Friday the 14th

I try to watch the usual Halloween movie classics like everybody else, but more than anything else I make sure I watch one of my favorite Only Fools and Horses episodes, Friday the 14th. As I posted a few years ago from an article that seems to have been deleted from the Internet:

 ‘Friday the 14th’ is interesting because it works to highlight the inherent venality of the Trotter family. While Del, Rodney & even their crafty Grandad, are at heart good people (and Only Fools would not shine away from outright sentimentality at points), they are crooked, opportunistic, and will happily run away from a situation if they feel the long arm of the law bearing down on them. In this case, what appears to be the offer of a nice country cottage, rent-free, in Cornwall that the trio can escape to comes with a caveat – Del has made a deal with his old friend Boycie, who owns the cottage, to illegally salmon poach in order to make money from and exploit the local area. This makes the episode, to some extent, a cautionary tale. The Trotters are threatened by a dangerous external force for their hubris, for emerging from the moral vacuum of the crime-ridden, urban London landscape in order to remove natural resources from Mother Nature. Del placing a tub of writhing maggots on the dinner table as Rodney eats a curry with rice foreshadows this juxtaposition, suggesting horror before they even leave the homestead. 

WATCH THE WHOLE EPISODE ON BRITBOX, PEOPLE!!!