The guys settle into their new house after the destruction of their previous abode in the show's pilot episode and allocate the bedrooms. As Rick and Vyvyan argue over one bedroom, Mike discovers a man resembling Buddy Holly in his, having survived the plane crash on The Day the Music Died by parachuting out and smashing through the roof. He is still tangled in the parachute and hanging upside down from the ceiling, and he proceeds to sing Mike a song about the diet of insects on which he has subsisted since that day in 1959. Mike dreams of getting rich off the song, but his plan ends abruptly when the man falls loose and hits the floor, breaking his neck. Dragging the body into the cellar, Mike discovers two elderly men lying on their backs under a bare light bulb and hallucinating that they are adrift at sea. Rick and Vyvyan give the room they have been arguing over to Neil after Vyvyan sets its bed on fire, and Mike briefly converts Rick's room into a roller disco and charges him admission to enter. After a solo match of Murder in the Dark, Vyvyan announces that he has struck oil in the cellar, and instantly forms a coalition with Mike to extract and sell it. They decide to use Rick and Neil as slave labor, with Vyvyan enforcing discipline by beating the two with a cricket bat as they lie on the floor. After Neil inadvertently impales Vyvyan through the head with a pickaxe while digging for the oil, Rick tries to start a workers' revolution and organizes a benefit concert in the house. The effort fails, though, as the band demands a large fee and Rick has not bothered to sell any tickets. During the end credits, a disoriented but conscious Vyvyan stumbles around the cellar, swinging a pickaxe at random. He ends by addressing the camera, saying that he lied about finding oil. The episode featured a performance from electronic band Radical Posture, with Sayle as their singer, singing "Doctor Martens' Boots"
Characters
As with all episodes of The Young Ones, the main four characters were student flatmates Mike ; Vyvyan ; Rick and Neil. Alexei Sayle appeared as Alexei Balowski, a protest singer and nephew of the students' landlord Jerzei.
Edited scene
When the episode was originally aired, an extended scene was shown at the basement oil well involving Vyvyan criticising Rick for not working hard enough, and then head butting the ground to speed up the digging. In VHS and DVD releases, this scene has been edited to just show the pickaxe event and aftermath. The scene began with an obscure Roy 'C' song from 1973 called "I'm Bustin' My Rocks " playing on Rick's radio, so the reason for its omission may be a failure by the BBC to secure broadcast rights for the music. A similar problem afflicted the re-release of "Cash" on DVD.
