Recap / The Brittas Empire S7E8: Curse of the Tiger Women

Mr. Brittas: It is seven years to the day since the first member of the public came through those hallowed portals.

Gavin: And you threw him out, Mr. Brittas!

Mr. Brittas: He was wearing unauthorised water wings, Gavin.

— Gordon Brittas and Gavin Featherly remembering the leisure centre's first customer.

• Date First Aired: 24/02/1997

It's the final episode of the series, and we begin with Colin showing off his plans for "Colin's Ark" (as part of a religion class that Linda is doing) to Julie, who's contemplating marriage to Alex. Brittas shows up and it's revealed that a community of travellers were there the other night, which Brittas threw out. One of the gypsies which were forced away cursed Brittas, making it so that anyone who eats his food will die.

Meanwhile, Carole has come back from a holiday and is showing off her snaps to Gavin. Gavin notices that the twins look remarkably similar to Gordon Brittas in profile. Carole is initially reluctant to see this but after she gets Brittas to show his profile to her, she realises that this is true and that her twins were actually fathered by him. Carole goes to Helen for advice and reveals to her this, to which she replies that she always suspected this.

As it turns out, it has actually been seven years to the day since the centre opened so Brittas bakes a cake. However, none of the staff wants to eat it, fearing for their lives. Meanwhile, there is a series of explosions that are mainly controlled by Colin, wanting to alleviate a build-up of marsh gas in the centre.

Meanwhile, Harold (who turns out to be Brittas' only friend), dies, apparently due to Brittas' cooking. Brittas decides to sell his cake to the public and ends up inadvertently killing a goldfish and a canary. Helen tells Brittas the truth about Carole's twins and that Harold is dead, much to his shock. Making matters worse, Drugget comes, hoping to force early retirement on Brittas. Before Drugget can do this, however, he eats some of Brittas' biscuits and dies as a result.

Brittas, free from early retirement, decides to throw the cake to the birds. Brittas talks with Carole and he, her and Helen reconcile (with Brittas and Carole agreeing to not tell the twins their true parentage until they're 40 and sitting down). Linda, Tim, and Gavin try to figure out how to get Brittas out of harm's way, since he's at risk of poisoning a group of old people with his cooking, eventually deciding on a staff mutiny. Just as they go in with this, Colin appears and tells them to evacuate the building, since it's about to blow. Everyone goes out to a shower of dying birds, with one angry goose, in particular, heading to peck Brittas unconscious...

After Brittas has an odd dream on "Colin's Ark", he wakes up again...on a train. As it turns out, none of the preceding episodes ever happened, having been the result of a dream Brittas was having on his way to the interview for the job. The closing moments of the series ends with Helen (who's still his wife in reality, the rest of the staff actually being random bystanders all along) asking Brittas the question of why he wants the job, to which he replies "I want the job Helen because... because... I have a dream...".

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Tropes featured in this episode:

• Adam and Eve Plot: During the "Colin's Ark" Dream Sequence, Brittas is faced with Helen, Julie and Carole, who tell him that he's going to be everyone's father now as they need to repopulate the world. They've even drawn up a roster.
• Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: Brittas blames the fact that he mistook Carole in a tiger suit for Helen, having sex with her as a result, on having had too much fruit cup at Julie's New Year Party.
• All Just a Dream: The entire series is revealed to be a dream that Brittas was having as he was sleeping on the way to the interview for the leisure centre.
• Book Ends: An In-Universe example comes when both the first and last person to have come to the leisure centre end up being kicked out by Brittas for a ridiculous reason.
  Tim: Oh well done, Brittas. 7 years ago, you threw out the first bunch and now you've thrown out the last!
  Mr. Brittas: Well, he was petting in the pool!
• But You Were There, and You, and You: The series is revealed to have all been a dream in the final scene, with Brittas using random bystanders on the train as characters within the dream. Colin is a ticket conductor, Carole is with Gavin, Julie is an on-board caterer and Linda is a nun (and seemingly with Tim).
• Call-Back:
  • Brittas and Carole finally learn the truth about Emily and Jessica's lineage which was set up as far back as "Temple of the Body" back at the start of Series 2.
  • Laura had previously briefly mentioned Brittas having another friend who wasn't her back in "The Old, Old Story".
  • Alex is still trying to get Julie's hand in marriage, having previously been attempting to do so back in "Reviewing the Situation". Additionally, Brittas' copy of How To Be An Even Better Manager (previously seen in the episode) can be seen on his desk.
  • This hasn't been the first time Colin has been shown to own canaries.
• Canary in a Coal Mine: Colin uses canaries to detect a build-up of marsh gas in this episode. One of them does die, but it's from Brittas' tainted cooking.
• Character Death: Councillor Drugget had been a recurring presence in the show since Series 4, only for this episode to unceremoniously kill him with cursed biscuits.
• Crashing Dreams: The episode concludes with Brittas waking up on an ark that Colin has been secretly building in the car park of the leisure centre. After a moment, he's jolted out of the dream by Colin repeatedly calling "Tickets, please!" and realizes that he's been asleep on a train and that Colin is in fact the conductor, he's on his way to the interview for the job he's had throughout the series, and that every episode of the series has been a dream.
• Curse: Brittas is cursed so that anyone who eats food made by him dies.
• Deadly Gas: Colin blames all of the recent deaths in the centre not on Brittas' Gypsy Curse, but rather a build-up of marsh gas forming pockets. Including Harold's death by kedgeree outside of the centre.
• Dream People: With the reveal that the show was All Just a Dream, it means that the only real characters we have been following the entire series have been Brittas and to a lesser extent Helen. The majority of the staff, whilst based on the people on the train in the real world, have different roles and pairings in Brittas' dream, even occasionally dreaming themselves and having separate plots from Brittas. This doesn't even go into characters who don't appear to have real-world counterparts, such as the staff members who were written out earlier on and, despite their importance in this episode, Carole's twins Jessica and Emily.
• Dream Sequence: Brittas has one between leaving the main leisure centre dream and waking up in the real world about him riding in Colin's ark with Helen, Carole and Julie trying to get him to repopulate the world with him.
• Dream Within a Dream: Brittas is knocked unconscious by an angry goose and then initially wakes up in Colin’s Ark, with several of the female cast of the show stating that they've got to repopulate the world. After this, he then wakes up on his way to the interview for the centre, revealing that the entirety of the series was All Just a Dream.
• The Ending Changes Everything: The reveal that the entirety of the show was just a dream scenario imagined by Brittas as he waits for his job interview does call into question some of the show's plot points.
• Everyone Has Standards: Julie may be a Jerkass and hate Brittas, but even she thinks that Drugget's attempt to get rid of Brittas is too harsh.
• Foreshadowing: At one point, Brittas comments that if it weren’t for the fact that he was still wearing his trousers, he would have thought that he was in a bad dream. It is later revealed that Brittas really was having a dream - one which lasted seven series to be precise.
• Foul Waterfowl: Brittas ends up being pecked unconscious by a goose that had eaten his cooking (which had been cursed to kill those who eat it). It should be noted that a lot of birds ate his cooking, it was just the goose that went after Brittas personally. It should also be noted that the goose's attack on Brittas is where his dream ends, making the goose the direct one at fault for the destruction of the dream world.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: If one looks carefully during the scene where Carole is showing her snaps to Gavin, one can see a clear view of her twins on one of the photos, having not been seen on-screen since "UXB".
• Gainax Ending: Up until the last minutes of the episode, it's pretty normal for the series, focusing on Brittas finding out that he's the father of Carole's twins whilst being threatened with early retirement. Then he is knocked out by a goose, experiences a weird Dream Sequence involving "Colin's Ark", then wakes again to find that the entire series was All Just a Dream. There was some subtle Foreshadowing this series, but it does come straight out of nowhere otherwise.
• Get Out!:
  • The whole plotline with Brittas having a gypsy curse begins because Brittas kicked out a Travellers community from the car park of the centre.
  • Gavin mentions Brittas kicked out the centre's first visitor for wearing unauthorised water wings.
  • Brittas later kicks out the last person to use the leisure centre for petting in the pool.
• Gilligan Cut: Gavin, Tim and Linda decide between them to lock Brittas in the area under the swimming pool until they can get the Darby and Joan tea party out of the way. Whilst Linda suspects that Brittas isn't going to be that cooperative, Gavin expresses his belief that he is a reasonable man and that he'll understand. The very next scene has Brittas angry at the trio for what he believes is a mutiny against him.
• Giving Someone the Pointer Finger: Linda points two of her fingers right in Gavin's face when recounting how Brittas kicked out the Travellers.
• The Ghost:
  • Although they drive a major part of the plot, the gypsy and the Travellers community that she belongs to are already gone by the time of the episode and make no on-screen appearance.
  • Beryl and Harold, the couple for who Brittas makes food for the day before the events of the episode. In Harold's case, he's not only also killed by Brittas, but is also his Only Friend.
• Global Warming: Brittas believes that global warming and rising sea levels is just fear-mongering made up by the newspapers as part of the incoming millennium and tells Carole that it will take a high tide to reach the centre, whilst Colin believes that the rising sea levels and the greenhouse effect is being caused by a building up of marsh gas.
• Grand Finale: The episode has Brittas (and Carole) find out that he is the father of Carole's twins (resolving a plotline from Series 2), and has a more apocalyptic than usual plot involving poisoned cooking and a marsh gas build up threatening the centre. The episode ends with Brittas being pecked unconscious by a goose (with the centre about to blow up, seemingly for good), revealing that the entirety of the show was just a dream that Brittas was having on the train on his way to the interview for said Leisure Centre Manager job.
• Gypsy Curse: Brittas is cursed by a gypsy he kicked out of the centre which causes anyone who eats his food to die.
• Heads or Tails?: Julie can't decide if she should marry Alex or not. She decides to leave it to chance, first by flipping a coin, which eventually escalates to if an odd or even amount of dead birds falls from the ground. We ultimately never learn the outcome, because of the All Just a Dream reveal at the end of the episode.
• Insane Troll Logic: Colin is fully convinced that the build-up of marsh gas is responsible for Global Warming and all of the deaths at the centre which has happened due to Brittas' cooking. When Gavin points out that the gas was hardly likely to have made holes in the kedgeree Brittas made for Harold at his house, Colin replies that he wouldn't put the gas past it.
  Gavin: It's like talking to a lavatory wall.
• Internal Reveal: This is the episode where Brittas and Carole finally find out about the true identity of her twins' father, although the audience (and most of the staff) have known since Series 2.
• Killed Off for Real: Brittas' Sitcom Arch-Nemesis Drugget dies when he eats biscuits made by Brittas who had been suffering from a curse.
• Killed Offscreen: We see Drugget eat some of Brittas' cursed biscuits and begin to die, and when the episode cuts back to him, he's being sent away in a body bag.
• Killer Finale: Final episode and they use the opportunity to kill off recurring character Councillor Drugget. For bonus points, he appeared more this series compared to earlier on.
• Kind Restraints: Brittas is inflicted with a Gypsy Curse making his cooking fatal, an issue since he's making sandwiches the next day for the Darby and Joan tea party held in commemoration of the start of Whitbury Senior Citizen Week. With Tim and Linda unable to find the gypsies, they and Gavin propose locking Brittas in the area under the swimming pool so that he doesn't go down in history as a mass murderer, to the point of initiating a mutiny against Brittas. They're unable to go through with it however due to the centre's marsh gas-induced destruction.
• Lethal Chef: Thanks to a Gypsy Curse, Brittas' cooking ends up killing those who eat it. The total death count includes several birds, a goldfish, Councillor Drugget, and his Only Friend Harold, and it would have been more had a goose not slammed into Brittas and ended the dream world. Interestingly, it also seems that Brittas himself is immune to the cooking, as shown when he eats a slice of cake that he made himself and doesn't die.
• Literary Allusion Title: The title is a play on the novel Kiss of the Spider Woman.
• Look Behind You: Carole manages to check Brittas' profile by claiming to see a cockroach on the ground, so that he turns to the side.
• Low Count Gag: By the time the centre is about to explode, only one person was actually pursuing the facilities that day. They're also kicked out by Brittas beforehand, leaving the place empty.
• "Metaphor" Is My Middle Name: Brittas does this after it is noted that Brittas kicked out the first entry to the leisure centre for wearing water wings.
  Mr. Brittas: Attention to detail, my middle name!
• Mistaken Identity: Helen doesn't believe Carole when she claims that it was Brittas who was the father of her twins, claiming to have seen him talk to a pillar box at the party where the twins were conceived. Carole corrects her and says that they were actually Tim and Gavin.
• Noah's Story Arc: Colin has a minor plotline where he tries to assist Linda in helping teach children about the story of Noah's Ark. This ends up bleeding into Brittas' dreams when the Dream Sequence he experiences after being pecked by the goose is "Colin's Ark" which Colin had secretly constructed in the car park.
• No Name Given:
  • With the exception of Laura, none of the schoolchildren's names are given.
  • With the exception of Brittas and Helen, who have the same names in the real world, none of the people who inspired the staff in Brittas' dream are given any names.
• Noodle Incident:
  • The leisure centre's first visitor was apparently kicked out for wearing unauthorised water wings.
  • Brittas tells Carole that she's been seeing things again when he fails to see a cockroach which she claimed was there (unaware that Carole made up the cockroach to get him to turn to one side), although this previous incident is not elaborated on.
• No Sympathy: When Drugget is dying and complaining of pains in front of Julie, her response is to simply complain that he's always making it about himself and then asks him if she should marry Alex.
• "Not Wearing Pants" Dream: Briefly referred to by Brittas in the middle of the episode.
  Mr. Brittas: It’s like I'm having a terrible dream. Only, I know I'm not dreaming, I've still got my trousers on.
• Only Friend: Apparently, by this point in the series, Harold is the only friend that Brittas had left, which makes it even more tragic when he dies to Brittas' cooking.
• One-Shot Character: Laura and the other schoolchildren.
• One-Steve Limit: One of the schoolchildren who's with Linda is named Laura, the same name as Brittas' Deputy Manager from the first five series.
• Plot Allergy: Tim claims to have an allergy to candles to get out of eating Brittas' cake.
• Polyamory: During Brittas' Dream Sequence, Julie, Carole, and Helen claim themselves to be Brittas' wives.
• Putting the Pee in Pool: Gavin mentions that the urine content is down to 9 per cent in the pool.
• Revision: Airing five series after the event was last revisited, this episode's recounting of the fateful New Year's party where Carole was impregnated is given further detail that wasn't noted beforehand. For instance, whilst Brittas is never mentioned as having worn a costume beforehand, here, he's mentioned to have gone as a gorilla.
• Right Behind Me: Carole initially is reluctant to state that her twins look like Brittas, saying that the twins have round faces whilst Brittas has a craggy sort of face. As she says this, Brittas appears, forcing her to state that she was talking about a different Mr. Brittas.
• Running Gagged: The Running Gag earlier on in the series of Brittas going on one of his dream tangents gets a final use here, with it being the final line in the series and it turning out to literally be a dream that Brittas is having.
• Season Finale: Of Series 7 (and the show as a whole).
• Series Continuity Error:
  • Gavin is rather surprised at how close Carole's twins look to Brittas... despite "The Stuff of Dreams" establishing that he is aware that Brittas was the one who accidentally impregnated Carole with them in the first place.
  • Carole claims that her twins are three years old and that she was impregnated with them exactly three years and nine months ago. However, the centre's anniversary is heavily implied to take place on September 20th 1997, which would place her impregnation to January 1994, long after she was established as being pregnant with them in scenes dating back to June 1991. For that record, the centre is mentioned to be celebrating its seventh anniversary, which would date its opening to 1990 rather than the 1991 date given in Series 2 and the 1989 date given in Series 5.
• Sequel Episode: To "Temple of the Body" and "New Generations", resolving the plotline of the paternal identity of Carole's twins by having their parents find out the truth.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: The plot involving Brittas finding out that he is the father to Carole's twins becomes null by the end when it is revealed that the show was All Just a Dream, with no indication that Jessica and Emily even have real-world counterparts.
• Shout-Out:
  • When Gavin tells Carole that her twins remind him of someone, Carole asks if they look like Cliff Richard.
  • Colin apparently won first prize as Fungus the Bogeyman at the party where Carole was impregnated, even though he didn't actually dress up.
  • Brittas is mentioned to have gone as King Kong at the same party. He laments that if he had come as The Tin Man, he wouldn't have ended up having accidental sex with Carole.
  • Among the toys given by the children are toys of Batman and My Little Pony.
  • When considering getting Brittas out of harm's way, Tim suggests marooning him on a desert island, only without any Shakespeare, The Bible, or any records.
• Single Serving Friend: Brittas briefly has to deal with the death of Harold (who was his only friend). Whilst his existence was alluded to back in "The Old, Old Story", this is the first time we hear about him in any detail.
• Sleepyhead: The entire series basically began as a result of Brittas somehow falling asleep on the train whilst Helen was trying to talk to him.
• Speak in Unison: Both Helen and Carole's final lines in the dream world are "Alright darling." which they both say at the same time after Brittas sorts out the whole situation involving him being Carole's twins' father. They're a bit freaked out about it.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Carole figures out that the twins are Brittas' children solely from the fact that they look like him in profile.
• Stuff Blowing Up: The apparent final fate of the leisure centre is to get blown up by a build-up of marsh gas, although this isn't seen before Brittas is knocked out by the goose.
• Talking to Themself: Before Carole comes in with news about the twins, Helen can be seen talking to herself, mainly asking herself why she went with Brittas in the end before it devolves into her complaining about her own advice. When Carole comes in, she passes it off as "staff training".
• Trauma Conga Line: Brittas gets a curse put on him that poisons his cooking, loses his only friend Harold to it, is faced with early retirement and a staff mutiny, is about to lose the leisure centre, is pecked unconscious by a goose, and finally finds out that the events of the last 7 series have been a dream all along.
• Undignified Death: How does Drugget die? He ate some of Brittas’ biscuits (which unbeknownst to him were actually cursed).
• What Happened to the Mouse?: We never do find out if Julie allowed Alex to marry her or not.

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