Do-It-Yourself Mr. Bean

"Do-It-Yourself Mr. Bean" is the ninth episode of the television series Mr. Bean that first aired on ITV on 1 January 1994^[1] and was produced by Tiger Aspect Productions.

Plot

Act 1

It's New Year's Eve 1993 and Bean is excited. He has invited his two best friends Rupert and Hubert over to his apartment for a New Year party and is putting the finishing touches on his decorations, which isn't much (a circle of chairs in the living room and a bunch of balloons hanging from the front door). He greets his neighbour who is also throwing a party, and goes back inside to prepare for his guests' arrival. Soon enough, Rupert and Hubert arrive, and they realize that it's not really the party they were expecting, as Bean forces them to wear party hats made of newspaper, assigns them designated chairs, and the only form of entertainment is a radio. Bean then goes to the kitchen to prepare a snack of Twiglets, only to find out that there is two left. He eats one of them, and decides to improvise by chopping up a branch outside his kitchen window with a butcher knife and dipping them in Marmite in an attempt to disguise them. He then opens a bottle of Champagne, but is dismayed to discover that there is only enough to fill half a glass. As Rupert and Hubert wait in the living room, Bean improvises again by using a bottle of vinegar and adding sugar to sweeten it.

As the night goes on, it becomes apparent that Rupert and Hubert are not having a good time. They've uncovered that the "food" they've been given isn't genuine (there is a small leaf growing on one of the sticks on Rupert's plate and Hubert is repulsed by the smell of vinegar) and refuse to eat it, despite Bean eating his and pretending to like it. Bean then heads back to the kitchen to get more snacks, but this time he grabs the bird feeder off of the branch and pours the seeds onto a plate. Finally had enough, Rupert and Hubert turn the clock in the living room to just before midnight. When Bean comes back, the clock chimes and Rupert and Hubert say "Happy New Year!". Bean is also happy, saying "Doesn't time fly while you're enjoying yourself?". They then link hands (almost forgetting Teddy) and sing "Auld Lang Syne" to celebrate (although Bean over-excitedly rushes through the song). Rupert and Hubert then feign yawning and claim that they are tired, so Bean puts the doorknob back on his door (for some reason he takes it off and puts it into his fruit bowl; this is a running gag throughout the episode) and bids them farewell. Right outside the door, Rupert and Hubert come across two women who laugh at their paper hats before heading into the neighbour's apartment, where a swinging New Year's party is underway. They then ponder whether to leave or go to the party, ultimately deciding to do the latter.

Meanwhile, Bean is in bed and puts Teddy next to him before turning off the light and going to sleep. However, he hears the countdown process at the party across from him as well as everyone singing "Auld Lang Syne", indicating the real New Year has started. Confused, he turns the light back on and looks at the living room clock, which indicates that it's 1:40am. He then takes another clock out of his chest of drawers, which indicates that it's just past midnight. His blood boils with anger when finds out that Rupert and Hubert deceived him and attended the larger party next door. Just as Bean switches off the light, a person from the party shouts "Three cheers for Rupert and Hubert".

Act 2

Rowan Atkinson demonstrating a famous scene from the episode on a Mini at Goodwood Circuit

Its New Year's Day 1994, and Bean heads to the Arding and Hobbs department store to take full advantage of the January sales, nearly running over several pedestrians while parking. Dozens of other people have queued overnight to get there first, however Bean jumps to the head of the queue and stands in front of an alarm clock next to a sleeping bag supposedly containing someone inside of it. He then taps his watch indicating the alarm is about to go off, and it does, frightening the elderly couple sitting next to it. He then takes a beanie hiding a cabbage from under the sleeping bag along with a modelling balloon figure which he pops, revealing that he created the "person" as a fake and placed it there the night before in order to cheat his way to the front of the line. The doors finally open, and Bean excitedly runs in not knowing where to go first, so he heads downstairs.

Later, Bean has purchased many items, including an armchair, paint cans and an assortment of brushes and mops. After strapping the armchair to the roof, he runs into a problem: because he squeezed everything else inside of the car, there is no room left for himself. However, he gets an idea. Bean successfully constructs a way of remotely driving the car while sitting on the armchair, using some string attached to the steering wheel and creating a mop/broom combination stick to operate the accelerator, brakes, and clutch. At first, all goes incredibly well, until he ends up on a steep incline after swerving to avoid a road works barrier. He desperately tries to keep the car under control as it starts to pick up speed, and things get worse when the broom part of the stick pops off and gets stuck underneath the pedals when he tries to hit the brakes in a panicked frenzy. Now with no way to stop the car, his only braking method is to drive it into a parked lorry delivering mattresses, causing an explosion of feathers out the back.

Act 3

Back at his apartment, Bean begins to give it a makeover with the new items he has purchased, although it doesn't go as planned. He first realises that moving the table from in front of the hole in the kitchen wall and moving it to the other kitchen wall is impractical, as he can no longer drop objects onto it through the hole while he is in the kitchen (they just smash onto the ground). His solution: just move the hole. After getting exact measurements using three pencils (one in his mouth and one in each hand), he uses a reciprocating saw to cut out a section of the wall (cutting through several pictures - including those of the Royal family - and a telephone cable on the opposite side of the wall in the process) and simply moves it into the original hole.

He then decides to paint the whole living room white, but finds that the bristles on his paintbrush are dried solid. He uses a hammer to soften them, but when he goes into the living room and dips the brush into the paint, the bristles disappear into the paint, annoying Bean. In a cruel improvisation, Bean shoves the brush handle into Teddy's rear and uses his head to paint the walls. However, he manages to only get a few lines of paint done after accidentally dripping paint onto things. Finding some newspaper, he comes up with a solution: carefully covering virtually everything in the living room and kitchen (including each individual grape in his fruit bowl) in newspaper and when he runs out of paper to cover his clock, he uses the hat Hubert left behind.

Bean then comes across a huge firework cracker in a dusty box underneath his bed, and plants it into the can of paint. He ignites the fuse, but as he tries to escape, he realises that there is no doorknob as he wrapped it up and put it in the fruitbowl. He retrieves it and escapes just as the fuse nearly runs out and hides behind a corner in the hall. At that moment, a tired and hungover Hubert stumbles out of the neighbour's apartment covered in kiss marks from the party he and Rupert attended. He is just about to leave, when he realises that he left his hat in Bean's apartment and goes in to retrieve it just as the firecracker explodes. When Bean returns to his apartment, he is puzzled to find his front door wide open and a trail of white footprints leading out to the stairs.

He goes inside and is satisfied that his paint bomb worked, as his whole apartment is covered with white paint. However, he is shocked to discover a silhouette of Hubert getting his hat is frozen onto a section of wall as the only unpainted area and his clock covered in paint.

Deleted scene

The following scene was originally cut from the episode at the end of Act 2, though it was included in the early United States VHS releases.

Mr. Bean is shopping in a department store, when he sees a chair that he wishes to purchase. Upon approaching the reclining chair, he discovers that a sales assistant is already demonstrating its features to an elderly couple. In an attempt to fool them into thinking it's broken, he unplugs it, which is almost immediately noticed by the assistant.

While the elderly woman enjoyably sitting on a chair, Bean then sneaks up to a control panel on the chair's arm and tampering the wires inside, unknown to the elderly woman. As the elderly woman tries out the reclining feature this time, it folds over, sandwiching her in the middle, she yells to her hearing-impaired husband for help but is unheard despite being only a couple of metres away. In addition, Bean turns up the music playing on the store's intercom, to make it harder for her to be heard. Ultimately, she falls backward.

Music

The Kinks' 1964 hit You Really Got Me is featured in this episode, as is Des O'Connor's hit "Dick a Dum-Dum"

Broadcast and reception

Do-It-Yourself Mr. Bean was first broadcast on the ITV network on Monday 10 January 1994.

15.60 million viewers watched this episode on the original transmission. A repeat showing a year later on 7 January 1995, attracted a further 12.96 million viewers, out rating the final two episodes that aired later in the year.

Along with "Mr. Bean in Room 426", this episode has never been repeated on Nickelodeon UK for unknown reasons.

Editing

Since the death of Diana, Princess of Wales on 31 August 1997, the part of Act 4 where Bean decapitates her picture whilst cutting a new serving hatch has been cut, only showing Prince Charles, whose head Bean cuts through with the jigsaw.

Legacy

MythBusters tested the idea of painting with explosives in Mind Control after being inspired by a rerun of the episode. They first ran tests to see if it was really possible to cover an entire room with paint by exploding a firework in a paint can, but the method was proven impossible by the test.

In a later revisit in Painting with Explosives/Bifurcated Boat, Jamie Hyneman's twist on Mr. Bean's technique using a steel sphere was also busted while Adam Savage's snowflake frame twist on the idea worked, but not well enough to be either busted, confirmed or judged plausible.^[2] The scene where Bean removes the control cover on the chair and switches the wires around was adapted for The Inventor in the Mr. Bean animated series. Also Bean where he bought a chair is inspired in the Mr. Bean animated episode, Sofa.

Notes

References

External links

• "Do-It-Yourself Mr. Bean" at the Internet Movie Database