Goodbyeee...

“Plan F: Goodbyeee”
Blackadder Goes Forth episode
Insane Blackadder
Episode no.	Season 4 Episode 6
Guest stars	Geoffrey Palmer
Written by	Ben Elton Richard Curtis
Directed by	R. Boden
Original airdate	02/11/1989
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"Goodbyeee..." is the title of the final episode of the BBC One situation comedy Blackadder Goes Forth and the final Season episode of Blackadder to be produced and transmitted. It has become immensely popular and well-regarded with both critical and mass audiences. It depicts the final hours of the main characters before a final charge on the Western Front of World War I.

Summary

Millions of civilians and soldiers have died, but the troops have advanced no further than "an asthmatic ant with some heavy shopping". However, the final 'big push' looms - the Third Battle of Ypres.

Plot

Captain Blackadder's trench gets a phone call from General H.Q; an assault has been ordered for the next day, at dawn. George is eager to get to grips with the enemy, despite the fact that he's the last surviving member of the Trinity College tiddlywinks team who signed up on the first day of hostilities. Blackadder decides that now's the time to get out of the trenches. He's currently in the biggest crisis he's ever faced, and it's time for the best plan he's ever had - which involves two pencils and a pair of underpants.

Wearing the underpants on his head and sticking the pencils up his nose, Blackadder pretends to be insane to be invalided back to Blighty; this, for some reason, appears to require use of the word 'wibble'.

As Blackadder has refused to play charades, the three men have plenty of time to hand as they wait for Blackadder's escort. This leads to conversation about the origins of the war; George believes it to be a result of villainous German imperialism (despite the relative imbalance between the massive size of the British Empire and its German equivalent, which Blackadder says consists of "a small sausage factory in Tanganyika"), Baldrick is adamant it resulted from Archie Duke's hunger-motivated shooting of an ostrich, but Blackadder determines that it was simply too much effort not to have a war (citing the fact that the intricate system of alliances designed to prevent war was 'bollocks').

As General Melchett and Captain Darling arrive to view the patient, George goes to greet them; and Melchett casually remarks that he once had to shoot an entire platoon for trying to get out of the Sudan by wearing underpants on their heads and sticking pencils up their noses. Blackadder overhears this just in time and pretends to demonstrate this very principle to Baldrick. Blackadder claims that reports of his insanity were merely a miscommunication. Melchett casually offers George a place back in the car to General Headquarters, to witness the 'results' coming back in... an offer George refuses.

Blackadder berates George turning down a golden opportunity to get out. Baldrick lightens the atmosphere with his his magnum opus, 'The German Guns', consisting entirely of the word 'boom'. Baldrick then suggests that Blackadder call Field Marshal Douglas Haig to get him out of it. Blackadder had saved Haig's life at a previous battle, and the Field Marshal still owes him. As Blackadder happily gets packing, George and Baldrick find themselves reminiscing about the Christmas truce of 1914 (where Blackadder comments 'both sides advanced further during one Christmas piss-up than the next two years of war'). Talk turns to the unhappy slog the war, which seemed so promising in 1914, turned in to. Baldrick demands to know why they can't just stop the war and go home...a demand that neither officer can answer.

Back at General H.Q, both Melchett and Darling are awake, pondering the coming battle. Melchett, having always considered Darling a son (albeit a rather disliked, illegitimate one) has a surprise for him: a front-line commission. Darling tearfully begs Melchett not to send him to the Front, but Melchett - completely misinterpreting Darling's pleas - has nevertheless prepared his driver.

As dawn nears, Blackadder makes his call to Haig, and demanding his favour in return. Haig is not happy, but agrees to Blackadder's terms and advises him to stick a pair of underpants on his head and shove two pencils up his nose. Blackadder says his intended response rhymes with 'clucking bell'.

At that moment, Darling arrives in the trench. For once, the enmity between the two men is gone; both are in the same, fatal position. George celebrates the comradeship of the men around him... and then finally admits he's scared. Baldrick and Darling, who has hoped to see the war out in order to marry his sweetheart, are scared as well. But it is too late; the order to prepare for advance go out over the trenches. The four men line up for their certain doom... as the guns stop firing. For a brief, shining moment, it seems like peace has finally been declared - but the guns are ceasing to prepare for the attack, as not even British generals are stupid enough to shell their own men. As Blackadder puts it "they (the British generals) think it's far more sporting to let the Germans do it".

Just then, Baldrick has a cunning plan, but it's too late. Just before the order comes in, Baldrick mentions how a man could injure himself on the splinter sticking out of the stepladder up to No Man's Land. The order to attack comes through, and Blackadder, Baldrick, Darling and George go over the top - into the mud and the hail of lethal machine-gun fire and exploding artillery. They are not seen again. The season ends as the mud of No Man's Land fades into a beautiful, tranquil field of poppies, with only sweet birdsong disturbing the peace.

Trivia

One of the songs George mentions ('Whoops, Mrs Miggins, you're sitting on my artichokes'), has Mrs Miggins in the title, who was mentioned in Blackadder II and seen in Blackadder the Third.

Tony Robinson recalls that the ending was filmed on a polystyrene landscape with no rehearsal, and that as a result the cast bounced visibly as they fell down dead, ruining the poignancy of the scene. This was rectified by slowing the film down and fading into a post-battle shot of No-Man's Land littered with corpses, followed by the final fade into a shot of a poppy field. ^[1]

In a 1999 poll held by The Observer newspaper and Channel Four to determine what the public thought were the hundred most memorable television moments of all time, the final scene of this episode came ninth.

References

1. ^ Channel 4: The World's Greatest Comedy Characters, 14 April 2007.

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