Fresh Meat Finale Review

Ever since Fresh Meat premiered back in 2011, the journey the six main characters JP, Vod, Howard, Josie, Oregan and Kingsley have been on through university life was definitely something many could relate to, but at the same time it hasn’t deterred from it’s main purpose, to make people laugh.

With how popular and successful the show has been I was hopeful they’d give it a good send off.

The main plot of the finale was the realisation that University was over for the gang and they would all be entering the ‘real world’. All except Josie however who was struggling to cope with having no friends next year after being kept back a year due to being kicked from her dentistry course for drilling a hole in a patients cheek when drunk during season two.

It began with all of the characters sitting around the infamous sitting room on the beige sofas waiting for their final results. It was synonymous to a scene from Friends when the characters would congregate around the sofa and chairs in Central Perk.

Vod, who throughout the show hadn’t taken university seriously and valued partying over studying, somehow managed to get a 2:1 while Oregon who did the same course and was a ‘swat’ of sorts could only manage a 2:2. Oregon was adamant there’d been a mistake and Vod had been given her result. “You know what rhymes with 2:2, f**k you” was Vod’s brilliant response.

Howard, a mysterious but witty Scot, and Kingsley, played by ‘Inbetweeners’ star Joe Thomas, both got the results they needed for jobs they had lined up whereas JP, played by Jack Whitehall, failed his final year.

The remainder of the episode was tailored around the characters coming to terms with their results but also coming to terms with them all no longer living with each other.

It showed that even though they had all fallen out with each other at some stage they had became close and comfortable with each other.

This time of year is when, like myself, third year students will be submitting their final pieces of work of sitting exams and stressing over what they will do once they leave university. So while the main purpose of the show is to act as a comedy and make people laugh, the stories are real to a lot of students up and down the country and it’s this what has made it popular in my opinion. The balance between the two is perfect.

As far as show finales go, it was slightly disappointing however. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed it and had a fair few laughs throughout but nothing out of the ordinary or shocking happened. Maybe that was the plan though seeing as something out of the ordinary happening in a finale is the obvious thing to do.

Not only that but there has been rumours of a potential movie in the pipeline so that could explain the somewhat somber finale. The writers left the show at a good point to do so as the characters start their new journeys apart. I could see it being a reunion type movie like ‘The Inbetweeners 2’. Fingers crossed it is as funny as that was should it happen.

The final shot of the episode, and show (for now), was all six characters sat side by side on top of a grassy hill overlooking Manchester as they reflected on their time together. It was an excellent shot and a fitting end to one of my favourite comedy’s in years, even if the finale didn’t quite live up to my expectations.