Roadworks (stylised as ROADWORKS in the title card) is the 9th episode of Season 1 of the Animated Series.
Synopsis
YouTube
Roadworks outside of Mr. Bean's flat cause him grief, and so he goes to stop the road workers.
IMDb
Mr. Bean is tormented by loud roadworks on his street, and tries his best to cope with it.
Plot
The episode starts with Mr. Bean sleeping peacefully in his flat, only to be woken up by a loud drilling noise coming from outside. The noise also causes an earthquake inside the flat and even makes a clock on the wall fall off before it is caught by Bean. Curious to the source of the noise, Mr. Bean looks outside his flat and sees a duo of road workers; one of which is reading the newspaper and the other who is drilling up the pavement with a jackhammer. As the clock falls from the wall again and shatters on the ground, an annoyed Bean opens the window and yells out at the two workers, only to be caught by the window falling back on him; the road workers temporarily pause what they are doing as they hear his yelps from his flat and brush it off. Still stuck in the window, Mr. Bean struggles and then screams as he falls from his flat and into the bushes below, leaving behind his pyjama pants fastened to the window.
Getting up from the bushes, Mr. Bean decides to get assertive and walks up to the two road workers, ranting angrily at them, but they simply laugh at him. Bean then realizes that he has lost his pyjama pants and, covering his shame with his shirt, walks back into his flat as they continue making fun of him. Covering up his lower half with the door mat, which is not flexible enough nor wide enough to also hide his exposed rear end, Bean finds the key hidden under the door mat and unlocks the door, falling backwards as he does so.
As the road workers get back to work, Mr. Bean attempts to fix his pyjama pants with a sewing machine, but the vibrations coming from the jackhammer shake up his flat again and cause him to accidentally sew the pants' legs together. The short road worker then brings in a bigger jackhammer and activates it, causing an even more violent earthquake inside Bean's flat. As his possessions in the flat move around from the vibrations, Mr. Bean attempts to keep the shelves of a nearby storage cabinet closed, but in doing so, the door on the right opens and causes a stack of bowls to fall and break.
Mr. Bean then tapes, nails, glues, chains, and ties up everything in his flat, including nailing Teddy to a chair, in an attempt to counter the vibrations from the road work outside, but this fails when the short road worker has now used a rammer compactor. After almost getting crushed by a falling grandfather clock, Bean then goes outside and secretly switches off the engine of the rammer to disable it. As the two road workers try to figure out what happened, Mr. Bean hides in the work tent and moves over to the rammer. Using a screwdriver from a Swiss army knife, he then cranks the meter of the rammer up to maximum.
Outside, the big road worker flips through the pages of a book and finds a page detailing how to turn it on. Pointing this out to his smaller co-worker, the latter then turns the switch on the engine the opposite way and pushes the button, starting up the rammer again. Unaware of what's going on outside, Mr. Bean decides to test out the rammer and is soon propelled up into the air along with the tent when it pounds. Falling back down, the rammer keeps bouncing around the place like a pogo stick with Mr. Bean hanging on for dear life, even smashing the roof of his car. While this chaos is going on, the big road worker points to a page about turning off the rammer and the small road worker deactivates the engine. With the rammer finally off, Mr. Bean crashes back down with it while the tent safely falls back onto the place where it originally was.
Now back in his flat sitting on his armchair with pillows tied to his ears, Mr. Bean struggles to put up with the vibrations from the rammer as they once again shake his flat up and move his possessions, even changing the channels on his TV. Later, Bean then resorts to relaxing in the water-filled bathtub with a snorkel on, but the vibrations cause most of the water to splash out as he stands up and coughs as some of the water has gotten into his mouth.
Trying another solution to stop the commotion outside, Mr. Bean takes all of his eggs out of their cartons and places them in the fridge, then tapes the cartons to his window to block out the noise. Tossing aside the rope, tape, chains and nails, he straightens a photo of the Leaning Tower of Pisa on the wall before deciding to adjust it back at an angle to make the building in the photo seem straight, then rests on his armchair as he plays classical music on the record player. However, it turns out that the road workers were just on a brief lunch break, and the moment they resume their work, Mr. Bean's flat is shaken up once again, with the tremors causing the record player needle to scratch the record. With his relaxation disrupted again, he sees the cartons falling off the window and runs into the kitchen to see everything in it vibrating, with the fridge even opening as the eggs in it fall and shatter on the floor. Enraged by this, Mr. Bean decides he's finally had enough.
Holding a petition signed solely by him (including Teddy's name), Mr. Bean angrily marches outside and confronts the road workers, pointing to the petition and telling them to cut it out, but they have no idea what he is trying to convey. He then decides to meet up with his elderly neighbor, explaining the road work outside to him and trying to request his signature on the petition, but the latter is unable to hear him clearly, enraging him. Marching to the next door on the block, Mr. Bean rings the doorbell and is greeted by a woman holding two mugs of coffee. As Bean tries to get her attention, the woman hands the coffee mugs to the two workers, who temporarily pause what they are doing to chug them down, all while Mr. Bean hears the noise being stopped. As the woman walks back into her flat with the now empty mugs, Mr. Bean suddenly gets the idea to distract the road workers with food long enough for them to not get back to work, so he goes back into his flat to carry it out.
Mr. Bean then hastily prepares two mugs of coffee and some biscuits and offers them to the two, once again temporarily stopping their work. After finishing their food break, the two road workers are about to get up to resume work when Bean suddenly offers them six sandwiches and two slices of chocolate cake, to which they accept. Strutting back into his flat, Mr. Bean relishes his peace and quiet with Teddy as he has another meal for the two road workers prepared in the kitchen. As the duo of road workers finish their food, they suddenly take notice of a broken pipe leaking gas in the ground and look it up in the book.
Worried about the incoming danger, the two then notice Mr. Bean carting a wheeled table with something on it covered by a white cloth, who then reveals the next meal he has in store for them: a roasted chicken. As the panicked workers try to warn and discourage him, Bean pours red wine into the glasses and brings out a match box to light the candle, still unaware of the leaking pipe. By the time he manages to light a match, he notices the road workers taking cover towards a tree, but unable to understand why, he decides to light the candle anyway, resulting in a massive explosion that leaves a massive crater in the pavement. After the charred table and chicken fall back down, a charred Mr. Bean smiles and falls over on his back, while the road workers look up a page with a broken pipe exploding.
As a crew of other road workers get to work repairing the crater while Mr. Bean's flat continues to rumble, Bean himself has now been transported to the hospital to recover from his injuries, finally getting his well-deserved peace and quiet.
Characters
- Mr. Bean
- Teddy
- Roadworkers
- Frey
Gallery
Censorship
- When this episode aired on Boomerang Asia, the scene where Mr. Bean's buttock is entirely exposed from the doormat after Mr. Bean says "There!" was entirely cut.
- The scene in which Bean ignites the match was cut during some airings.
- The scene in which Bean hammers Teddy was cut as well.
Trivia
- This was the third time Mr. Bean revealed his butt, the first was in the live-action episode The Curse of Mr. Bean and the second was in Mr. Bean in Room 426, also from the live-action series.
- This was also the second time a loud vibration occurred, the first one was in Mr. Bean in Room 426, where Mr. Bean created a hole using a drill on his neighbor's room to enter the bathroom since his room doesn't have one, causing everything to shake.
- This is also the second episode where Mrs. Wicket is absent.
In Other Languages
| Language | Title |
|---|---|
| Dutch | Wegwerkzaamheden |
| Finnish | Tietyömaa |
| French | Marteaux-piqueurs |
| German | Bauarbeiten |
| Italian | Lavori in corso |
| Polish | Roboty drogowe |
| Romanian | Reparații de drumuri |
| Slovenian | Delo na cesti |
Videos
Roadworks - Full Episode - Mr. Bean Official Cartoon