S4 E6 - Watching The Girls Go By

Rodney - Look either I like a girl, or I don't - if I don't like her, I don't see her no more! Right, but if I do like her... I tend to get a bit serious - and well I think that's what's frightening them off! They're young, you know, they want to see a bit of life. Perhaps they don't want a wally like me drooling round them! I just fall in love too easy, that's my trouble!

In this second episode about misunderstandings, we have Del buying a bet off Rodney that he can find a girlfriend before Saturday night. Del and we in the audience assume that Rodney and Mickey are upping their bets in pounds settling at £50, only for the ending to reveal it was all for 50p instead. This goes a long way to showing the difference between Del and Rodney.

Rodney says that a lot of other men see women as “a trinket to bolster their masculinity” and explains to Del and Albert that he’s not like that. This is similar in tone to Del’s confession of love in ‘Diamonds are for Heather’ and neither of them have been lucky in love just yet. We also get Del’s vision of what falling in love means to him now - and it is far more expressive and overtly romantic than we have seen him be in the past. It’s still a while until we meet Racquel but it explains the over the top gestures when he feels like he has met ‘the one’.

We also get a war story of Albert, but sticking with the theme of love he recalls a German lady, Helga, who he fell in love with in Hamburg after the war. There’s something in the way these stories are written that they give us lots of little laughs along the way “the little finger on her right hand was missing” but then they all build up into a climax which pays off in a big way.

Albert - I asked her to marry me. She said no! Just like that - no! See, I mistook her gestures of friendship as tokens of love! I suppose it was all for the best really. You see the authorities didn't like us fraternising with the Germans, and I was still married to your Aunt Ada - and she'd have kicked up a stink! It's funny you know, but even after all this time, if I'm ever watching a German war film and I hear the word 'nein' I always think of Helga.

Rodney - What, 'cause that's how many fingers she had? 
Albert - It's the German word for ‘no’! I'll put this back in the box.
Del - Yeah that’s it. Go on, put it somewhere safe.
Albert - I think in her own way she loved me! She never used to charge me as much as the other lads!

In the end, Rodney comes away from the evening embarrassed about his date that Del set him up with - an exotic dancer called Yvonne who ends up stripping in the pub. There’s a funny parallel to how Del meets Racquel in ‘Dates’ here too although Rodney and Yvonne probably weren’t meant to be soulmates.

Tomorrow’s episode: As One Door Closes