"Where's the Generalissimo?" "In Madrid!" Franco, known as the Generalissimo, was the dictator of Spain at the time.

Great job! The actress who plays Polly was his wife in real life. In the show, she is the maid and general assistant. His wife in the show is the older woman, Sybil.

Polly (Connie Boothe) was John Cleese's wife at the time and also the co-creator and co-writer of the show. She was born in Indianapolis, USA and met Cleese through acting in New York in the late 60s. They divorced in 78 before the second series was completed. Connie quit acting in 1995 to become a fulltime psychotherapist. Dago is a slang term for Italian/Spanish people in the UK, it's considered offensive. And finally, Mr. Fawlty deliberately told Manuel to call the builder a hideous orangutan, knowing that he would be punched in the face.

The plots in Fawlty Towers are very well structured; everything always comes together beautifully at the end.

The Urangutan thing was deliberate, Basil knew that making Manuel say that would get him punched in the face, even though Manuel had no idea what he was saying.

Any sitcom is as good as it's characters and how believable they are. This is a classic case of that.... surely this is one of the best comedy shows ever made.

The Roman named Hadrian built Hadrians wall that divides England from Scotland when they invaded, hence the joke about the wall

This episode sets the scene for future classic episodes. The relationship between Basil and his wife is firmly cemented in the viewers mind. I remember watching an interview with the late Joan Rivers and she gushed about Fawlty Towers saying she new every word from every episode by heart. They are worth watching again and again. Great reaction.

The display of fury from Sybil is why this is one of my favourite episodes because I can relate. Her reaction is exactly what I sometimes feel like doing when faced with other people's thoughlessness or incompetance.

Funfact...Mr O'Reilly was also Grandpa in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.Same actor

Glad you are persisting. I've heard someone say Fawlty Towers is particularly difficult to get through copyright. The older actress is Prunella Scales. She plays Sybil Fawlty, Basil's wife in the show. The younger actress is Connie Booth, who was John Cleese's wife in real life, but the receptionist in the show. Confusing. Pleb is short for Plebeian, the name given to commoners in Ancient Rome. It's used here in a derogatory sense, Basil is aspirational middle class, he looks down upon the laboring class. At the time this was made, Spain was still under General Franco, an authoritan fascist dictator. When the construction worker asked for the 'Generalissimo' meaning the boss, Manuel thought of Franco, hence his reply: Madrid.

Understanding the British sense of humour helps a lot.

I actually appreciate you stopping to debrief some of the frantic scenes bc there is SO much packed into these episodes that it's worth stopping to acknowledge and process it! I am analytical like you too and like to process verbally as I go. I grew up watching these in Australia and can recite every line and the cadence of every characters dialogue... and I STILL laugh 30 years later! I hope you keep finding ways to keep these on YT as they're ALL amazing episodes and I need to see you react to them all! New instasub!

British comedies tend to have a prolonged storyline, compared to American sitcoms. It's something that needs a longer attention span from the audience. Fawlty Towers basically has the 4 main characters: Mr. & Mrs. Fawlty (or Basil and Sybil), the owners of Fawlty Towers... Polly, the assistant... and Manuel, the immigrant employee... The series was created by John Cleese (Basil Fawlty) and Connie Booth (Polly) who were married at the time. The story is basically Mr. & Mrs. Fawlty are going away for the weekend, Polly is put in charge... Mrs. Fawlty told Mr. Fawlty to hire Stubbs to make some alterations to the hotel lobby, and strictly told him not to hire O'Reilly again because of past blunders... But determined to be stingy and stubborn, Mr. Fawlty hired O'Reilly again behind his wife's back to save money. Of course, thanks to Manuel's incompetence, O'Reilly's builders (without supervision) close off the dining room and put in a smaller door for upstairs (They were supposed to close off the drawing room from the lobby and install a door to the kitchen at the bottom of the stairs). If u watch another British comedy 'Coupling', it's very raunchy, but the storytelling is excellent... It's about the main couple Steve and Susan who get together after breaking up w/ their relationships... but their exes become friends - Steve becomes friends w/ Susan's ex Patrick... Susan becomes friend(ly) w/ his ex Jane... and then, throw in Susan's erratic friend Sally, and Steve's neurotic friend Jeff into the mix. One episode, for example... A wedding invitation comes in. Steve becomes terrified that Susan might want a proposal from him, since the couple getting married got together after they did, one year earlier... And they have plans for dining out to celebrate that occasion. Steve decides w/ Jeff and Patrick to have a phone call from them during dinner w/ Susan so that he can make an excuse to duck out and not have to propose... Meanwhile, Susan is mulling w/ Sally and Jane about the wedding invitation, because both Sally and Jane are single and jealous of the woman getting married... Susan isn't expecting a proposal from Steve, but she becomes flustered when Jane talks about how she would turn on Steve sexually when they were dating... So, Susan goes to the dinner w/ Steve on a mission - to prove to herself that she can turn Steve on just as effectively as Jane could... 🤣 U have to pay attention to the dialogue... Another 'Coupling' episode, u get 2 scenarios: A hot single woman sitting in a bar w/ Steve, Patrick and Jeff watching her from afar... One day later, u have Susan, Sally and Jane watching the same woman sitting in a bar from afar... The contrast between how men and women talk about this one woman is hilarious 🤣 And both times, Jeff is encouraged to approach that woman, who turns out not to be able to speak or understand English...

I love how several plot lines in FT are intertwined ( in most episodes) and are set up to go off like time bombs as a crescendo towards the end. 😉 According to Cleese the episodes were at first conceived and structured by Connie and him on large sheets of paper as several blocks of mini plots & loose ideas, which were then combined into more solid templates for each episode and its dialogue to be written around.

The most important take-away from this episode, is that I need a pair like Sibyl's pants.

LOVE and ADORE this series! Cleese was amazing.

Polly (Connie Booth) is his wife in real life and co writer of the episodes. By the second series they had divorced. Sybil (Prunella Scales) is his wife in the show. Manuel (Lennard Sachs) is actually German. When a child his family moved to England to escape oppression in Hitler's Germany. Roman Emperor Hadrian had a wall built in northern England over two thousand years ago as protection against attacks from the Scots. RSJ = Reinforced Steel Joist

"Plebs" is from an old Roman term, "plebeian"...it meant, in their time, someone who didn't have the right to voice themselves or direct the common goal, usually because they didn't own land, simply worked it, and thus were seen to have no stake in the future of The Republic....but it wasn't quite true...the Plebs ran, supported and understood the entire infrastructure of The Republic, yet had no say in anything as they were "Commoners"...not the Ruling-Class who were just used to everything being the way it was...too divorced from soil, too narcisstic to see a flower is only beautiful because it is the result...check your garden, I've yet to see a rose-head floating on air without leaves, stems, soil and roots...but, to be more pertinant, America actually seems to be about to approach, not a Civil-War, but something closer to Rome's uprising of the Plebs...and if you think I'm talking horseshit...look what happened in Canada when the truckers said "fuck you, fuck this, go fuck yourself"...wasn't the Canucks taking away their right to earn....the Canadian people sent them fuel, food and shelter...who shut down the bank-accounts of Canadian citizens?...

Loved your reaction as always. 👏👏👏👏😂

Hi R R Randy, enjoying all your reactions on here, three cheers to you ooo thanks

29:12 An RSJ stands for Rolled Steel Joist an ][ shaped girder used for supporting structures

Manuel is only human. Most men would find a sleeping Polly too beautiful to wake up.

Apparently they weighted the umbrella to make it more effective. O'Reilly was in genuine pain at the end of that scene 😲😁

Sybil is his wife on the show. Polly is the maid/assistant on the show, but she was his real wife at the time. Basil wants to hire O'Reilly, who always takes forever and does a crappy job. Sybli wants him to hire Stubbs, who is more expensive but does a better job and does it on time.

John Cleese was\is a physical actor\comedian as you may have noticed by now. As when he tells Polly to hit him harder, remember this for later in the series. Basil was based on a hotelier in Torquay that was apparently almost as bad as Basil. At the start John would write the male parts and Connie would write the female parts but by the time of the second series they were writing for both parts equally. Ballard Barclay (The Major) was an actor back in the day, he appeared in the film "In Which We Serve" starring Noel Coward, Richard Attenborough (John Hammond, Jurassic Park) and John Mills. Prunella Scales (Sybil) was fantastic in this, some years ago she made a TV series about travelling the English Canals on a narrowboat with her husband (Great Canal Journeys). Unfortunately I believe she has been diagnosed with dementia a few years ago (I really hope I am wrong on this though.) Andrew Sachs (Manuel) is a legend here, he even had a chart hit or two as far as I remember. Hope you enjoy the rest of the series, but there is one episode that is a bit controvertial as it uses some fairly rascist terms but it is funny, also it feels like the busiest episode as so much seems to happen. The "hotel" shown at the start was burnt down a number of years ago.

Back in 1975 when this was filmed, General Franco ("Generalissimo") had been the dictator of Spain for almost 40 years. Spain was the backwater of Western Europe, along with Portugal, which had a regime similar to Franco's. Spanish and Portuguese labour was cheap, hence the reason Fawlty hired Manuel. Franco passed away in Nov. 1975, and Spain became a constitutional democracy, holding free elections in 1977. By the time the second season of Fawlty Towers was aired in 1979, the "Generalissimo joke" would've been out of place.

FYI, RSJ = Rolled Steel Joist. (I beam)

Basil's wife is called Sybil. And it's Manuel, not Miguel.

Cybil is his wife in the show...Polly was his wife in real life (well was in the first series!).

That was an actual hotel but unfortunately it burnt down in 1991

Pleb is short for plebeian, and it does mean commoner. The opposite term is patrician, meaning someone upper class or wealthy or well educated or socially prominent. Dago is an insulting British term for a Spaniard; it's as insulting as calling a Mexican a wetback in the US.

While this was the second episode shown in the series, it was originally meant to be the first and was the first to be recorded. I'm not sure why they swapped "A Touch of Class" with "The Builders" - there's not much continuity between the two episodes, so I guess it was something they could do relatively easily. The lobby's layout changes slightly from episode to episode anyway so the re-build in the second episode wouldn't affect the continuity too much.

The work output for the builders would've been the same thing. Sybil just wanted Stubbs because they were more trustworthy and O'Reilly she didn't trust to do great work....as you found out later in the episode. And if you're a fan of the series, it's only 12 episodes and if you buy the remastered edition, you'll get commentary on all episodes with John Cleese and a separate commentary with the first and second series' directors. 10 out of 10, definitely recommend. John's very particular about what he likes about the series, what he would change about different episodes, filming facts, etc. He's also got quite the wheeziest laugh.

They were married 1968 to 1978,

Yowda yowda yowda ,where did that come from haha , police squad series comedy,top show by the way😊😊😊

Better Every Day -- Generalissimo Francisco Franco was the US-backed far-right fascist military dictator of Spain from 1936 till November 1975. Manuel is from Barcelona in Spain.

Lol you will 🙂

I could teach you a way to get around blocking

Check out "Waking Ned Devine"

It's a start and stop been scared of KZfaq, there's ways through it😜

You did not seem to think it was the least bit fun. I don't think I saw you laugh or smile during the whole video. What a pity.

When this was first shown in the 1970s Spain was run by a military dictatorship led by the 'Generalissimo' in Madrid ... 'Dago' is a derogatory word for a Spaniard. A corruption of Diego, perhaps? You have to listen to the language as well as the physical comedy, both are superb but the language is so rich that you can watch these several times and still miss a subtle joke. O'Reilly is a bit of a 1970s stereotype, the 'thick paddy'. That's why he's away with the fairies half the time. Things have moved on, thankfully.

😀Could you make a comedy like this today?😉

Whats up beautiful spirit❤🌹U R WONDERFUL🌹❤

"I don't really like talking over the show" - Yet you did, a lot!. Talking about pants you bought at a boot sale or whatever else. It's no wonder you missed the whole thing about the door you thought was there after it was explained at the start that the door would be closed off. You miss things when you ramble on while keeping the programme running. And these editing glitches throughout are really annoying too.

I see your struggling to understand characters,plot & storyline. Honestly never is a comedy more simplistic & understanding like Fawlty towers.

Polly and John Cleese were married in real life.

so it's ok for her to do that because she's a woman?