Does Lynda DIE!??

Did you notice though, that in "the last word" part two,the guy contradicts himself? {the gunman}.He says that he isn't going to hurt anyone, but when spike tells him he's out of bullets, he tests it by shooting at frazz.How did his i.q. increase over the course of the five seasons of the show? {frazz}

I think Frazz was always intelligent - he just chose to hide it most of the time (if you watch all the episodes, you might notice that Frazz was often quite sharp-minded and practical). Or maybe he was dumb in some areas, but not in others. He was a pretty hard character to peg. But then, they all were...

About the gunman, well...Don't forget, he shot Colin as well (and wounded him). I loved it how, in later episodes, Colin would often mention being shot as a way of weaselling out when he got in trouble with the others. Actually, one thing about events in "The Last Word" bothered me, but only after seeing the first episode of season 5, "Head and Heart." In that episode, Lynda decides to expose the Norbridge High Headmaster, Mr. Winters, for having an affair with his secretary. Lynda justifies this by saying that she's giving the people the whole true story, and they can make their judgement of Mr. Winters based on that, and if the Junior Gazette chose to ignore the story, then they might as well make up their stories. This is an appalling case of hypocrisy, if you look at "The Last Word" - why didn't Lynda tell the truth about what happened THAT time, and let the people make their mind up about the gunman, instead of making up a largely false story about phony heroism (which she did)? I liked it how Spike told Lynda she didn't do the right thing about Mr. Winters, but I was annoyed that no one mentioned the gunman thing to Lynda as proof that she was wrong.

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But i think series 3 WAS better.

Okay, I've just re-watched Seasons 3 and 4. Last time, I wrote "I think the fourth season was (probably) better than the third." I've changed my mind: the fourth season was DEFINITELY better than the third. The third season really only had three truly great episodes: "The Big Hello," "Chance Is A Fine Thing," and "Holding On."

The "Last Word" two-parter is well-written and acted, and it plays out well and with suspense at first - but after watching it again, a lot of it strikes me as false. Putting aside the fact that I don't think the gunman deserved to be falsely glorified - and that there's NO WAY the Junior Gazette team would've done it, given what he did to them - the whole thing strains credibility because of the police inspector's actions. It's ridiculous to believe that he would've complied with the cover-up, after Sarah told him the truth - it was unethical, he could lose his job over it, and adhering to Sarah's (false) story made the police's actions during the siege look incompetent (which they weren't). And anyway, why was the gunman (and for that matter, his parents, who we didn't even know) so deserving of sympathy? And like I said before, the extent of Lynda's hypocrisy doesn't become fully evident until the first episode of season 5, in which Lynda says to Mr. Winters, "We don't decide what's good for people to know. We print the facts; the readers make the judgements." Lynda surely did more damage bringing down Mr. Winters with the adultery scandal story than she ever could have done by telling the truth about a pathetic, gun-toting dickweed who killed himself. Although perhaps Steven Moffat knew this when he wrote "Head and Heart," to demonstate how unscrupulous Lynda had become: there's no way she would have taken down Winters had Kenny still been assistant editor - but Julie and Colin encouraged her to run the story, and only Sarah, Spike and Frazz (and the last two hold next to no weight in the editorial stakes) were against it.

Another thing - the supposed problem at the end of the first "Last Word" is, the cops have shown up, and there's no way for the gunman to walk out of there without being caught, therefore, he sees no other course of action but to continue holding the J.G. team as hostages. Now, if Lynda or any of the others were smart, they could've just asked him to lose the gun, mask and army jacket, then they could all go out together, pretend that the gunman is one of them, and tell the cops that the gunman escaped. IF THEY DID THAT, EVERYTHING THAT FOLLOWED WOULDN'T HAVE HAPPENED!! I also hated the bit when Spike confesses to Lynda that he was lying about being engaged to his girlfriend Zoe, because he never mentioned being engaged to her in the first place.

Now, the fourth season - despite the weak "She's Got It Taped" episode - actually improves on repeated viewing. The “UnXpected” episode, which went a little stop-start on me at first, struck me as great the second time around. Plus, another nice touch that I didn’t notice at first, in “Day Dreams” – Spike says “Goodbye forever and all that” to Lynda (in her dream), which are the last words he said to his father’s answering machine in “Love and War." I still think that the showdown between Lynda and Spike on the "Crazy Stuff" show in "Bad News" is the funniest Press Gang scene ever, and "Love and War" is beautifully written and acted (and I like how it follows the pattern of season 2's "At Last A Dragon" - it's a Spike/Lynda relationship episode with the only other regular cast member being Colin, who gets in the way).

And I don't think that series 4 has an issue with not flowing - I mean, "Love and War," "In The Picture" and "Day Dreams" continue into each other quite well. But seeing as how seasons 3 and 4 were actually produced (though not broadcast) as one series, it makes more sense to examine how well both seasons fit together - I mean, Lynda's behaviour and actions are quite baffling and obnoxious for much of the third and fourth seasons (she was almost certainly affected by the losses of Spike [and later Kenny], and also by fighting the uphill battle of justifying the J.G. as a commercial venture), but it's in the fourth series (towards the end) that she softens up.

Don't get me wrong - season 3 is great. But season 4 is better. If I had to rank the seasons from best to worst, I would probably go 2, 5, 4, 3, 1.

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