“Sex, Death and Nudity”

Coupling season 1, episode 3
Original air date: October 09, 2003

Jeff's nervous about a job interview for a promotion he's up for at work, and neither Patrick nor Steve can understand what the big deal is. Jeff explains that he's most concerned about the "giggle loop": you almost laugh at an inopportune time, but you recover, but as you think about how bad it would have been if you had laughed, you almost laugh again, only a bigger laugh. And so on, until this giant laugh can no longer be suppressed. He stacks pint glasses on top of each other to illustrate, yanking unfinished beer from Patrick's hands in the process.

Meanwhile, Jane's aunt has died, and she calls Steve to ask him to accompany her to the funeral, because her family doesn't know that they've broken up, and it seems like the wrong time to tell them. He tells her he shouldn't go, because he's with Susan now, but Susan encourages him to go. Of course, she's planning to go along, to keep an eye on Jane. Since Steve's supposed to go with Jane as her date, though, Susan has to get Patrick to be her decoy date. Sally wants to come, because it's an opportunity for her to flaunt her young, moist skin, and Jeff, being the only one of them who actually ever met Jane's aunt, also tags along.

Sally has a run-in with some very wrinkly elderly ladies who jibe her about how proud they used to be of their moist, young skin at her age, which they estimate to be about 45. Jeff, Steve and Patrick are unable to avoid the giggle loop at the funeral, and Jeff eventually yells out "Nipples!" Patrick teaches Jeff to visualize people naked to make them less intimidating.

Jeff uses Patrick's technique in his interview, but unfortunately for him, there's a large mirror behind the interviewers, and so he can't help picturing himself naked in the mirror instead of the interviewers.

Differences:
There's quite a bit of interaction from the British version between Jane and Steve over whether or not he'll go to her aunt's funeral, which has been cut. There's also a very amusing recurring gag where, as Jane and Susan storm out of Steve's apartment at different points, they shout things like "I'm not trying to lure you back into bed with my dead aunt!", and Steve's neighbor, who's having a smoke on his stoop, keeps blandly staring at Steve like he's some kind of degenerate. Of course, that's not in the American version, either.

Jane's the one, at the funeral, who breaks the giggle loop by hysterically laughing. But, thankfully, they kept in the little "Reservoir Dogs" bit with the guys in their suits and shades as they're walking into the funeral.