Yet another superb episode. As usual the authors get the writing exactly right: deeply original while poking fun at familiar tropes and expectations; challenging and witty, but never obscure or baffling. You don't need to know anything about Commedia dell'arte to enjoy this, but you do have to be willing to learn, pick up hints from the behaviour of the characters, guess and be curious.
The jokes and meta-jokes come in hard and fast - be alert, and keep up! I confess I almost hugged myself for figuring out "Trinidad and Tobago", but a bunch of other -presumably clever- jokes flew right past me. Too bad. This is exactly what I want from this show - the writers stubbornly refuse to assume that their viewers are dumb, or spoilt kids who need to recognise every joke before it's uttered and cannot bear anything that's outside of their reference frame.
The plot doesn't quite land on its feet as satisfactorily as in the very best episodes, which is why I can't give this a full 10.
The jokes and meta-jokes come in hard and fast - be alert, and keep up! I confess I almost hugged myself for figuring out "Trinidad and Tobago", but a bunch of other -presumably clever- jokes flew right past me. Too bad. This is exactly what I want from this show - the writers stubbornly refuse to assume that their viewers are dumb, or spoilt kids who need to recognise every joke before it's uttered and cannot bear anything that's outside of their reference frame.
The plot doesn't quite land on its feet as satisfactorily as in the very best episodes, which is why I can't give this a full 10.