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© Companions of the Longbow
Robin Hood Goofs - Episode 13
Episode 13 "A Clue: No"
England welcomes home King Richard and Marian's impending marriage is brought forward; can Robin save Marian in time?
Robin Goes Killy Yet Again
At the cliff hanger to the last episode, the sheriff, Sir Guy and his men are coming up on the hiding place where Robin, the Merry Men and the apparently now dead Marian are holed up. Robin, in his grief, decides to its time to kill everyone and a big fight ensues where, along with Little John and Much, he shoots everything that moves. More fantasy archer ensues as without the aid of the thumb ring he manages shoot a quick succession of arrows with deadly accuracy on the “wrong” side of his bow. Of course Sir Guy and the sheriff escape unharmed and shortly afterwards he finds out that Marian isn’t dead after all. So, does he regret killing again? Even a little flicker of regret? After all, he said he wasn’t ever going to kill anyone ever again. That’ll be a “no” then.
Djaq’s Medical Qualifications
Okay, so Marian is dead. Djaq said so. It takes Alan A Dale from ten paces away in a gloomy cave to point out that she’s still breathing. Djaq squints her eyes for a moment and voices the opinion that the blade that stabbed her must have been coated with hemlock which forced her into a near death experience. Marian’s young and she’ll be OK after a couple of days rest. Phew! What a save. She nearly gave the game away that she clearly knows “Djaq all” about medicine.
Hiding in the bedroom
The scene: Marian is recovering in bed back at her father’s house. Robin and the Merry Men are up in her bedroom tucking her in when Sir Guy arrives and demands to see his fiancée who he thinks is feigning illness to get out of marrying him. Quick, everyone hide! Much hides behind the bedroom door, Little John slides under the bed, Djaq climbs into the empty chest that Marian keeps empty in case little Saracen women need to hide, Alan hangs out of the window and Robin? Well Robin must’ve leapt like Spiderman up into the ceiling rafters and then shimmied along to position himself over Marian’s bed. Sir Guy arrives, has a chat with the ill Marian and then leaves. Now if Robin were to drop now he’d land knee first in Marian’s stomach and probably make her feel a bit poorly, so off camera, as always, he shimmies back along the ceiling rafters to drop clear of the bed. Everyone else emerge from their respective hiding places including Alan who needs help to be pulled in from the window. Except everyone seems to have forgotten that way back in episode Episode 7 "Brothers in Arms" Robin spent some considerable time hiding and eavesdropping on Marian and Sir Guy’s conversation at the window by standing on the veranda ledge. This ledge is big enough to take all the Merry Men but even Alan seems to have forgotten that it should be still there.
Hello, My Name is Friar Little John
The king is back in Nottingham and everyone except Robin (who is mooching off to be sad about Marian marrying Sir Guy) and Much (who follows Robin every where) and Marian (who has to put a net curtain over her head and is off to marry Sir Guy) and Marian’s dad (who wants to speak to the king more than see his only daughter married) decide to sneak back into the castle (again). They do this by disguising themselves as monks. The costume department gets to stick their oar for the last time and manage to make half of the monks’ robes blue, but undeterred the Merry Men manage to fool the guards (what a surprise) and position themselves in the great hall. The sheriff is there too. The thing is, Little John has his face and massive trademark beard in plain sight and yet the sheriff fails to recognise him. Not a flicker. This is the same Little John who less than two episodes ago was straddling the terrified sheriff as he was about to bash his brains out. Now of course you could argue that as the sheriff wants to capture all his enemies so he’s pretending not to notice him. But Little John doesn’t know this does he, so why doesn’t he tuck his face away, eh?
Ringing the Church Bell
To cut a long dull story short, Much figures out that the king isn’t really the king but an impostor set up by the sheriff to flush out the sheriff’s enemies. He heads straight to the church where Marian and Sir Guy were getting married and manages to tell her and ring the church bell. Heart broken Robin who was about to head off into the sunset hears the bell, perks up, rides back into Locksley, picks up Much and Marian and rides off back to Nottingham to save the day. Hurrah! Except most people when they hear a church bell being rung when a wedding is taking place would assume that it’s in celebration on the completion of the ceremony.
Did I Just Miss Something?
Right then, Much and Robin must break into the castle (again) to warn everyone that the king isn’t really the king. They find a handy piece of rope laying around outside the castle wall, (as you do) tie it to an arrow and shoot it over the battlements. Next scene we see Robin pointing an arrow at the sheriff. All perfectly natural right? Keeps the story moving along, right? The thing is the sheriff had set up an elaborate trap for the people back in the main hall. He had his impostor king say enemies were at home (gasp) and he wanted the sheriff arrested (gasp again). The king then says that everyone must give evidence according to some made up idea about French law that the writer concocted on the day because someone remembered their schoolboy French for “left” and “right”. This works by having the witnesses who want to give evidence for the king going down a corridor and turning left into a room to give their testimony. Those who want to give evidence against the sheriff going down the corridor and turning right into another room to do the same. Of course in the room in the right is the sheriff. With a big pointy dagger.
What happens is demonstrated by the first floppy hatted noble who enters. The sheriff stabs him in the gut and, like all people stabbed in the gut, he goes down and dies without a sound so as not to give the game away to everyone waiting in the main hall.
Right, back to Robin shooting that arrow over the battlements. We don’t get to see it but what obviously happens is that he shoots it over the battlements, gets it to anchor into something that will take his weight, shimmies up the rope, fights the guards, gets into the main building undetected, somehow learns about the trap, I don’t know, maybe he figures it all out in his head, or he overhears it, or reads it from off the big white board that the sheriff has in office with the title “My Fake King Plan” written over the top, but anyway, he sneaks his was past everyone in the main hall, down the corridor and into the room where the sheriff is waiting and this where we as the viewers get to pick up on the rest of the story. It’s obvious when you think about it.
The Rope Pulley System
The games up and now everyone’s back in the main hall having a bit of a scuffle. The Merry Men decide to beat a hasty retreat up the main hall stairs, along the balcony and out. But oh dear what this? Much has delayed too long and the sheriff has a dagger against his throat. What will Robin do? Well with a nod to Little John and a bit of help from two guards who right at that moment have burst through the balcony door, Robin chucks one end of the rope to Little John who pulls a blanket from out of his backside, tosses it over the two guards and wraps the rope around the now struggling bundle. Meanwhile Robin ties the other end of the rope around an arrow and shoots it up into the rafters. We don’t get to see the path of the arrow, we just get to see the crowd in the hall follow it – a bit like watching a crowd watching a ball at a tennis match. Anyway, based on the sounds and the crowd’s reaction it’s quite obvious the arrow goes up into the rafters, hits a cow bell, hits a second cow bell, threads itself through some sort of rudimentary pulley system and then we see it come straight down to land in-between the big toe and second toe of the sheriff’s right flip-flop. Robin nods to Little John again and Little John pushes the guards in the blanket through the balcony rail which pulls on the rope and yanks the sheriff up into the air to be left hanging upside down. Robin stops to laugh at his own joke about keeping the sheriff hanging around before we see the Merry Men do Morcombe and Wise skips outside down the steps of the great hall before the picture freezes capturing all of them doing Borat high-fives and the end credits roll.
Of course what’s wrong with all of this is the fact that there is no way on earth a flip-flop could hold the weight of a fully grown man. Do you think we were born yesterday BBC?
The End....