MovieChat Forums > One Foot in the Grave (1990) Discussion > The One Bit I Hate

The One Bit I Hate

posted 11 years ago by kathmaxwell828586
10 replies | jump to latest

In the christmas special with the garden gnomes the Meldrew's get a bottle of wine delivered along with a christmas card from a relative and they think the wine is for them, as you surely naturally would. Later on after they have already drunk it Patrick and Pippa call around to pick it up informing them that they took it upon themselves to have the wine delivered there without asking them first. Margaret decides to cover this up by pouring beer into the bottle and handing it back to them. But when the truth is discovered Patrick destroys all the gnomes.

i have never found this bit funny, and it's probably the only moment i hated in this show, it's one of my favourite shows but i found that whole thing totally unfair and unfunny. It was entirely Patrick and Pippa's fault, not the Meldrews. How the hell were they supposed to know the wine was for the Trench's if they hadn't been told about it first?!

I feel Victor and Margaret were silly to hide it they should have been upfront about it and told the Trench's it was their own bloody fault! They tried to cover it up and acted like it was their fault when it wasn't

Patrick and Pippa's revenge on them for something that was their own fault was just nasty, especially when the Meldrews had been so hospitable to Pippa's father earlier in the episode. They would have been well within their rights to report that to the police, what they did wasn't intentional or their fault, what Patrick and Pippa did was.

Also it felt out of character for Pippa to join her husband in being so vindictive when all the other times in the series she tries to keep the peace and doesn't agree with some of the things Patrick does and says.

[–] phynesse72 11 years ago

Yes that whole scene was a bit over the top and totally out of character especially for Pippa.

[–] 11 years ago

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[–] nass_k 10 years ago

Yes I agree. Bit far fetched. So when handing in the gun to the police the fingerprints of the nutter, Pippa, & Patrick would be all over them. Surely questions will be asked.

However OFITG is not your regular kind of sitcom. There is often a lot of black humour involved where scenes are exaggerated or don't seem possible.

The wine episode is just one of many situations where Victor is, in the opinion of Patrick, the cause for everything that goes wrong.

[–] johnbalance 9 years ago

Its a long time since I've seen it and can't remember all the details of the episode but that bit with Patrick firing the machine gun at the gnomes was the only real jumping the shark moment in OFITG and not a bit believeable.The sound alone would have resulted in someone calling the police and the street swarming with armed emergency response coppers.This was after all only three or four years after the Hungerford mass shooting.

[–] 9 years ago

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[–] cris-07026 9 years ago

The only thing i would say in their slight defence is that Patrick and Pippa probably assumed Victor or Margaret took receipt of the parcel (it was just left at an open door) and therefore would have had to give their name and would probably realise what was going on

Therefore if all that happened as planned then they would assume Victor and Margaret had just decided to drink it and hide the fact (They never explained what actually happened)

An £800 bottle of wine should surely have needed signing for and that is where the realisation would have happened and V and M would realise it wasn't for them

Long shot i know but at no point did anyone explain what happened and that V and M didn't actually read the address label with the names on it

[–] foebane72 8 years ago

I agree, it was Victor and Margaret's own fault for not reading the label on the bottle's packaging, they just assumed it was for them. That's nigh-on selfish, frankly.

And some of the stuff that happens in this sitcom is so wildly outlandish and ridiculous, that they pick on a sub-machine gun fired in a residential street? BTW, Victor lost Patrick £800, so I think it's quite fair that Victor should lose about £800 worth of garden gnomes. However, what I thought was unnecessarily cruel was the tree going over into the Meldrew's living room at the end of the episode, causing them much more costs in terms of structural repairs. That was the bit that was off to me.

Why are you here if you haven't seen the movie yet?

[–] mjn-seifer 8 years ago

I agree, it was Victor and Margaret's own fault for not reading the label on the bottle's packaging, they just assumed it was for them. That's nigh-on selfish, frankly.

They could have read the label, but I think they assumed that it was for them because they got it at the same time as a card from Great Aunt Joyce, so they just assumed that the were delivered together and didn't bother to read the label, so it was more careless than selfish if anything.

[–] rjstephen 8 years ago

I agree, it was Victor and Margaret's own fault for not reading the label on the bottle's packaging, they just assumed it was for them. That's nigh-on selfish, frankly.

Well since it was delivered to their door why wouldn't they think it was for them? Its a natural thing to assume, no? Patrick and Pippa didn't tell them beforehand so its their own fault

[–] [deleted] 3 years ago

Yes. The gnome massacre really offended me as I have a fondness for elder, Scandinavian men.
Otherwise very funny episode.