MovieChat Forums > Bottom (1998) Discussion > Oddly depressing

Oddly depressing

posted 11 years ago by thiselemental
9 replies | jump to latest

I love this violent and anarchic show.

Having first watched it back in the 90's and a good few times since, I decided to view it again after not seeing it for a few years. It is still side splitting funny but there is something rather sad and depressing about Eddie and Richie's plight.

Yeah, it's a comedy and not to be taken seriously but both the characters seem as much trapped in their anti-social and violent personalities,as their dingy surroundings. Poor Richie has no friends, Eddie only living with him because he doesn't pay rent. Eddie, who's only friends end up being stranger than him and who stumbles from one Alcohol sodden episode to another, briefly stopping to sample any edible/inedible morsels he can find along the way.

It might be nice if one final episode featured Richie finding a girl (obviously not for the girl!!! =P) and Eddie found sobriety, but then that would Hollywood and not nearly as funny 'sigh'.

As a side note, being British and having lived in the States for over 10 years, there is nothing like this apart from the odd Saturday Night Live sketch. So, nothing else over here is really like this show and certainly not as funny.

[–] brand_name 10 years ago

your right, i feel like that about the two characters also, always sunny in Philadelphia is kinda like that too

IT is a great book

[–] amplified_cactus 10 years ago

Yes, there's definitely a more depressing side to it.

Still, if you count Guest House Paradiso as part of the Bottom universe, then it actually does have a very happy ending for the two of them.

[–] speccyboy 10 years ago

Although that would have to explain how they survived getting gunned down by the SAS at the end of the third series ("Carnival").

[–] lunchboxattacks 9 years ago

To be fair, they died at the end of 'Hole', too. Or, if they survived the huge fall from a tall ferris wheel, they came back in the next episode without a scratch or any mention of the incident. Either way, it wasn't a series that paid much of any notice to continuity.

They had written a 4th series, too, but the BBC didn't pick it up. Shame, that.

[–] newtype_1 9 years ago

I found that the first season had a certain unique tension about it. I recently watched the whole series for the first time and I wanted to feel sorry for these guys, their life is so terrible but they deserve everything they get. Like in the episode where Richie breaks his legs, as sad and pathetic a character as he is here he still wastes no opportunity to behave like a complete prick. Watching him hit on the obvious lesbians in "Smells" made me squirm in the best Basil Fawlty tradition, where he would spin lie after desperate lie to keep from humiliating himself (which is what happens anyway).

Eddie also seems a bit more malevolent in this first series than later on, like when he gloated about shagging the girl Richie liked on the bus. In the early episodes where they didn't leave the flat, I wondered if maybe Eddie was a figment of Richie's imagination like Tyler Durden or Hobbes. Their relationship has been described as a husband/wife thing on multiple occasions, but you could also look at it along the lines of a master/pet relationship. Only Eddie is a talking, drinking dog that occasionally kicks his owner's ass.

[–] The-Last-Prydonian 9 years ago

I couldn’t agree more with your summarizing of the series newtype. The best way to describe Bottom is It’s a tragicomedy in the classic tradition of such British comedies as Steptoe & Son or Fawlty Towers. Although with the former you can at least sympathize with one of the two main protagonists ie. Harold Steptoe. It’s no coincidence as well that Mayall and Edmondson’s series was partly inspired by Samuel Becket’s Waiting for Godot which they both starred in a stage production of on the West End. The play, in itself a tragicomedy which featured two tramps getting up to all sorts to wile away the boredom before the titular Godot comes along. It’s not hard to see the parallels with both the series and the play. Bottom merely had a different setting, period with cruder, more adult material and O.T.T. cartoon violence. That said it was not lacking in some of the pathos that came from It’s partial source material.

But to some degree Richie and Eddie were also offshoots of previous comedic creations which included the Dangerous Brothers, as well as the deviant, delinquent escorts from their hilarious Comic Strip classic Mr. Jolly Lives Next Door.(Which they incidentally co-scripted with Roland Rivron). A short film which had a fairly downbeat ending in itself.

For this series to have had a upbeat conclusion would have gone against the very theme and nature of it. I appreciate the fact that both Mayall and Edmondson never bowed to convention by tacking on a happy ending because let’s face it, both protagonists didn’t really deserve one. They were essentially their own worst enemies and to reward two thoroughly unpleasant, pathetic foul losers would have been unpardonable. I personally liked how the series ended and at three series it certainly didn’t outstay It’s welcome.

[–] Gwasgray 8 years ago

Aren't many classic British sitcoms set in depressing situations?

[–] nikkivisser 8 years ago

aren't most movies about the underdog or david vs goliath. we need to be filed with hope .

[–] ChuckyBlackheart 8 years ago

As a side note, being British and having lived in the States for over 10 years, there is nothing like this

There's Married with Children. That was relentlessly dark and depressing. It also contained a lot of OTT slapstick humour. Like Bottom, it also contained a lot of exaggerated jokes about what the family ate to survive.

There's also Beavis and Butthead. Every bit as anarchic as Bottom.

http://chucky-blackheart.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/prison-dramas.html