Spaced
“Leaves”, Season 2 Episode 7
Requested By
EdwinSorrow on our Discord server
What do I know about this series going into it?
It’s a geeky sitcom by one of my favorite directors, Edgar Wright. I have actively wanted to watch it for some time, but when it got requested I had to put it aside. That’s extremely rare; I can count on one hand the number of times it has happened.
I know it has Wright’s frequent collaborators Simon Pegg and Jessica S-(something) in it, and that Pegg later joked that he was cast as Scotty in the J. J. Abrams Star Trek films as revenge for his character saying that odd-numbered Trek films always suck.
Recap
The opening credits are a montage of shots showing the living room of what looks like student or young-adult housing. Various characters fade in and out of existence, all watching television.
Daisy1 kicks things off with a voiceover: “The 21st-century family is made up of friends, not relatives.” The soundtrack, however, blares a DUN DUN DUN of disagreement, as we see Simon Pegg and (I assume) Daisy looking in horror at a For Sale sign outside their apartment building.
They enter their apartment building to find an estate agent showing a couple around. “Mrs. Klein,” says the agent, gave him the key. What makes Daisy and Simon (character name Tim) even more frustrated is that the couple are 25 and 24 years old - “Younger than us!” Daisy laments.
They decide they need to take action and head to another apartment down the hall, inside which they hear loud, hysterical sobbing. “Brian, are you all right?” they ask - but Brian isn’t crying, he’s listening to a recording of sobs, to help him externalize his feelings. The cause of the heartbreak: “She” has gone to Manchester. “Marsha?” asks Tim. “No, Twist has gone to Manchester.”
I recall having seen the name Twist in the opening credits, which is odd. I know Edgar Wright used to have a penchant for giving characters the same name as the actors, so this may be a case of that.
There’s a cutaway to a woman dancing at a bar and trying to call Daisy to let her know she’s in Manchester. So my guess is Marsha is Brian’s girlfriend, but Twist is his roommate and he is non-romantically broken up about her moving out.
After the cutaway, Brian laments how everything in life is uncertain. But this house - this house - is the one thing he can rely on: my port in a storm, my rock. Tim and Daisy glance at each other, worried, at this extended display of verbal irony.
They leave Brian’s apartment, possibly without giving him the bad news, and discuss their options. “We’ve got to find Marsha,” says Tim. “Say we’re sorry we hurt her and please, please, please don’t sell the house.”
So Marsha is Mrs. Klein, the owner of the house, and Brian’s girlfriend? Weird.
Tim and Daisy then go to another guy’s apartment, whose name I didn’t catch (Mike, maybe?). Together they conclude that Marsha must have contacted “Amber”. Cut to an external shot of Amber’s house; we don’t see her, but she clearly thinks her mother Marsha is a psychopath.
But where does Amber live? To get the address out, Tim and maybe-Mike and Daisy break into Marsha’s room. But just as they’re about to leave, Daisy looks out the window and spots a dog, named Colin, running off into the neighbors’ yard. She freaks out. “When did you start giving a shit?” Tim asks. Daisy is insulted and storms off.
Good job, Tim - now you’re going to lose your house and your girlfriend.
While Tim and Mike and Brian head off to find Marsha, Daisy knocks on the neighbors’ door. It has a prominent number 47 on it, in a clear Star Trek reference. But there’s no answer, and the door is slightly open. With trepidation, she enters, seeing pictures of Colin all over the walls, and a boiling pot on the stove in the kitchen. She reaches out a trembling hand, fearing the machinations of a young Glenn Close…
Meanwhile, Tim has found Marsha and quotes the line from the episode’s opening: The 21st-century family is made up of friends, not relatives. “And if that’s true, you’re the best auntie I’ve ever had.” Marsha leans in and they start to kiss, and Tim emerges from the imagine spot, having freaked himself out. They’re still in the van, and haven’t even started driving yet.
Inside the pot, Daisy finds… a teddy bear. Just in time, the old lady who lives here enters the kitchen; she was boiling the teddy bear to clean it. Colin is perfectly fine, and the old lady sweetly invites her to have tea with her, drop in any time, or even contact her anytime she needs a dogsitter. She’s being very sweet about it - but the background music and lighting turn it into something inordinately creepy.
Returning home, Daisy turns to Colin in desperation. “Why?” she asks. “Have I done something wrong? I don’t neglect you. I can change!” Creepy music plays, and Daisy’s pleas are intercut with flashbacks to her ignoring Colin or pushing him away, while the old lady treats him much better. Daisy’s pleas amount to nothing, however, and Colin gets up and leaves the apartment.
Meanwhile, the boys have found Marsha. “How did you find me?” she demands. Tim dodges the question, but Mike is a little bit too open:
“You’re wasting my time, I’ve made up my mind,” she insists.
“But we only did it” - whatever the original insult that drove her off was - “because we love living there,” says Tim. And he gives the “friends and not relatives” line.
And just as he had imagined: she leans in; he thinks she’s about to kiss him; he leans in too; and she spits out a venomous “Kiss my arse.”
That evening, a depressed Tim and Mike return home to find a depressed Daisy. They update one another on their failed missions, and Daisy laments: “Everyone leaves.”
“Don’t be silly,” says Tim as he goes to answer a knock at the door. It’s a friend of his named Sophie2; she’s moving to Seattle to work for Marvel Comics. “Never mind, Daisy, you were right.”
He agrees to go with her to the airport the next morning, and asks “What are you planning to do for the next 13 hours?” She gives him a look.
So huh. Clearly he has a sexual relationship with Sophie; up until now I thought Daisy was his girlfriend.
With Tim now… ahem… busy, and Daisy out of it, Mike has an idea. Wearing military fatigues, he approaches a quartet of similarly-clad friends at a bar. He calls them “boys”; they call him “Sarge”3.
The next morning, Daisy gets the train schedule for a place called “Colwyn Bay”, packs up her stuff, and heads out, pausing only long enough to leave a note for Tim.
Then there’s a knock on the door, and Tim and Sophie wake up. It’s Mike, still in fatigues. He orders Tim to get dressed, then heads down the hall to Brian’s room.
Brian is listening to the sobbing tape and unable to answer the call to action, but Mike is prepared: he puts a cassette with the Thunderbirds theme into the player, which instantly rouses Brian to action.
We next see Mike opening a garage door, accompanied by his subordinates4. They express some hesitation: “Is this a matter for the military?” But Mike smacks some sense into him: of course it is!
Cut to Marsha, looking out a window as a tank rolls up the street towards her. The clowns (by which I mean the main characters) pop out. “What are you gonna do, blow me up?” she asks.
But the four soldiers, like a well-oiled machine, jump out and hold a banner that reads “We’re sorry Martha”; Mike waves a white flag; and Tim holds up a boombox blasting a song with the lyrics “I want you back for good”. She is visibly touched.
Meanwhile, next door, the old lady has renamed Colin “Lancelot”.
At 11am, Tim, Mike, and Brian return to the apartment and find Colin waiting for them (why?) and Daisy’s letter, which he had missed in Mike’s urgency. The letter is long-winded but boils down to Daisy saying, “By the time you read this I’ll be gone.”
What can I do? Tim agonizes. Sophie’s not answering her phone so he can’t explain; the tube is on strike; and they have no money for a cab. How is he going to get to the train station to stop Daisy, and then get to Sophie in time to take her to the airport?
Mike comes up with another idea, and we next see Tim driving down the train platform on something that looks kind of like a flattened Zamboni; I assume this is a callback to some earlier episode. While in the meantime Mike has taken his van to Sophie’s, handing her a letter from Tim explaining why he’s late (though Tim runs up mere moments later).
In a montage, Brian locates Twist in Manchester5; Mike is seen teaching Martha how to put together a rifle blindfolded; Tim and Daisy sit in their living room watching TV; and workers take down the For Sale sign.
Lingering questions
Does Brian successfully convince Twist to come back?
Does Tim and Sophie’s relationship survive being long-distance?
Why did Colin return?
Ratings
I evaluate the finale-of-the-week from an angle that its writers never intended: how well it works as an individual episode watched in isolation. This will likely differ greatly from how the episode works in its proper context. And it should go without saying that the following does not apply to the series as a whole, which I have not watched.
The rating system is from 0 to 10, where 5 is considered average for television. These are intended to be measurements, not judgements; a low rating may reflect low quality, but it may also reflect a deliberate choice. For example, a strong character piece may have no plot, or a finale may intentionally provide no closure - neither of which makes an episode bad.
Story: 6/10. A well-executed example of the classic sitcom format, where each of the five main characters has their own plot thread, woven nicely together into a strong plot rope. The simplicity of the story and a few weird plot holes (like issues with the timeline, and Colin’s sudden reappearance) prevent it from reaching excellence, but it’s a good showcase of what can be done in a mere 25 minutes.
Writing: 6/10. There was far too much reliance on verbal irony. The first the-universe-will-predictably-conspire-to-prove-this-character-wrong gag is great; the fourth is pushing it. The rest of the episode was genuinely funny at times, but not as often as I would have liked.
I want to also single out enormous praise for the episode’s theme, which is the best depiction of the five so-called stages of grief that I’ve ever seen on television. Contrary to how they are usually portrayed, the original model6 is of five different reactions to impending loss, not five stages a person goes through after a loss has already taken place. Some people go through all five reactions in the classic order, but many have only one or two.
This episode doesn’t match the model perfectly, but it’s far closer to the original intent than the cliches you see elsewhere on television. Each character is presented with a different type of loss, some more absurd than others, and reacts to it in their own idiosyncratic way:
Tim’s girlfriend is leaving for career reasons that have nothing to do with their relationship. He reacts with immediate acceptance.
Daisy’s dog has decided that he loves the next-door neighbor more than he loves her. She reacts with bargaining, then moves on to despair when this fails.
Brian is dealing with a loss that has already taken place: Twist having left for Manchester7. In a twisted form of denial (denying his own feelings more than the fact of the loss), he externalizes his reaction to someone sobbing on a tape recorder.
Marsha is dealing with the loss of the good relationship she had with her tenants, due to whatever horrible thing they did to her in the previous episode. She reacts with anger, which causes even more loss (the loss of the tenants themselves, due to selling the house), which causes even more anger.
Which leaves Mike, the only one not wallowing in a psychology textbook, to actually step up to the plate and do something about it.
Production: 8/10. This is still early in Edgar Wright’s career, but you can see here everything that will one day make him great. Wherever the writing is lacking, he more than makes up for with perfect lighting, music, and instructions to the actors.
On the page, there is nothing creepy whatsoever about the nice old lady who is perfectly willing to watch your dog for you - but he knows exactly how to turn it from sweet to sinister without changing a line of dialog. But the best part is that he doesn’t make her actually sinister at all. He makes her seem sinister only to Daisy; we the viewers get to see her through Daisy’s eyes while simultaneously being fully aware that Daisy is overreacting and she really is just a sweet old lady.
Characterization: 3/10. This episode didn’t provide much of a glimpse into the characters at all. I saw Marsha while she was angry, but everybody gets angry; I saw Daisy while she was depressed, but everybody gets depressed. The little bit I did see of Brian and Mike’s personalities was more confusing than enlightening. I couldn’t tell you a thing about who any of these people are.
Accessibility: 5/10. While I got the basic plot and the characters’ names fairly quickly, the nature of their relationships still eludes me. Daisy and Tim act just like they’re dating, and I was certain they were up until the moment Sophie showed up. Marsha is their landlord, and yet somehow they act like she’s a close-knit member of the friend group. And I don’t even know what to think about Mike being in the military.
Most confusing at all, Twist is Brian’s girlfriend, but left him because she wants to experience the gay scene in Manchester - but of gay men rather than gay women. So she just likes hanging around gay men? Does that mean Brian is gay, and she’s not his girlfriend? Then why is he so broken up about it? How exactly does that relationship work?
Closure: 5/10. Many a finale features the characters facing permanent breakup but averting it at the last minute. This one is slightly atypical in that Sophie actually does leave, and the situation with Twist and Brian is still up in the air (did he go to Manchester to bring her back, or stay there with her?), but other than those minor twists it’s a classic way to close out a series.
Do I want to watch the series now?
I always did want to watch it, and that hasn’t changed. I’m a big fan of Edgar Wright; even though I don’t like everything he does, this is a perfectly good example of his early work. I’m looking forward to seeing the whole thing.
Is there a series finale you’d like me to try? Join our Discord or leave a comment below.
Name given in captions.
In captions
I still can’t tell if he’s really in the military or this is some strange impersonation plotline.
I only realized this when I went back to grab the screenshots, but one of them is the amazing Reece Shearsmith!
Give they made such a big deal about not having transportation, how did he get there?
Though there is some controversy about how accurate the model is at all.
I definitely don’t understand the nature of their relationship; see the Accessibility rating below.