"You've always got to send a man a book when you split up to prove how you're a caring, giving person. And how they're going to die alone in a pit of their own filth." - Kate Isitt as Sally Harper
Coupling: The Complete Third Season DVD Review
By Jonathan Boudreaux
NBC's lame attempt to Americanize the British series Coupling failed miserably this past fall, but luckily for viewers of quality television, the BBC original is still a ratings and critical success. The fourth season is currently playing on BBC America, and fans were also recently treated to the DVD release Coupling: The Complete Third Season.
This season begins just where the last left off, with both Steve (Jack Davenport) and Susan (Sarah Alexander) doubting their ability to commit to each other. The first episode, "Split," ingeniously employs a variety of split screen effects to illustrate their separate lives during their brief breakup. For the entire episode, Steve and his friends occupy one part of the screen while Susan and her friends occupy another. All three seasons of Coupling employ, to a certain extent, similar types of unique storytelling techniques. In less talented hands, this might come across as gimmicky and distracting, but with writer/creator Steven Moffat, the result is wildly creative.
While season one focused on the beginning phases of Steve and Susan's romance and season two on Steve's fear of marriage, the third season delves into the commitment problems of the entire group of friends. Loveable loser Jeff (Richard Coyle) is finally able to get consistent, non-imaginary sex thanks to his girlfriend - and boss - Julia (Lou Gish), but their relationship is challenged by Jeff's flirtatious co-worker and by Julia's ex-boyfriend. Self-involved traffic reporter Jane (Gina Bellman) finds a heavenly boyfriend in the form of James (Lloyd Owens), a talk show host at her radio station. Unfortunately, hunky James is a bit TOO heavenly - he has found God and given up sex before marriage, a fact that greatly disappoints the voracious Jane.
The biggest commitment problems are saved for vain, high-strung Sally (Kate Isitt) and callous ladies man Patrick (Ben Miles). After a disastrous, aborted attempt at casual sex in season two, they spend much of season three strenuously trying NOT to commit to each other. This season-long non-love affair gives the show's third year much of its heart, and provides many of its most memorable moments. Writer Moffat again surprises with his ability to combine the outrageously funny and the incredibly bittersweet, sometimes in the same scene. In "Remember This," Sally and Patrick recall the long-forgotten moment years ago when they first met at a party. Their wildly different, Rashomon-like takes on the same events provide many laughs (as well as glimpses at all of the characters at a point in their lives with which we are not familiar), but the episode ends with Sally's achingly tender understanding of why the name "Spider-man" resonates so deeply with her. With its dinner party gone awry, "The Girl with One Heart" is an excessively amusing riff on season one's standout episode "Inferno," but it, too, ends with a heartfelt Sally moment.
There seems to be a conscious effort on the part of Moffat to beef up Isitt's role in the third season, and she more than rises to the occasion. In a cast brimming with strong performers, she manages to steal the show in season three, effortlessly playing both her character's comedic and dramatic sides with perfect tone and shading.
Isitt is especially pitch-perfect in the season's final episode, "Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps," which features not one, not two, but three pregnancy scares. The episode is a fitting end to this season devoted to commitment, and provides a tantalizing look at what is to come in season four. All of the friends' relationships are thrown into a state of flux thanks to stunning admissions, external circumstances, and quirks of fate. And yes, one of the pregnancies is real.
The seven episodes that comprise season three are divided onto two discs. The discs are housed in a lavender keepcase that contains an interior swinging arm for the second disc. The DVD menus are in the same style as those for the previous two seasons. The main menu presents successive clips from each of the disc's episodes. From this menu, viewers can play all episodes or choose to watch an individual one. Choosing an individual episode brings up that episode's dedicated menu. The individual episode menus feature short clips from each of the episode's six chapter stops.
