Episode 10 - "Untitled"

"Adopt, adapt and improve. Motto at the Round Table." - John Cleese as the Lingerie Robber.

Back again, for the whopping 10th episode. Many of the better early Python episodes demonstrate a cohesion of styles-- Cleese getting silly, Palin bringing his exquisite talents to a straight up sketch, all of them working as a team on a film like "Bicycle Repairman". But some of the shows regress a bit, and we have a variety of styles that aren't quite gelling. This is one such episode, a pastiche of sketches and bits that never really come together into the joyous and explosive whole ("Oy, my explosive whole!") that we equate with the best of Python. Never mind. It's still better than the best episode of "Friends." Yes, I went there! As always, please buy the box set. Stop peeking through the curtains like a pathetic, timid voyeur-- pay the cover charge, get undressed, and join the orgy. That syphilis ain't gonna spread itself. 

We begin with a long slow pan and zoom to Palin as the "It's" Man, hanging from a meat hook alongside a bunch of dead pigs. As the camera takes its sweet time getting close on his face, as a slow and sonorous funeral march plays, Palin's eyes dart anxiously about, taking in his dilemma. He holds his hands up, like a kitten being held by the scruff. Suddenly, his eyes seem to clarify with awareness and purpose. "It's!" he rasps emphatically. The subtext-- "Help!" One of his best performances. The Titles unfold, (with applause following Cleese's announcement,) and we're off!

Next, we see a great example of the mind of Terry Jones at work. We cut to a lingerie shop. Idle behind the counter in a suit, Cleese in a horizontally striped shirt and mask pulled up onto his forehead. Mannequins in lacy underwear stand nearby. Cleese paces, irritated. "Where is he?" he mutters to Idle, who shrugs, bored. Cut now to a filmic close-up of a BBC form letter, and we pull back to reveal Palin and Jones as a married couple. (Spoiler alert! Jones is the woman!) Palin reads a letter which asks him to be in a BBC sketch. Now we know that Cleese and Idle are waiting for this dim plumber, who is only now waking up to the fact that he's gonna be a TV star. Jones' encouragement is hilarious, ("Look at Mrs. Brando's son next door. He was mending the fridge when they came and asked him to be the Wild One.") and despite his resistance ("What about the cat?") she sends him off with a hearty "Mind you don't get seduced!" He doesn't even leave through the door-- he leaves through the fourth wall, right onto the television screen! As soon as he leaves, he turns on the television, and there he is, greeting the actors, finding his mark, and walking off.

What a long way to start a sketch! Still, it's full of all that great Python stuff-- the meta humor, the doubling down on a middling concept, and of course, the silliness. Palin and Jones' portrayal of a typical English couple is fond and sweet. The audience seems mystified, or lulled, by the lyrical quality, and the great jokes slip past them like serial killers in the fog, only to come up later on the third viewing. I have no evidence to hand that the Jones/Palin team wrote this intro, but it feels like them. It's too subtle to ever play in a stage show, few people quote it, but it's a hidden gem-- except for the hidden part. They only open the show with it.

 Now that the sketch has been properly introduced, we begin. Cleese silly walks in through the shop window, his gun held out rigidly, mask in place. Clearing his throat, he politely attempts to rob what he thinks is a bank, only it's a lingerie shop, and the best he can hope for is a pair of knickers. Anticipating the self-improvement wave of the current era, he mantras himself into a positive interpretation of his massive blunder. Idle, smiling ostentatiously as the gun wedges into his nose, exudes British loathing, killing this hapless burglar with kindness. A one joke sketch overall, but well-performed by both Cleese and Idle, and strip-mined for every possible laugh.

Chapman cuts in with rambling, smarmy gay host David Unction, fake-tittering at the mention of the word "knickers". He links us to the next sketch, a talk show spoof hosted by a tree. (Remember David Hemmings played by a piece of wood?) The tree puppets used in the sketch are grotesque, with only mouths to denote a face, and only the one lip moves. No wonder we take an axe to these freaks of nature. If they didn't spew out oxygen with every breath, they'd be outta here! The sketch is random bits of silliness, perfect for exposing the self-congratulatory bullshit that passes for entertaining conversation on talk shows.

The jokes are multi-layered-- intentional or oft-told jokes from a tree's perspective, but relatively incomprehensible to us, and thus, funny. The unspoken question of who the hell cares what a tree thinks about teenage violence is a silent yet powerful rebuke to the activist stars (on both sides) that still plague the celebri-verse. The applauding audience is a forest. "Put your twigs together..."This feels like an Idle bit, and he chews the scenery with his David Frost impersonation ("SEW-pah!"). It doesn't get very far before we segue into a Gilliam animated bit with a performing Chippendale desk who winds up getting hammered-- literally. A long, long fanfare, capped off with a barbershop quartet harmony from the boys, (Cleese gets the last note-- funny!) and we get to the Vocational Guidance Counsellor Sketch.

This is back to the precise, clinical dissection of human nature that Cleese/Chapman excelled at. A young man comes in to change his job, only to be told that he's too "irrepressibly drab and awful" to be anything other than a chartered accountant, which is what he already is. His lion taming dreams are shattered. The jokes are great, the sketch builds nicely, with a quick call back to Episode 3 ("The Larch.") and it ends as an infomercial on the dangers of being an accountant. I love this sketch, I don't know why exactly. Palin reprises his Pewty character, this time as Mr. Entropy, and Cleese has great bits describing Entropy, and the lion.The sketch only gets more cruel when you realize that Cleese's dad was a chartered accountant. Suh-NAP! This is one of the many sketches Cleese and Chapman wrote mocking the honored profession, the first of which was for the "1948 Show" and is embedded below. Enjoy. It's funny, and ol' Wall Eyes himself, Marty Feldman, is in it. Sorry for the glitches-- I didn't upload it.
After the Vocational Guidance Counsellor Sketch, we catch David Unction looking at a men's body building magazine. This was before straight men read those things. He's called out by Jones as a Viking, and we cut to film of the sea, and Mr. Ron Obvious running alongside it. What follows is a long film bit showing the travails of Jones as Obvious, trying, at the urging of his manager Luigi Vercotti, to accomplish one impossible feat after another, from jumping the channel to eating a cathedral. It's fun to see Cleese, as the TV announcer, trying to keep Jones herded for the camera.
The film clip is funny, but the pain is too real somehow. Jones, as the game, gullible Obvious, is heartbreaking in this allegory of celebrity exploitation. It seems ridiculous that we can be made to care about someone who died while trying to leap into orbit, but there you go. Even the Circusians suspected what was going on, giving the Obvious sketch a tragic ending in a cemetery. Complete with a long zoom out, and an offscreen couple expressing confusion. "Satire? But this is zany madcap humor."

As if on cue, in walks Cleese into a pet shop. The set-up, so terribly similar to another pet shop sketch we've discussed just a couple of posts ago, quickly distinguishes itself from the famous "Parrot Sketch." Cleese wants a cat. The pet shop doesn't have any. But they offer to "customize" a terrier. "I'll file its legs down a bit, take its snout off, stick a few wires in its cheeks, there you are, a lovely pussycat." When challenged that the terrier wouldn't meow, Palin replies, "Well, it would howl a bit." After a few more exchanges along these lines, Cleese finally agrees to turning the terrier into a fish-- "But only if I get to watch." And the yo-yo dances, taking us from empathy to cruelty, back to empathy, back to cruelty, both sides locked in life or death struggle for our sensibilities, neither side winning the tug-of-war.

Anyone?

A series of quick one-offs accusing the show of being predictable (huh!) links us to the next sketch, with Chapman, Jones and an unnamed woman comprising a panel tasked with hiring a librarian. They interview Idle, dressed as a gorilla. This sketch is inscrutable to me. It has all the ornate silliness that you'd expect, with Chapman in the lead. His daydream of a panther ripping open a complaining readers throat is funny. Jones as a clergyman (occasionally stopping the sketch to inquire about a gladiator picture Chapman is looking at) gets some laughs with his prurient smile. But overall, I just don't get this. I've not found any literature on it, so if anyone could explain it to me, I'd appreciate it. Something to do with people being threatened by books? I don't know...

The bits that follow include letters to the editor, or an advice columnist called "Old Codgers", which I like. The letters are read by a person, and the response is a short, pithy meaningless phrase read by Idle and someone else, in unison, always ends with the title "Ma'am." A letter reading "Dear Old Codgers, I am President of the United States of America. Yours truly, R.M. Nixon" gets the reply "Phew! Bet that's  job and a half, Ma'am." I don't get this bit either, but it's still funny. Often around the house, we'll speak in the same sing-songy cadence as the Old Codgers. "Those shoes are quite the pair, Ma'am." The Old Codgers links us to the next sketch--

Next, we get Palin and Jones as a couple once again, in bed this time, asleep. This sketch even starts off with an intro pan, and goofy music playing. It's like suddenly, we're on the Lucy show!

The sketch feels like it was written for a prior gig by one of the guys. Essentially, a parade of passionate lovers visits the bedside of this homely woman (sorry, Terry-- you're no Carol Cleveland!) including a mariachi band. The husband occasionally rouses, stopping the proceedings, but goes back to sleep once mollified. Even if you've never seen this sketch before, you've seen it a million times. It's that old. Still, Monty manages to surprise us. First, we meet Biggles, the anachronistic sky-captain, and his partner Algie. We'll see them again, but this is their first appearance. Second, Palin gets up to tinkle, and the others reprimand him for not finishing the sketch. "There's only another bally page!" whines Algie. This pedestrian sketch all of a sudden seems pedestrian by design, luring us into an awkward position and ripping the rug from under us. It's fun to see everyone together in the room, and the performances are all good-- I especially like Idle's Frenchman. "Come to mah urrrrrrms!" But it feels like we spend way too much time in self-aware predictability, just to enjoy a brief second of inspiration. In the lavatory, Palin, the dozing husband, meets his blonde mistress and delivers the obligatory punch line. A quick series of animated animals devouring each other while discussing the predictability of the last sketch feels oddly disjointed. Still, if you've never seen an ostrich eat an alligator, it's not to be missed. The "It's" Man is motored into the abattoir, someone walks out with his entrails, and another show is finished.

Many of these sketches were originally written for other episodes, and it shows. Though every moment is touched by geniuses, the sum is never more than the parts, and the vertiginous leaps in tone and world view give us less a flow than a series of jolts. Clearly, the Circusians are adopting many new styles in their team effort, but they still haven't consistently managed to adapt to one another. That improvement will come. In the meantime, we can still enjoy the individual pieces, and delight in the incongruence, as depicted below. Thank you, Terry Gilliam, for so exquisitely rendering a portrait of the group at this stage in their creative development.

Ostrich Eats Gator-- But both make great boots!

Next week; Episode 11 - The Royal Philharmonic Goes to the Bathroom