“We’re not here for you two to bump muffs, we’re here to work!“

After the ending of the previous episode, Dana and Rachel are now a couple and are ready to let the office know. But, as Jo and Brad both correctly declare, nobody cares. The show is still in its infancy, and it’s too soon for anyone to be remotely invested in their relationship, hopefully those comments were reflected realisations from the showrunners. Together along with Jo, the testers are put in charge of coming up with a new mobile game to make Brad plenty of money off micro-transactions.

Poppy has a speech to give at an event recognising the empowerment of women in gaming, and seeks the help of Ian to teach her how write inspirational speeches, after seeing it first hand, giving everyone goosebumps when he gives a speech to the art team about caulk.

A lot more Ian doing his Steve Jobs stuff and a much bigger role for Jo, while still giving us Poppy at her best make for a great episode. There are plenty of belly laughs to be had throughout, and Poppy’s train wreck of a speech at the end was a truly unforgettable moment, made all the more amusing when it’s revealed that Ian wrote it all – crabsticks and all. The testers are both still a bit too nice and normal, and though the show is desperately trying to point out their differences, scenes with them together still lack friction and humour, and the two just don’t have the on screen chemistry or charisma to be the next Jim and Pam.

This episode also pokes fun at the over worked and underappreciated workers in the games industry and the whole ‘Crunch’ climate surrounding it. This is done in the form of the head of art department, who is trying to explain the hard work that goes into everything as phrases like “work your magic” and “it’s perfect, and if it’s not we’ll just change it later” are tossed around. This is nice to see as we’ve had a lot of mentions of things that the art department ‘whipped up’ in previous episodes, which would have just ended up in the bin as the idea went nowhere.

After a wobbly first episode to the second season, Episode 2 steps up its game and improves on nearly everything that was wrong with the first episode.