Episode 9 - The Ant, An Introduction

"The giant redwod! The larch! The fir! The mighty Scotch pine!" - Michael Palin as Bevis

People like to think that Genius is consistent. DiMaggio should always get a hit when at bat, Don Juan is always a great lover. But reliant as it is on inspiration, Genius is mercurial. The greatest hitters can strike out, and the greatest lovers can be left hanging. (Just ask my wife.) Where Genius is involved, you just have to give it your all and hope it lands. Sometimes it won't.

Let's see how the Geniuses did this week. As always, feel free to watch along. If you haven't bought the box set yet, clearly Genius hasn't struck you more than a glancing blow.

The "It's" Man runs through a forest/minefield, keeping one step ahead of the explosions as he pants to the camera. When he finally gets here, he looks almost bored. "Just another day ay work." Then, the Titles, with a Cleese announcement that's sounding more French with every show. This time, the announcement is enhanced with an echo.Why? I don't know. Genius, I suppose.

John Cleese and a very good friend.

A caption reads "Part 2" and then... "The Llama". We cut "live" to Golders Green, where Idle, smiling inanely at the camera, strums a guitar, dressed in a black mariachi outfit. Beside him, equally demented grin scarring his face, is Jones in a matching outfit, playing castanets. Cleese hurries out, a manic smile-- these guys can really do fake, desperate, showbiz smiles-- and a tux, and he speaks in pretty impressive Spanish on a small raised platform about the llama. There are subtitles to help us along, and we soon realize he's getting everything wrong. Llamas have "A beak for eating honey"? It's an interesting mix of bad entertainment, an edu-mercial, and just plain silliness. Cleese has difficulty pulling a bouquet of flowers out of his jacket to emphasize a point, and Idle and Jones add, in song, that llamas are larger than frogs. Finally, Chapman putters out on a scooter dressed up as a Contessa, blows up a paper bag and pops it. The rest of the crew shout "Ole!", hopping into the air, as Chapman bows. The energy is deliriously infectious, but remember, they weren't improvising. Someone wrote this. How did they know? Why is this funny? Genius, I suppose.

Quick personal note; They performed this bit on the City Center album, with Michael Palin voicing over the captions in a very dry, subdued tone. "Look out. There are llamas." I was very familiar with it, due to incessant listening, well before I saw it on television. I'd always enjoyed it, but seeing Idle, Jones and Cleese and their crazy eyes, followed by Chapman on the scooter, is not to be missed.

Moving on as the audience applauds, we cut to a dingy London street. A low rent snack shop perches precariously on a narrow wedge of a corner. As we move around, we get a close up glimpse of swingin' London in the late 60s. Look at the pile of rubble-- yeah, baby! Moving past the grit heap, we step into an alley, and, trash can by his side, we see Cleese in a dinner jacket and thick socks visible under his (always) too-short slacks, sitting at a desk. There's a phone on the desk, although where it would plug into, I don't know. There's also a tumescent, old-school BBC microphone jutting from the desk's center. It's as if the Announcer, desk and all, had been warped from a drab office to this grubby back alley. Cleese doesn't seem alarmed, as he hangs up the phone and announces "And now for something completely different..." It's as if he's been going to this alley every day 9-5 for the last few years. Although we've heard the catch phrase before, (see Episode 2 - Sex and Violence) this is the first time Cleese has said it, and his "Man at the Desk in Some Strange Place" bit will be a staple in the second season cold opens.

Cleese introduces Palin, who has a tape recorder up his nose. One nostril plays, one nostril rewinds. It's a call back to Chapman's man with two noses-- physical deformity as vaudeville. Palin takes us into the next sketch with a pre-corded, nasal obscured announcement. Cleese, in age make-up and tweeds, pays Sir George Head, O.B.E., who is hiring a climbing party for Kilimanjaro. But wait, there's more. Cleese has double vision. The sketch plays every possible variation on this joke, as well as toss in additional jokes. "Kilimanjaro is a pretty tricky climb, you know, most of it's up until you reach the very, very top, and then it tends to slope away rather sharply." Chapman provides a bit of random lunacy, and the sketch wraps up with the reveal that Head's double vision was correct-- there really are two people there, and two George Heads. Not particularly inspired, but brilliantly executed, with poor Idle as the increasingly exasperated straight man.

They hang onto the double vision theme, as Cleese returns as the Announcer, only now there's two of him. He introduces a man with a tape recorder up his brother's nose-- it's Palin again, this time with his stiff backed brother Chapman. They perform in stereo, to enthusiastic applause from a lone spectator in a football stadium. (They don't have any other kind of stadiums in London, do they?)
Gilliam animations follow, with a halo-d priest speaking Latin and sales pitches to the audience, before he's sucked up through his halo by an admiring and libidinous angel, and kissed to distraction-- a great animator's gag, making the halo a direct conduit to heaven. A cabbage knocks him the priest off the screen, and when the bewigged carnival attendant tries to reward the ace with a naked lady, the unseen pitcher throws another cabbage at the attendant. If someone tried to offer me a naked lady, I'd hold my cabbage for later.

We cut to the next sketch. Palin as a Barber washes blood of his hands at the sink. Jones enters, looking for a "short back and sides" hair cut, not in the least put off by Palin's blood splattered smock. What follows is an awkward few minutes of near-miss comedy, with Palin performing a manic Sweeny Todd scenario (before there was any popular awareness of Sweeny Todd.) The lack of successful humor in this sketch is complemented by its odd pace and (by Python standards) epic length.

Why is this sketch not funny? They pile on the jokes, including a funny bit where Palin, trying to avoid slaughtering another patron, ("Never kill a customer.") plays a tape recording of Palin cutting hair. But even this bit is squelched by an imperfect landing, as Jones' outrage and Palin's apology is obscured by the still-playing tape. The overall sketch is equally muddy. Is Palin trying to kill him, or trying not to kill him, or trying not to cut his hair? Is the joke of the sketch that Jones doesn't know what sort of danger he's in? The cartoony embellishments (the bottle of red eye, complete with "Red Eye" written on the bottle) don't help, reminding us that this is just a sketch-- and not a very good one. It's rough going, because Palin tries sooooo hard to sell it, with a mawkish drunk act and his occasional burst of psycho phrases (including "Psycho".) Apparently, Palin and Jones busted their ass writing this piece, going late into the evening. But after the clarity and expert precision of the Mountaineer sketch, this feels like a child's finger-painting. It's only good because we love you, kids. Without that context, it borders on sadism, and we'd never put that shit on our fridge. Sometimes, Genius just doesn't land. Watching this sketch is a painful experience, like watching an ugly duckling with a broken wing.

And then...

And then...

The crippled duckling transforms before our eyes into a glorious swan, as the sketch suddenly veers right. Palin becomes... a lumberjack!

There is no point in trying to explain the sublime "Lumberjack" song. Like "The Parrot Sketch", you probably already know it backwards and forwards. Palin rips off his smock, to reveal a flannel shirt, and suddenly he's singing a manly song about being a lumberjack and doing feminine things. The femininity repulses his back-up singers, (Chapman, Cleese, and the Fred Tomlinson Singers, dressed as Canadian Mounties) and traumatizes his "best girlie" played by Carol Booth. "Oh, Bevis!" she wails. "I thought you were rugged!" Palin is hilarious, chewing imaginary gum while he sings and rhapsodizes, slapping his thigh manfully. The reaction of the chorus and Booth just adds to the hilarity. It turns out that the pain of the previous sketch was birthing pain. And it was worth enduring. "The Lumberjack Song" marks the first original song composition on Monty Python's Flying Circus, written by Palin and Jones, although it was far from the last. One imagines the group's resident rock star, Eric Idle, wondering "How the hell did those two beat me to the first song?"

Excuse me for a second-- I'm going to watch it again.
Ahhh....

If you watched the above, you saw what happens next. As Palin is abandoned by Mounties and Girlie, we cut to a funny letter voiced by Cleese, and a quick joke (by Chapman as a pepperpot) that came in last in the Rubber Mac of Zurich Awards.

Another great first follows-- Gumby! Chapman stands in front of the Lumberjack backdrop, a napkin tied atop his head, suspenders over a sweater vest, glasses, moustache, and striped, high-waisted pants rolled up to the knees. As he hits himself with bricks while crooning, we'll pause to note that this is the first official appearance of Mr. Gumby, (in this case, "Prof. R.J. Gumby",) We have seen the napkin before on Cleese's head, but here, Chapman coalesces the character, with his loud, bellowing voice and clueless yet adorable demeanor. We'll see more of Professor Initial Initial Gumby in the near future-- but we'll never see enough of him.

We cross fade to a supper club, where Idle, as an emcee (aka "Compere") introduces the next act with unctious and passionate self-abasement, winding up crawling on the floor before the performer "so totally and utterly wonderful that I would rather be sealed in a pit of my own filth than dare tread on the same stage with him" calls in to cancel. The sketch feels like pure Idle-- riffing on show biz with fiercely intelligent language, wrapping up the sketch with a predictable twist, and Eric's insufferable compere is exquisitely played, pulling his cuffs and pressing against his hip bones as he leans to the left. They should show this bit before every Oscar acceptance speech. In lieu of Harry Fink, Idle brings out Ken Buddha, of the inflatable knees Buddhas. That odd gag goes by before we can register it, but Idle follows up with a pun that sets us right again. Next comes Brian Islam and Brucie.

A Gilliam animation follows, with two men in old-style swim suits doing a funky dance along the lines of the wacky sergeant earlier in the series. To the sound of an old farting orchestra, they jump around onstage, expression stoic and immobile as they switch legs, spontaneously clone themselves, and otherwise have a great time. Back at the Refreshment Room, the audience applauds, and we return-- no! To the psychotic barbershop! (It's okay-- he's just linking the next sketch.)

A filmed bit follows, with the Circusians dressed up as Twits to the Manor Born, leaving an estate house all liquored up, shotguns a-blazing, to go out and hunt pheasant. A series of mishaps follow, with American Indians, parachutists, and young lovers in the hedgerow, complete with bustle. The ruling class morons return home with one pheasant, tied to a stick, limping, bandaged, one even dead. The corpse gets off one shot post-mortem, and doubles the quarry for the day. The scene freezes into a picture, and we're backstage at the show. The knight is waiting, warming up with his cold chicken. He's told by the director (?) that he won't be needed for that show. He walks off past a chicken coop, and there's Cleese. "And now for something completely different..." I think they've finally latched onto their own catchphrase.

We come up on the last sketch of the show, a painful bit called "The Intruders." Chapman and Carol Cleveland (why is all the luck wasted on gay men?) sit on a couch, just getting to the good part of a date, when the doorbell rings. It's Idle, doing a variation on his "Nudge, Nudge" character. Having met Chapman in the pub three years ago, he barges in with tasteless bonhomie, destroying the mood and bringing other strange people in his wake-- a "distraught" (aka gay) widower and his shabby friend (and goat), a bunch of miners, and Cleese and Jones as an Albee-esque couple, full of crude insults innuendo. Cleese and Jones are the stand-outs in this sketch, and Jones especially steals the show as Cleese's ratbag wife. "I told you to lay off the beans, you whore!" Cleese bellows. "I only had three cans!" she snarls back. Jones' contribution to show is generally more along the writing and conceptual lines, and his performances are embarrassed or wimpy chaps, or maternal women.
But here, he pulls out all the stops. It seems like the cringe inducing cruelty of Cleese/Chapman can take him to new heights-- unfortunately, he doesn't avail himself of their inspiration.

"Ooh. I wet em."

Later in the sketch, she laughs so hard, she pees. Chapman throws a fit to get them to leave, and Cleese shoots him. This is the Python equivalent of the Smothers Brothers' tried and true way to end a sketch-- having a midget bite someone. This sketch is typically Cleese/Chapman, with a cringe-inducing cruelty reminiscent of the Job Interview sketch. It's funny enough, but lacks the joy of, oh, say, "The Lumberjack Song".  Having eliminated the conflict, Cleese and the rest sing a Christmas carol, (recorded in early December, aired in mid-December, this is actually as close as the Pythons come to a Christmas special,) and the "It's" Man is sent back into the exploding forest, but warned in Spanish to "Cuidado" for the llamas.

So there you go-- a seriously weak sketch redeemed by one of the best ever, all in the middle of a very funny show filled with future classics. Plus, the introduction of Gumby, the Fred Tomlinson singers, and a glimpse of both Carols. Genius may be mercurial, but there is enough Genius in this group to amass a pretty strong batting average. Suck it, Don Juan!

Oh, my God! He's sucking it. He's really good at this!

Next week; Episode 10 - Untitled (Double Digits!)