List of Coupling episodes

We find out what was really going on in the previous episode...

The action begins where it left off at the end of Series Two: Steve and Susan have had an argument about their future, and Susan storms out of Steve's flat in tears. The screen splits into two and we follow what happens to both Steve and Susan simultaneously.

While Steve tries repeatedly to ring Susan, his courage failing every time, the girls are locked in a debate over the merits of 1471, and what it means if the phone "chirps". Eventually the tension at both ends of the phone gets too much. The boys and the girls set out for "the Temple of Woman": for the girls, a beauty salon; for the boys, a lap dancing club.

Jane and Jeff are both having difficulty keeping the faith.

Jeff is sent into a spiral of tension when his attractive colleague, Wilma (played by Emilia Fox), asks him out for a drink. Is Wilma about to make a move on him, or does she just want to be friends? If she's interested in his arse, then surely he shouldn't be talking to her, what with him having a girlfriend. But to refuse the date would be to assume that Wilma fancied him, and she certainly hasn't made that clear. Unable to face this challenge alone, Jeff rigs up his mobile phone for the date, so that his friends can hear his conversation with Wilma, and give him advice. Wilma puts her cards on the table straight away: she fancies Jeff and she wants to know if he fancies her too ...

We pick up the action where we left off at the end of the last episode: with Jeff trying to work out how (or even whether) to refuse unconditional sex with Wilma. Meanwhile, his friends are still listening and offering advice via the mobile phone.

Jeff is no match in this debate for "devil woman" Wilma. She knows every argument that Susan (the expert in getting her own way) has ever used. Jeff paints himself into a terrifyingly extreme conversational corner, until he blurts out that the reason he can't have sex with Wilma is that his girlfriend is dead.

Sally is surprised to say the least when Patrick arrives at her flat at three in the morning to get rid of a spider for her. It turns out that he dreamt her distress call. What can this mean? Does Patrick subconsciously want to protect Sally? More shockingly, does Patrick have a subconscious? And what does Spider-Man have to do with all of this?

Encouraged by their friends, Sally and Patrick independently tell the story of how they first met. It was at Susan's office party. The attraction was instant. Sally got horribly drunk and the two of them had a romantic embrace in the cloakroom. We see the scene from both points of view: the inebriated Sally believed she was acting cool when she gave Susan's phone number to Patrick. Sober Patrick actually remembers that it was Sally's number he was asking for.

Steve is suffering from a bout of hypochondria, thanks to the discovery of a mole on his bottom. This leads to a bitter argument with Susan, about how well the pair can remember each other's blemishes. Steve feels hurt that Susan can't remember if the mole is new, and Susan becomes paranoid about the possibility that she too may suffer from freckles in her otherwise-perfect private regions.

The argument is settled when the gang are introduced to Jane's new boyfriend, James. It turns out that Jane has perfect recall of Steve's mole. And it also turns out that James has perfect recall of Susan's "nether freckling" - the two of them were briefly an item at university.

Susan has invited everyone over for dinner, which as we know is just asking for trouble.

Steve is particularly worried because Susan has recently redecorated the bathroom, and removed the lock, thus robbing him of his Fortress of Solitude. Sally's worry is that Patrick is bringing his new girlfriend Jenifer (played by Emma Pierson): she's frightened that she will overcompensate her feelings of hostility towards her new rival by being embarrassingly nice. Patrick dimly perceives there might be a problem, so has told Jennifer that Sally is a lesbian.

Sally is terrified that she might be pregnant, so she takes a pregnancy test and asks the other girls to do the same so that she knows what a negative result looks like. In her fluster she gets the tests muddled up. One of the girls is pregnant, but which one?

Is it Sally? Well, she did have sex with awful Peter on the night that Patrick came to save her from the non-existent spider.

Is it Jane? Well, with James away, she was so desperate for sex that she even briefly toyed with the idea of doing it with Jeff. But the pizza delivery man was on hand, so to speak. So, yes, it could be Jane.

Is it Susan? She reveals that she has recently discovered she has a medical problem which prevents her from having children. It would take a miracle for her to be pregnant.

Susan is depressed so phones a woman she met at her antenatal class who had said to phone at any time if she wanted a chat. The woman turns out to be Oliver's ex-girlfriend, who has left her phone in Oliver's shop. Oliver therefore answers, then calls Susan back trying to find out how they had met. In the mean time, Susan has phoned Sally for a chat, using her other phone.

Steve, wanting to know what is going on, picks up the extension in the bedroom and listens in to the conversation with Sally until she calls him insensitive, when he objects. Sally tells Susan that pregnant women are beautiful, and is surprised when Patrick agrees with her - he has picked up her extension in the bedroom. He then reveals that he has slept with a pregnant woman in the past, which Sally finds revolting.

After a B&W flashback of his steady slide into bachelorhood following his breakup with Tamzin, Oliver runs into Jane in his local grocer's. He doesn't exactly impress her, but his friendly banter with the elderly checkout ladies leads Jane to believe there might be another side to her would-be suitor. Jane invites herself up to his flat, which turns out to be littered with porn. Jane is alternately fascinated and repulsed, until Oliver turns the tables on her by telling her he sees through her ditzy facade and knows she is more than she appears to be. She responds by delivering a naked invitation to her place the next Tuesday. The audience learns all this as Jane and Oliver each are recapping events to the girls and the guys just before the scheduled rendez-vous. Meanwhile, Susan's water has broken, and Steve races out of the bar to take her to hospital.