Cabin Pressure Advent Day 13: Molokai
(Or shall I say, for some reason, Moloquai?)
It's always fun to listen to a holiday episode during the holidays! By which I mean Chanukah, of course (I listened to Molokai on an hour-plus car trip between two Chanukah parties). Now, as someone who is not a Christmas person I always judge a Christmas episode by how well I'm able to enjoy it despite not being a Christmas person. For the record, most episodes pass pretty easily. But Molokai is an interesting one, because it passes despite being very, very, very Christmassy.
Why does it pass? Well, first of all, it helps that it's on a British show, which means that some stuff I genuinely can't tell whether it's a Christmas thing I don't know about or a British thing I don't know about (what the hell is a sugar mouse?), and the latter is something I basically have to be okay with to listen to the rest of Cabin Pressure to begin with (I'm still not sure what a Wimpy is over a decade after first listening to this episode, after all). So it's just kind of immersing in another culture, except it's really two cultures, English culture and Christmas culture (as, of course, epitomized by The Auspicious Pig and Whistle of Tokyo).
The second (and bear with me, it gets a bit involved) is that it might be very specifically about Christmas, but it's also just about happiness, community, and, best of all for me, ritual and the way that that can make holidays even better. To a certain extent, that's something that I know is subjective- I grew up in a religious culture which values religious and holiday ritual very strongly, and so that's something that I'll always find to be meaningful, even if sometimes that comes from creating your own meaning or emphasizing the parts that mean most for you. But at the same time- lots of the "ritual" that I prize on various holidays isn't religious at all, but just the product of family tradition in ways that bring us all together. Particularly as an adult, I've found that holidays make only as much of an impact as you WANT them to- and including ritual makes that impact stronger, because it forces you to DO something that separates this day from other days, and that, incidentally, keeps you busy and absorbed.
It's why I found Martin's disliking Christmas in this episode, only to get really into it when it comes to creating the rituals of Christmas for Arthur, so interesting. I don't recall any real REASON being given for Martin disliking Christmas- it could be an affectation along the lines of Arthur's attempt at sounding grown-up by calling Christmas over-commercialized, but it sounds more like, as an adult living in shitty circumstances (we don't really KNOW what kind of shitty circumstances yet because we haven't heard Qikiqtarjuaq yet, but still) who isn't super close with his family and for whom any Christmas he has, he'll have to make for himself, he doesn't have much reason to like it! What, indeed, WOULD make Christmas different than a typical day for him? But as soon as he's given a reason to cling to the trappings and rituals of Christmas, he gets into it, and I really do love that.
Now of course, Arthur is really the poster child for the whole above concept. But- I was going to say that that's almost too obvious, but that's not really it. It's that Arthur is the one who does this ALL THE TIME. We know already that he's the heart of this show, and what it seems to really come down to is that a large part of that is creating a life around rituals or practices that bring joy. On the most basic level we have that list of events and holidays that he likes, all of which are defined by ritual in some way (I admit to not knowing much about Lent). But I think it goes beyond that- first of all, he CREATES ritual: while it's unclear who exactly invented the name Birling Day, he's the first one to use it in Edinburgh and he's the one who creates a "Happy Birling Day" song in Paris. Even more than that, though, we know his life philosophy from Fitton- create meaning and happiness from things that you DO (sinking into a bath at just the right temperature) rather than from things that happen to you (happening to be in the moonlight with the love of your life). In so many ways, that's what ritual is- rather than treating a time of year or a life cycle event as a thing that happens to you, you create your own meaning through your own actions. You're active and in control of your own joy.
So anyway, all this to say, Molokai continues the Arthurian tradition of Cabin Pressure which is that we have power over our joy by creating and expressing it, and just so happens to apply it to Christmas as a specific example. Gah. I have no idea if that makes sense written out- it does in my head.
And I've barely gotten to the actual episode!
One thing I'd forgotten til I turned it on- Molokai is the first post-Sherlock episode to be recorded. I'd heard a lot from people that the laughter gets louder as a result, which leads to the show seeming funnier as you laugh with the audience. I was skeptical- and I was SORT OF wrong. I do think that the show gets funnier in no small part because JF becomes a better and better writer, but at the same time... the laughter DEFINITELY gets louder. Oh my gosh. I'm not sure how I'd never noticed it. Like, it's loud in Limerick, but this is another level. And what's nice is you can kind of hear the actors feeding off the crowd energy, which is yet a third reason why S3-4 might seem even better.
(On that note, I don't know how much JF pre-planned his rendition of Get Dressed, but it is note perfect. It would have just been normal-funny if he'd sung it, but the Chri-i-i-i-i-stmas/Chri-hi-hi-hi-hi-hi-histmas Days took it up another level. Kudos to him- and his "you'd better not pout, you'd better not cry" is just as great. Incidentally, as a non-Christmas celebrator I didn't get that joke until way later, but his performance is so funny that honestly it didn't matter.)
Of the two plot lines (each with its own set of Chekhov's Guns) in this episode, I vastly preferred the Secret Santa plot. Not that there's anything wrong with the Mr Alyakhin plot- but the resolution, however clever, is just a LITTLE bit too unlikely and over the top. Which, again, sounds weird to say about Cabin Pressure, a show where in a few episodes they'll be dragging a piano to a pub in Devon, but I do still believe that it's all about proportionality- a crazy antagonist justifies a crazy resolution, and this resolution was just a trifle too crazy for the antagonist (and relies a little too much on him missing some major red flags). But it genuinely doesn't matter, because it's still hilarious and sweet, and ends on just the right outrageous note- in particular, the note in Roger Allam's voice (playing to the audience beautifully) as, after an almost-too-long pause, he says "mulled it." Just beautiful- all of the setup and the pitch-perfect payoff.
There's probably other stuff, but please excuse me, I have some latkes to eat. Tomorrow, we're off to Newcastle, one that I haven't listened to in AGES- and I'm dying to know what I'll think!
