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"Cucumber" and "Banana" 1.03 Recap: Eine Kleine Britisher Boy

Hello, guys and dolls! It’s that time of the week again, so let’s sink our teeth into the newest episodes of Cucumber and Banana!

In Cucumber, Henry Best (Vincent Franklin) starts the day in his favorite place: the Mount Olympus supermarket, where various bronzed gods and Adonises shop for their daily nectar and ambrosia. Nothing makes Henry hornier than the cereal aisle, so he imagines every handsome man that walks by in the throes of sexual ecstasy.

Already the episode is on better footing than the previous one, bringing back the spritely rhythm and fantastical sexuality of the pilot. This scene kind of feels like the Birdman soundtrack as performed by Colby Keller and it’s a lot of fun.

Back at home, Henry attempts to sleep despite sharing a wall with Freddie (Freddie Fox), who is hard at work jackhammering a twink into mush, shaking his bedframe and the wall behind it like the T-Rex in Jurassic Park.

The next morning, Cleo (Julie Hesmondhalgh) stops by with her kids, delivering some more of Henry’s stuff, which she has picked up from Lance’s. She demands that Freddie make coffee and he surprisingly complies. During this visit we learn several things:

1) Cleo was adopted, and Henry was born to their parents shortly afterward.

2) Cleo desperately wants Henry to come home, away from this dreadful apartment with no heating and twink bones scattered about the floor.

3) When Henry was young, he had a huge crush on Kevin Banks from Crossroads, which according to Wikipedia is a British soap opera that “became a byword for cheap production values.” That’s really saying something considering the state of British TV in the 60’s and 70’s. Also, he would grow damningly silent whenever any men would take their shirts off. I wish that were still the case today.

4) Speaking of taking off shirts, Adam (Ceallach Spellman) finally reveals his Internet occupation and it turns out I was right! Too right, if you ask me. He and his friend Beanie (Miles Higson) do shirtless vlogs for the unseemly pleasures of German businessmen. They make about 500 quid a month selling merchandise, though, so who am I to judge? I’ve got a whole stack of mousepads with my face on them, and I can hardly give them away.

5) Lance (Cyril Nri) has transferred all of Henry’s money into his own account, just for the hell of it. And there goes my last shred of respect for any character on the show.

After this visit, something unprecedented occurs: a subplot! Yes, for the first time on this show, something happens to a character who isn’t Lance or Henry. What a turning point! Freddie ventures out into the cold on his own, and of course he runs into trouble. He comes across an old high school teacher, Gregory (Edward MacLiam) with his wife and kids, and they invite him to coffee where they catch up and discuss him dropping out of college.

Or whatever the British versions of “high school” and “college” are. The Harry Potter books didn’t prepare me for this.

When his wife leaves to change their daughter, Greg says that he can smell the stink between Freddie’s legs. That’s a pretty disgusting come-on in any scenario, but especially here, where it is revealed that Greg seduced Freddie when he was 15 and desperately wants to polish his apple one last time. Greg gives Freddie his number and says he’ll figure something out.

After they depart, Greg finds a way to slip away from his wife and texts Freddie to meet him at various locations, eventually landing on the second floor men’s room of a nearby gallery. This sexual scavenger hunt is scored by some truly incredible secret agent music as Freddie pauses by the door, then runs the other direction. You go, Freddie! End the cycle of abuse!

To douse the fire in his loins, he whips up a threesome using Grindr, graciously invites Dean (Fisayo Akinade) to come play, and slams the door behind him, all in about 12 seconds flat. Henry looks startled and mildly impressed.

At 6 AM the next morning, Lance meets up with Diver Daniel (James Murray) at the gym for his swim lessons. Dan's clearly in his Dr. Jekyll mode this morning as they gossip about a coworker with a crush on Lance, practice swimming using his abs as the target, and talk about how Lance is the best at blow jobs. His Speedo practically rockets off his groin.

Meanwhile, back at Twink Towers, Freddy fishes out an old comic he drew about his affair with his teacher. He sends Gregory a snapshot and a text: “Want to c u.” This is probably a terrible idea, but the glint in his eye makes it seem like he’s got something big planned.

Because Henry hasn’t done anything particularly terrible so far this episode, he decides to make up for it and then some, by attempting to make some cash by being Adam and Beanie’s queerbait vlog director. Apparently because he’s watched a lot of these videos in the mid-2000’s, that makes him an expert. I don't want to burst his bubble, but if the world worked like that, I would be directing the Sabrina the Teenage Witch reboot and married to Shawn Ashmore, not writing about Henry Best’s sorry life.

OK, that came out meaner than I anticipated. But there’s something about a middle-aged man directing his 15-year-old nephew in Katy Perry quasi-porn in his dead grandmother’s living room that rubs me the wrong way, you know?

So, he’s trying to get the boys to lip sync to “I Kissed a Girl,” but Beanie won’t stop giggling and botches the whole shoot. Later on, Adam contacts Henry and tells him that Beanie’s out, in favor of a Polish newcomer, Tomasz (Matthew Bailey) who is… a teenager and thus out of the scope of any comments. Needless to say, he is down as hell to play gay if it gets clicks. High school is a strange time for everyone.

They enthusiastically lip lock during filming and Henry watches them, jaw down to the floor. This is… upsetting.

Back in a place with legal adults, Lance calls Diver Daniel to invite him to curry, but he’s too late. Mr. Hyde has taken over and he’s driving through some Speed Racer reject greenscreen and blaring his radio. He’s rude, homophobic, curt, and he hangs up on Lance. What a fun guy.

Over at Twink Towers, Gregory arrives to meet Freddie, who shows him the comic strip he drew about them. He’s uncomfortable that his name is written in the dialogue, but it turns him on and they begin to hook up, hooting like a pair of capuchins in heat.

Henry and Dean enter, and Dean asks if Henry will still pay rent. Henry says he can’t keep that promise anymore, now that Lance has siphoned his funds. Not to mention that pimping out his nephew doesn’t pay as much as he’d hoped.

In the bedroom, Freddie asks if he can top for Gregory this time, which makes him falter. He’s clearly afraid of losing the power in this fantasy relationship of his, and Freddie can see his hypocrisy and manipulation. He snaps a photo of Greg in the nude and threatens to send it to his wife’s sister. Greg tries to take the phone away and they wrestle for it, spilling out into the living room.

When Henry comes to investigate, he assumes that this is but another of Freddie’s sexcapades, but when he discovers that this is a teacher who had his way with Freddie at 15, he leaps into the fray. They squash into a strange, immobile pile, because the martial arts educational system in Britain is severely lacking.

Dean walks by, obliviously refusing to join in, and answering the door. Lance arrives with a box of Henry’s stuff. Freddie and Henry cry for help in that frustratingly sitcommy way where they use every word in the dictionary except the ones that actually explain what’s going on.

All Lance knows is that he’s had a bad day and he wants to kick the crap out of someone. He goes for Henry. I’d normally approve of this course of action, but my already hull-damaged respect for Lance sinks to the bottom of the Atlantic.

I can tell that this scene is actively trying to be funny and it is, in fits and starts. But it’s kind of like an episode of Three’s Company was hijacked by the guys who made Entourage.

After their tussle, the men all sit together in the living room. Henry comments on how brave the youth of today are, and how afraid he always was of revealing his true self. You can see that he might be cracking open the mystery of his stunted sexuality, and he tells Freddie to send that picture to Greg’s sister-in-law. He does, and Greg storms out. Lance follows suit, saying that everybody’s mad. I can’t say I disagree.

Later on, Freddie approaches Henry on the rooftop, saying that he’s set him up on a date with a nice age-appropriate man who he met online. I’m legitimately surprised and mildly delighted that he has done a good deed. No coal in Freddie’s stocking this year.

Meanwhile, in Banana Land…

Sian (Georgia Henshaw) is working a regular day at the shoe store, when a beautiful customer Violet (Hannah John-Kamen) catches her eye. Violet keeps coming back with a series of increasingly arbitrary returns (they squeaked, they were the wrong color, they were possessed by the ghost of a long-dead pirate, that kind of stuff) until she finally works up the courage to ask Sian on a date.

The girls go out for lunch, have a bit of wry banter, and share a spectacular kiss. Sian goes home to her supportive lesbian mom, Vanessa (Lynn Hunter) who practically begs on hands and knees to meet Violet, but Sian is apparently mad at her for dating a revolving door of women when she was growing up. She runs off to Violet’s desperately bohemian apartment to tell her life story and slut-shame her mother.

Apparently her teen rebellion phase pushed her to experiment with heterosexuality, which is a fun twist. She also reveals that Violet is her first ever girlfriend. At the grocery store, hopefully more than a couple minutes later, the first “I love you” is bandied about.

Violet finally coerces Sian into having dinner with her mother, where she tells a super cool story about cleaning brain matter at a crime scene. They bond over the best way to murder someone, and have a great time. When Vi is in the bathroom, Sian complains about her mother’s behavior, then tells her they might be moving in together. When she tries to protest, Sian’s rebellion kicks in again and she tells Vi yes. She complains about being commitment-phobic while rearranging mugs. The wailing specter of The Odd Couple lingers over the entire scene.

Dean stops by to borrow lube, providing this couple’s tenuous connection to Cucumber. Apparently they live next door to Twink Towers. Lucky them.

They stop by the Mount Olympus grocery store once more to play a game of curling with a discarded broom and a honeydew, sending the melon careening into a shopper who’s shaped remarkably like Hulk Hogan.

Later, when Sian returns home from work to a house party, she’s disappointed to see that her mother has been invited. She then runs into Francesco (Peter Caulfield), who you might remember as the Muppet Baby Alan Cumming who was dragged into Lance and Henry’s depressing threesome way back when in episode one. He’s stoned to the moon once again and talking about how he could be great at playing an instrument if he ever picked one up. Oh M.B.A.C., never change.

The next morning Sian wakes up to a phone call telling her not to be late for her interview to be manager at the shoe store. She scrambles around trying to find her iPad, but it’s nowhere to be seen. She blames Violet for its disappearance, saying that one of her friends must have stolen it. When she gets home after the interview, she sees Dean playing with it and practically roasts him over a fire.

He prances away, blameless as ever, while Sian and Violet continue their fight. Sian thinks that Violet parties too much and Violet thinks that Sian is too uptight. Textbook. She moves out and finds out that she got the job, but finds it hard to celebrate. When she gets home, she complains to her mother about her dating habits, saying that she was taught to fear commitment because of how often Vanessa fell in love.

Vanessa calls her out on her ludicrous blame-shifting, says that Sian is a “f*cking idiot” who needs to grow up. Finally somebody has decided to talk some sense into one of the characters on this show. Sian probably isn’t the one I might have picked, but it’s still refreshing. Yadda yadda yadda, Sian apologizes to Violet by rolling a melon at her. As you do.

Fin.

Grade: Obviously I’ve been having trouble overcoming the fact that the bulk of the characters in these shows are despicable, despicable people. And that was before one of them was a sexual predator. But for what it’s worth, I enjoyed this episode more than last week’s.

The drama was engaging, there were plenty of shirtless dudes, and Muppet Baby Alan Cumming returned in style. Also, I’m grateful for the variety that Banana provides. Including lesbian characters isn’t exactly radical at this point, but at least it prevents the show from being solely about lower/middle class Kinsey 6 boys.

B

The Doctor Potter Quotient: A big fat, whopping 0%.

I may have to give up this feature. Cucumber and Banana are using much fresher talent than I could have predicted. Not a single person this round was from Harry Potter OR Doctor Who.

I’ll have to come up with something else… Henry Tantrum Moment of the Week, perhaps?

Champion Dialogue: “Now shut up, take your shirt off, and sing!” - Henry

Mixed Veggies

*Henry starts every episode at the grocery store, but he never seems to buy anything, nor does it have any impact on the plot. Is the supermarket all in Henry’s head? Is the season finale going to St. Elsewhere everything and show that he has hallucinated everything while staring at a can of green beans?

*I like how Freddie seems low key terrified of Cleo.

*Adam hands out badges to people who recognize him on the street. That’s actually kind of cute.

*Gregory spilled juice on his daughter on purpose so he could talk to Freddie alone. We already know this guy is an ephebophile and a statutory rapist, but that’s some real sociopath behavior. He’s like Manchester’s answer to Patrick Bateman.

*Lance can do way better than Diver Daniel. He may have lost points for me this episode, but he doesn’t deserve this cartoonishly bipolar whack job.

*I’m gonna come right out and say it, those boys are worse at lipsyncing than Milli Vanilli.

*Is “I Kissed a Girl” really the best song for their video? There are only so many layers of gender and sexuality re-interpretation that one crappy vlog can take.

*I like the way Dean walks. It’s so carefree and whimsical. Mind you, it’s the only thing I like about him.

Fruit Medley

*Does the opening title of Banana remind anybody else of the Minions from Despicable Me?

*The connections to Cucumber in this episode were so ephemeral! Aside from a party and a brief encounter on a fire escape, Banana was practically in its own universe. Not that it’s a damning problem, I just feel it could have been integrated better.

*I like Sian’s voice a lot. She reminds me of a cross between Anna Faris and Tara Reid.

*Sian wears overalls to a party. How does everybody feel about overalls coming back into style? Because personally it terrifies me that whoever’s in charge of fashion might be drunk at the wheel.

*There’s a guy at Violet’s house party who’s just sitting on a bicycle in the middle of the living room, without a care in the world. He might just be the best extra I’ve ever seen on TV.

*In spite of the show’s foibles, the soundtrack is still consistently top notch. Even Sian’s ringtone is great. It’s kind of uncanny.

So what do you think? Is the show picking up the pace? Or would you rather drown than swim another lap with Diver Daniel and Co.? Let us know in the comments below!

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