Coupling: Jeff vs Oliver
One of the TV storytelling cliches that I keep tripping over is "The Big Swap." That's where you leave a show for the summer and come back and that quirky supporting character you knew and loved has been supplanted by some loud pushy blonde. Now, that's not exactly what happened here, but it does qualify as a swap: Jeff is out, Oliver is in.
Now, having come to Coupling so late, I pretty much took it as it came. There was no use for me to get upset about Jeff not appearing in Season Four. It happened long ago and far away. Wikipedia puts it down to Richard Coyle not wanting to come back, but there's not a lot of detail there. Perhaps I should poke around for some dirt. Or perhaps - disappoint I know - there isn't any.
That's not to say I don't appreciate Jeff or notice the difference between him and Oliver. Jeff has a unique mania that Richard Coyle somehow manages to get across without a blithering descent into shrieks and flutters. He is - as Steve put it in the pilot - completely tasteless. And yet completely adorable at the same time which is an accomplishment, considering that the subject matter could have gone to a number of disturbing and nasty places. Jeff honestly thinks you need to know what an "unflushable" is.
The biggest difference between him and Oliver is that Jeff is convinced he is useless to women and is therefore cutely surprised to discover otherwise. Oliver suspects it, but covers with bravado and convinces himself he has a chance. Where Jeff hangs back, Oliver is out there giving it his all, "a cross between a puppy and an idiot." Poor guy. I suppose he should get credit for trying.
I didn't object to Oliver in principle or merit. He lacks Jeff's odd flair, but that would be true of anyone. The real test is whether Oliver brings anything of his own to the table? Unfortunately, the answer is "not really." I mean he is there when they needed a sixth person. And the show wisely does't contrive an old friendship, nor does everyone gush over how cool he is - a key indicator that the writers are desperately trying to sell me on something. Oliver is and remains something of an outsider and it helped make him more palatable.
So I suppose I have to wonder how things would have gone with Jeff in Season Four. Would Tamsin have been replaced by a pregnant Julia? Would Jane have wound up naked in his living room? That last is hard to say. They do fake us out regarding Jane in "Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps." On the other hand, that was all there was in three seasons. The show would have had to really work to earn a Jane-Jeff hookup in six episodes. Oliver's final two episodes with Jane work really well and I would have really liked them if they'd aired as just her picking up a new guy. At the tail end of Season Four, however, it was a little too late to really make Oliver the focus and the scenes in the series finale are - rightly - more about Jane than Oliver.
On a final note, I wasn't entirely sold on the dream-version of Jeff that they conjured up for Steve. The idea of Jeff in the body of Steve's old grade school teacher is that sort of thing his brains would serve up in a stressful situation, but actress didn't quite get the body language and vocal pace down. There were moments, but as a whole, it was just kind of "off." I do like that they addressed the issue and acknowledged Jeff as Steve's best friend rather than just pretending he wasn't important. So many shows just breeze forward, leaving beloved but gone characters in the dust.