Blackadder/Recap/S3/E06 Duel and Duality

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
< Blackadder‎ | Recap‎ | S3


The last episode of season three starts with the impossible: George has gotten laid. Unfortunately, his amorous conquests are the nieces of the Duke of Wellington, who has personally sworn to kill anyone who defiles one of his relatives. George is terrified of fighting the duel so Baldrick suggests he should get someone else to fight it for him, and suggests Blackadder, who of course, is not pleased. However, when he remembers his identical Scottish cousin, who just happens to be a homicidal maniac, MacAdder, is in town he changes his mind. Of course, MacAdder refuses to fight and Blackadder must pretend to be the prince and fight the duel himself. Wellington turns out to be a blustering idiot, and the duel turns out to be fought with cannons, and Blackadder is shot. But all is well! The cannon ball hit his cigarello case, and everything is fine! George, pretending to be the butler, Blackadder, steps out of the shadows to reveal he is the prince, but Wellington shoots him in his anger. At that moment, the mad king appears, looking for his son, and Edmund, still in the prince's clothes, goes off with him, presumably to live the rest of his life as the Prince Regent.

But wait...George isn't dead after all! The bullet hit HIS cigarello case--oh, wait, he must have left it on the dresser. Bugger.


  • Acting for Two: Rowan Atkinson as both Blackadder and MacAdder.
  • The Bad Guy Wins: An odd, yet awesome example of the trope. Blackadder may be the protagonist, but he's certainly a bad guy. And he gets to live out the rest of his life as the Prince Regent, and eventually the king, while George dies. However....it's awesome.
  • Buffy-Speak: One of the few times Blackadder is so mad he can't even think of a simile.

Blackadder: "We're about as similar as two completely dis-similar things in a pod."

Edmund: Yes, I'm afraid my ambitions stretch a little further than professional idiocy in West London. I want books written about me. I want songs sung about me. And then, hundreds of years from now, I want episodes from my life to be played out weekly at half past nine by some great heroic actor of the age.
Baldrick: (smiling) Yeah, and I could be played by some tiny tit in a beard.

George: This is just like that story, 'the Prince and the Porpoise'.
Edmund: And the Pauper.
George: Of course. 'The Prince and the Porpoise and the Pauper.'