The Comic Strip, Part 37 - I can't look at hovels and I can't stand fences

"Queen of the Wild Frontier" - May 6, 1993

At the beginning of one of my undergraduate terms, I was having a conversation with a group of exchange students. One of them, a girl from the UK, wanted to talk to me, as she had heard that I had a car that was quite good for road trips. Turns out that the only reason that she took the exchange was so she could take a particular trip.

Me: "Where do you want to go?"
She: "Montana."
Me: "Where in Montana?"
She: "Just Montana."

The reason why she wanted to go to Montana was because she had hooked up for a weekend with some guy who said he was from Montana. As the guy was skipping town, he told her that all she needed to do to find him again was to come to America, go to Montana and ask for him, because everyone in Montana knew him.

Me: "What's his name?"
She: "Bill."
Me: "Bill what?"
She: "He told me to just go to Montana and ask for Bill."

Quick fun statistic to help put this story into perspective:

• Total approximate land area of the United Kingdom - 245,000 km¬≤
• Total approximate land area of Montana - 381,000 km¬≤

I don't think she caught up with Bill. If she did, I hope that she kicked the shit out of him. I bring this story up because the lead character in this episode sort of reminds me of her. I've met a handful of British women that were made from this mold, all seemed to be headed out to the wilderness to work the land and wear flannel. Their only regret seemed to be the inaccessibility of HP Sauce in the Badlands.


I love the look of this episode - it could not only very easily be a film, it could very easily be a very good film. It feels even more different than these episodes generally do, because the cast is almost entirely new - Peter Richardson turns up for about three minutes as a yuppie neighbor, and Alexei Sayle shows up to almost steal the show as a police chief. The episode was broadcast a few months before the Harrison Ford version of The Fugitive was released, but it's hard to watch Sayle giving instructions to his search party without thinking that they're doing a goof on Tommy Lee Jones. It's a hilarious moment, and it doesn't detract from the tone of the episode as a whole, which is quite a neat trick.