Work Text:
So, as I have been saying, both “Boston” and “Cremona” feel weird when you go back and listen to them after having listened to the whole show, because Finnemore seems to be trying various plots and conflicts and shticks out for size, and not really finding the fit. “Douz,” I would say, is the first episode where the show finds its wings (har har). It is certainly my favorite from the first season, and that’s because at last, instead of the plot being Martin vs. Carolyn or Martin vs. Douglas or everybody vs. Hester Macauley, it’s MJN vs. The World.
All right, maybe Yves from “Douz” isn’t exactly The World. But “Douz” defines what the show will usually really be about on a deep level: the struggle of these four misfits, rejects, and losers to keep their tiny ship afloat in the rough economic waters of the 21st century. In a world of megamultnational capitalism where everything is about scale–about VAST scale, like Walmart- and China-sized scale–MJN, with its one plane and its two pilots, is an anachronistic survival of a time when things were more human-sized, and there was room for human error, failing, and eccentricity. GERTI is a little safe haven where four people who, in the world of global capitalism, are basically worthless and unproductive trash–an old woman, an idiot, a swindler, and a failure–can be all the things they want to be: a CEO, a helper, a mighty sky-god, and an airline captain. And “Douz” is the episode where everyone learns that if they want to keep GERTI flying, they have to get over their individual issues and their interpersonal shit and work together.
And I love watching the whole team pitch in for the solution. Martin actually finds the escape route (he’s apparently the first to realize that if they’re ever going to take off it’ll have to be at another airport), Douglas figures out how to clear the path, Douglas’s fuel-stealing dodge inspires Martin with the idea of siphoning out the gasoline (sorry, PETROL), and Arthur, who as we know thinks so far outside the box that he usually can’t even actually see the box from where he’s thinking, comes up with exactly what they need, which is an idea so idiotic that it could never possibly occur to their too-wily adversary. Carolyn’s contribution is less concrete: She finally tells Douglas the truth.
The key moment in “Douz” is that conversation under the wing. Up to this point all the episodes have relied structurally on antagonism between Carolyn and the pilots. The focus so far has been on Martin, but you finally see in their exchange under the wing in “Douz” just how much Douglas resents Carolyn’s treatment of them. He just hasn’t been letting anyone see that he cares, because that’s how Douglas copes with the humiliation that is his daily portion as the *second* in command at an airline he wouldn’t have wiped his feet on back before he got busted, sacked, and blacklisted. It’s kind of insane for him to tell her to just pay up E12,000 that she doesn’t really owe out of her own pocket, but it shows you that all this time he has been thinking of her as someone with unlimited riches who is screwing them out of every penny just because she can–and that this makes him *really* angry. Discovering that she’s living on the margins too changes everything. Partly, no doubt, that’s because he realizes that MJN Air is operating without a safety net, and that they are all much more vulnerable than he realized–which makes him more willing to get over his resentment about the landing and work with Martin. Douglas tells her to “swallow her pride” and pay up; she doesn’t pay up, but in order to get the team working together she does have to swallow her pride. It’s Carolyn’s willingness to finally drop the front and allow Douglas to see how beleaguered and vulnerable she really is that actually saves the day. Those are some excellent crew resource management skills right there.
The running gag with the brochure photo is perhaps Finnemore’s way of signaling that he’s finally discovered the essence du show. We finally have an episode that “really sums up MJN Air.”