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.
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!
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| 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.
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