Recap / The Brittas Empire S7E5: The Disappearing Act

Mr. Brittas: When you interpret these dreams, I was wondering... is there any topic I should avoid?

Helen: Gordon...

Mr. Brittas: It's just, I don't wanna have a dream that's gonna make me look ridiculous. (Beat) Like the one when I was a haddock.

— Gordon Brittas asking his wife Helen what he should dream of for the Dreams Workshop.

• Date First Aired: 03/02/1997

Drugget has bought in a new Employee of the Month competition to win a weekend to Paris, which Brittas doesn't like as he feels it hampers team building and introduces competition. Regardless, however, it has convinced the others to work other - Julie is actually doing her job for a change and Carole is trying to learn French. As she is showing this off to Helen, she reveals that she's hosting a Dreams Workshop.

After Drugget leaves, Colin announces that he plans to volunteer for the birthday party planned for Julie's niece as a stage magician called Mr. Magic, alongside a plethora of animals that keep either running away from him or are killed. After a staff meeting, where Brittas forces everyone to attend Helen's Dream Workshop, Linda shows him her new exercise program, which involves speeding up the treadmill, unbeknownst to them, however, leading to a crack in the centre...

The next morning, as the party is being prepared, everyone discusses their Dreams, with Tim having a Chariots of Fire styled dream, and Carole having a dream in Paris, and Colin dreaming of finding perfectly preserved Anglo-Saxon poop. Afterward, the birthday party goes awry when Melanie goes through Colin's cabinet and actually disappears. Searching for the child, Brittas and Colin come across the crack, which has now become a hole. It turns out that there's an underground railway, containing the Bristol spur to the Channel tunnel, which the Eurostar has gone through.

Afterward, they find out the location of Julie's niece - hurtling towards France on the Eurostar. Brittas then decides to announce the result of the Employee of the Month competition. The winner - no one, since he didn't want to single out any one of his staff. Not that it would have mattered, because Melanie's parents take the tickets anyway in pursuit of their daughter. Oh, and they plan to sue too.

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Tropes in this episode:

• Aborted Arc: Drugget mentions briefly how there's a movement to get the leisure centre privatized when it goes up for funding next year and suggests Gavin try to get a management job for it. Despite sounding important, it is never mentioned again.
• Added Alliterative Appeal: Individualised Incentives Inculate Inherent Instability (or I.I.I.I.I. for short), which Brittas thinks is what the Employee of the Month competition is doing.
• Assurance Backfire: Helen's attempts to calm down Melanie's parents just leads to the mother breaking down.
  Helen: Have you got any other children? 'Cause I always think that helps. I know when I lose one of mine, I always think, "Oh well, not to worry, I've got three more at home".
  Roger: ...I'm going to thump you in a minute.
• Birthday Episode: The second half of the episode is set at the eighth birthday party of Julie's niece Melanie, which of course goes horribly wrong.
• Birthday Party Goes Wrong: Melanie's birthday party goes horribly wrong when the birthday girl herself seems to have genuinely disappeared.
• Bizarre Dream Rationalization: Whilst exploring the strange tunnel underneath the centre, Colin ponders if he and Brittas were in a dream, even wondering if he was in Brittas' dream or his. Hilariously, whilst Brittas tells him to shut up, "Curse of the Tiger Women" reveals that Colin was right all along, the whole show being just a dream of Brittas.
• Black Comedy Pet Death: Colin accidentally kills his frog by sitting on it. For bonus points, it comes with a cartoony squelch sound effect.
• Brief Accent Imitation: Brittas puts on a dreadful French accent when he claims to speak French whilst on the phone.
• Character Check: After having not been mentioned since "In the Beginning...", Brittas' Dream, an important character goal of his, is finally mentioned again, albeit only for a brief joke about him confusing it for a real dream and not to be mentioned again until "Curse of the Tiger Women".
• The Cloudcuckoolander Was Right: For all of Colin's odd ramblings, his one about being in a dream all along, namely that of Brittas, turns out to be completely true, not that Brittas realizes at the time.
• Consolation Prize: Brittas has his reservations about the Employee of the Month competition due to the inevitability that it would create losers, so he has provided a consolation prize for those who do not win the tickets to Paris: A weekend of bonding, barrier-breaking, and teambuilding where Brittas tells them everything he knows about the leisure industry.
  Tim: You must be joking...
  Colin: Magnificent, Mr. Brittas! May I be a lucky loser? I didn't want to be Employee of the Month anyway.
  Mr. Brittas: Don't worry, Colin. You were never in with a chance.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Monty, one of the rabbits shown as part of Colin's Children's Corner, makes a reappearance as part of Colin's magician's act.
  • Helen mentions having previously lost at least one of her children.
• Disappearing Box: Colin repurposes one of his cupboards for the purpose of such a device at the party. This ends up going awry when Julie's niece seems to have genuinely disappeared through it.
• Dream Within a Dream: The references to dreams in this episode become this with the reveal at the end of the series that the show was All Just a Dream.
• Employee of the Month: Councillor Drugget brings in an Employee of the Month Competition, with the eventual award of two tickets to Paris. At the end of the episode, Brittas decides to award the tickets... to no-one, since he never liked the concept of the award. Not that it would have mattered anyway, since Julie's niece has been sent hurtling to France on the Eurostar and her parents take the tickets to pursue her.
• Erotic Dream: Colin mentions having dreams of women volleyball players when he was in his early teens that he knows the real meaning of.
• Foreshadowing: The episode has a strong emphasis on dreams, and Colin at one point wonders if he had somehow ended up in one of Brittas' dreams. The last episode reveals that Colin is not off the mark there.
• Free the Frogs: Linda, who opposes Colin's use of live animals for his magic act, lets his bunny go free.
• Immediate Self-Contradiction: Brittas gets everyone to attend the Dream Workshop:
  Mr. Brittas: Now it's purely voluntary, but everyone must attend.
• Incredibly Lame Fun: Apparently, Brittas' normal dreams usually involve him filling stuff.
• Gratuitous French: Thanks to her Sleep Learning, Carole spends the episode alternating between English and French.
  Carole: I've been learning French for three weeks and I'm practically bilingual. I just keep slipping in and out of it, comme ci, comme ça. Oh, there I go again.
• Just a Stupid Accent: Brittas claims to know French, which just leads to him putting on a silly French accent.
• Limited Wardrobe: When Colin talks about changing his wardrobe, Brittas comments that he always wears that cardigan.
  Colin: I can do a few tricks I think the kiddies might like, and I've also been working on my wardrobe.
  Mr. Brittas: Well, it doesn't show, you always wear that dreadful cardigan.
• A Lizard Named "Liz": Most of the animals that Colin intends to use for magic have these sort of names - Scottie the Scorpion, Harry the Hamster, Freddie the Frog...
• Missing Child: 8-year-old Melanie goes missing at her own birthday party, prompting a search around the centre to find her. It soon turns out that Melanie had ended up in a tunnel underneath the centre, performed an act of freight-hopping, and wound up hurtling towards France on the Eurostar.
• Mistaken for Superpowered: Colin briefly ponders if he really does have magic powers after Melanie vanishes at her birthday party. In truth, an entrance to a subterranean tunnel had opened up behind the Disappearing Box that Colin used and Melanie went through it.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: If Linda hadn't freed Monty the rabbit, chances are that Melanie wouldn't have gone in through the crack and ended up on a train heading to France.
• Noodle Incident: Apparently, Brittas has had a dream where he was a haddock.
• One-Shot Character: Melanie, Cathy, Roger and Eamonn.
• Parodies of Fire: Tim's dream involves him running on a beach in slow-motion. Brittas lampshades the dream's similarities to the movie.
• Recurring Dreams: Apparently, when Colin was a child, he used to dream night after night about a grid on the road that he wished to go to. He notes that the grid did exist in the real world, but that it was actually a sewer in question, which may have sparked his interest in things subterranean. He also had a recurring dream about volleyball playing girls in his teens.
• Saw "Star Wars" Twenty-Seven Times: Brittas has apparently watched Chariots of Fire six times.
• Scary Scorpion: The episode ends with Colin getting stung by his scorpion, Scottie.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: The staff's attempts to win the tickets to France are rendered null by a combination of Melanie's parents taking the prize and Brittas deciding not to give the Employee of the Month award to anyone after all.
• Sleep Learning: Carole has been teaching herself French by listening to tapes while she sleeps at night, which ends up seeping into her dreams when she has one of going to France with the DuPont family who are the stars of the sleep tapes.
• Soapbox Sadie: Linda makes it clear that she opposes Colin's use of live animals for magic and sets his bunny free in a bid to stop him.
• Something That Begins with "Boring": Melanie was apparently playing "I Spy" with the driver of the Eurostar when finally located.
  Mr. Brittas: They've got stuck on "T" for tunnel, nyah!
• Squirrels in My Pants: Colin keeps getting live animals within his trousers, including hamsters and lobsters.
• Shout-Out:
  • Helen mentions reading a book of Sigmund Freud's called The Interpretation of Dreams.
  • Brittas has seen Chariots of Fire six times.
  • A young girl chasing a white rabbit through a hole and into another world? Now where have we heard that one before?
• Stage Magician: Colin briefly becomes one of these as "Mr. Magic". It doesn't end well.
• Treadmill Trauma: Linda's enhanced exercise program involves increasing the output ratio on a treadmill by 150%, leading to anyone who goes on them going at uncomfortable speeds. It also leads to a crack being created which Melanie later goes through.
• Toilet Humor: Colin's dream? Finding perfectly preserved Anglo-Saxon poop.
• The Unreveal: Considering his fretting over it, the audience never learns what dream Brittas intended to talk about for the dream workshop. He does have his hand up when Helen asks if anyone wants to share their dreams, but she goes for Carole instead and it goes untold. For that matter, Linda is also seen with her hand up, indicating that she had a dream to talk about as well, but the audience never learns about it.

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