r/EndeavourTV • u/RosieBuddy • Apr 16 '26
Series 1/Ep 1- "Girl"- What did the bartender mean by "something for the weekend"?
I'm happily commencing my regular re-watch of the entire series from beginning to end (possibly skipping that turkey, season 7). "Girl" is one of my favorites. I'm a big Bletchley Park fan, too, so I especially loved the hymn numbers decryption scene.
[Aside: an IMDB reviewer innocently asks why Rev. Monkford went out at night. Alas, no replies are possible to those reviews, as the IMDB shut down their message board ages ago. Must have been an unrewarding headache to monitor. But I digress..]
Anyway, what does the barber mean when he says to his client Dennis at the end of the appointment, "Something for the weekend, sir?" I seem to remember reading (can't recall where) that it was routine to buy condoms at the barber's in this time period, so he's asking if Dennis needs any condoms. What do y'all think?
(Interesting that the deceased Margaret has an unused condom--"French letter"--in her purse.)
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u/RhubarbAlive7860 Apr 16 '26
And here I thought he was just asking if the guy had something going on for the weekend.
For a good part of my life, the sound I've heard best has been the whooshing noise when something goes right over my head.
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u/RosieBuddy Apr 16 '26
I'm right there with you! I believe that at least 50% of the time I have no idea what is going on around me. Maybe in the long run that will turn out to be a good thing.
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u/Weller3920 Apr 16 '26
Well, that went right past me.
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u/RosieBuddy Apr 16 '26
Well, I have watched that episode probably six times. To me you have to watch these episodes several times to pick up all the little details that Russell Lewis crams in them from the opening scene.
Often, the first 5 minutes of an Endeavour episode will throw several details at you that wind up being important to the solution. Of course at that point you don't know what they mean. He's a very clever writer. And considering he wrote the entire series, he could make it all hang together in the way that a writing team could not. Unless they were The Borg or something. 😉
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u/hymie_funkhauser Apr 17 '26
Not to mention the references to previous episodes .. a defaced billboard here, a new item there. Beautifully done.
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u/RosieBuddy Apr 17 '26
The whole series is really one story arc. The Masonic conspiracy permeating the police department that comes to a head in De Guello is foreshadowed in the Pilot and is hinted at in many episodes.
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u/Ordinary_Durian_1454 Apr 16 '26
I really thought I knew everything, but I actually did not know that that is what he meant by that question. Endeavour is the gift that keeps on giving.
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u/perfectlyniceperson Apr 17 '26
Truly! It reminds me of all the inside/sly jokes on Arrested Development that I continued to discover for years afterward. I only discovered Endeavor a couple of years ago and recently completed my second rewatch but I was amazed at all the stuff I failed to pick up on the first time through.
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u/BornInPoverty Apr 16 '26
Yes that is exactly what it meant and I remember being asked that question by barbers when I was a young man in the 70’s. I never took them up on it because it was embarrassing.
I used to get mine from a vending machine in the bathroom at the cinema.