I'm taking a quick squee break between making doctor appointments for my little girl, handing off car keys to the towing company, lying down to rest from my cold, and strategizing for Camp-Out Night on Monday (about which atrocity, more in the next few days).

"Uskerty" is John Finnemore plunging elbows-deep into fansquee with us, isn't it.  He's fanboying Sherlock Holmes all over the place with the reference to the plot of "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" and Benedict Cumberbatch reacting in a rather un-Sherlockian way to a hive of bees.  In fact, when Carolyn calls Martin "Captain Winnie-the-Pooh," all I could think was that this convergence of Holmes, Cabin Pressure, and Winnie-the-Pooh was foretold by the gift for annietalbot, "Worlds Enough, and Time," in the current sshg_exchange.

It's as though Finnemore has taken a careful survey of every Cabin Pressure quirk that has delighted the hearts of fans and given us more, more, more.  We get more of Martin's atrocious accents and Cumberbatch's ability to convey that the accents are atrocious.  The writer who gave us the traveling lemon and le bear polar and otters on the flight deck has now given us a stuffed sheep, a truck full of geese, Martin up a tree, pineapple juice, and "black and white times."  We see Finnemore daring to create character continuity a bit, branching out from the self-contained approach to episodes, when he pointedly reminds us that Carolyn doesn't pay Martin and that Martin's luck with dating is about on par with his other luck.  I got the delicious Martin-pang I always want when the truck driver referred to Martin having to sit with "the girls" -- oh, I had a jump of hope -- I think I may have had a plot bunny like that one or a hundred times -- and then Martin saying in his indignant way, "I don't want a goosefriend!"  *heartmelty*

The relationship work in this episode was superb.  Douglas and Arthur have a shared history that predates Martin.  Carolyn fusses maternally over Martin.  Arthur sees his pilots with stars in his eyes.  And oh, the absolute glory of it:  a soulmate for Arthur!  Yes, yes, yes!  Is there fic up yet?  Martin's enormous, tender, sensitive heart is revealed yet again when we find that he never takes off his father's signet ring.  I see he's still trying to earn his father's approval...and dare I hope that we find out it's partly because the old man died before Martin got to rub his flying success in his father's face?  Is there going to be some anger there?  *crossing fingers*  Oh, where did Martin say he was from?  Wokingham?  Did Finnemore find a way to slip that into this episode?  Why, I do believe he did.

I love that Martin never climbed trees.  I think it's probably the slight abnormality of the inner ear that prevented it.  Who here thinks that Martin was ever picked anything but last for sports teams in school?  Raise your hand!  I love that when he finally reaches the top, he gets one bar.  Of course he gets one.  <3

This is a perfect illustration of how to write Martin Crieff:  push him to extremes.  Finnemore created him as the embodiment of desire by giving him all-consuming yearning for things that are out of his reach:  his pilot's license, a paying job, an adult residence, his dead father's approval, a love life, more than a scrap of dignity.  He went extreme on the ways that Martin can't attain these things but strives for them tenaciously.  The hysterical end speech in which -- oh god, Martin's dignity is as threadbare as his oft-laundered, undoubtedly immaculate underwear probably is -- Martin chokes out with barely suppressed rage that he will sit in goose shit for Carolyn but he will NOT let her talk him out of X-raying these geese.  Even Martin Crieff has his limits.

This one episode alone ought to generate as many icons as all three previous seasons put together, as far as I'm concerned.