Let’s think about this for one moment… News Posted by Jonathan Capps on 26th March 2006, 11:45 Look at this extract from the original version of Better Than Life: CAT: We’re having a really nice time. I’m dating Marilyn Monroe and also I have another girlfriend who’s a mermaid. She’s half woman, half fish. (He starts licking and kissing a photograph then turns round.) It’s Miranda, my girlfriend! As she comes out of the water we see the top half of her is a fish, the bottom half is a woman. HOLLY: Somehow I’d imagined she’d be a woman on top and a fish on the bottom. CAT: No! That’s a stupid way round. (He sticks out his tongue briefly and grins and waves). So. We’ve established that the Cat’s perfect girlfriend is a Mermaid. A Mermaid with an opposite, and less conventional, configuration to most. But why? Well, there’s a few options: He likes the way she looks. He wants to perform cunnilingus on his girlfriend. He wants to do a sex with his girlfriend. This is all fair enough, I suppose, and nothing to be ashamed of. Apart form perhaps the thought of having sex with a fish head on legs. But there’s also some more macabre (and sadly, more likely) reasons for his peculiar taste in women… He wants to EAT the top half of his girlfriend and then leave her as a useless pair of legs. He wants to EAT the top half of his girlfriend AFTER having sex or performing cunnilingus. He wants to EAT the top half of his girlfriend WHILST having sex with her. I think we can safely assume that the Cat’s brief tongue flick in the scene suggests that the first (more savory) option isn’t the case. The licking of the photograph only serves to prove this point further. So I am led to the opinion that the cat only wanted Miranda for one of the last three points. And this scene was classified as PG. Will somebody please think of the children! Anyhow, I am now scared of Grant Naylor for writing that scene. I am even more scared with myself for writing this post. I think I better go and have a bath.
>He wants to EAT the top half of his girlfriend WHILST having sex with her. The exact same reason I enjoy having sex with chocolate bunnies.
Lots of things were cut in the remastered version. If this was cut, it was probably to fit in an extra meaningless shot of the ship.
It was probably cut for not being terribly funny. It’s only now I’ve thought about the TERRIFYING ramifications of what is being suggested.
I would guess it was cut to remove Danny’s little kiss/lick improv! The gesture is very clear on ‘top’ and ‘bottom’. He’s kissing one end, licking the other…and thus taking the whole thing WAY too far, and messing with the gag – which is, surely, that you can’t have full sex with a regular mermaid, but this way round he gets to have the sex whilst also tasting (surely not EATING?!) fish. Man this is hard to discuss without wandering down smut avenue…
Well, my assumption is that the Cat would certainly want to eat anything that even vaguely resembled a fish. Tasting just wouldn’t be enough. If sleeping is his third favourite thing, then surely being able to combine his first 2 favourite things with the same girlfriend would be a bonus? I suppose I *am* guilty of taking this all a little bit too far, though… I agree, though, Danny’s improv is just TOO much.
I always took Danny’s improv as showing that the cat still had his more crude, animalistic instincts in the early series, just like when he licked the waiter for bringing him food in the same episode. Not that I’m in any way biased, given that BTL happens to rank as one of my favourite episodes… “coughs”
“Man this is hard to discuss without wandering down smut avenue…” If you want to avoid wandering down Smut Avenue, Andrew, you’ve come to the wrong place.