The Full Monty – Season 1 Episode 6 Recap & Review

Welcome to the Job of Your Dreams

Episode 6 of The Full Money begins with Horse’s happy flashes of his childhood, specifically a scene at the beach with his mother and family. These are interrupted by a dripping ceiling. We see his living conditions are quite heartbreaking. There is no running water supply. His cooking gas needs replenishing. And he hasn’t eaten for three days.

Yvonne, who is now pregnant, picks Horse up and takes him to the local Job Hub. She waits in the parking lot as Horse waits inside for his turn. Institutional apathy reeks from the place, where Horse meets an unhinged young man who tries to place Horse in his memory.

When the waiting gets too long, Yvonne spots Darren passing by. She asks him to check in on Horse. As he goes inside, Horse’s name is called. The irony of his situation truly speaks out to you from the screen. Horse has been declared “fit for work” after his last assessment. But as the Job Hub officially lists out the jobs he could do, Horse isn’t fit for any of them! The worst part of this interaction is when Horse learns that he will not be getting a single penny of benefits as he broke his Claimant’s Commitment in the contract.

Horse is given advice on how to escalate a complaint. But Horse is clueless about what to do. The man hasn’t eaten for three days. Even though he is shaking, he refuses to take the lady’s lunch. He refuses any display of pity. Something awakens inside him and he gets up on top of a chair. In his “Daniel Blake” moment, Horse cries out the tragedy of his life. The only reason he cannot work now and has to depend on benefits is because of the part-time jobs he took when he was young.  After we hear that he doesn’t want to be called a “scrounger” for his situation, we see he has a knife in his hand which he raises to his throat.

But when the man installing floor carpets in the room faints, Horse stops. Seeing him do that inspires the unhinged man in the baseball cap to take the knife and declare, “This is a robbery.” He starts collecting things from everyone in a bin. But when he walks out, he notices that the police have cornered him. The man takes the keys to the place and locks everyone inside. It has surely turned into a hostage situation! Meanwhile, Gaz sees Horse’s pictures on the internet. Nathan, Gaz’s son, who is a policeman, rejects Gaz’s idea to walk in and save Horse.

When the officers aren’t looking, Gaz slips in anyway. Using his street wit, Gaz convinces the man to give back everyone’s stuff and dump the knife. If he does this, the police cannot call it a robbery. Everyone in the room also plays along to make sure that the situation is resolved. Just as they come out, Special Forces arrive and the man panics. He threatens everyone to get inside once again. Now back in, Darren starts an uproar for food. Gaz orders food from Dennis’ place that is delivered by Dave, Lomper, and Dennis himself. Except for the latter, the other two also join their friends inside.

As they are sitting around and chatting, Yvonne learns that Guy has been lying to her about inviting the gang to their wedding and going on wild weekend getaways. Earlier, the Job Hub employee also pointed out that Guy gifted Yvonne cheap jewellery and claimed it was 24k.

When Gaz suddenly starts advancing toward the man, he is attacked by him. The man realizes that the group performed “the full monty” at the bar all those years ago. He asks them to perform again and they diligently do, albeit not as well as the first time. At this point, the Special Forces are finally able to break through as Horse collapses on the floor.

The Episode Review

Horse’s declining circumstances have quietly made it till episode 6 of The Full Monty. But they couldn’t be contained as they exploded into life in this episode. The result was arguably the most profound moment of the series when Horse refuses to be called or perceived as a “scrounger” for not being able to work or feed himself. Credit to Paul Barber for manifesting Horse’s circumstances with such pure honesty, intensity, and integrity.

His health remains important going forward. Hopefully, he will make a full recovery and we can have a happy ending. We got to see a watered-down version o the stripping dance from all those years ago. But it felt contrived and without meaning, to be honest. The staging of the robbery itself could have been much better. But that has been the problem with The Full Monty thus far. They clearly have special characters with resonant issues but the creators keep falling short of building things around them.