Season 2, Episode 2
The Clue
Aziraphale and Crowley investigate why Gabriel has amnesia and is on Earth, with their biggest clues being a song Gabriel sang and their involvement with the story of Job.
Tropes That Appear In This Episode:
- Accomplice by Inaction: Gabriel seems to think that Heaven is blameless for Job's tragedy because they aren't the ones killing his children. They're just... not stopping Hell from killing them.
- Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Apparently Jane Austen was a criminal mastermind who organised a major diamond heist and ran her own smuggling and spy operations. Crowley is genuinely surprised to learn she wrote some books, too.
- Berserk Button: Crowley acts rather offensively when Aziraphale asks him if he can use the Bentley, right down to implying they share it.
- Big Eater: When Crowley introduces Aziraphale to the concept of eating, he realizes he likes the taste of beef and spends a chunk of the night stuffing his face while the weather thunders outside.
- Capital Letters Are Magic: Aziraphale believes the song Gabriel sings is a Clue to the mystery. Crowley accuses him of pronouncing the capital letter.
- Caught in the Rain: Crowley is convinced that all they have to do is get Maggie and Nina caught in a sudden downpour together and they'll immediately fall for each other.
- Comically Wordy Contract: Evidence of The Bet between God and Satan takes the form of a scroll describing it in detail. It's so long that when Crowley unrolls it, it unrolls across the various hills of a vast canyon and circles back to the cliff-face where Crowley and Aziraphale were conversing.
- Composite Character: Here it's revealed that one of many Biblical figures Crowley played was Bildad the Shuhite. Ironically, in the Book of Job, Bildad was the one who cited Job's children dying as proof of his wickedness, while Crowley was tasked with killing them and instead fakes resurrecting them.
- Credits Gag: The main-theme is played using Middle Eastern instruments in reflection of the Book of Job plot.
- Dance of Romance: Discussed. When discussing romcom tactics to make Nina and Maggie fall in love, Aziraphale cites Jane Austen's dances as emotional turning points.Aziraphale: Cotillion balls. People would gather and do some formal dancing and then realize they had misunderstood each other and were actually deeply in love.
Crowley: Now that sounds unlikely.
Aziraphale: Works every time apparently. - Erotic Eating: The scene in which Aziraphale discovers the pleasure of eating while devouring an ox is filmed very sensually. Aziraphale and Crowley are close together in a dark, intimate space, and as Aziraphale eats, Crowley watches him with the intensity of someone who's just discovered a new kink. Hilariously, this will be the first of several times in-series in which Crowley offers food just so he can watch Aziraphale eat it.
- Everybody Has Standards: Both Aziraphale and Crowley are deeply troubled by the events of the Book of Job. For Aziraphale, he's horrified that Heaven is just going to sit back and let Hell steamroll all over Job's life and kill his loved ones over a bet of all things. In Crowley's case, it's been established that he's not all that comfortable with killing — especially children — and he pulls every trick in the book to get out of it while still looking like he's doing his job.
- Exact Words: Crowley tells Aziraphale, "I long to destroy the blameless children of blameless Job, just as I destroyed his blameless goats." He wasn't lying. Crowley didn't destroy Job's goats, turning them into birds instead, and in just that same way he saves Job's children by turning them into lizards.
- Forced Transformation: Crowley couldn't actually bring himself to kill Job's innocent goats, so he turned them into crows. Aziraphale notices this when the crows bleat and turns them back. Crowley later turns Job's children into geckos.
- Innocently Insensitive: None of the angels (apart from Aziraphale, of course) seem to understand why smiting and replacing one's farm animals isn't on par with doing the same with one's children. Gabriel doesn't even know how babies are made, let alone the logistics of a woman in her late fifties in Biblical times having seven kids to replace the kids she already lost.
- Insane Troll Logic: Gabriel/"Jim" seems to think that the best system for filing books is putting them in alphabetical order according to the first sentence on the first page. Aziraphale starts to protest that customers will never be able to find the book they want under that system, and then he remembers that unlike human booksellers, he doesn't actually want customers buying his books, so he tells Jim to go ahead.
- King of All Cosmos: When God gives Her famous speech to Job in Her ineffable ways, a large chunk of it seemed to be about ostriches and whales. Not only that, but Crowley overhears some of it and thinks that She's just taking the time to ask him questions. Not because She wants answers, but She doesn't get to ask questions very often, being omniscient and all.
- Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Gabriel claims he knows all about the human birthing process because he was present for the very first birth. Except, as Aziraphale points out, Eve's birth was very different to how these things usually happen. Crowley and Aziraphale take advantage of his lack of knowledge when staging the "births" of Job's "new" children.
- Lack of Empathy: The angels have absolutely no tact and compassion while telling Job and Sitis that their three children are dead.
- Little Known Facts: Crowley knows Jane Austen by her work in espionage, smuggling and the 1810 Clerkenwell Diamond Robbery, but is surprised when he finds out that she was also a published author (the thing people actually know her for).
- My God, What Have I Done?: Aziraphale is very distraught over his choice to actively aid the demon Crowley in his trickery against Heaven to save Job's kids, even if it was for a purpose he agrees is good. He believes he'll fall to Hell for it, but Crowley comforts him about it.
- Not So Above It All: God's first and only appearance in the second season plays Her surprisingly cruel part in the original Book of Job straight, grilling Job over how he knows nothing when he asks for clarification. (Although She isn't very rude with Her questions, mostly just asking Job about ostriches and whales rather than daring him to control the behemoths and leviathans or anything like that.)
- "Not So Different" Remark: When Aziraphale worries over what he is now, Crowley answers that he's "just an angel that goes along with Heaven as long as he can," much like he referred to himself earlier in the cellar.
- The Queen's Latin: The people of the Land of Uz in Biblical times speak in British accents.
- Recursive Reality: One of the books Gabriel sorts in Aziraphale's shop is Good Omens.
- Replacement Goldfish: The angels believe that Job and Sitis will be perfectly happy with a new set of children to replace the ones killed as part of God's test. Aziraphale is the only one who recognises that that's not how humans work. Job and Sitis are devastated, with the latter even threatening to curse God for it. Luckily Aziraphale and Crowley had saved the children, and come up with a plan to pass them off as the "new" children.
- Shout-Out:
- Gabriel as "Jim" hands Saraqael a Discworld book. Not a coincidence that that book series is written by the late Terry Pratchett, who also co-wrote the original Good Omens book.
- Crowley got his plan to have it rain on Maggie and Nina from a Richard Curtis film, presumably Four Weddings and a Funeral.
- Spoiled Brat: Job's son comes across as a haughty hedonist who knows his father is God's favorite person and throws it around to get what he wants. Naturally, he's the first to get turned into a gecko.
- Tautological Templar: When Aziraphale expresses horror at the tribulations God has planned for Job, the other angels justify it as them being the good guys.
- That Liar Lies: Crowley repeatedly acts the Hypocrite during the Job-plot. He fakes killing the goats, he claims he wants to kill Job's kids when he really doesn't, he threatens to destroy them by burning their home down, only to teleport them safely into the cellar, etc.
- Two Lines, No Waiting: This episode follows both the present day, where Aziraphale and Crowley find out Heaven's investigation into their half-miracles, and the events of the Book of Job, where Crowley and Aziraphale go through the motions of taking everything Job owns as part of God and Satan's bet, including his children.
- Wouldn't Hurt a Child: Crowley claims that he'll kill Job's children, but he just turns them into geckos.
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: When Crowley comes to Aziraphale after saving Job's kids, the angel thinks he's been sent to bring him to Hell for thwarting God's will. Instead, Crowley just shrugs and is willing to keep it between them, thinking he shouldn't be so hard on himself.
- Zany Scheme: Aziraphale convinces the angels that his alarm-blaring miracle was caused by him trying to make Nina fall in love with Maggie, so now he and Crowley have to make that happen in order to keep Heaven off their backs.
