The Builders

Plot

Fawlty Towers is undergoing renovations over the weekend, so Basil informs Major Gowen, Miss Tibbs, and Miss Gatsby that they will have to have dinner at the Gleneagles hotel. The Fawltys themselves are going on a golfing holiday for the weekend in Paignton with friends, leaving Polly and Manuel in charge of the hotel. Before they leave, Basil reminds Polly that the workmen are to block off the drawing room door and build a door leading into the kitchen. Polly, meanwhile, is busy drawing on her sketchpad. Basil describes it as "a landfill junk-pile with a shirt-collar and tie under it", but Manuel later sees it and immediately recognises it as "Mr. Fawlty". Basil tells Polly that the workmen will be O'Reilly's, an Irish cowboy builder with very little understanding of the building trade, as opposed to the competent, professional (and more expensive) Stubbs, who Sybil believes is carrying out the alterations to the hotel. Sybil warns Basil not to hire the cheap but incompetent O'Reilly, as they hired him to build a wall a few months ago which has still not been built.

The Fawltys depart and Polly goes to her room for a short nap, telling Manuel to wake her as soon as the builders arrive. Left behind the desk alone, Manuel enjoys his temporary power, imagining the hotel is his own. During this time, a delivery man arrives to deliver a garden gnome Sybil has ordered, but confuses Manuel into thinking that he wants a room for it. Manuel places the gnome behind the desk. The builders arrive, and confusion arises when Manuel keeps asking them if they are "Orelly" men. This irritates Lurphy, the bearded builder, until another of the men realises "Orelly" in fact means "O'Reilly". Immediately Lurphy understands and affirms they are indeed "Orelly" men (whilst referring to Manuel as "Thick as a plank"). Whilst the builders study the plans, Manuel goes upstairs to wake Polly up. He enters her room to see her sleeping peacefully, and decides not to disturb her. Manuel returns to the front desk and receives a call from someone he believes is asking for Basil. After insulting the caller, Manuel drops the receiver in shock when he realises Basil is on the line. On Basil's instructions, Manuel calls Lurphy (the bearded builder) over and then, whilst listening to Basil but clearly not understanding what he is saying, calls Lurphy "a hideous orangutan." Lurphy responds by punching Manuel, which is what Basil had hoped for.

Basil arrives early the next morning to check on the renovations. When he walks in, he realises to his horror that they haven't been carried out properly as the drawing room door is still in place, the door intended for the kitchen has been placed in front of the stairs and the dining room door has been blocked off instead. In a combination of rage at the shoddy work and fear over his wife's anticipated reaction, Basil, after tripping over Sybil's gnome, furiously threatens Polly and then physically assaults Manuel, before phoning O'Reilly and threatening to "insert a large garden gnome in you" if he does not arrive to fix the work within twenty minutes.

O'Reilly arrives, and while Basil is imploring him to get to work, Sybil returns early, having forgotten her golf shoes. As she arrives, she becomes suspicious when she spots O'Reilly's van. She confronts Basil, who blames the situation on Stubbs and his builders. Sybil responds to this by telling Basil that she saw O'Reilly's van outside, with Basil explaining that O'Reilly has come to rectify the mess caused by Stubbs. Sybil, to Basil's surprise, actually agrees with him, but thinks that since Stubbs caused the situation, he should have to put it right for free. At that moment, Polly calls the front desk from another room impersonating Stubbs' secretary, but is caught by Sybil.

Sybil confronts Basil for hiring O'Reilly and vows that she will make him regret it for the rest of his life. Basil continues his attempts to convince her it was "at least partly" Stubbs' fault, but Sybil is having no more of his lies. Berating herself for letting Basil oversee the arrangements, Sybil hurls the cash box across the room at Basil and goes into a furious tirade about several recent times he has hired O'Reilly to do jobs with shoddy, disastrous results ("You got him in to change a washer in November, and we didn't have any running water for two weeks!"). O'Reilly merrily walks in from the bar and, upon admitting his mistakes, tries to joke about it with a furious Sybil. O'Reilly smiles at Sybil, at which Basil despairs. Enraged by this, Sybil lashes out at O'Reilly and Basil with an umbrella, before telling O'Reilly to leave and never return. Sybil calls Stubbs to get him to do the work the next morning. She then leaves, not intending to return until the following morning, whilst sarcastically suggesting her new garden gnome be in charge of the hotel, as he "is cheap and would do a far better job" than Basil. As Sybil leaves, Basil convinces O'Reilly to stay and complete the work.

Sybil returns the next morning to find the renovations have been completed by O'Reilly, apparently with no problems. As Stubbs arrives, Sybil finds herself in an embarrassing situation at having called on him, seemingly now for nothing. Stubbs looks over the renovations and admits at first that whoever did them did a very good job. However, when Stubbs further questions Basil about the work, it turns out he may have been needed after all. Whilst making a doorway leading into the kitchen, O'Reilly only used a wooden lintel as opposed to a concrete one or Rolled Steel Joist. Since the door to the kitchen is on a load-bearing wall, the supporting wall could give way at any moment and cause the entire building to collapse. As Stubbs goes to telephone his company for the necessary equipment to commence immediate repair work, Sybil looks furiously for Basil and finds him marching down the driveway with the garden gnome. Basil calls back to Sybil that he is "going to see Mr. O'Reilly, dear!" before adding "and then I think I might go to Canada" under his breath.

Cast

Episode-credited cast:

With:

Criticism

David Stubbs has rated The Builders as the weakest Fawlty Towers episode due to its reliance on stereotypes such as the battleaxe wife, the feckless Irish labourer and the dimwitted Spaniard.

John Cleese himself named The Builders as "the least good" of the Fawlty Towers episodes that were filmed, owing to a general lack of laughter in the studio on recording day. He recalls that members of the Icelandic Broadcasting Corporation were visiting the studio that day and many of them were in the front row seats, apparently not entirely amused.

Connections