Yes I love working in Japan, yes I love teaching the children, yes I even love lesson planning. But somedays I suffer for that love I really do.
Like today.
Tommorrow the third years are watching a video because they’ve just finished tests. Its a British Comedy I’m told and they have to fill in a fun worksheet on it afterwards. So they ask me to watch the video today and devise the worksheet. Great thinks I and you call that work! So they hand me the keys to a room and give me the video. I love comedies, I’m going to have a great hour or so to myself giggling so I think. I wonder what it is that I am watching, so I read the title (its in Japanese of course).
Hmmm Me-ri-ku-ri-su-ma-ss. Merry Christmas. Ok it’s the Christmas episode of whatever. Makes sense.
Mi-su-ta. Mr…at this point I have a premonition. Oh Gods I hope I’m wrong.
Bi-uh-nn. Bean. Great. No I was right.
I get to write a worksheet for Merry Christmas Mr Bean. Oh joy. I have to watch the sodding thing. That means I have to watch it FOUR TIMES tommorrow. I hate Mr. Bean, now don’t get me wrong I love Rowan Atkinson, Blackadder- Excellent, Not the Nine O’clock News- Fine I can even cope with The Thin Blue Line on occaision. But BLOODY BEAN!
Ok Ok. It could have been worse but I don’t think they’d let the third years watch Alan Partridge…
Apparently Rowan Atkinson despises the character of Mr Bean, because he’s such a self-absorbed psychotic.
Until he pointed this out on Parkinson(?), I never realised exactly how not-nice Mr Bean was.
I don’t understand how people can not notice that about Mr Bean. Thats why I don’t like him!
Although after watching him yesterday I finally clicked that in some ways hes the forerunner of Raymond on Thin Blue Line.
I got into Mr Bean early on, so I just looked on him as a 2D cartoon character, and the world and people around him as just a canvas for his weirdness.
His diary was a good insight into the darker side of the Bean, thinking about it.
I should try watching some Mr Bean again, see what I think of him.
Inspector Fowler was intended as a successor to Bean, but he was written and played as a far more sympathetic character, i.e. still an arsehole, but at least he was a human arsehole, flawed rather than irredeemably anti-social.
Oh yeah thats why I can usually stomach Fowler but never Bean. I’ve always hated him ever since I was a kid. My sister loved him.
But watching the Christmas episode made me realise that if you humanise Bean but keep his relationships with women (and making models) then you pretty much have Fowler. Which I adn’t noticed before because I largely steer clear of Bean.