Goodnight Mr. Bean

"Goodnight Mr. Bean" is the thirteenth episode of the British television series Mr. Bean, produced by Tiger Aspect Productions and Thames Television for Central Independent Television. It was first broadcast on ITV on Tuesday, 31 October 1995.^[1][2]

Plot[]

Act 1: The Hospital[]

Because his left hand got stuck in a teapot, Mr. Bean drives to hospital where he parks his car right behind an ambulance, obstructing the rear doors in the process. Inside, Bean gets impatient while waiting in the queue and cheats his way to the front by throwing a little girl's doll and then starting a fight between two men. After Bean pulls his numbered ticket from the dispenser, he races towards the last remaining chair in the waiting room, sitting down just in time to prevent a frail old man from sitting there. He sits next to a seriously-injured female patient (with head wrapped in bandages, and an arm and a leg in plaster), and taunts her by stretching his neck, waving his hands, and crossing his legs. Bean sees his ticket numbered 76 as the digital counter shows 23. Just as Bean checks the time on his watch, he inadvertently reveals his hand stuck in his teapot, prompting the woman at the reception desk and the patient sitting next to him to laugh at him.

Annoyed with how long he is forced to wait, Bean then swaps his ticket for a lower numbered ticket, showing 52, from the severely-injured patient, and sneakily turns the digital counter upside down so that 25 will look like 52. However, the patient thwarts Bean by grabbing on the handle of the teapot on his hand, and the digital counter is turned around back to its normal position after patients complain of their tickets being ignored and skipped. Some time later, Bean falls asleep in waiting and, as the digital counter reaches the real 52, wakes up and loses his ticket (back to the patient who originally had it). As a result, Bean has to get another ticket and he, once again, starts a fight between the same two men from earlier to get immediately to the reception desk. Bean gets angry and frustrated when he takes a higher number ticket and he throws it in the bin, but his other hand becomes stuck as he tries to push down the ticket into the bin to show his frustration. Unable to recover it, he uses his mouth to take out another ticket from the dispenser, and Bean walks to his seat with his hand still stuck in the bin.

Act 2: The Queen's Guard[]

Following the hospital, Bean visits Windsor Castle where he takes a few photographs, including one of the inside of a dustbin and another of a nude statue after covering the private part with a plastic wrapper from the bin. He then pries the gnomon off a sundial to place his Polaroid camera on the stand, in order to get a photo of himself with a Queen's Guard (Rupert Vansittart). He dresses the guard up with flowers and other things, trims his moustache (into a toothbrush style, similar to that of Adolf Hitler and Charlie Chaplin) and hangs Teddy off his bayonet. While Bean is doing this, the guard attempts to remain motionless (which proves difficult as especially when Bean starts to dangerously clean the trigger of his rifle). Just as Bean has wound the self timer on his camera, the charge is called and the guard marches away along with Teddy just before the camera snaps the photo. Off screen, Bean groans in anger and frustration from this.

Act 3: Sleeping Trouble[]

Later that night, Bean gets ready for bed (after using his new electric toothbrush to clean his teeth and ears, reading an Asterix comic with Teddy and then putting Teddy to sleep and finally shooting out the incandescent light bulb with a pistol) but has trouble falling asleep. He scares away noisy cats outside the window by disguising himself as a dog and barking, then tries sleeping in different positions (along with sleeping with his face on pillow until he can't breathe), then watches a chess game on TV. As he nearly falls asleep, he becomes startled when the television channel cuts to a Bodyform advertisement featuring loud rock music. Finally, he takes out a picture of a flock of sheep and begins counting them, first with his finger and then, after losing count a few times, with the assistance of a calculator. When he sees the number of sheep (albeit inaccurate) on the calculator display, he instantly falls asleep. During the closing credits, he rolls out of bed, and at the very end falls onto the floor.

Cast[]

• Rowan Atkinson as Mr. Bean
• Elizabeth Bennett as Hospital Receptionist
• Suzy Aitchison as Hospital Nurse
• Rupert Vansittart as Queen's Guard

Production[]

The opening and closing titles featured a new recording of the choral theme, performed by the Choir of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, which debuted in Tee Off, Mr. Bean. The first act was filmed at the permanently closed National Temperance Hospital in London. Studio sequences were recorded before a live audience at Teddington Studios.^[3]

The scene in Act 2 where Bean covered the private part of the nude statue of an angel with a plastic wrapper from the waste bin for censorship purposes before the picture was taken was replicated in the Mr. Bean: The Animated Series episode "Art Thief". The other episode "Big TV" also featured Bean turning on his television with a glove attached to a broomstick, as referenced on the latter part of Act 3. The scene in Act 1 where Mr. Bean parked the car behind the ambulance and obstructing the rear doors was reproduced in the episode "A Running Battle". The scene where Bean went into frustration after the picture was taken is also similar to the scene in the episode "In the Wild" of Mr. Bean: The Animated Series where Bean was mad after he took a picture of Wild Animals, after he realized that he forgot to take out the cap of the camera's lens, before the Wild Animals left Bean behind.

Censorship[]

The scene where Bean turns the light off by shooting the incandescent light bulb with his pistol was cut from some broadcasts for this episode on Nickelodeon, due to its violent nature.

References[]

External links[]

• "Goodnight Mr. Bean" at IMDb