Goodbyeee...

Infobox Television episode
Title = Plan F: Goodbyeee
Series = Blackadder Goes Forth


Caption = Blackadder feigns madness
Airdate = 02/11/1989
Writer = Richard Curtis & Ben Elton
Director = R. Boden
Guests = Geoffrey Palmer
Episode list = List of Blackadder episodes
Season = 4
Episode = 6
Prev = General Hospital
Next = "Goodbyeee..." is the title of the final episode of the BBC One sitcom "Blackadder Goes Forth" and was originally the final episode of "Blackadder" to be produced and transmitted, until the 1999 special "" was appended to the series. It depicts the final hours of the main characters before a final charge on the Western Front of World War I. It has become immensely popular and well-regarded with both critical and mass audiences: in a 1999 poll held by "The Observer" 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. It was first broadcast on 2 November 1989.

ummary

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 Battle of Passchendaele.

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 "wIPA|ʊbble".

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 that it started "when a man called Archie Duke shot an ostrich because he was hungry", but Blackadder corrects him: it was actually when "Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary got shot." Blackadder then determines that it was simply too much effort "not" to have a war (citing the one flaw in the intricate system of alliances designed to prevent war: "it 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, before claiming to Melchett that reports of his insanity were merely a miscommunication. Melchett dismisses Darling's insistence on the message saying how could the hero of Mboto Gorge (a colonial battle where the British Army massacred a pacifist tribe armed only with fruit) be mad. Darling taunts Blackadder over the matter, but Blackadder gets revenge by serving Darling a cup of Baldrick's vile coffee (in truth, hot mud with dandruff and saliva). As he leaves, 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 avoid being killed. Baldrick lightens the atmosphere by reading his war poems, including 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 in battle more than twenty years earlier,(at Mboto Gorge, Blackadder saved Haig from a warrior wielding a sharpened mango slice) and the Field Marshal still owes him. As Blackadder rejoices in this plan, George and Baldrick find themselves reminiscing about the Christmas truce of 1914 (leading Blackadder to observe that "both sides advanced further during one Christmas piss-up than the next two years of war"). Talk turns to the unhappy slog into which the war, which seemed so promising in 1914, turned. Baldrick demands to know why they can't just stop the war and go home...a demand that neither officer can answer.

Back at G.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 and is adamant.

As dawn nears, Blackadder makes his call to Haig (Geoffrey Palmer), and demands his favour in return. Haig is not happy, but agrees to Blackadder's terms and hastily advises him to stick a pair of underpants on his head and shove two pencils up his nose before slamming down the phone. Blackadder notes to Baldrick that his intended response rhymes with 'clucking bell'.

At that moment, Darling arrives in the trench and faces Blackadder. 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. Notably Blackadder does not employ his wit after hearing these admissions of fear as he appears to understand where they are coming from. But it is too late; the order to prepare for advance has gone out over the trenches. The four men line up,along with another 100 soldiers never seen in the series before or after, 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 the 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".

Final scene

Just then, Baldrick has a cunning plan. Just before the order comes in, he mentions to Captain Blackadder how a man could injure himself on the splinter sticking out of the stepladder up to No Man's Land. However, it is too late, and the order to attack comes through. Blackadder consoles him, saying Blackadder concludes by wishing "Good luck, everyone" — perhaps the first genuine expression of concern for others demonstrated by a member of the Blackadder dynasty. 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. For the desired effect the sequence was played in slow motion as the Blackadder theme is played slowly on piano on minor key, gradually drowned by a slow, monotonous booming resembling cannon fire. The season ends as the mud of No Man's Land and the four characters fade into a beautiful, tranquil field of poppies, with only sweet birdsong disturbing the peace. There are no credits. It is left open as to whether the protagonists have survived, since battles are horrific but there is always a slight chance of survival. This open-endedness reflects "Blackadder Goes Forth"'s serious anti-war message.

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. [Channel 4: "The World's Greatest Comedy Characters", 14 April 2007.] In the Britain's Best Sitcom documentary for Blackadder, Tim McInnerny admits he (and presumably, most of the other cast and crew members) hadn't known about this change prior to the episode airing, hence he found it particularly emotional.

References