[SPOILERS] This was much closer to my idea of what The IT Crowd should be trying to do each week, even if it still struggled with another weak subplot for Jen (Katherine Parkinson) and a ragged ending that didn't provide the smooth, clever wrap-up I was expecting. But for most of its runtime, "Bad Boys" was more inventive and funny than what's come before this year.We began in media res, with Mos (Richard Ayoade) looking very incongruous in a prison setting and doing his best to act tough in a white T-shirt and red bandana ("what the flip are you looking at?", regaling an unseen audience with this personal tale of how he came to end up in the slammer. From there, the episode zipped back in time to reveal how Roy (Chris O'Dowd) persuaded Mos to bunk-off work for a day, which gave rise to undeserved feelings of rebellion and lawlessness in Mos (he stole three DVDs of Grand Designs from a shopping centre, before fleeing a policeman the wrong way up an escalator).
Back at the office, Jen was without her colleagues at the worst possible moment because Douglas (Matt Berry) had decided to hold a special party to celebrate the IT department; an event that rather awkwardly was proven to be a ruse by the typically unpredictable Douglas, but nevertheless resulted in Jen needing urgent help with her laptop, moments before the office was evacuated because of a bomb scare.
The problem with "Bad Boys", and the thing that unfortunately prevented it being the near-golden episode it might have been, is that Jen's entire story felt very unconvincing, not particularly funny, and actually quite confusing at times. The core idea of seeing Roy and Mos get into scrapes away from the office was fantastic, and led to some great moments and exchanges between the pair, but the whole episode built to a moment with Roy and Mos standing next to a bomb on the street that (while amusing) didn't really click.
In fact, it was here that Graham Linehan tried to pull the entire episode together, by paying off some setups from part 1, and it felt forced at times. The notion of Jen winning £100 because Roy failed to go a day without telling a customer to "turn it off and on again" worked fine (with did the bomb disposal expert's laptop needing that advice to save Roy's life), but other call-backs were less successful -– like Mos kissing a blonde lady he fancies, who has appeared in the first scene (I'd almost forgotten about her entirely), or a weak payoff to Roy's throwaway remark about hating balloons that just wasn't worth the time and trouble.
However, I appreciated the slightly different structure to this episode, and there were more laugh-out-loud moments: Mos's "fast walking" run through a park, Roy's disbelief at Jen's laptop cluttered with ad pop-ups, the escalator escape, Mos trying to act like a mean criminal, some great lines ("Jen lacks basic computer skills; like thinking that IT means internet things"), and an amusing cameo from Kevin Eldon as an incomprehensibly French tech support worker. My only issue there is quite why a Frenchman was chosen, considering we all know the helplines are manned by incomprehensible Indian. Was this an intentional steer away from being called racist, as people are more accepting of a comedy Frenchman than they might be a comedy Indian? If so, that's a little cowardly.
Overall, "Bad Boys" was great fun for the most part, but lacked a few ingredients that could have raised this episode one vital notch.
WRITER & DIRECTOR: Graham Linehan
GUEST CAST: Margaret Cabourn-Smith (Social Worker), Sophie Colquhoun (Nikki), Kevin Eldon (French Tech Support), Marcus Garvey (Bomb Disposal), Chris Hayward (Ben Genderson), Liam Houricon (Security Guard), Adam Leese (Barry) & Mark Small (Policeman)
TRANSMISSION: 23 July 2010 – CHANNEL 4/HD
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