Season 2, Episode 1:

Summer Once Again

The CPDS stages a family saga following the life of an aristocratic family living in Northwood Manor. It starts when the son Roger returns from his military service, but his arrival will lead to great upheavals.

After Chris Bean's catastrophic staging of The Nativity, Robert Grove assumes the position of director and casts Chris in a degrading role. Unlike before, Robert insists that this show will run with no mistakes, and everything will be absolutely perfrect— sorry, perfect. However, this insistence leads to disastrous results...

"Summer Once Again" contains examples of:

Accidental Innuendo: Whose bright idea was it to give Dennis lines with the word "hard"?
Agony of the Feet: Robert tries to make Chris look weak by filling his suitcase with bricks so he won't be able to lift it, but during the third take, the suitcase springs open just as Chris is lifting it, sending the bricks inside thundering down on Robert's feet.
Awesome, but Impractical: Robert's summary of the play makes Summer Once Again sound impressive, but it's abundantly clear that Cornley wouldn't have been able to make it anywhere near as epic as Robert had hoped even if everything had gone perfectly; among other things, the sandstorm was going to be portrayed with the aid of a bag of sand and a desk fan. Plus, given the sheer scale of the play, they probably wouldn't have been able to fit all it into their usual timeslot, even if Robert hadn't insisted on redoing takes.
Bathos: Naturally, as with all Cornley productions it's full of this, but there's also a lampshading; apparently Max's character's death was "very moving" in rehearsals, but it loses something when done as an attempt to summarise the whole play in fast forward.
Be Careful What You Wish For: Robert has clearly been hungering for a shot at both centre stage and the director's chair. He quickly learns that being in charge of the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society is not as easy as he apparently thinks.
Break the Haughty: Robert is subject to this throughout the course of Summer, Once Again.
Brick Joke: When realising that the third run-through of the play only has six minutes to cover everything, Roger orders everyone to skip to Scene 3. At the end, when he's finally summarised everything, he realises that no one mentioned that his character was dying all along of typhoid... which, as it turns out, was revealed in Scene 2.
Dashed Plot Line: From the summary Robert delivers in the last few minutes, the story seems to spans multiple years if not decades from Roger returning home from the war; certainly, long enough for Roger's illicit baby to become a man (18-20 years at youngest) and for the two to subsequently meet on a yearly basis, for Roger to embark on a lengthy pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and for multiple characters to die long lingering deaths of the Victorian Novel Disease. There's so much going on over so many years that it reaches the point where the viewer might start to wonder if they'd still have had the time to perform the whole play even if the first scene had by some miracle gone well.
Death By Newberry Medal: Apparently, in the play within a play, Mrs Wimblegate kills Monty the dog for reasons that even Robert has to admit don't really seem to make a lot of sense.
Dramatic Pause: Robert tries this when his character broaches the subject of the whereabouts of his fiance.... Susan. Unfortunately, he leaves the pause so long that everyone gets confused and thinks he's forgotten his line or that they've missed a cue. Ironically, on the third go-around he actually does forget the line.
Drunk with Power: Heavily implied of Robert's directorial style. Certainly, he makes a point of turning Chris into a belittled dogsbody and if nothing else, say what you will about Chris's methods, he never had a whistle that he blew whenever anyone made a mistake.
The Dog Bites Back: A two-way example (at least, in Robert's mind and ego). Having had to play second-fiddle to Chris throughout the various Cornley productions, Robert is clearly very pleased to have an opportunity to put Chris in what he feels is his place, and has humiliated him by casting him as "Manure Boy" and giving him lots of demeaning dialogue. Later in the play, however, when things are going very wrong for Robert (up to and including a face-plant into the aforementioned manure), Chris looks extremely pleased and takes the opportunity to deliver a gloating Ironic Echo. ("It appears someone has already beaten me to my supper!")
The Door Slams You: Vanessa is a victim of this in all three go-arounds, despite her best efforts.
Downer Ending: Everyone dies of Typhoid except for the staff, who both pulled a Screw This, I'm Outta Here.
Everyone Has Standards: Apparently Chris's attempt at staging The Nativity was too big a disaster even for the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society to stomach without forcing his replacement. Let that sink in a moment.
Exhaustion-Induced Idiocy: The stress of having to repeat the take multiple times without adequate time to tidy up after the previous attempt results in the cast and crew making more and more mistakes as exhaustion sets in, worsened by the actors' own foibles. Among other things, Vanessa ends up putting rain boots over the rain boots she put on in the previous take, Sandra brings out a boiling hot kettle instead of a fresh pot of cold water (badly scalding Max), Annie gets the galoshes and goulashes mixed up, Robert himself actually forgets his lines by the third take, and the technical errors get worse and worse.
Failed Attempt at Drama: As with most Cornley productions, the entire play ends up being this, but a particularly significant example comes with Robert's attempt to bring up his fiance... Susan. He leaves a pause before saying her name in order to give it more dramatic weight, but unfortunately leaves it too long, leaving his fellow performers to get confused and think he's forgotten a line or that they've missed a cue.
Fast-Forward Gag: Robert has to rush through the entire play after repeating the opening scene too many times. Also a literal one, as it turns out that Robert and Sandra pre-recorded a love scene between their characters which is still played, but in fast-forward. Both are left looking awkward and a bit squicked out when its finished.
Fetish Retardant: In-universe, what was supposed to be a steamy and sexy love scene between Robert and Sandra's characters becomes this when, owing to time constraints, it's forced to be played in fast-forward. Both its stars are left looking rather uncomfortable by it.
Force Feeding: Played for laughs. Dennis's character is supposed to be an elderly man whose health is failing, and it's established that the doctor has ordered him to have plenty of food to keep his strength up. In the scene, this translates to Dennis having to eat two serves of goulash and a "large" slice of cake. Unfortunately, the numerous resets mean that Dennis has to keep eating the same large portions over and over again, much to his distress. Over the course of the production, this results in Dennis consuming four large plates of goulash, three large slices of cake, and two wellington boots. And to make it worse, due to the various indignities the cake goes through the "slices" get larger every time.
Dennis: There! Second helping finished! [almost begging] NOW NO MORE!
Vanessa: You're not finished until you've had a big slice of cake.
Dennis: [Borderline hysterics] Well I do love cake!
Foreshadowing: After accidentally flubbing the word 'perfect' in his first introduction, Robert commands the audience to "reset their minds" and pretend his mistake never happened. This is what he later tries to do with the entire performance. Multiple times.
Funny Background Event: Annie can be seen reacting with annoyance on learning that, according to Robert's production diaries, he was trying to replace her with Judi Dench.
Generational Saga: Played with; the story spans a long period of time and features several generations of the family of Northwood Manor, but the main protagonist remains Roger throughout.
Gratuitous French: Robert's Secret Diary is labelled "Mon Journal".
Her Code Name Was "Mary Sue": It's not confirmed if Robert actually wrote this particular play, though it's rather telling that his character is liked by everyone, given a ludicrously overblown hero's welcome, and even has a sex scene. For good measure, Chris is made to look pathetic and disgusting - to the point that Robert adds even more demeaning lines to the script in between takes. Downplayed in rest of the play that Robert fast-forwards though, as it's shown that Robert's character has a fraught relationship with his family and has a character arc about coming to respect the Manure Boy (the latter of which appears to surprise Chris when he hears it), and the story is something of a tragedy.
Hoist by His Own Petard: Every single one of Robert's arrogant decisions comes back to bite him.
- Giving himself a spectacularly overblown hero's welcome eventually results in the "NOBLE WAR HERO" banner dropping on his head and a confetti cannon sending him diving for cover.
- Having a wheelbarrow full of real manure for Chris to handle results in Robert accidentally piling facefirst into it after the aforementioned intro.
- The suitcase of bricks he used to make Chris look like a weakling falls open, spilling the bricks all over Robert's feet. And he trips over the suitcase later in the scene.
- Literally throwing a book at Dennis in order to punish him for mistakes results in Dennis getting it mixed up with his prop bible and reading it instead, ruining another take. Worse still, it's Robert's journal, and Dennis reads out some particularly embarrassing passages.
Honking Arriving Car: Robert playing "Roger" makes his entrance to Northwood Manor in a car preceded by the honking horn. After Robert calls for a reset of "Scene One" for a second time, because of numerous mistakes, the car horn sound effect is mistakenly cued "three pages early."
Humiliation Conga: Robert is subjected to the ultimate in embarrassments during the third take, in which his car falls to pieces, his ego-stroking intro not only fails but ends up making him look like an idiot, a misfiring confetti cannon sends him faceplanting into a wheelbarrow full of manure, the suitcase full of bricks opens on his feet, a chair collapses under him, Dennis reads out several extremely embarrassing passages from Robert's diary, and last but not least, he forgets his lines.
Ikea Erotica: Slowing down the love scene video will reveal just how unsexy the whole thing is.
Ironic Echo: Certain lines of dialogue take on unintended layers of meaning and subtext thanks to the numerous resets. ("I feel I've lived through this moment so many times before..." "There! Second helping finished! Now no more!" "And look at me with me hair in such a mess...")
Irony:
- Robert eventually realises that his insistence on restaging the opening scene twice has left them with only about six minutes to perform the whole rest of the play, resulting in a Fast-Forward Gag staging which culminates in Robert essentially shouting a breathless summary of the main points at the audience. Once he's done, however, he realises that he rushed them through everything so quickly they're left with a few minutes to spare.
- Robert has spitefully rewritten Chris's character to have him say numerous demeaning things about himself, among them that he eats manure. In the third run-through, Robert's chaotic arrival ends with him taking a tumble that sees him faceplant right into the manure wheelbarrow. Chris, naturally, is most pleased by this.
It Makes Sense in Context: Invoked by Robert after Mrs. Wimblegate inexplicably kills Monty the dog. (“Something about loss.”)
Large Ham: Even in the truncated version of the play, Annie makes the most of Mrs Wimblegate's reaction to the maid's illegitimate child with Roger ("That baby brings SHAAAAAAAAAAAAAME ONTO NORTHWOOD MANOR!")
The Last Dance: Robert reveals that the whole play was supposed to be this at the end.
Mondegreen Gag: The script calls for Uncle Roger to eat two goulashes and Lady Montague to don a pair of galoshes. The third time around, Vanessa is wearing goulashes while Dennis is eating galoshes.
Dennis: This beef is tough as old boots.
No OSHA Compliance: The stove might be the single most dangerous setpiece ever used in Cornley's history. For some reason, Robert decided to get a real wood-burning stove and have it burning for real without bothering to turn it off between takes or to replace the teakettle that was heating up on top of it. Because of this, both Vanessa and Max end up with burnt hands in the second take, while in the third take, the stove has been on for so long that it starts belching fire, and even after the fires have apparently been extinguished, the simple act of accidentally knocking Sandra's wig onto the stove causes it to burst into flames. Finally, the entire stove explodes during Robert's rushed synopsis, sending bits of it cartwheeling across the set.
"Not So Different" Remark: Chris seems almost shocked when Robert blazes through his character's relationship with the former's deliberately-demeaning character of 'the manure boy,' because he says that after years of conflict and animosity they came to bond through their shared hardships and realize that they had more in common than either realized and developed a mutual respect for one another. This is clearly reflective of both Chris and Robert's overall dynamic in general. Because Robert is Robert, he doesn't realize what a Freudian Slip this seems to be, and finishes by saying that the manure boy also died of typhoid.
The Perfectionist: Robert cannot abide mistakes in the performance, ultimately resorting to physical assault and even restarting the play from scratch. In the end, this actually makes him even worse of a director than Chris, as it means that almost nothing in the gargantuan bulk of the play ever gets filmed.
Rule of Three: The opening scene is played out three times.
Running Gag:
- This time, Robert decides that they don’t have enough time for any of Johnathan’s scenes.
- Each run-through begins with something missing from the first scene that makes Robert have to do an immediate reset. The first time, the table the actors are sitting around is missing. ("Where's the table?") The second time, the actors themselves are missing. ("Where are the actors?") And then the third time, the house is inexplicably missing. ("Oh, for God's sake!")
Seasonal Baggage: How the play demonstrates the changing of the seasons, often dumped right on the cast.
Shoot the Money: In-universe case; Roger's pilgrimage to Jerusalem is meant to be set against a backdrop of a tapestry depicting a Levantine pastoral scene, and as the tapestry itself cost a fortune and months of work, Robert insists on having the damn thing quickly paraded in front of the camera.
Stealth Pun: On the third take, Robert’s “Noble War Hero” banner falls down on the right side, making it read “Nob” (a bit of North London slang for a jerk).
Take That!: This week's production is very Downton Abbey, but on top of that what we learn of the narrative highly suggests that the overall story is a bit of a dreary rip-off of works like Brideshead Revisited, The Painted Veil and similar narratives involving post-World War 1 members of the British upper-crust engaging in lengthy and rather self-involved voyages of self-discovery while having lots of dinner parties and affairs with the lower orders.
Tempting Fate: Robert confidently boasts that, unlike Chris, his direction will result in no errors. Guess how long that lasts.
The Ending Changes Everything: Done accidentally. Towards the end of his final, breathless recap of the play's plot, Robert realises that no one had remembered to mention the reveal in the second scene that the protagonist was actually dying of typhoid throughout the entire play, which informed most of his otherwise utterly inexplicable and confusing actions throughout.
Title Drop: The play-within-a-play was apparently supposed to end with one of these. It might have been more moving if actually performed in context rather than as Robert hurriedly summing everything up.
Victorian Novel Disease: At least seventy percent of the named characters end up dying of typhoid. (Which is another example of the script's hackiness, because typhoid—while period-appropriate—is an acute illness. One wonders whether the unknown author of the script meant tuberculosis, which tends to be used as this trope.)
What Happened to the Mouse?: It's never actually clearly answered what precisely did happen to Susan, as the play keeps being reset before Robert's character gets an answer to his question. Reading between the lines implies that she gave Robert typhoid at some point before succumbing to it herself.

Recap / The Goes Wrong Show Summer Once Again

Summer Once Again