Season 2, Episode 3
I Know Where I'm Going
Aziraphale travels to Edinburgh to investigate the clue he found from the record of "Everyday". Meanwhile, Crowley tries to match together Nina and Maggie so Heaven doesn't get suspicious. In the past, our favorite duo meets a gravedigger named Elspeth who plans on selling the corpses to Mr. Dalrymple.
Tropes That Appear In This Episode:
- Actor Allusion: Crowley tells Dalrymple to call him "Doctor".
- Being Evil Sucks: Beelzebub gives an exhausted remark about how no one in Hell acknowledges whenever someone does a good job. Their minion Josh remarks that the best one could hope for is a Villainous Demotivator.
- Caught in the Rain: Crowley summons a heavy rain to force Maggie and Nina under an awning together. Subverted when the awning breaks in the middle of their conversation and ruins the moment.
- Death of a Child: Alluded to with Aziraphale and the jar containing the tumour Dalrymple removed from a seven-year-old child. Dalrymple wordlessly confirms that the child did not survive.
- Driven to Suicide: Elspeth plans on killing herself via drinking laudanum after Morag dies and she only gets five pounds for her corpse. Crowley saves her by drinking the laudanum himself; an overdose for a human makes the demon pretty impressively high. Aziraphale gives her money to give her a head start on Crowley's insistence. However, Mr. Dalrymple does end up killing himself after being disgraced.
- Hugh Mann: Muriel's attempts at passing off as a regular human police officer fall flat, especially to Aziraphale and Crowley. Their outfit is a stark, Heavenly white, they insist they're an inspector when they're dressed like a constable, they don't know what to do with a cup of tea when given one, and they go to the trouble of reminding everyone that they are indeed a human.
- Out-of-Character Alert: It doesn't go unnoticed when Beelzebub doesn't inflict some sort of cruel punishment for annoying them like what usually happens in Hell. The most they do is threaten to send one demon to the Dung Pits when he pries.
- Shout-Out:
- When Aziraphale arrives in Scotland the landscape is highly stylised and cartoonish, and the Loch Ness Monster is visible in the distance. The imagery and the episode's title are a nod to I Know Where I'm Going! by Powell & Pressburger.
- The laudanum that Elspeth stole from Mr. Dalrymple was apparently mixed up by one C.M.O.T. Dibbler.
- Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!: The Elspeth Arc challenges Aziraphale's belief in Black-and-White Morality. He disapproves of Elspeth's grave-digging because it's both thievery and desecration of the dead, and claims that her poverty gives her a sense of moral flexibility that the wealthy don't have. Never mind the fact that it's hard for her to consider her alternatives, being a woman in poverty in this particular era, Aziraphale learns that her grave-robbing does have positive consequences, i.e. allowing Mr. Dalrymple using the cadavers for medical research so that future doctors would learn how to alleviate suffering.
- Super Gullible: Not only does Muriel think she has Aziraphale and Crowley fooled by her laughably bad disguise and persona, but Muriel lets them discuss something in private when they assure Muriel that they'll tell her what they talked about afterwards.
- Tempting Fate:
- After Crowley (drunk on laudanum) helps Elspeth, Aziraphale voices concern of what Hell would do with him if they found out that he did something genuinely good for someone. Crowley assures him that won't happen, only for him to suddenly sink into the ground, Aziraphale not having seen him for a while afterwards.
- Crowley says the plan is working when Nina and Maggie are under the awning looking longingly at one another to escape the storm he summoned. Then the awning breaks, water pours on the two, and the mood is ruined.
- Wide-Eyed Idealist: Aziraphale argues that Elspeth shouldn't be gravedigging for money. As someone who's poor, he says, she should have more freedom to be good than someone living in a castle.
