know-nothing-about-IT manager Jen Barber (Parkinson) whose own philosophy seems to be, “fake it till you make it.”
If you’re not one to find humor in situations of social awkwardness and terrible runs of bad luck this isn’t likely the show for you. As the show’s creator, writer, and director Graham Linehan would say, “It’s fly-on-the-wall humor.”
***Spoiler-town***
Roy’s latest girlfriend Alice, who calls him “emotionally artistic,” is a Marvel trivia boss in Moss’ mind. Jen gets dreamy for a flirtatious coffee barista who looks better suited in a rugby match yet can still make a decent cup of joe to Jen’s delight, and she recommends her colleagues to try the place. Taking Jen up on the newly discovered coffee shop Roy orders a small coffee, but ends up with a bad cup of coffee from a “small man” barista; Roy emails a complaint about the quality of the coffee.
Moss has made a 2nd video for his board game review show. Roy’s not at all shy about his own sentiments of the first episode he found, “so insanely boring!” Frankly, the webisode is comparable to Vogon poetry; it’s awful enough to warrant Roy having to flee the office in horror from merely listening to it! After receiving strong negative feedback from Jen and Roy concerning his web show on board games, Moss is advised by Douglas to wear women’s trousers to boost his confidence.
Roy’s girlfriend Alice asks if he would mind accompanying her to her grandfather’s funeral, but in listening to his half of the conversation it sounds more like he’s being invited to a sporting event. To make matters worse, when Roy actually gets there it turns out that one of the six pallbearers couldn’t make it, and thus Roy is asked if he would mind taking the place of the sixth; in contrast to Roy’s 6’2 stature the other five are dwarfish. Poor Roy can’t catch a break!
Jen and Roy revisit the coffee shop again, but Roy’s presence throws off Jen’s favorite barista, and she is served a coffee sub-par her first one. In her ill-contentment over the terrible drink, which is unimpressively topped off with an image of her having a beard, she tosses the coffee on a homeless woman, while the short-statured barista confronts Roy about the complaint email and is then hit by a van with huge tits!
When a video of Jen and Roy’s mishaps goes viral and reveals their identity, Jen and Roy turn to Moss for ideas. Moss offers the use of his pepper spray into a useful product as a chic self-defense tool, only to have it backfire in a demo. To add insult to injury the infamous hacker group Anonymous gets a hold of the footage, cleans it up further, and character-blasts Jen as a coffee toss tramp bitch and Roy as a small-person racist. I have to agree with Roy: you can’t be racist of small people. “This isn’t Game of Thrones!” Probably the winning-most part of this final episode, the proverbial cherry on top, is the portrayal of Anonymous as nothing more than the occasional teenager setting up a web-cast from their bedroom of their folks’ home only to have mum and dad unwittingly expose the charade.
I’ve worked in the IT department of various companies to appreciate the anticipated humor of techie jokes such as the favorite question of all tech support agents, “Have you tried turning it off and on again?” Unfortunately, however, there’s only enough geek humor to just allow the show to remain true to its name. The finale, and entire series for that matter, rests on an interesting and successful chemistry between the four main characters; like a few other fans I find Moss the best character in the show. With its brand of humor The IT Crowd comes across as a UK version of Seinfeld: about as funny as it is predictable, and more misogynist than not. When I add up all the humor and substance of the show it passes as a little above average given some of the subject matter ventures into the taboo, which actually helps it!
