THE IT CROWD

I read the script for an episode of the IT Crowd called Yesterday's Jam. This is what I analysed:

How are the characters constructed?
Jen - As a sociable girl who's not really very intelligent because of the way she can make friends instantly (such as with the woman who beats Roy with her shoe) but she is not very knowledgeable about things like IT, for example, when she doesn't realize her computer is not plugged in.
Roy - As short tempered and lazy but desperate to be popular and get a girlfriend because of the way he doesn't answer the phone for as long as possible when it rings and when he does he gets very angry when the person on the other end doesn't understand what he's saying ("why don't you come down here and make me then?"). However he also tries to impress girls like Jen when he first meets her by pretending to be intelligent and sophisticated ("I believe it was Tolstoy who said...").
Moss - As very clever when it comes to technology but completely uncomprehending of subtlety such as when Roy pretends to be talking about Tolstoy and he doesn't understand why ("When have you read Tolstoy?" "Why are you giving me the secret signal to shut up?")


In what way are Roy and Moss 'standard nerds'?
Things they say - use of technological language such as 'system core tablet', 'thread' and 'programming code' that no one except someone very interested in computers (a stereotypical 'nerd') would understand 
Things they do - they don't know how to interact with girls, for example Roy getting beating regularly by girls he's frustrated with on the phone; they sit alone in the basement all day and are surprised when they have a visitor like Jen (for example when they enter, look surprised, put on deodorant and re-enter to try and impress her); they order two books to check the text isn't different (when Moss says "I got the child edition and the adult edition just to check there are no differences in the text"), which is something most people would not be interested in doing.

What is comic about Jen's appointment as IT manager?
She seems to know nothing about IT (for example naming the same thing different ways "emails, sending emails, receiving emails, deleting emails") yet Denholm is taken in and says that "you certainly seem to know your stuff". Therefore it is comic because although it is clear to the audience that Jen is incompetent when it comes to computers Denholm seems to believe her.