Plot
Blackadder is attempting to teach Baldrick the basic concepts of addition when he is appointed Lord High Executioner and Minister for Religious Genocide (because the previous incumbent signed his name on the wrong dotted line). To give himself a long weekend, he makes a simple change by moving up the date of execution for Lord Farrow (From Wednesday to Monday).
However, this simple change goes completely awry when the Queen allows Farrow's wife to visit her husband in prison on Tuesday, the day before his originally scheduled execution, not aware that he has already been executed. As he is already too late, Blackadder has to pretend to be Farrow, disguising himself with a bag over his head, as the Queen had given Lady Farrow a death warrant to give to Edmund should he refuse her. He is nearly thwarted, first when he discovers that Farrow had many individual traits, such as a deep voice, being much taller than him, and missing half an arm, and then when Lady Farrow attempts to take the bag off his head. Afterward, the Queen decides to pardon Farrow, saying 'He probably is innocent anyway', and everything looks bleak for Blackadder. Deciding that the only way to get around this problem is to pretend that he had said something traitorous on the way to the Queen, who is on her way to visit another man named Ponsonby, and he and Percy had cut his head off in the hallway. Upon searching for the head in Traitor's Cloister, they realise the plan will not work, as the head already looks decomposed. However, Lord Percy notices that the head that Blackadder found on Farrow's spike isn't his, but Ponsonby's, meaning that Baldrick had killed the wrong man. Blackadder is relieved and hurriedly head to the prison to pretend to be Ponsonby for the Queen, just as he had done with Farrow.
Read more about this topic: Head (Blackadder)
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“The westward march has stopped, upon the final plains of the Pacific; and now the plot thickens ... with the change, the pause, the settlement, our people draw into closer groups, stand face to face, to know each other and be known.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“But, when to Sin our byast Nature leans,
The careful Devil is still at hand with means;
And providently Pimps for ill desires:
The Good Old Cause, reviv’d, a Plot requires,
Plots, true or false, are necessary things,
To raise up Common-wealths and ruine Kings.”
—John Dryden (1631–1700)