Spaced Newbie Recap: “Gone”

This has to be the best episode of Spaced, if we’ve basing it solely on sheer ingenuity. It’s inventive in its storytelling method, rich in its characterization of Tim and Daisy, and a hell of a lot fun, taking a silly pastime and making it a cornerstone for the episode itself.

It all starts with Tim being blown off by Sophie, and succumbing to paranoia about it. Daisy’s fix is for the two of them to go out for a night where she believes they should embrace their artistic natures. Tim wants to get plastered.

Now, any episode where the sole focus is Daisy and Tim, and where Jessica Hynes and Simon Pegg get to play off of one another with their effortless chemistry, is an immediate win; particularly, episodes where they’re allowed to venture outside of their apartment. Their friendship hasn’t been as much of a focus in season two, so it’s nice to see them brought together for such a fantastic episode.

Before they leave, there’s a scene (which works wonderfully on it’s own as well) where Tim and Mike share with Brian this link that every male has. This all amounts to them making artillery noises and pretending to shoot one another, but the sound effects are top notch and it’s a fun moment for the three actors to play off of one another. This is really all set up for what happens later.

Sidebar moment – there is a subplot with Mike and Brian where Mike is supposed to watch Colin, but accidentally lets him out of the house and the two must go and find him. My interest, however, leans with our leads however.

While drinking, we get to see Tim and Daisy going through different stages of drunkenness (sound familiar), and run into the person whom will cause them the most amount of grief in their night out.

Tim and Daisy’s main antagonists in the episode are gawky teenagers who are mad that they were given cooking spices instead of marijuana. Their outrage leads them to track down the two roommates as they bar hop, getting increasingly drunk, as predicted by Daisy. I will mention, yet again, just how much I love Edgar Wright’s fear of teens. It’s hilarious each time it’s brought up in a storyline, however subtle, and in moments like this it provides some fantastic comedic beats.

On paper, doesn’t this whole show down look simply ludicrous? How did this play out when they were filming it? The scene is acting at its barest, and the performers are required to tap into unfiltered youth and enthusiasm, to play make believe. There’s a lot of commitment that goes into this scene, as silly as it is on the offset, by all the actors; it’s almost a completely choreographed fight scene, just without any actual weapons. It’s also a nice way to show that Daisy and Tim also have the same connection that Tim had with Mike and Brian – it’s their earlier scene blown up into a larger scale. Tim and Daisy end up, somehow, as the victors, and walk home.

Of course, once they’re, home they’re faced with one last hurdle: they locked themselves out and have to wait on Mike and Brian, who have gone out looking for Colin to return.

It’s an episode that finds Spaced at its zaniest, and yet still manages to reel it all in to make the human connections feel poignant and fun. I want to be friends with these characters, and watching this show is pure television comfort; by the end of each half hour I’m in an instantly better mood. These characters enjoy the simple things in life and see them and make them grand, turning a night on the town into a action film. To end the episode with Brian, Daisy, Tim, and Mike all high on Daisy’s accidentally-tampered-with stew is a nice way of reminding us that time spent with these characters is spent well, if if they’re too far gone to move an inch off their bean bag chair.

Allyson Johnson is a twenty something writer and a lover of film and all things pop-culture. She’s a film and television enthusiast and critic over at TheYoungFolks.com who spends too much of her free time on Netflix. Her idols are Jo March, Illana Glazer, and Amy Poehler. Check her out at her twitter @AllysonAJ or at The Young Folks.

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