Three very different teams of three face off against each other on the game show 3 By 3, but only one trio can make it to the final round.
Tropes:
- Abusive Parents: Margaret is at a minimum shown to be extremely controlling, withholding all forms of pop culture and enjoyment from Catherine, though she's implied to be abusive in other ways, too.
- Amicable Exes: Quiztopher Bigwins are a trio of flatmates, but still living happily together even after Gavin broke up with Bella and started dating Maisie.
- Arc Number:
- 3. There are 3 teams, of 3 people each, on a show called 3 By 3, they start out with £300, and the games have names such as "3-Point Turn" or "3 Blind Twice." In the final round, each correct answer trebles the prize money.
- The show's overall arc number also appears obliquely; the result of multiplying three by three is, of course, nine.
- As Himself: Lee Mack plays himself as the host of 3 By 3.
- Basement-Dweller: Catherine is an adult who still lives at home with her parents, yet doesn't seem to have any obvious friends or hobbies of her own. It gets a literal reference when Margaret says their plan for the money is to build Catherine a basement den so she can study at home. Reading between the lines given The Reveal, however, implies that Catherine is in fact a trapped lab rat in some kind of secret (underground) laboratory and Margaret is planning on using the prize money to keep her research going.
- Control Freak: Margaret Oakwood controls Catherine's life and won't let her travel or listen to music, despite Catherine being an adult. Though it's gradually implied that this goes beyond being My Beloved Smother and into darker territory.
- Credits Gag: The end credits start out bright and colourful, like the standard end credits to a light entertainment quiz show, but suddenly fade to grey as the continuity announcer informs the audience that they have been watching Inside No. 9.
- Death Glare: In a crossover with Meaningful Background Event, Catherine is shown looking progressively more worried and upset as she realises how sheltered she's been and trapped she is, culminating in her giving her mother Margaret a literal Death Glare.
- The Dog Bites Back: The ending is heavily implied to be Catherine, having been Margaret's abused lab rat her whole life, finally taking her revenge and gaining her freedom.
- Don't Explain the Joke: When Stephen mentions that his grandmother Rosemary lives at home with them, Lee says "Rosemary, I've always got thyme for you!" and upon failing to get a laugh, tersely explains why it's a joke.
- Expy: Two to in Carrie:
- Margaret has deliberate similarities to Margaret White: along with the name, she is an abusive, controlling mother of a telekinetic daughter.
- Catherine is one for Carrie White. Their names are similar, and both are extremely sheltered, abused teenage girls who fight back against their abusive mothers during an Extremely Short Time Span after they reach a Rage Breaking Point of seeing some form of acceptance by the normal world. And, of course, there's the psychic powers.
- Foreshadowing:
- Catherine's Master's degree is in "applied neuroscience". Guess what her powers are.
- Catherine correctly answers a question about Matilda (a girl with telekinetic powers) and knows the answer to one question before it was asked.
- Margaret encourages Catherine to give "the first answer that comes into her mind", and on a difficult question suggests they both "put (their) minds together." When Catherine isn't sure which of her parents to bring back into the game, Margaret says "you know what I think."
- During the third round, Catherine can briefly be seen wiping blood from her nose.
- The answer board briefly malfunctions in the second round when Catherine is unsure whether she got the answer right.
- Game Show: The premise of the episode.
- Golden Snitch: While the Oakwoods managed to score £1,500 in the first two rounds, winning the last round would bring it to a whooping £40,500.
- Homage: The shot of Catherine and the camera movement as she's about to kill Margaret is taken directly from Carrie (1976).
- Interface Screw: Calling up the Electronic Programme Guide on your television or set—top on the initial broadcast of this episode, viewers really would find Inside No. 9 had gone missing and in its place the name 3 by 3.
- Intergenerational Friendship: The Three Tenors count as this; retired Enid is friends with the much younger Niall and Shindu.
- Laugh Track: The quiz show doesn't have a live audience but they make up for it by using a laugh track.
- Ludicrous Gibs: The splatter of the mother's exploded head creates a huge mess in the soundproof cabin.
- Marry Them All: Quiztopher Bigwins are maybe getting there, as they delightedly say all three of them will go on holiday together with the money they won.
- Meaningful Background Event: Catherine can be seen looking increasingly confused, upset and angry the more she realises how trapped her life has been and how cruel Margaret is.
- Men Are the Expendable Gender: Kind of. While Margaret dies and Catherine's father Stephen presumably survives, Catherine "saves" Margaret from elimination but not Stephen.
- Mind over Matter: Catherine reveals at the end of the episode that she has this power when she shuts the cabin door on her mother and makes her head explode.
- Never Trust a Trailer: The promotional materials made the episode seem like an On the Buses spoof rather than the actual spoof of a game show.
- No Social Skills:
- There's something ... off about all of the Oakwoods throughout the entire episode. They're generally reserved and socially awkward, they miss obvious jokes, and in general act like they've never been out in public before. And it's gradually implied that in Catherine's case this is the truth.
- Gavin doesn't seem to understand why it's awkward to bring up the fact of living with both his girlfriend and ex.
- Oddball in the Series: This is the only episode not to feature either Reece Shearsmith or Steve Pemberton. It also doesn't include the show's usual opening titles, and it's not until the credits begin that any implication of it being part of the series is even suggested.
- Pair the Suitors: Discussed. Gavin lives with his ex Bella and current girlfriend Maisie. Lee suggests the situation could be resolved if Bella and Maisie ended up together.
- Psychic Link: Catherine and her mother Margaret are joined together psychically. Since Margaret works in genetic research, it's implied that she may have engineered Catherine in some way.
- Punny Name: One of the teams is called Quiztopher Bigwins.note
- Raised in a Lab: It's never outright stated but heavily implied throughout the episode that Catherine was raised by her Mad Scientist mother Margaret in a lab in order to develop psychic and telepathic powers.
- Scenery Dissonance: A brightly lit quiz show, with a wisecracking celebrity host, hints Catherine's ominously controlling mother; Psychic Powers, and sees a graphic demonstration hereof.
- Rule of Three: The whole game show is themed around the number three.
- Shout-Out:
- One of the teams is called "Quiztopher Bigwins" after Christopher Biggins. Another team is named after The Three Tenors.
- Catherine is able to throw others off their answer by making them picture David Jason.
- Lee makes several jokes about H from Steps.
- Catherine and Margaret's names evoke their inspiration; Carrie White and her abusive mother Maggie.
- Margaret's eventual fate at Catherine's hands also evokes Scanners.
- Margaret incorrectly answers a question about a rapper with "Fur Q" — the same name as a rapper played by Chris Morris on The Day Today and Brass Eye.
- Show Within a Show: The entire episode is based on the set of a supposed brand-new game show broadcasting in Inside No 9's usual slot. It's not until the credits that the continuity announcer goes, as they begin fading to monochrome...Announcer: "Well, that was a shock. It just goes to show that you can never know what to expect from Inside No. 9..."
- Sound Proof Booth: Used for the jackpot round. Will need a thorough cleaning afterwards.
- Stealth Insult: The contestants are told that their final prize pot will be £40,000, which Catherine says she could use to go travelling to New Zealand. Catherine's mother shoots this down, saying she instead wants to spend the money on a basement room (or a holding cell) for Catherine. However, if Catherine gets the final answer right, they will walk away with £1,500, which is more than enough to travel to New Zealand on a one-way ticket. When asked a question about a rapper, Margaret answers “Fur Q”, an answer which Catherine presumably broadcasted to her telepathically, and is angry when it becomes clear that Catherine gave her the wrong answer. Now consider what “Fur Q” sounds like…
- Subtext: As the episode itself takes place entirely within the game show, a lot of what's actually going on is left to subtext and implication, because it naturally wouldn't come up directly amongst the banter and games. It's heavily suggested, however, that the true story is that Margaret is some kind of Mad Scientist who has genetically engineered her daughter Catherine to possess powerful psychic and telepathic abilities, has trapped her within some kind of secret laboratory her whole life, and has had to resort to bringing her on the game show because the funding to continue her experiments has run out. And that Catherine — on finally gaining some exposure to the real world — has begun to realise just how awful and abusive Margaret is...
- Sudden Downer Ending: A light-hearted quiz show ends with one of the contestants having her head explode on camera.
- Telepathy: Catherine and Margaret appear to have a telepathic connection, allowing them to correctly give the same answers in the final round. It's also implied that Catherine may have more general telepathic abilities, given that she answers a question before it's asked, appears to be able to pluck answers from the minds of other contestants and prevent them from answering, and after Stephen is eliminated from the game can seemingly reach him for the answer to a question about cricket.
- Threesome Subtext: Quiztopher Bigwins appear to be gradually inching their way towards forming a throuple (or perhaps already are and just aren’t saying it outright); they're roommates who live together, the man previously dated one of the women but is now dating the other one, everyone remains very good friends despite this, Lee at one point jokes that the natural evolution of the dynamic is for the two women to start dating each other, and on winning a sum of money they all happily decide to go on holiday together.
- Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Catherine, though very much of the Anti-Villain sort.
- Wham Line: Immediately before her head explodes, Margaret can be heard shouting from inside the booth.Margaret: The doctors were right! I should have destroyed you when you were b⸻
- X Meets Y: Carrie + Game Show.
- Your Head Asplode: Catherine traps Margaret inside a booth and finally kills her by exploding her head.
