Beautiful Serendipity

Perhaps my favorite episode of Coupling re-aired this week, and given my venting in previous post, it was quite serendipitous.

In this episode Susan and Steve are preparing for Susan's baby. We open with Steve having a dream where a plane crash he obviously has no control over is a metaphor for the pregnancy. Awake, they sign up for antenatal classes. Susan asks Sally to join them as Steve's back up. Sally asks Jane to come as her back up. Jane demands new beau Oliver joins her, and he ropes Patrick in because he doesn't want to be the only bloke there. Joy of joys, at the class itself, Patrick is revealed to have slept with most of the women there, during times they were dating their SOs. Blah blah blah. The men adn women are paired off separately to discuss birthing issues. In the question of pain relief, the men unanimously decide on the epidural as the only sensible option (and while I'm friendly with the idea of the epidural, I really don't care all that much what Denise chooses for this) and all the women toss it out. Steve follows with a beautiful instruction for all of the participants to go home, take off their shoes and socks, purposefully stub their toes and try to make the pain go away by breathing.

Anyhoo, Susan eventually tells Steve that she's decided that even though she doesn't want an epidural, she knows she'll ask for one when the pain gets bad and she instructs Steve to make her request the meds three times before letting the doctors administer the meds (I only hope she puts this in writing and submits it to the hospital beforehand, otherwise the docs won't listen to Steven anyway). Steven is now given control over something in the pregnancy, and while incredibly miniscule, it puts him afloat emotionally.

We end with Steve dreaming of the plane again. This time everyone on board but him ate the chicken and got extreme food poisoning. The stewardess recruits him to help as he'll be the only one capable when the time comes--and then hands him a bucket and mop to clean up all the pending vomit with, as the plane's autopilot and autolander will take care of the plane--he's only needed for clean-up. I thought it a great metaphor for the insignificance of the significant power he was given.

I suppose I should have put a spoiler alert up at the top for Adj, as she actually watches the show too.