The Doctor and Amy use their magnificent time-traveling device to... Go to a museum across the Channel from Amy's home time/space, although one presumes before her wedding day, and no explanation is given as to why this particular adventure is so banal, or why the brilliant/adorable Bill Nighy is given such a small part to completely rock. Also, everybody in every scene including the Doctor constantly talks about how van Gogh was the greatest artist who ever lived in the history of humanity, which is just sort of weird and annoying, but makes more sense -- higher emotional stakes -- when you think about how this was written by the guy who wrote Love, Actually and Four Weddings & A Funeral and just about every other manipulative brainless thing that fooled you with British accents.

They see something scary in a van Gogh painting, so they head over to Provence in the year before he killed himself to save him from the monster so that he can kill himself. The artist is just wonderful, beyond or including his intense manic-depression, and instantly falls for Amy, because "girls with zero qualities other than bitchiness" is apparently most boys' dating algorithm regardless of century. The monster is invisible, but not really a metaphor for van Gogh's craziness, because his craziness is already an offensive metaphor for his actual craziness. At one point, the villagers in Provence actually throw rocks at him because he's such an outcast. We join him at his cute little house and put up with his bipolar bullshit for awhile, but eventually chase the invisible monster to a church, where van Gogh kills it, like, with an easel.

Then they all realize that the monster, which the Doctor identified as this brutal beast with nothing but viciousness in its heart, was actually blind and just wanted to give them hugs and bake them cookies, so van Gogh cries. Then they all hold hands in the field and hallucinate and bake each other a bunch of cookies and giggle and roll around in the grass and who knows what else, but it's super queer. Then they leave van Gogh so he can kill himself, except at the last second they decide they haven't put him through enough already and so, just to be condescending, they take him to the aforementioned museum thing so he can hear Bill Nighy talk about how amazing he is. (This whole time there is a very loud song playing and a bunch of people weeping, just like in both Bridget Jones's Diary and Bridget Jones's Diary II: Edge Of Reason.) Then Vincent cries, goes home, and kills himself.

Amy sort of takes this as a personal affront, because of futility and mental illness and how Rory died but she still doesn't remember him, and because van Gogh shouldn't have killed himself after meeting her and Bill Nighy, but before she can really get upset about that she sees van Gogh wrote her name into a painting, so then everything's cool.

Yeah, it's up there with "Amy's Choice" as one of the best of the season, and definitely it's one of the most distinct and enjoyable episodes I've seen on this beat, but if you're not in the mood to be relentlessly dicked around and fucked with and tearjerked, I think you should wait to watch it until you're in a better or more forgiving mood, because you could end up having a very negative experience. But if you're in the mood, probably you'll really love it. I know I did.

Next week: James Corden -- aka (in ascending order) Smithy from Gavin & Stacey, aka Fletch from Lesbian Vampire Killers, aka roommate of wildly hot Dominic "Hop On My Motorcycle Anytime" Cooper -- does something totally adorable, I'm guessing, and there's a lot of low-budget running about, but everything turns out okay in the end. Or maybe -- given the way this season is going -- he suddenly and without warning commits grisly suicide. Either way, though.