Do-It-Yourself Mr. Bean

Do-It-Yourself Mr. Bean
Season	1
Episode	9
Air date	January 10, 1994
Written by	Robin Driscoll, Rowan Atkinson
Directed by	John Birkin
Previous	Mr. Bean in Room 426
Next	Mind the Baby, Mr. Bean

Do-It-Yourself Mr. Bean is the ninth episode of the live-action TV series. It originally aired over ITV on January 10, 1994.

Plot

Act One: Mr. Bean's party

It's New Year's Eve 1993 and Mr Bean is excited. He has invited his two best friends Rupert and Hubert over to his flat for a New Year party and is putting the finishing touches on his decorations, which aren't much (a circle of chairs in the living room and a bunch of balloons hanging from the front door). He greets his neighbour who is also throwing a party, and goes back inside to prepare for his guests' arrival. Soon enough, Rupert and Hubert arrives they realise that it's not really the party they were expecting: Bean gives his guests party hats made of newspaper, assigns them designated chairs, and the only form of entertainment is a radio. Bean then realizes he forgot to prepare refreshments, so he goes into the kitchen and takes out a tin of Twiglets and a bottle of champagne. However, he discovers there is only one Twiglet left and enough champagne to fill only half a cup, so Bean improvises by using a butcher knife to chop up a tree branch outside his kitchen window and dips them in a tin of Marmite in an attempt to disguise them, and adds sugar to a bottle of vinegar to sweeten it. 

As the night goes on, it becomes apparent that Rupert and Hubert are not having a good time. They've uncovered that the "food" they've been given isn't genuine (there's a small leaf growing on Rupert's Twiglet and Hubert is grossed out by the smell of vinegar) and refuse to eat it, despite Bean eating his and pretending to like it. Bean then heads back to the kitchen to get more "snacks", and this time he pours the contents of a bird feeder outside onto a plate. While he is doing this, a fed up Rupert and Hubert turn the clock in the living room to just before midnight, and by the time Bean returns, the clock chimes and they say "Happy New Year!", prompting Bean to say  "Doesn't time fly when you're enjoying yourself".  They then link hands (almost forgetting Teddy) and sing "Auld Lang Syne", although Bean over-excitedly rushes through the song. 

Rupert and Hubert then feign yawning and claim that they are tired, so Bean puts the doorknob back on the door (for some reason, he had taken it off and put it into a fruitbowl; this is a recurring gag throughout the episode) and bids them goodnight. Right outside the door, Rupert and Hubert encounter two women who laugh at their paper hats, prompting the men to yank them off in a hurry. They witness the women heading into the neighbour's flat, where a swinging New Year's party is underway, and ponder whether to leave or go to the party, ultimately deciding to do the latter. 

Meanwhile, Mr. Bean is in bed and puts Teddy next to him before turning off the light and going to sleep. However, he hears the countdown process at the party across from him as well as everyone singing "Auld Lang Syne". Confused, Bean turns the light back on and gazes at the clock in the living room, which shows that it is 1:40 AM. He then takes out a smaller clock from his chest of drawers, which indicates that it is just past midnight, revealing that the real New Year has started. Bean becomes angered as he realizes that Rupert and Hubert deceived him and attended the party across the hall, and just as he switches off the light again, a person from the party shouts "Three cheers for Rupert and Hubert!". 

Act Two: The Sale

For the deleted scene, see The Chair.

It's New Year's Day 1994, and Bean rushes to the Arding and Hobbs department store to take advantage of the January sales, nearly running over several pedestrians while parking. Dozens of other people have queued overnight to get in first, however Bean jumps to the head of the queue and stands in front of an alarm clock next to a sleeping bag supposedly containing someone in it. He then taps his watch to indicate that the alarm is about to go off, which it does, scaring the elderly couple sitting next to it. Bean then takes a beanie hiding a cauliflower from under the sleeping bag,which he threw into a trash bin, and with a modeling balloon figure, which he pops, revealing that he created the "person" as a dummy and placed it there the night before in order to cheat his way to the front of the queue. The store finally opens, and Bean excitedly runs inside not knowing where to start, so he head downstairs. 

Later, Bean has purchased many items, including the armchair that was on display in the window, tins of paint, and an assortment of brushes and mops. After strapping the armchair to the roof, Bean runs into a problem: because he squeezed everything else inside of his Mini, there is no room left for himself. However, he manages to construct a way of driving the Mini while sitting on the armchair. He first places a brick attached to a string in front of the front wheel to hold the Mini, and releases the handbrake. He then uses a paint can attached to another string to operate the clutch, further strings for the gear stick and steering wheel, and joins his mop and broom together to form a long rod with which to operate the accelerator and foot brake. At first, all goes incredibly well, but Bean hasn't see a danger sign nearby as he ends up on a steep downhill slope after swerving to avoid a roadworks barrier. He struggles to keep the car under control as it picks up speed, and things get worse when the head of the broom becomes stuck under the pedals and eventually comes off when Bean tries to get it loose. Now with no way to stop the car, it is too late, and his only braking method is to drive into a parked lorry filled with delivering mattresses, creating an explosion of feathers once he crashes.

Looks like Bean didn't see that coming.

Act Three: The Window

Back in his house, Mr Bean pushes the armchair into place and sighs, takes the doorknob off, and puts it in the fruit bowl. He then coughs out feathers. Then he moves the new armchair in place of the old one. Suddenly, he realises he needs to fill out the hole by the counter because he drops stuff (specifically, a ketchup bottle, a coffee jar, and a fruit bowl) through them. so he goes to the other wall with the measurements obtained by a pencil in his mouth and one in each hand. He then proceeds to drill on the line, unknowingly cutting the strings from a teddy bear birthday painting, cutting through the lower right corner of a kitten painting, through the phone line, making the phone stop ringing, at which point he stops because he thought he heard something, but having cut the phone line, it stopped ringing. He then resumes, decapitating Queen Elizabeth II (only the top part), Princess Diana and Prince Charles (through the necks), going through up up between legs and up from the groin of a shiny tanned bodybuilder. Then he takes the rectangle he cut out, and puts it in the other hole.

He takes out the paintbrush but it's dried solid. So he gets out a hammer and starts softening it. Then he goes into the living room, dips the brush into the paint, making the paint bubble and the bristles sink into the paint. So he takes Teddy, tells him to look the other way, and shoves the brush handle (the metal bit rather), into his rear. Then he dips his head in paint and tries to paint the wall but only managing to do a few lines, and getting paint splatter on the nearby lampshade, as well getting some on the nightstand the paint can was placed on. So he grabs the newspaper, which gives him an idea. he carefully wraps everything in newspaper, exactly as it normally is, including every individual grape of the bunch. He only has the clock left and only a strip of paper, so he uses the hat, which Hubert forgot behind, to cover the clock. He then comes across a big cracker in a dusty box under the footstool, and he has another idea. He puts it in the tin of paint, lights the fuse, and goes to run out the door, only to realise there's no doorknob. So he hurriedly unwraps the doorknob, right as the fuse is almost to the point, and he runs out and round the corner and plugs his ears and shuts his eyes.

Right then, Hubert leaves the party in the flat across, all tired and drunk, and realises he forgot his hat, so he knocks on Mr. Bean's door, no answer. So he goes in, and that's when the cracker goes off. Mr. Bean goes to look, and sees the exploded tin dripping, satisfied that his paint bomb method had worked. However, to his surprise and confusion, he notices white footprints of Hubert from his front door, and a silhouette of Hubert fetching his hat is frozen onto a section of wall as the only unpainted area.

Trivia

• "Dick-A-Dum-Dum (King's Road)" and "When You're Smiling" by Des O'Connor and "You Really Got Me" by The Kinks was heard at Mr Bean's party.
• Near the end of Act 1, Mr. Bean is shown using a Thunderbirds bed sheet and pillowcase.
• It would be a waste of food when he throws away the cauliflower.
• After Mr. Bean finishes his shopping, the real-life footwear retailer Freeman, Hardy and Willis can be seen in the background. It would close down in 1998, four years after this episode aired.
• When Mr. Bean and his Mini enter the delivery truck, feathers burst out. This implies he collided with and destroyed a down-filled duvet or pillow inside the truck.
• Nestlé's Nescafe and Heinz ketchup jars are shown in his apartment.
• Mr. Bean would have used a ruler to measure the new wall for a windowed wall. However, he had marked a rectangle before he cut it out.
• The cut-out rectangle still have the decors (corner of the cat painting, shred of photo of a woman, a picture of Queen Elizabeth II, heads of Princess Diana and Prince Charles, telephone wire, and half of the bodybuilder) stick on it without dangling or falling. They are just glued on the wall.
• The scene where Mr Bean uses Teddy as a paintbrush is referred to in the animated series episode, "A Royal Makeover" where he use it to stamp patterns on the new wall.
• The scene of the paint explosion is referred to by the SpongeBob SquarePants' episode, "Wet Painters" where SpongeBob and Patrick create a giant bubble of paint as violently bursts with white paint to paint Mr. Krab's room - although the SpongeBob series began five years after this episode aired.
• In the VHS and DVD, the episode 9 is Mind the Baby, Mr. Bean and the episode 10 is Do-It-Yourself Mr. Bean.
• When Mr. Bean applies damaged paintbrush on the paint, it produces bubbles with bubbly sound, meaning the paint is fluid and watery, not thick and mucilaginous. It wouldn't be possible for syrup-like bubbles to be created and popped that fast.
• The explosion of paint to cover the entire room is a highly cartoonish myth:
  • The Mythbusters episode, "Mind Control", with "Painting With Explosives" experiment. The myth is considered busted because the only 40% of the walls, ceiling and floor receive paint from explosion, including shrapnel damage which even a plastic paint container can.
  • Several areas are shown painted that would not be: the kitchen is fully painted even though the internal wall would have prevented the blast reaching it; the walls behind the furniture are painted even though the furniture would have blocked the blast; and the back of Mr Bean's door is painted, even though Hubert opened the door, the door is open when Mr. Bean re-enters the room where Hubert just left, and it is unlikely Hubert closed the door while retrieving his hat from a room with a firework about to explode.
  • The shape of Hubert grabbing his hat would not be precisely outlined. Also, Hubert may have been harmed by the exploding shrapnel.
  • The white painted footprints show that Hubert was walking away rather than running as you might expect. This also means that Mr Bean would have returned in time see Hubert walking out of the room.
• The dynamite's ignited wick is closer to the blast, but becomes delayed when Hubert enters the room. 
• The scene where Mr. Bean creates a control on couch and Mini is inspired on the animated series episode, "The Inventor" where he uses toy cars and remote controls to modify Mrs. Wicket's couch.
• There was a hidden stage driver controlling the Mini for safety purposes.
• Mr. Bean would have taken all of his furniture instead of wrapping them with newspaper and leave them inside. Because of that, not only Hubert's paint silhouette is created, but also other furniture that block the paint splattering.
• This episode also shows he would end up in trouble once again, (e.g. blowing up a can of paint in his living room as he could technically have killed Hubert and driving his car while he is in a chair on the roof. It's a wonder why the police officer in the patrol car did not drive after him.)
• The shot of Mr. Bean decapitating Princess Diana's picture was cut from later airings following her death in a car crash in 1997. Some countries showed the scene after the Princess' death.
• The scene of Mr. Bean riding on Mini is used by Rowan Atkinson himself on September 4, 2015 outside Buckingham Palace to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Mr. Bean.
• This is the first episode to use the 1993 Tiger Aspect Productions logo.
• This episode aired one year later after Mr. Bean in Room 426.