The episode in which Del falls through a bar, and Rodney meets Cassandra. First broadcast 8 January 1989.
Having seen and been strongly influenced by Wall Street, especially its lead character, the ruthless corporate high-flyer Gordon Gekko, Del Boy has decided to adopt a new "yuppy" image, donning a striped shirt and red braces, and carrying a filofax and a silver briefcase. Rodney in turn has joined an evening computer class in an attempt to earn a diploma and finally get a proper job.
His efforts to learn the ways of the Amstrad CPC 6128 are mocked by his family, but at the class he meets and is attracted to a fellow-student, Cassandra Parry. He later meets up with her in a nightclub (winning a bet with Mickey and Jevon in the process), and she offers to give him a lift home. She first drives to her house and Rodney feels upstaged by her comparatively luxurious lifestyle. Embarrassed at the thought of Cassandra seeing Nelson Mandela House, Rodney instead leads her to The King's Avenue, an expensive and very up-market road, implying that he lives there and has to stand in the driveway, being seen by the homeowners. Despite soon finding out that he actually does not live there, Cassandra still phones and agrees to meet Rodney again.
Del, meanwhile, goes out on the pull with Trigger in an upmarket wine bar. While there, he leans against a bar flap, moves away to point out some women to Trigger, and then leans back ... but, because a barman has lifted the flap, he falls straight through the gap. After Trigger double-takes in response to Del having seemingly disappeared, Del gets up and decides they should leave.
Tropes:
- Actor Allusion: Del mentions once working at the Tower of London. David Jason once studied raven behavior there when portraying one in a pantomime.
- Artistic License – Geography: When Cassandra drops Rodney off on the posh King's Avenue, the street sign shows King's Avenue to be in N10 — the postcode for the North London district of Muswell Hill note . It would take over three hours to walk from there to Peckham. No wonder Rodney looks like a drowned rat when he finally gets home.
- The Bet: In the nightclub, Mickey and Jevon have a bet with Rodney that he can't get one of the girls to dance with him. He's reluctant to take them up on it, but when he spots Cassandra, who he already knows, he's willing. And he wins.
- Comically Missing the Point: Del never quite seems to catch on to the fact that "Yuppie" is an insult, or that a trenchcoat, red braces and a filofax do not make him one. And then there's Trigger in the wine bar, shortly before Del falls through it. Encouraged by Del to talk to women about money, he strikes up the following line of conversation:Trigger: I found one of them old five pound notes the other day.
- Double Take: Trigger's reaction to Del falling behind the bar; as this happened behind his back, he thinks Del has randomly disappeared, and is even more confused than usual as a result.
- Foreshadowing: Del's applied to buy the flat via the Right to Buy scheme. This will have several consequences (good and bad) in future episodes.
- Leaning on the Furniture: Del attempts to do this while out on the pull in a posh wine bar, only to fail to realise that the barman lifted the hatch while he wasn't looking, causing him to fall straight through the bar
. This is one of the most famous scenes in the whole show, and has often been cited by British viewers as one of the greatest TV moments ever. - The Makeover: Having seen Wall Street several times, Del's ditched the flat cap and camel-hair coat in favour of a green trenchcoat, striped shirt and red braces.
- Meet Cute: Rodney meets Cassandra on the computer course after they put on each other's coats by mistake. However, the effect is slightly undermined by the fact that she learns his name because Del has written it on the subside of the collar of his coat, in a style very similar to that of a parent writing their child's name on a school uniform item.
- Never My Fault: When Albert points out that Rodney has already failed the computer course several times (it's apparently a three-month course that he's been doing for a couple of years), Rodney points out that the other students have an advantage over him, in that they have jobs which involve using computers on a daily basis and have been sent on the course by their companies, whereas his day job involves trying to sell raincoats which are labelled "dry clean only".
- Shout-Out: Del has seen Wall Street several times, and thinks that Gordon Gecko is someone to be emulated — which is why he's started dressing like a stereotypical yuppie.
- Uptown Girl: Middle-class Cassandra, when compared to working-class Rodney. She's from Blackheath, a much better-off neighbourhood than Peckham.
- Yuppie: From this episode onwards, Del starts dressing like one of these in order to convey the impression that he's a successful businessman. This is (also) why he starts hanging out in the wine bar, although things don't exactly go according to plan.
