Recap / Blackadder S 3 E 2 Ink And Incapability

Baldrick, that is by far and away, and without a shadow of doubt, the worst and most contemptible plan in the history of the universe.

Prince George is sick of everyone thinking he's an idiot. So to boost his credibility, he decides to patronize Dr. Samuel Johnson's new book, the first-ever English Dictionary. Blackadder thinks this a ridiculous idea — though he is biased against Dr. Johnson since he sent Johnson a novel entitled Edmund: A Butler's Tale, under the name Gertrude Perkins, and never heard back from him. But unfortunately, the prince is too dumb to be dissuaded. Dr. Johnson comes over, and the prince, being himself, fails to understand what exactly a dictionary is, and insults Dr. Johnson, who storms out, but not before saying that the only book he ever read that was better than his own was Edmund: A Butler's Tale, and if the prince weren't so stupid, he could patronize that book as well. Realizing this might be his chance to have his novel published and finally get rich, Blackadder tries to convince Dr. Johnson to give the prince another chance. Dr. Johnson agrees, and after remembering he left the only copy of the dictionary in the prince's room, tells Blackadder to give it to him later at Mrs. Miggins' Coffee Shop. Blackadder manages to convince the prince to patronize the book, but runs into a worse problem; Baldrick has burned the dictionary in a fire, and (as previously stated) there are no other copies.

The rest of the episode involves Edmund trying to stall for time and replace the book before he is brutally murdered by Johnson and his violent poet friends. He eventually tries to rewrite the dictionary in one night, but only gets as far as "aardvark". Dr. Johnson and his poet friends appear in the morning, and on hearing that the dictionary has been burned, they are about to kill Blackadder — upon which, George appears, having had the dictionary the whole time! Dr. Johnson accepts it gratefully, and allows George to be both its patron and the patron of Edmund; A Butler's Tale. Blackadder promptly reveals himself as Gertrude Perkins, and offers to prove it by comparing his signature to that on the manuscript's title page. However, Dr. Johnson now can't find that manuscript. Turns out Baldrick hadn't burn the dictionary manuscript; he burnt Blackadder's novel. And to make matters worse, Johnson left the word "sausage" out of his dictionary. And "aardvark". He's going to have to hope he has better luck next time; as they all leave, Baldrick starts another fire, this time throwing the dictionary on it for good!

Tropes

• All Just a Dream: Blackadder wakes up to find that Dr. Johnson is about to arrive and find out his dictionary has been burned. Then Dr. Johnson comes in and announces that he didn't like the dictionary after all; and that he is glad to find out it has been destroyed. Things start getting surreal when Blackadder's aunt appears out of nowhere and Baldrick randomly turns into a dog. Blackadder eventually realises that "It's all a bloody dream!" Cut to Blackadder waking up and finding out that Dr. Johnson is still arriving and the dictionary has still been burned.
• Anachronism Stew: Samuel Johnson actually published his dictionary in 1755, seven years before Prince George was born. In addition, Johnson died 27 years before the Regency was declared. Additionally, Lord Byron was born four years after Johnson died.
  • And a more obvious example; Dr. Samuel Johnson refers to Edmund's Her Code Name Was "Mary Sue" book Edmund: A Butler's Tale as a "huge roller coaster of a novel". For reference, the first modern roller coaster (the Promenades Aériennes at Parc Beaujon in Paris) opened in July 1817; 33 years after Johnson's death.
• Artistic Licence – History: See above. Also, Samuel Johnson's father actually died of natural causes and his wife had three children, all by her first husband.
• Artistic Licence – Linguistics: When trying to rewrite the dictionary, Blackadder refers to "a" as an "impersonal pronoun". The grammatically correct term is "indefinite article". Of course, Blackadder isn't a linguistics expert.
• Ax-Crazy: The poets and Doctor Johnson. The former evidently on account of being high as kites (combined with suffering from syphilis in Lord Byron's case), the later because of the ten years he spent writing his Dictionary.
• Big "NO!": They didn't burn the dictionary as they thought. They burnt Blackadder's book, a novel that would have made him a millionaire. When Baldrick reveals this, Blackadder excuses himself and lets out one of these.
  Baldrick: So you're asking for the big papery thing tied up with string, exactly like the thing we burned?
  Blackadder: Yes.
  Baldrick: We burned it.
  Blackadder: [calmly, but visibly trying not to explode] So we did. Thank you, Baldrick... seven years of my life up in smoke. Your highness, would you excuse me a moment...?
  George: By all means!
  Blackadder: [he exits, but audible from outside] OH, GOD, NOOOOOOO! [returns, calm again] Thank you, sir.
• Black Comedy Rape: Lord Byron threatens to kill everyone in the palace by giving them syphilis.
• Brick Joke: Baldrick's terrible "novel".
  • The word "sausage".
  • And "aardvark."
• Buffy Speak: Baldrick calls the manuscript "The big papery thing tied up with string," the fire "The hot orangey thing under the stony mantlepiece" and Edmund threatens that "the booted boney thing with five toes at the end of [his] leg will soon connect sharply with the soft dangly collection of objects in your trousers."
• Comically Missing the Point: Most of Baldrick and George's efforts to help Blackadder rewrite the dictionary:
  Blackadder: "AB". What starts with "AB"?
  Baldrick: Honey? Honey starts with a bee.
  • And later:
    George: "Medium-sized insectivore with protruding nasal implement." [beat] Doesn't sound much like a bee to me.
• Continuity Snarl: George speaks of Prime Minister Pitt as though he was an older man, even though the teenage Pitt the Younger became Prime Minister in "Dish and Dishonesty".
• Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: "Baldrick, believe me. Eternity in the company of Beelzebub, and all his hellish instruments of death, will be a picnic compared to five minutes with me... and this pencil... if we cannot replace this dictionary."
• Dream Sequence: "Baldrick! Who gave you permission to turn into an Alsatian?"
• Fun with Homophones: Baldrick's contribution to the dictionary is, as was to be expected, less than useful.
  Baldrick: I've done C and D.
  Blackadder: All right, let's have it.
  Baldrick: 'Big blue wobbly thing that mermaids live in.'
  Blackadder: What's that?
  Baldrick: C.
  Blackadder: Yes. Tiny misunderstanding. Still, my hopes weren't high.
• Groin Attack: "The booted bony thing with 5 toes will soon connect sharply with the soft dangly collection of objects in your trousers."
• Have a Gay Old Time: A somewhat subtle example: Blackadder says that "The prince cannot wait to patronise your dictionary." At the time, "patronise" meant "to be a patron of; to bankroll", which is what Doctor Johnson is looking for. Of course, to modern audiences, "patronise" means "to sarcastically insult", which is closer to what George actually does to the dictionary.
• Her Code Name Was "Mary Sue":
  • Blackadder's novel Edmund: A Butler's Tale sounds like this, based on what he tells Baldrick about it.
  • Baldrick's novel (or "Magnificent Octopus") also has elements of this, despite it being a rather extreme example of Beige Prose: "Once upon a time there was a lovely little sausage called Baldrick, who lived happily ever after."
• Historical Domain Character: Samuel Johnson and Lord Byron. The two other poets are identified as Percy Bysshe Shelley and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Additionally, various other authors are referred to, although all of their genders are reversed.
  Baldrick: Jane Austen's a man?
• Hope Spot: When Samuel Johnson tells Edmund that he wasn't happy with the dictionary and is glad that it was destroyed. Shame it's All Just a Dream.
• Hot Gypsy Woman: Dr. Johnson says that Edmund's novel is "crammed with sizzling gypsies".
• Large Ham:
  • The poets, Lord Byron in particular.
  Lord Byron: To hell with his fine talking! COFFEE, WOMAN! My consumption grows ever more acute and Coleridge's drugs are wearing off!
  • Doctor Johnson's last line as well.
  Johnson: Sausage? SAUSAGE?! OH BLAST YOUR EYES!
  • Blackadder himself snaps for a brief second over the word "Aardvark".
  Blackadder: IT'S AN AARDVARK! CAN'T YOU SEE THAT YOUR HIGHNESS? IT'S A BLOODY AARDVAARK!!
• Life's Work Ruined: Double Subverted in a very odd way. It turns out that Dr. Johnson's dictionary was never burned at all, despite what Blackadder and Baldrick spent most of the episode believing; the book that was burned was in fact Blackadder's novel, which both he and Johnson thought was a masterpiece. The dictionary then gets burned by Baldrick while he's making another fire.
• Magnum Opus: Blackadder spent seven years writing Edmund: A Butler's Tale, "a giant rollercoaster of a novel in four hundred sizzling chapters, a searing indictment of domestic servitude in the eighteenth century, with some hot gypsies thrown in", and describes it as his magnum opus. This is immediately followed by a parody in which Baldrick produces his "magnificent octopus": "Once upon a time, there was a lovely little sausage called Baldrick, and he lived happily ever after." Baldrick doesn't like long books, y'see. Dr. Johnson agrees that Blackadder's book is a masterpiece, pronouncing it the only book superior to his dictionary. A pity he's the only person besides Blackadder who ever gets to read it before a misunderstanding leads Baldrick to throw it on the fire...
• Moustache de Plume: Blackadder wrote Edmund: A Butler's Tale under the name Gertrude Perkins, because everyone wants books by women nowadays. He claims that Ann Radcliffe, Jane Austen and Dorothy Wordsworth are all in fact men using female pen names. Reversed with James Boswell, who's actually a woman who fancies Dr. Johnson.
  Baldrick: Gertrude Perkins?
  Blackadder: Yes, I gave myself a female pseudonym. Everybody's doing it these days: Mrs. Radcliffe, Jane Austen...
  Baldrick: [astonished] What, Jane Austen's a man?!
  Blackadder: Of course! A huge Yorkshireman with a beard like a rhododendron bush!
  Baldrick: Oh, quite a small one, then?
  Blackadder: Well, compared to Dorothy Wordsworth's, certainly. James Boswell is the only real woman writing at the moment, and that's just because she wants to get inside Johnson's britches.
• Neologizer: Blackadder becomes one for a short while in order to troll Doctor Johnson, who is boasting about having written the first English dictionary and that he has taken care to include every English word.
  Blackadder: "Contrafibularities"? Why, 'tis a common word down our way.
• Noodle Implements: Blackadder threatens Baldrick into helping him by stating that eternity in the company of Satan and all his little devils will be nothing compared to five minutes with him and a pencil.
• Oddly Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo: Invoked. Edmund asks whether the book that's even greater than the Dictionary is called "Dictionary 2: The Return of the Killer Dictionary".
• Perfectly Cromulent Word: Edmund makes up a lot of these to annoy Dr. Johnson into thinking he has left out words such as "contrafibularities" "pericombobulations" and "interfrastically".
• Purple Prose: The poets talk like this.
• Rage Breaking Point:
  • Blackadder reaches this when Baldrick reveals he burned his novel.
  • Doctor Johnson when he learns what word he left out of his dictionary.
  Doctor Johnson: "Once upon a time there was a lovely little sausage n-" ... Sausage? Sausage?! Damn and blast your eyes!
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Dr. Johnson talks like this at first:
  Dr. Johnson: I celebrated, last night, the encyclopaedic implementation of my premeditated orchestration of demotic Anglo-Saxon.
  George: Didn't catch any of that.
  Dr. Johnson: I simply observed, sir, that I'm felicitous, since, during the course of the penultimate solar sojourn, I terminated my uninterrupted categorisation of the vocabulary of our post-Norman tongue.
  • After Prince George annoys Dr. Johnson by thinking he is talking about an erotic encounter, Blackadder explains to him in Layman's Terms that he has finished writing the Dictionary.
• Shout-Out: The plot of the episode is inspired by a real alleged incident from the 1830s, when the only manuscript of Thomas Carlyle's The French Revolution was burned by a servant of John Stuart Mill, who mistook it for waste paper.
• Stepping Out to React: Blackadder learns the book he's spent years writing was thrown into the fire and asks to be excused. He screams "OH GOD, NO!" just behind the door and returns.
• Talks Like a Simile: In addition to Blackadder as usual, Doctor Johnson does this, albeit his are a little less creative.
• Truth in Television: Played with. Samuel Johnson really did leave the word "aardvark" out of his Dictionary (hardly surprising, given that such an animal would have been unheard-of in mid-eighteenth century Britain), although he did include "sausage".
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Doctor Johnson was very focused on his work. When his mother died, he didn't notice. When his father cut his head off and fried it in garlic, he didn't look up from his work. When his wife cheated on him repeatedly and raised a huge family of bastards, he didn't care.
• Wake Up Make Up: The Prince Regent wakes up (at three in the afternoon) fully made up in powder and rouge, and with his wig already on his head.

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