Porterhouse True

Poet's Coroner
Mr. Peperium

Just a short reflection on perhaps Porterhouse Blue's choicest thrust at knee-jerk Liberal Academia. I'm thinking of the scene after the lecture on Birth Control. Over cocoa in the quad, a young, unattractive but desperately earnest female student opines that sex--as in human reproduction--is a terrible problem that must be eliminated. As our hero leaves the room, she calls after him, "You won't miss next week's lecture on genocide, will you?"

And there, in about as tidy a nutshell as one could wish, the "internal contradictions" of Liberalism smile up at us.

Also, nowhere else has television given us a better summation of Conservatism. The two best lines are:

"Things work if you just leave them alone." --Scullion

and

"No matter how many things they (Liberals) improve, they never get any better themselves." --The Dean

True, the ending is a bit problematic. But somehow I prefer it to the alternative, in the same way that I prefer shiftless, aimless Bertie Wooster over dynamic, driven Honoria Glossop.

Thanks to Irish Elk for bringing this little gem to our attention. It was, at times, excruciating to watch for the same reasons the British version of The Office is excruciating: because it is so true. And I call this gem little because, unlike most BBC productions (Upstairs Downstairs and Monarch of the Glen spring to mind) Porterhouse says its say in four curt episodes.

Comments

[Mrs. Peperium]

Mr. P, You and I are in disagreement about the end. I'll finally gotten my head around why I disagree and here it is.

It's the perfect ending as I truly think there is no malice. Not even on Skullion's part. These 3 men Skullion, the Dean and the other guy were products of an institution -- yes, outside of their world they made no sense what so ever and needed to be institutionalized but in their world, they were completely sane and dare I say it? Functioning.-- When that bozo who married the frigid and rich Hillary Clinton ( a marriage made only to better himself on his part and for her to have control on her part) --by the way the Clinton Presidency gave us Lewinsky as a code word for a certain behavior then in the interest of egalitarianism, Hillary Clinton needs to be the code word for a certain kind of woman as well -- became the master which was only because no one liked him in Parliament said "Skullion" it was somewhat inaudible, wasn't it?

Those two guys, the dean and whoever, who were products of a 1000 odd years of tradition. They realised the Master was dying. In instances like that, tradition takes over. Just like when Zipser and the cleaning lady blew the roof off, Skullion did not run to get the ambulatory services. He was too bent on not having his beloved school be caught in disgrace of letting strangers learn that some of the gentlemen at Porterhouse had become new-fangled gentlemen. They let rubber get in between them "when they were riveting a dolly" (that's the best line of the show). With men like Skullion and the dean tradition kicks in times of great duress to keep them going. Think of the English royal family still going to morning services at the nearby chapel the morning the ex-Princess of Wales bit the dust in a tunnel with a cocaine-addicted Muslim and you see what I mean. This is one of the most important roles of Tradition.

And in this case, Tradition demanded that if a dying master uttered a man's name, that man was the next Master, no questions asked. Even if, that man was a pastry chef as we later learned.

By the way, Skullion did learn that he was not responsible for the early demise of the Master. No court would have found him guilty. Assault perhaps, but surley no more. Besides having to be spoon fed, Skullion was more than qualified to be Master.

The script writers were especially brilliant to let Tradition dictate the ending. They need to be commended.