Colour me utterly unobservant, but I've only just noticed that all of the first four episodes have misleading or fantastical openings: the Tim/Daisy dialogue that turned out to include Sarah and the homeless guy; Tim's dream of Sarah and the monster; Tim fighting the zombies in the flat; and now Daisy dreaming of being a jet-setting journalist. All are undermined pretty quickly, but I think this lasts the shortest amount of time. This is also the last one of the series. I don't know what this means - perhaps Tim and Daisy are shedding their illusions and self-deception as they get to know each other better?

The 'going to Fuji to interview the Feejees' mistake always grates at bit.

The sequence when Brian is revealed lurking by the wall in his body paint didn't work well for me first time round - it's a bit dark, and I didn't really work out what was happening until Brian turned up in Tim and Daisy's flat.

I love Tim's line about the dog that attacked him: 'Jaws slung with bloody slaver, eyes lit by the firs of Hades' own eternal damned kingdom'. Is that a quote from anything?

'Stop trying to get your own way by turning everything into a psychodrama that somehow benefits me!' A very observant line: that's a common form of argument, which pops up a fair amount in Spaced, and in real life too. See kids, Spaced is educational!

We see a lot more about Tim and Mike's friendship in this episode - its fragility, and its strength too. And its ambiguity, what with their holding hands on the way to paintballing!

I love the holding hands part, but does my memory serve me well by informing me that they release hands when going round a tree and then link up again?


if they don't the should have done

Genius. It's the pessimistic insights that pepper the show in throwaway lines like that which really raise it above the usual sit-com schtick, which are out to purely entertain. Spaced hits so many buttons for so many people precisely because of this zeitgeistical [sic - jessop] observational comedy.

One of my favourite moments in the Series is the Lethal Weapon II parody where Brian sits on Colin, so bloody funny to watch and executed perfectly. Plus it sets up for the follow-up conversation where Brian talks about the death of Pom Pom and how that event transformed his life and ambitions (though that isn't truly revealed until the 2nd series).

Not to mention the Evil Dead ''Groovy!'' when Mike is tooling up, the gravelly voiced exchange between Duane and Tim:

Tim: Aren't you going to answer that?
Duane: I've got an answering service.
T: You've got an answer for everything.
D: I can't believe you just said that.
T: Neither... (Coughs) Neither can I.

The exploration of their background with the Baywatch montage, and Daisy's near revelation of her and Tim's secret to Marsha which culminates in them getting Colin

Can Tim and I, can we...can we have... *Look, down there* A Plate *Dog!* A Dog.