Manuel victim of racism
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Fawlty Towers
lawrenceconwayvulcan — 9 years ago(December 01, 2016 09:54 PM)
I have just got the complete series on DVD and watching the show there is one thing that strikes me. There are many times when Manuel status as coming from Spain is somehow linked to his level in intelligence. One example being in The Builders and the scene where the delivery man with the garden gnome makes a comment along those lines. Yes those people who make the remarks are shown to be narrow minded fools including Basil.
Andrew Sachs R.I.P. -
clofa — 9 years ago(December 02, 2016 04:28 AM)
I think the point is that Basil is an obnoxious, racist person who's also so cheap he couldn't be bothered to offer Manuel language lessons and proper training.
In a lot of situations, I thought that it's not Manuel's intelligence that's in question, it's just the miscommunication resulting from the language barrier that makes the whole situation funny (e.g. the "un, dos, tres" scene when Basil is trying to tell Manuel that there's too much butter on the trays. It's not Manuel's intelligence that causes the funny situation but the fact that Basil doesn't know Spanish).
Brianwashed!