Episode 4 - Owl StretchingTime

"What about my rustic monologue?" - John Cleese as Rustic Monologist


Well, it's Owl-Stretching time, boys and girls. Just grab that owl by the beak-- don't let him peck ya-- and clutch him just above the talons with your other hand-- yeah, they're sharp-- and streeeeeeeeetch!

Away we go with our 4th installment of my episode-by-episode appreciation of Monty Python's Flying Circus. As always, I invite, nay, urge you to watch along with me. The show is much, much better than this blog, and while watching the show is essential to enjoying this blog, you can enjoy the show without ever reading another word by me. But one of the joys of Monty Python is laughing with fellow fans about Monty Python. So watch the show, or buy the box set, if you haven't already. Burma!

Episode 4 begins with the "It's" Man thrown over a cliff, howling with pain. The dummy that they throw over is so ridiculously fake, even this minor and predictable act of gravity gets you laughing. Then, when the real Michael Palin crawls up from the rocks, you laugh even harder. The magic of cinema-- only you can see the strings. The dummy is probably the same dummy they used to depict the death of Admiral Nelson, but that dummy had clothes to hide the yellow, muppet-ish pallor of the its felt flesh. The "It's" Man's costume fails to hide said jaundiced pallor.

Another long rumination on this short bit-- the Circusians are building the legend of this hapless vagabond. Initially content to portray him as lost or abandoned, a survivor of some previous tragedy, for the past coupe of episodes they've transitioned from suggested danger to overt danger. He's no longer a mere unfortunate-- he's a marked man. But he still takes care of business and introduces the show.

Then the titles, again with more laughter than previous episodes. After the foot squishes the pretty naked lady, the name of the episode stands revealed-- "Episode Arthur"!! If you've looked at prior posts, you'll remember that I noticed a definite trend in the character appelations. Almost all of them are named "Arthur". It could be argued that this was all accidental, that the boys had a subliminal fetish for all things "Arthur" (a fetish that found its full realization in their first made-for-movies movie.) But now they're naming their episodes "Arthur"? Nope. This is not a writing accident! This is a meta bit. I've never heard it mentioned before by fan or scholar, so I found it! Therefore, I am claiming discovery of the "Arthur" bit, in the name of King Ferdinand. The natives who own the bit can piss off. Every time someone uses the name "Arthur" in an ironic way, I expect a check. After all, I'm not making a dime off the box sets. In addition to being "Episode Arthur", we read that it's Part 7-- Teeth.

Eric Idle appears as a groovy lounge singer with guitar, singing "Jerusalem" (with altered lyrics; "And did those teeth... in ancient times... walk upon England's mountain green...")  from the Cardiff Rooms in Libya. What?! I don't know, move on! Idle then dedicates the next song to a bewildering series of names, some of them historical references that I have no interest in. I'm content to let the erudition wash all over me. He throws in a pimple joke ("Old Spotty") before we launch into the first sketch.

Cleese and Chapman enter an art gallery, accompanied by unseen (but not unheard) children. What follows is one of Monty Python's "know-it-all" sketches, a series of art history references juxtaposed against the silly fact that the children are blithely destroying them. For me, the funniest part of this sketch is the slapping. Both Chapman and Cleese reach off screen to slap their misbehaving spawn. Sometimes the slaps come for no apparent reason. Cleese pauses mid-sentence to slap her child, and while Chapman is off-screen wailing on her "naughty, naughty, naughty, naughty boy", Cleese casually slaps hers, just to keep up. The slaps sound genuine-- like a PA was kneeling nearby, hand just out of frame, so Cleese and Chapman could slap at will. This is  the first time Cleese and Chapman have performed together as the Pepperpots in an entire sketch. It won't be the last. The sketch finishes with the two of them eating a Turner painting-- apparently a pasty dry concoction-- with a sweet pun to wash it down.

Michael Palin follows with a series of not-so-sweet puns as he devours a painting of his own. The winsome Katya Wyeth comes in with the stinkiest pun ever, and when criticized for it, she weepily replies "But it's my only line!" Commence running gag #2!

Look at the smile!

We leap back to Running Gag #1, Eric Idle with his guitar. Now he's being led to a bed as he continues singing "Jeruslaem" by the no-longer-winsome-but-incredibly-sexy Katya Wyeth, who makes up for her bad pun with some great seduction. Eric Idle seems to enjoy it capitally. Just look at the smile on his face! No way did he think all that prep school would get him this kind of career. As she lathers up his face and neck, a title appears-- "It's a Man's Life in the Cardiff Rooms, Libya" This shoots us into Running Gag #3. Holy crap, it's like the comedy version of a pinball machine!

Running Gag #3 is Graham Chapman, as the militaristic "officer commanding the Regular Army's advertising division." He strongly objects to the cribbing of the slogan "It's a Man's Life in the Modern Army," referring to it as "sloppy, long-haired civilian plagiarism." He orders the cameras about, ("Cut to me!") and sternly warns from a creased brow, moustache and clenched lips, that he will punish this program for any further encroachments upon the Army's intellectual property. This character, whether in the Army or the Police, is a Chapman standard. The hyper-masculine rectitude mixed with Chapman-esque absurdity never fails to delight. It might seem foreign to kids today, in the post-9/11 reverence that we laud on our military and police, but in the late 60s, in the era of Vietnam and the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention,  authority figures such as these were seen as buffoons. Nowadays, fat policemen can casually dissolve a peaceful student's eyeballs with a bottomless can of mace, and we thank the policeman for his service. We need more mockery. We need more Python!

The show, let off with a warning, continues with Terry Gilliam as the Viking. "This is my only line." Running gag #2! Tilt!

A film starring Terry Jones follows. It's funny enough-- a man tries to take off his pants to change into a swim suit, but can find no privacy to do it-- but it feels more like Benny Hill than Monty Python. There's even some irritating organ music, like we're in a silent movie hall. Chapman has one of the highlights as a doorman who gladly drops his trousers for Jones. (Could Chapman's legs be skinnier?) The piece finally transcends its pedestrian routes when Jones finds a dark place to get naked. Suddenly the lights come up, and he's on the stage of a strip parlor. Rather than get

embarrassed, he decides to quit worrying a love exhibitionism. The strip tease that follows is hilariously awkward yet assured. It's even a bit grotesque, as he lolls his tongue out taking off his socks. A great send up of the sexuality on display that we take for granted when it's women. It does go on a bit, though. Finally, it freeze frames, and a title tells us "It's a Man's Life Taking Your Clothes Off In Public." (The title is read aloud by the weirdest voices I've ever heard! Croaky, feminine, and very intimate, it's the kind of voice you wake up hearing when you're rousing from a nightmare. You can scarecely hear it over the applause at the end of the video, but listen for it, and it will haunt you. It will infect you like a virus, sticking in your brain, and you'll find yourself muttering it to yourself on rainy days. "It's a man's life... taking your clothes off in public.")

Running Gag #3 returns with Chapman giving the show a second warning, before handing off the reins to an equally militaristic Cleese, who instructs a class on self-defense. Only this class specializes in self-defense against fresh fruit. Much like the art gallery sketch, the humor here resides in the bookish recital of types of fresh fruit, juxtaposed against a self-defense class. But unlike the art gallery sketch, this bit builds some "serious" tension, as Cleese challenges the class to attack him with fresh fruit, then kills them for their trouble. Chapman,the first one killed, has a line that has become a staple in my house; "Yeah, and mangoes in syrup." (Yeah, like you never say strange shit for no reason in your house.) The build up to Chapman's death is masterful, prompting applause. What follows-- Cleese eating the banana, thus disarming his foe-- is less masterful. The students, appalled that Chapman has been killed, protest "You shot him! He's dead!" But the sketch can't continue until Cleese can manage his lines with a mouthful of banana. So the others wait silently, as does the audience, until Cleese can speak again. Once he does, the class resumes its protestations. "You shot him! You shot him dead!" This is one of those odd quirks that reminds us that the Flying Circus performed their sketches in front of a live audience, and we're seeing that relatively unedited performance, warts and all. In light of that fact, Cleese's performance is incredible. He shouts through the entire thing like a drill sergeant, and still manages to find levels within the constant screaming. In an equally awkward moment, Cleese blows himself up-- only he's still standing there when the smoke clears.

This sketch is also the first appearance of the seventh member of Monty Python's Flying Circus-- The 16-Ton weight. As Jones approaches with lethal raspberries, Cleese pulls the lever and drops the 16-Ton weight on him. "Suppose you haven't got a 16-Ton weight?", Palin asks. "Well, that's planning, isn't it? Forethought!" This prop would continue to make appearances throughout the Python canon, as recognizable as the squashing foot or the chicken-wielding knight.

Next, a short Gilliam animation-- I guess he was busy working on his Viking line-- links us to another short film, where two footman take a nobleman swimming. We shoot back to Idle, Running Gag #1, with Katya totally tonguing his face. She's no Carol Cleveland, but she puts her heart into it. Idle takes us to a film clip with a Welsh monologist, who announces that "It's a man's life in England's mountain green..." Chapman's Army man steps in and stops him cold, ordering the show to do something about teeth. "I'm not sleeping with that producer again," whines Cleese.

A series of film clips promise us excitement and adventure, but takes us into a book shop. What follows is a Bond spoof, prophetic of Austin Powers, with code names, plot twists and dizzying betrayals, all having to do with dentistry. While most of the performances are standard spoof shtick, Palin comes in with a French spy named LeFarge-- it's Cardinal Richelieu by way of a beatnik. He gives it his all, complete with hyper-ventilation when grilled for the location of the fillings. Chapman follows with a Dr. Eeeeee-vil progenitor named "The Big Cheese." He shoots a bunny at point blank range. He's eeeee-vil. The sketch is funny, but uninspired. Only the ending-- that innocent bystander Idle was actually an undercover dentist, and this whole thing is some sort of procedural glorifying the great works of the British Dental Association-- is worthy of the Python squeeze of approval. Idle sums up the lesson to be learned with a jaunty farewell ("Bye for now. Keep your teeth clean.") while he works on Gilliam's teeth. An unaccountably catchy jingle follows ("Lemming of the BDA.") and Idle promises that "It's a Man's Life in the British Dental Association." Chapman has had enough. He stops the show. The referee calls it, and Palin climbs up that cliff-- only to be thrown back off. He has graduated from surviving shipwrecks, to being attacked by animals, to being killed by people. Palin deserves a medal just for getting up that cliff wall. Cranston can count his Emmys, but has he ever climbed a cliff face like that? Cliffs, bitch!

Another solid show, memorable mostly for the layers of running gags. The silliness is becoming less stodgy and studied, more free-form. The team is finding its rhythm, but still has the confidence to stand its ground for a long form sketch or two. But though they are shaking off the chains of prior television, you can still hear the shackles rattle, as in the "Changing on the Beach" film or the bookstore sketch. Gilliam's animations were almost entirely absent. But at least we got to see him as a Viking.

Next week; Episode 5 - "Man's Crisis of Identity..."

Episode 3 "How to Recognize Different Types of Trees..."

"A vast bowl of pus!" - Eric Idle as the Restaurant Manager

A key part of the Python canon is-- the film. According to Michael Palin's diaries, the team first "came into being" on film shoots around Ham House, Boveney, Bournemouth and Shell Bay in early-mid July, 1969. The diaries begin with the film shoots-- the writing of the film clips is apparently pre-historic.

Much of Episode 3 is the fruit of those July weeks. Many of these filmed bits would become classics of Python lore. This is where Michael Palin really begins to shine, his acting talent customized to the medium of film. While no slouch in front of an audience, no one in the group worked the close-up like he did. His real genius dwelt in film. It certainly did not dwell in the completeness of his diary.

We begin, once more, with the "It's" Man, this time emerging from a hostile and forbidding forest. Palin gives this approach his all-- his staggering seems more painful somehow as he clutches one arm to his chest. When the credit animations begin, we hear laughter for the first time, mixed with the coughs, which continues intermittently throughout the goofball cartoons. Are the audiences beginning to warm up to MPFC, or was this particular group all liquored up? (Although, this was London in the late 60's. Every group would have been liquored up- at least.)

Then comes a relatively formal framing device. Instead of pigs and flying sheep, we have a hideously awful slideshow, voiced by what sounds like a earnest and well-trained city college instructor, teaching us about trees. The slideshow is completely uninformative, and the quality is so hideous as to be convincingly realistic. There's a thumb print, inconsistent font, and the stammered rhythm of an inept picture-pusher. "The larch," says John Cleese, and then, just to make sure we get it, he adds "The... Larch." It's funny because it's familiar. This is what passed for instruction in England, too?  One imagines if heart surgery were taught this way. "The left ventricle. The left... ventricle."

This brings us to a courtroom, and the prosecution of a Mr. Harold Larch, played by Eric Idle. The judge, in all of his stentorian majesty, is Terry Jones-- the straight man in a sketch full of loonies. He asks Larch sternly if he'd like to make a statement before the sentence is passed-- and Idle gives one of his great performances, going from humble inarticulate working man to Richard Harris on 78 rpm as he orates on the importance of "Freedom!... Freedom... freedom." I wonder as I watch-- did Mel Gibson see this sketch before he made "Braveheart"? What's the point of  brilliant comedians pointing out how old and tired these moments are, if filmmakers are going to just go ahead and create them anyway-- twenty years later, at that?

But the real significance of all of this is that Larch's name isn't Arthur! It's Harold! We're beginning to see some growth here on the part of the group and its ability to name its characters. Not only have they moved beyond Arthur, but they're on a whole different letter of the alphabet. They've gone all the way to "H"!

Cleese storms in, keeping Idle's energy going, (keeping the sketch's engine "Idle-ing... aheh-heh... anyone?) and calls Fiona Lewis to the stand. Graham Chapman steps in as a Pepperpot, promising to "tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so anyway..." Another brilliant monological performance, as Chapman blathers a high speed series of non-sequinanities. "Well, they do, don't they, I mean you can't, can you?" All the while, Cleese will occasionally glare meaningfully at the camera, pointing a finger as if to say "You heard that, right? That bit was important." She's finally dragged off, but we've been given our first real glimpse of the insanity that is Graham Chapman.

Then Cleese calls a coffin to the stand. Inside the coffin is the late Arthur Aldritch. It's hard to see someone you love relapse, but at least this Arthur is in a coffin-- perhaps symbolic of their intention to put this whole "Arthur" thing to rest. This bit, the third self-contained bit in the sketch, is clean, cold absurdity. The highlight for me is when the coffin stops knocking (don't bother rocking) and Cleese opens the lid to check the body. The specificity is awesome! Cleese seems to check three points of the body, including the midsection, before closing up the coffin and announcing "No further questions, m'lud."

The sketch slows down a bit as the judge objects to how badly things are going. Reassuring him, Cleese calls Cardinal Richelieu to the stand, and things just start getting silly!

Separated at Birth?

Oui!

This is where I get curious about the process of writing the show. (If only someone had written a diary!) The Python styles are famously delineated along Oxford/Cambridge lines, with Chapman and Cleese (and Idle) in the Cambridge camp, and Jones and Palin (and Gilliam) in the Oxford camp. Cambridge is the silly, verbal "sketch-y" yet inherently rational style, and so far, this sketch has stuck pretty closely to that style. But then Michael Palin steps in as Cardinal Richelieu, by way of a bad American lounge singer, complete with microphone and his assurance that Harold Larch is "a beautiful human being." Calling Cardinal Richelieu as a character witness is Cambridge. Palin's take and performance are sheer Oxford. It's a strange fit, and you can feel the audience trying to come to grips with this new sensibility injected into what has been up to this point a very straightforward and self-assured sketch. We're going off the rails a bit as we try to make sense of what this is, and how it will pay off.

We needn't have worried. Dim has arrived! Dim of the Yard! Graham Chapman returns as a loud-voiced, erect detective who exposes Richelieu as nothing more than a Richelieu impersonator! We're back in Cambridge country, complete with a goofy little song and semi-elaborate choreography (although Eric seems a little off the beat.) Cleese bogarts the song with hysterical physicality, and for his pains,  he is clocked by the chicken-wielding knight.

So ends the first of four in-studio sketches for this show. The rest is all film, baby!

We return to the framing device. The class can't seem to get beyond "The Larch." "And now..." We get one of the Python classics, a self-contained short film called "Bicycle Repairman". I remember seeing this show long before I knew about Monty Python. I was 10, maybe, and Dean Martin had a comedy show on American television. He showed some Monty Python, usually in these self-contained filmed segments. The sketch is simple and easily grasped by a 10-year-old intellect. In a world populated by Supermen, complete with capes and giant "S"s, the manual laborers become the true heroes. A Superman capable of leaping tall buildings in a single bound, can't seem to master the intricacies of the bicycle, and wipes out. "This looks like a job for... Bicycle Repairman." The film reverses the already tired cliches of superhero movies, and gives the hero treatment to the mundane tasks involved in repairing a bicycle. Instead of "Pow!", it's "Bend!" "Screw!" And my favorite-- "Alter Saddle!" Palin sends up the Kent dilemma without commenting on it. It's a tidy, classic, one-joke bit that lands beautifully because of everyone's commitment. "Bicycle Repairman?! But how?!" Dean Martin had the right idea. "Bicycle Repairman" is the perfect introduction to Monty Python's Flying Circus, and a facile corrupter of 10 year old boys.

Cleese gives us the link, as a man enraged by international Communism. Screaming at his clenched fist, his woefully inadequate socks sliding down, Cleese in this bit is the Godfather of Fox News. Called away to dinner, the rage drops with his socks. This takes us into an animation of bunnies hopping like popcorn, introducing us to "Story Time". Sketch #2 is a quickie, with Idle reading children stories that rapidly devolve into pornography. Like Bicycle Repairman, it's a simple idea, brilliantly executed by Idle. The children-friendly portions are so stupid and perfect. "In the dinky-tinky shoppe" is my favorite, and "with a melon" became one of my standard catch phrases growing up. Who needs a melon during an orgy, with all those breasts flopping around?

But enough of that sketch. Back to film, as the bunnies are squashed by an equally hoppy hippo. This is followed by one of Gilliam's most inspired bits, the Priest praying with the penitent. While speaking Latin, the Priest bows repeatedly, knocking the penitent on the head and burying him in the ground. The moment is inspired, my description doesn't do it justice, just buy the friggin' box set already! This takes us to "Donky Rides" and Michael Palin on the beach, introducing the next sketch, entitled "The Restaurant Sketch."

This sketch should not be as funny as it is. It's standard Cambridge, with a lovely evening destroyed by a bit of dirt on a fork. The restaurant staff makes a mountain out of it, and soon bodies are lying on the floor. Chapman and Cleveland are wonderful as the "straight man" couple, and everyone else is great in their respective roles, with stand-out performances by Idle ("A vast bowl of pus!"), and Cleese, who stalks out like a gorilla, with a real cleaver! Cleese THWOCKS it into the table, and then as he attacks the customers with it, he's restrained by Jones, who flips over him, landing right near the cleaver. Holy crap! I bet the BBC insurance auditors were sweating bullets over that sketch.

Interesting to note the first self-aware punchline reference, as the show stops the sketch just to announce that the punch line is coming, the punch line is delivered, groans from the crowd, and back to Palin on the beach saying "What about that punch line?" The Circusians seem to be drawing the line in the sand. "We know how we're supposed to do it. Now shut up and watch." Palin's commentary on the sketch is cut short by Chapman hitting him with the chicken, then handing it to the knight, who turns to follow Chapman, the chicken raised. What goes around, comes around.

Gillian takes over your television set with another commercial spoof. Like most of his commercial spoofs, it's not very good, but there is an inspired bit in the middle with a lady on a horse that is absolutely indecent! It just shows how dirty you can get without nudity. It also gives me serious equine envy anytime I see it. The commercial spoof ends, and is crumpled up and we go to the next Monty Python export, the "Milkman Sketch."

This was another Dean Martin choice, a brilliantly executed short film, but it's different from "Bicycle Repairman." The former short has a clear joke right off the bat, and we enjoy watching the boys play with it, like a confused cat plays with string. This sketch makes us wait for the joke-- but like the imagined delights of the seductress, the wait is worth it! Fantasy turns to nightmare turns to hilarity. Once again, Palin is the star of the short, and his refusal to comment makes it work. We can see the prurience on his face as imagines his prurience on his seductress' face. Then, when his sexual fantasy slams into reality, the look on his face is almost heart breaking. (Equally heart-breaking-- the cadaverous expression of John Cleese, as hope dies in his eyes.) 

We return briefly to the studio as Cleese sets up the next filmed bit, as a BBC announcer, unflappable as he is kidnapped, thrown into a truck (complete with his desk and mic,) driven to the coast and rolled off a pier into the sea. This is another long bit with a sudden, brilliant pay-off that elicits laughter and applause from the studio audience. Its success is conceptual and execution-dependent. I can think of no reason why it should be as funny, and yet, it's brilliant! The final, cathartic moment somehow works. I could understand it better if I'd seen it happen in an improv session at Groundlings or whatever, but they wrote this thing, in advance, filmed it, made up a dummy to look like John Cleese, wrote his copy-- how could they know it would work?! What process led them to this exquisite, beautiful sketch? Let's consult Palin's diary... Nope. Moving on.

We return to the framing device, with yet another lesson on "The Larch". Finally, we get beyond the larch to "The Horse Chestnut"! Wild applause takes us to another filmed link. John Cleese doubles over to softly, ever so softly, interview three intimidated boys in school uniform about the larch. Cleese is great as the patronizing interviewer, but the boys, as played by Palin, Idle and Jones, are brilliant. They're not the same boys! Each boy is a brilliant creation, recognizable yet distinct from one another. Eric is flummoxed, but game. Michael is terrified ("I want to go home.") And Terry, in his best performance yet, plays the scarcely intelligible class cut up, who elicits giggles by saying "Bottom" on TV. With a mouth half full of chocolate, he volunteers the information that Eric's written a sketch.

This brings us to the final sketch of the night, the famous and imitable "Nudge, Nudge" sketch. I heard this sketch well before I saw it, on an 8-track of a Monty Python live performance at New York City Center. It's been a consistent part of their live shows. It's serviceable as a sketch, the progenitor of about 50% of all sketches ever performed on Saturday Night Live. A wacky character behaves in a wacky manner, and we delight in his wackiness. Unfortunately, in the states, we put the same characters in sketch after sketch, then give them their own series and a movie. Monty Python's Flying Circus deserves credit for their oh-so-British restraint in NOT doing "Nudge,Nudge" over and over again in increasingly outlandish situations. "Nudge, Nudge" in Space, anyone? Whup, there goes Sandra Bullock flying off. The Nudge Nudge movie? I urge American comedy producers to take note. If a sketch is funny, it doesn't have to be strip-mined until it isn't. Walk away. We'll come up with other stuff.

One of the funniest moments in the sketch, fueled entirely by Idle's performance, is the deliberate "putting down of the beer" by Terry Jones. Finally, as the sketch ends, we have a jerky close up of Jones' mute appeal to the audience, the filmed referee tells us time is up, and the "It's" Man is sent back into the lion-and-larch-infested jungle.

Things are picking up steam for the Pythons, as their in-studio performances seem more assured and their film work, in easy to digest bite sized chunks, create a low bar for entry into their world and sensibility. They're making the case for what they do, and the studio audience seems to be on board. In fact, to quote Palin's diary entry for Episode 3, "       "!

I've had a lot of fun with Mr. Palin and his diary, but as sparse as his entries were for the first season, they still dwarf the Cleese diary, and the Jones diary is too opaque to be comprehended. Chapman's diary is on a cocktail napkin in some tart's bra, and Idle was too busy scoring the rock opera version of his diary to actually write one. So, thank you, Mr. Palin, for your meager entries in 1969. It was better that you neglect the diary than your children-- or Monty Python's Flying Circus!

Next week; Episode 4 - "Owl Stretching Time"

The Redemption of John Cleese

Sure, he was always funny. He performed on Broadway in a revue show straight out of college, wrote for the BBC, and was making quite a nice living as a comedian.
But if you get a look at the work he did before Monty Python's Flying Circus-- the work available on DVD-- you catch only the faintest glimmer of what was to come. He wrote some excellent sketches for "At Last, the 1948 Show" with Graham Chapman, and even had moments of inspired absurdity-- note the "I am a Gorilla" sketch he did for that show-- and lest we forget, the "Luxury" sketch was written for that show. ("But you tell the young people of today that, and they won't believe you.")
But a glance at his TV special, a year before MPFC, and you realize how close John Cleese came to being nothing more than a stodgy, smug social critic, hemmed in by logical, "brainy" humor. "How to Irritate People" is interesting from a comedic anthropological perspective. We can see various Python sketches in their infancy, as well as "1948" sketches in their dotage. (I guess the BBC is much more lax with intellectual property rights than we are here in the states.) But the sketches, removed from the free-for-all craziness of Monty Python, fail to really take off, and Cleese's opening monologue, theoretically contextualizing the sketches to come, feels like a bad night at a comedy club. "Don't you hate bad customer service at the bank?" John Cleese came this close to being the British Alan King, only without the bombast.
Then came Monty Python.

From the beginning of the Python explosion, John Cleese seemed to come to life with exciting, bold, physical choices that were scarcely evident in his earlier material. Even the throwback sketches, wherein he'd play a reserved Brit, were punctuated with snorty laughs and sudden bursts of irreverence.  From whence did this sudden inspiration emerge? Did Cleese just happen to find his Inner Viking?
In a biography of Cleese, (I don't have it to hand,) the author recounted how, during the writing sessions, Cleese would laugh uproariously at the material of the other members of the troupe. It was suggested that he did this to curry favor for his own material. I don't think that's entirely true. His performance would indicate otherwise. The random silliness of the work of Palin, Jones and Gilliam seemed to free Cleese to be the mad man he was destined to become. Although Cleese does not typically write such fanciful, delirious sketches, it's clear that these sketches fed him in ways his prior collaborations did not, and in ways he couldn't feed himself, at the time. The contributions of the others resonated with him, and made him brilliant.
Furthermore, he took what he gleaned from the others and applied it to his future work. Basil Fawlty goose-stepping around, or the strip-tease in "A Fish Called Wanda" suggest that having unlocked his inner mime, John Cleese was never looking back.
It seems to me that, though the most visible of the Circusians pre-Python, John Cleese was searching for his comic consummation, and he found it with Monty Python's Flying Circus. None of the other members grew so rapidly or completely, (or in the correct direction.) Without MPFC, John Cleese might have faded in obscurity with countless other worthy writers, and the world would be a less silly place.
Thank you, Monty Python, for giving John Cleese the kiss of inspiration that he needed! I am very, very, very, very, very grateful! And so, I bet, is he!

Episode 2 - "Sex and Violence"

"I thought it was the continental version"-- Terry Jones as Arthur Frampton

I'm a bit under the weather today, so if my prose sounds blearier, runnier and fever-ier than usual, just dump a little Tylenol Cold and Flu on the monitor. We shouldn't let it get in the way of our enjoyment. I, for one, can think of nothing better to do with my delirium than feed it some (still) fresh Python. Watch with me, and get infected. (As always, if you don't own the box set, get it. I'll wait...)

Episode 2 begins with Palin as the "It's" Man, running through a brush-filled desert. I didn't know Great Britain had vistas like this, or the sunlight to render them visible. Yet, I doubt the show had the resources to send Palin and crew to Florida. My guess is, this sandy brush is maybe fifteen yards from the water he clambered out of in the Episode 1.

The sight of Palin is immediately funnier than it was the first time. Repetition and familiarity has reduced the uneasiness and uncertainty we felt during the first episode, hasn't it? Mark Twain spoke of this-- during his lectures, he would make a statement, then repeat the statement, and by the fifth repetition, the whole house was laughing hysterically. Maybe audiences were more hard up for entertainment-- the Civil War was so last minute--  but I think the same phenomenon applies to today's audiences.

I think the same phenomenon applies to today's audience.

Anyway-- long run through the desert, accompanied by falls and goofy sound effects (including a pig!) and on to the titles. No laughs during the opening from the live audience, but you do hear some coughs. It was taped in London in late August, and those summer colds are the worst.

We begin with Part 2-- of course we do-- and launch into Sheep! A sketch right off the bat! Graham plays a ruddy-faced country type, while Jones plays an urban dandy passerby. If you think this is going to be class warfare, think again. There are sheep in the trees.

I'd love to know who was making the sheep noises-- they are hilarious. Equally funny is watching Graham Chapman and Terry Jones try to agree on where and when the off camera sheep are hopping and perching. This is also the first sick bit of cruelty to animals (sitting on pigs doesn't count-- they're comfy!) as Chapman describes the unseen action. "Now witness their attempts to fly from tree to tree. Notice they do not so much fly as plummet." SPLAT! Now, that's cruelty to animals! Took 'em a whole two episodes! Chapman's verbal silliness makes its first appearance, with stilted verbosity and syntax making a simple answer long and funny. We'll see much of this later on.

Then the link, a bit of inspired lunacy from Cleese and Palin as they discuss, in pigeon French, the commercial possibilities of avine aviation, with lots of onomatopoeia, dancing about, and an exchange of facial hair. Take a look at how Cleese just physically goes for it. Palin is game, but he seems more... bashful, somehow. If these two were blonde bombshells, Palin would be Janet Leigh, while Cleese would be Mae West. I'm guessing Gilliam created the sheep. That takes us to a Pepperpot interview where the ladies admire the French. "Well, they think well, don't they?" This brings us to a mention of Rene Descarte, and a funny animation from Gilliam with a gag only an illustrator could have thought of.

Eric Idle comes in with a new catch phrase, "And Now For Something Completely Different." That something different is an interview with a three-cheeked man. Cleese once again plays the droll BBC interviewer plagued by fragile propriety with understated excellence-- but can I say, the man needed longer socks. His legs go all the way up, and his socks only go some of the way. Terry Jones pulls a funny voice, and the sketch is beautifully written. How can you prove it if you can't see it on television? Finally, Arthur Figgis (aka Graham Chapman) makes an appearance as the corroborrating witness to Frampton's 50% botty bonus. This marks (I believe) the last appearance of the epithet "S'Truth!" I, for one, will miss it. And I think the same phenomenon applies to today's audience.

Whereupon Eric Idle comes in with a new catch phrase, "And Now For Something Completely Different". That something different is an interview with a three-cheeked man. Cleese once again plays the droll BBC interviewer plagued by... didn't we do this just now? Holy crap, Monty Python is ripping off Mark Twain, the inventor of repetition. They come out of the redun-dance , like the Enterprise pulling free of a time loop, with Jones claiming that he thought this was the continental version. That's what I always say when people accuse me of repeating myself, and I encourage all of you to do the same. It makes being dull and unimaginative so interesting!

Whereupon Eric Idle comes on with a new catch phrase, "And Now For Something Completely the Same..." Behind his announcer's desk, odd pictures-- a gay poster boy, a dinosaur, Nessie-- are the only indication that things are indeed different. As Idle searches for a new act, we meet the Woman's Institute, stock footage of some old ladies applauding genially. This is their first appearance, apparently the discovery of researcher Sara Hart Dyke. According to Kim "Howard" Johnson's book, "The First 280 Years of Monty Python", Palin claims that the Women's Institute footage accurately represents the early Python audiences. That would explain the coughing.

Graham Chapman blows both of his noses, and then Michael Palin steps out as an unctious emcee, presaging Bill Murray's "creation" a decade later. He introduces Arthur Ewing (is everyone named Arthur in their sketches?) and his musical mice-- and the Circusians take animal cruelty to a whole new level! Oh, the howls of outrage this material would be greeted with today! The PETA protests, the red paint, the interviews with Justin Beiber! Monty Python was ahead of its time, but it was also ahead of PETA's outreach campaigns, and for that, I feel grateful. Watching the musical mice sketch with even the slightest degree of empathy will induce projectile vomiting, but being a heartless bastard makes it hysterical!

Play that Mouse-- Play it Hard!

Anticipating PETA's outrage, Jones' Ewing is dragged from the stage, and we slide right into the Marriage Counselor sketch. There are three stand-outs in this sketch-- John Cleese's cowboy, and Carol Cleveland. Let's dwell for a moment on the latter two. I can remember seeing this sketch when I was a teenager, and the thrill is NOT gone! Carol has never looked hotter then when she played the short-skirted, tanned, rapacious and vivacious Deirdre Pewty, the wife of Arthur (!) Pewty. I admire Carol Cleveland for her long creative partnership with the Pythons. She is funny and game, and stands up to the lunacy better even than Margaret Dumont stood up to the Marx Brothers. But in her broad-striped, zipper-in-the-front dress that scarcely contains her, she is GORGEOUS! Eric Idle, while getting most of the laughs, (especially whilst hastily undressing) plays third fiddle to her playful sensuality, and Michael Palin, playing the cuckolded coward, plays second, with his awesome admission that he suspects his wife. ("Well, yes!") Carol, without a single line (just a high-pitched giggle) is the star of this sketch. I'd say "God Bless Carol Cleveland," but it's clear He already has. To watch her and be straight is to be aroused. And I think the same phenomenon applies to today's audience.

Then, just as the sketch looks ready to peter out, (with Carol hidden from view behind a screen,) Palin wanders into a cowboy, played by John Cleese doing one of the worst Western accents ever! Was this the original idea behind Sam Elliot's role in "The Big Lebowski"? Are the Coens totally ripping off the Pythons? It serves them right for ripping off Mark Twain. But the anachronism of the cowboy raises the sketch up from standard to inspired.

Then the knight comes in-- as if Arthur Pewty is a walking time machine-- and clubs Pewty with a chicken. Although said knight was seen in Ep. 1, sitting beside Palin during the Picasso-on-a-bike sketch, this is the first appearance of the chicken. This is yet another thread in the Python mosaic, and we'll see more of him in the first season. It does not qualify as cruelty to animals, because the chicken is already dead, and thus beyond cruelty, and instead of being cudgeled, it is used as a cudgel. So much for pathos!

Let's go to the videotape! Some pseudo-archival film, starring Terry Jones as Queen Victoria and Graham Chapman as P.M. William Gladstone, narrated initially by Cleese, then by Michael Palin as Alfred Lord Tennyson, comes next. Typical British leveling of the class divides, by showing the Queen and stodgy Gladstone in a sequence of slapstick hijinks involving whitewash, kicks in the ass, and pie. It reminds me of a bit I read in, I believe, a National Lampoon compilation that I have since not been able to track down. It was entitled "The Wit of Winston Churchill" or something like that. It would recount an obviously fictional tale of Winston's fine repostes. An empress would approach him at an embassy ball and say "Mr. Churchill, your grasp of foreign affairs is as tenuous as your British cooking is abysmal." To which, Mr. Churchill replied "Suck my ass, you filthy old whore." Something like that.

The film freeze frames into a photograph on the mantel of a working class playwright, arguing with his effete coal miner son. Another solid if unsurprising sketch, pulled off with the commitment of the actors. The first half of the sketch seems to rely heavily on class distinctions and geography. "Hempstead wasn't good enough for you. You had to go poncing off to Barnsley!" I get the gist of it, but it doesn't pick up speed until Idle, playing the black sheep son, fights with Graham Chapman, his playwright father. "And look what you've done to Mother! She's worn out from meeting film stars and attending premieres and giving gala luncheons!" Terry Jones, as the mother, grounds it all somehow. "You know what he's like after a few novels." The father's affliction, writer's cramp, ends the sketch, and Palin, as a complaining neighbor, links us to a Scotsman on a horse, the applauding ladies, a third nose, and a flying sheep.

Next, a religious discussion moderated by John Cleese, that transforms into a wrestling match between a bishop and an atheist over the existence of God. (We find out later that God exists, by two falls to a submission.) Cleese (poorly) shoots a cowboy, which takes us into a set of Gilliantics. Some classic bits here, with the carnivorous baby carriage and Rodin's "The Lovers" as a wind instrument. He finally links us to the final sketch, "The Mouse Problem".

The sketch plays like an episode of 60 minutes, with interviews with contrite and embarrassed former mice, experts weighing in on what it all means for society, a montage of mice-y marquis, and the secret camera footage. I've watched this sketch many times with my daughter, and she's always enjoyed it, but on a recent viewing, she said "Oh! NOW I get it." Yes, the "Mice" problem is really about homosexuality, but of course it's really about the national and media fueled hysteria over homosexuality. Look at all the judgment and earnest inquisition around hat is basically a harmless (and a little silly) act.

John Cleese is my favorite in this sketch, with his halting, confessional tone. He manages, in the midst of all this silliness, to evoke a sincere and repentant tone, even while he involuntarily scrunches up his face at the mention of the mouse parties. John Cleese's name in this sketch, by the way, is Arthur.

Graham Chapman has a bit in this section that was cut out of the various PBS viewings that I'd seen before, (just as the Victoria/Gladstone film was,) but it's brilliant! He plays a psychologist named "The Amazing Kargol" and he's got a magician's assistant, played by Carol Cleveland, named Janet. I really like her! "Pick a case study, any case study..." Some famous mice are outed, including Ceasar and Napoleon. 

We see the first of the "Man in the Street" interviews in this episode, regarding the mouse problem. Some of the funniest lines in the episode are in these throwaway opinions. "I'd shove sparrows down their throats until the beaks poke out through the stomach walls." Who hasn't wanted to say that at a party? Although most of this episode was smaller sketches and links, this last bit is another deep dish exploration of a silly concept. It ends with Michael Palin shooting a flying sheep out of the sky, and the "It's" Man runs back into the depths of the desert.

We're beginning to see how deep the bench is at the Flying Circus. Not only can these guys do links, and explore silly concepts, but they're also pretty adept with the standard sketch. The sheep sketch, the marriage counselor sketch, the playwright sketch, all stand up to anything done on the more standard sketch shows. But then they give us the links, and the animation, and the "Mice Problem" exploration, and they haven't even started with the funny songs yet. Plus, they've got Carol Cleveland in their clutches. Even their constant repetitions are funny.

And I think the same phenomenon applies to today's audience.

Next week; Episode #3; "How to Recognize Different Types of Trees from Quite a Long Way Away"
or... "The Larch."

Addendum; According to Kim "Howard Johnson's nook, "The First 280 Years of Monty Python" (with the "0" crossed out... get it?) John Cleese and Graham Chapman originally wrote the Mice sketch for Peter Sellers to do in "The Magic Christian", and although Mr. Sellers liked the bit, he trashed it the next day. Apparently, he'd asked the opinion of his milkman. As we'll see in the next episode, milkmen make some very bad decisions. But Sellers, who was married to Britt Eckland, has no excuse.





 

Episode 1 - "Whither Canada" (and not "Sex and Violence")

"... A grand death, that!" - Eric Idle as Death Color Commetator

It seems appropriate that Monty Python began their series with death.

Before we start, a few minor notes-- you can skip this paragraph if you want to get to the show-- this blog is in no way intended to be a substitute for watching the show. If you haven't seen this episode yet, stop what you are doing, get out of that office chair you bought at Best Buy, go back to Best Buy and get the Flying Circus box set. Or, if you're online only, you can buy it here! Then, by all means, come back, and we'll laugh together. Second, some of you seem to be confused about which episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus is "the first," and by "some of you," I mean "me." I have chosen the first on the DVD box set, despite Kim "Howard" Johnson's perverse placing of it in the secondary slot. No disrespect to Mr. Johnson and his otherwise excellent book "The First 280 Years of Monty Python".

"Wither Canada" begins with the "It's" Man-- Michael Palin as a bedraggled castaway, coming out of the water onto a deserted sandy beach with a mission; to start the show with a short word. This is the first of Monty Python's running (or staggering, or falling, or crawling) bits. The single shot feels incredibly long. It's also not particularly funny, having no context beyond the meta-context of someone going through extremely hazardous conditions to start a dumb comedy show. Every time I watch this, I wonder what it was like on that dark October night in Great Britain, when some twisted group of insomniacs tuned in for "zany madcap humor"... and watched this. The dumbstruck, slack-jawed mystification must have been hilarious. Did they have the right channel? (There were only, like, three back then.) Ah, Monty Python-- the first joke of your brand new TV show, and it's not so much for your audience, as on them.

Then come the titles, with John Cleese announcing the name of the show in an understated, British way. The titles give us our first hint that this is a comedy show, with Terry Gilliam's inspired collages. The giant foot became the second running gag, and a visual trademark of all things Python. The shows, as I understand it, were taped in front of a live audience. But throughout the titles, you wouldn't know it. The genius just passes them by like a bullet train on the placid French countryside. If you think things will settle down and get ordinary, you're sadly mistaken. After the credits, Graham Chapman's arts program is interrupted when he sits on a pig. (No visuals, just a "squeal.") A temporarily anonymous hand crosses off a cartoon pig from a chalk board. It almost feels like we're watching a Kabuki play. This all means something... but what?

Finally, the boys take pity on us and present us with a bonafide "sketch." "Famous Deaths", emceed by Mozart. And it's... fair. It probably looked great on paper, a sports program wherein the prize was the best death. But it's an inadequate introduction to Monty Python. First, there's John Cleese. I'll say it right now, he's my favorite of the Circusians. But in this sketch, as Mozart, he never really ignites.
His anguished Austrian accent forces his voice into a low, sometimes inaudible monotone. His expression, a pinched, pained smile, is the opposite of funny, inviting us to squirm instead of laugh. (Just wait 'til you see his Beethoven!) Furthermore, as the sketch proceeds, the boys are isolated from one another, each in their own sound stage or film clip. Having tuned in to watch a comedy troupe, we instead see five individual performers. (Technically, we don't see Terry Jones, but we hear him. "Kiss me hardieeeeeeeeeeee--"THUD!)

Still, we can catch glimmers of greatness. Michael Palin brings the first dose of silly with his Genghis Khan expiration, with Graham Chapman upping the silly ante soon after ("S'Truth!" - another running gag). The sketch is saved by Eric Idle as the color commentator, totaling up the scores with an energetic, fast-paced monologue. The many famous names tossed off with jokes only a history major would be able to get ("Marat-- in his bath-- best friends with Charlotte in the showers afterwards--") were the type of thing that gave Monty Python its reputation for being smart.

But beyond this, we can begin to see how these boys do! Coming up with a concept, they go deep. Famous deaths take us to sports scores, then to ordinary but requested deaths, then the silly anachronism of the final death-- Admiral Nelson tossed out the window of a modern office building (yet another running gag, these bodies flying from the window, and one of my personal favorites!)-- it's not just a series of jokes that vary the central theme. They explore the concept, as if it were... well, a real thing. In fact, hardly any of the jokes work on their own, but function beautifully as part of the overall construct of a thorough examination of a very silly idea.

Nelson lands on a pig (I've always wanted to write that clause,) and we're back to the pig strewn chalkboard. The anonymous chalk-meister is now revealed as a teacher of Italian at a British college. The boys didn't forget us. They came back for us and wrapped up the chalkboard. Now we can relax-- we're in good hands. The pigs, on the other hand, better step it up!

Thus begins the second "sketch" of the night, the Italian class sketch. Though a relatively simple premise, there are two... no, three things to admire. 1.) The execution! Note how the camera lingers on the teacher at the start of the sketch, holding back on the big laugh. 2.) The accents! Holy crap, can these guys actually speak Italian?! Then Michael Palin, the Actor of the group, doubles back and speaks pigeon English with an Italian accent. And finally... 3.) The Group! For the first time, we see the five of them together in a room. The energy level spikes with stiletto intensity! In a much simpler and more abbreviated way, we see as before a silly concept being excavated, its depths plumbed. Eric Idle, once again, is the stand-out in this sketch, with his vocal energy and linguistic facility. John Cleese still seems abashed, though nothing like the Mozart sketch. Terry Jones, a man apart, beautifully plays the bemused teacher, and Graham Chapman makes a claim as the first Python goofball, playing a German student looking for the German class, lederhosen, legs and umlaut on full display. We're starting to build up a head of steam after the tepid start. The teacher sits on a pig, crosses out another from the chalkboard, and one of them races off. Goodbye, Italian class!

A pattern emerges-- Monty Python tends to avoid punch lines, choosing instead to end sketches with a link to the next skecth. This "link" idea is foreign to Americans, with their addiction to stand-up and improv. American television peppers its comedy liberally with punchlines, black outs and act outs. Monty Python instead used the link, and found a deep, rich vein of humor that still lies under-exploited. The various comedy shows here in the states, even in GB, still focus on punchlines to end their sketches, often with canned laughter and applause to make it clear to the audience that the sketch is over. Do we really need to be told when a sketch is over? Just end it! Get out! The audacity of Monty Python to refuse to cue the audience! I guess they were too busy writing jokes.

The next Gilliam interlude, while touched with genius as always, seems to end before it gets going, with a Whizzo butter ad. (Whizzo is another running gag, but it didn't get far.) Gilliam had a weakness for commercial spoofs, but they were never as good as the rest of his stuff. This one is no exception. We leap over to a televised demonstration of Whizzo butter and its dead crab-ness, and we meet "the Pepperpots," the Circusians dressed up like very ugly ladies, with long coats, curled wigs, hats, purses, and high, squeaky voices. Another Python standard, these "ladies" occupy much of the Python map. "You try that around here, young man, and we'll slit your face!"

Without so much as a link, we dive right into "It's the Arts", which is where we began the show way back when. (Again, they're doubling back for us. "You guys with us? You good? Okay, let's go..." ) This sequence is essentially two similar sketches of an artist being interviewed. In the first, John Cleese interviews the stodgy pompous filmmaker Sir Edward Ross, and Cleese finally seems to have found his feet, brilliantly sending up the grave, self-important BBC interviewer, unable to get to the interview until he figures out what to call the director. This sketch actually has a punch line. It's not very clever, ("Oh, shut up!") but I laugh every time I hear it. The second interview is Idle interviewing the illustrious composer Arthur "Two Sheds" Jackson, and it's sublime. Terry Jones as the hard luck "Two Sheds" projects the simpering whininess of the artist who doesn't control his own mythology, and Idle is charmingly hostile. The sketches tie together when John Cleese joins the second interview, and the interviewers chase off Jones. "Get your own arts program, you fairy!" Ah, to write comedy in the innocent days before PC and knee-jerk litigation. Having said that, they were very wrong to say that, very wrong indeed.

In between these sketches, Michael Palin introduces the next silly concept-- Pablo Picasso painting on a bicycle. It's not their most inspired idea, but once again, they double, triple, quadruple down on the idea, turning it into a breathless media frenzy by the time they're finished. The highlight for me is John Cleese, calling the race from the sidewalk with breathless energy and speed as the cyclists speed past. "It's Braque! Georges Braque the Cubist, painting a bird in flight over a cornfield and going very fast!" The artist name dropping is dizzying, and at the end of his schpiel, as Toulous toddles across on his trike, you feel like it's a miracle Cleese didn't have an embolism, or give you one. A brilliant precursor to his commentary for the Twit race.

Tossed into this sketch for no particular reason are two Python mainstays-- the Viking and the Knight. They bookend Palin during one pan, almost too quick to notice, and earlier the Viking (played by Cleese-- this time,) gives a one word helping hand to the flatulent Palin. Palin suppresses a pig before we move on into the next batch of Gilliam.

No commercial spoof this time, and Gilliam is on fire, showing us the comic variations on people posing for pictures. Two soldiers break into a twisted dance, and we finish off with a long, long, looooonnnng suspense shot of a man at a table. Footsteps let us know that something is coming, and the man's eyes dart about, concerned, then frightened-- but the man stays still. This shot goes on forever, and when the giant pig finally leaps in and squishes the man, one can't help but erupt with laughter. Even when you know it's coming! The confidence and skill that these people have, in their first show, is astonishing.

This brings us to the famous "Funniest Joke" sketch. This concept is a comic's wet dream! Imagine having written something that is so successful, it's fatal? It's reminiscent of Michael O'Donoghue's bit in "Manhattan." "I'm working on a screenplay about a guy who screws so great, that everytime he brings a woman to orgasm, the orgasm is so fulfilling that she dies. Now this one thinks that's hostile."

Yes, it's hostile, and the various laughs that the boys bark out betray that hostility. But it's all good. It's exquisitely constructed, with a combination of tape, film, and archival film, with a great turn by Cleese as a Gestapo officer, a beautiful laughing death by Terry Jones, Graham Chapman's first turn as a patriarchal general, the use of funny signs, and Palin's wonderfully committed acting. Lest we forget, Idle tosses in some of the best laugh lines in his voice over. "In 1945, peace broke out." Even the animator, Terry Gilliam, in what has to be the best-spasmed, worst-photographed death ever shot, got in the action. (Did the director not know he was going to twitch and fall? Or was Gilliam just too electric to contain in the frame?) Somehow, though the piece starts off in present day England, we lapse back into World War II without even noticing.

John Cleese, having begun with such trepidation, now enjoys himself, making the bold physical choices that were to be the hallmark of his career. In addition to the goosestepping Gestapo officer, doing a Woody Woodpecker impersonation as he laughs last, he also plays an police officer who's job it is to sing laments, bringing the mood down so his superior officer will survive reading the joke. Cleese actually seems to deflate as he moans, going from tallest of the lamenting trio to the shortest.

I also want to mention Graham Chapman, doing his best Stan Laurel impersonation as he and Terry Jones listen to the (terrible) German retaliation to the weaponized joke. The Hitler footage is awesome!

And with that, we cut back to the "It's" Man, passed out from exhaustion on the beach. Prodded with some driftwood, he's sent back into the sea, his job done. Funnily enough, there are two women in the background splashing each other. Some castaway.

Although the final score is Pigs 9, British Bipeds 4, I would take issue with that. I count at least seven British bipeds killed in this episode, and only five pigs. Overall, a very blood-drenched episode. But it is blood that nourishes us, and promises a long life. One episode down and 44 to go.

 And who the hell is Vicki Carr?

Next Week; Episode 1 the second - "Sex and Violence"