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"