Episode 16 - "Deja Vu" a.k.a. "Show 5"

"Arms out, fingers together, knees bent... Now, flap your arms..." - Graham Chapman as Flying
Instructor Mr. Anemone
 

I'm getting the strangest feeling we've done this blog before...


So, the lads have survived their first season, and by the way, have created a new kind of television show. They have adapted their individual styles to complement each other, creating a stream of consciousness framing device around a bunch of great sketches. Having successfully melded, they began their second season, and two shows into it, they seem to be hitting their (silly) stride. Classics like "Silly Walks" and "Spanish Inquisition" are already behind them this season. What classics will this particular episode bring forth?

Before the unpleasantness...

Sadly, not many. Although the episode is funny in its way, it leans heavily toward the conceptual, as opposed to the humorous. Few of these sketches can stand alone without the strange framing devices that surround them, most of which rely on repetition to be considered funny. Still, there are some (short) gems in here, and the weird Twilight Zone atmosphere of the episode is interesting even without the humor. This piece is stranger and more unsettling than the Blancmange episode from the prior season, which tries to pierce the weirdness with bad jokes. In this offering, the lads let the weird stand. It's a triumph in its own way.

Let's watch the show. Of course, you need the box set to do that. I can wait...

Welcome back! We start, as we start most of the shows, (who says they're unpredictable?), on film, in front of a bland 60s office building, the dreary bauhaus style on display.It's very drab-- I'm not sure, but it looks as though there are a series of balconies looking out on another identical building just inches away. I hope to God I'm miss-seeing that. Seriously-- the place looks like a project in the Bronx, only without the graffiti or drugs to make it bearable. It astonishes me that a society that could create comedy like Monty Python could also create buildings like this. But maybe the comedy is in response to said architecture. Anyway, speaking of bearable, we zoom in on an open window, and

Carol Cleveland begins to dress the place up-- by undressing. "My, isn't it hot in here" (her line) seems to be the standard prelude to a strip tease-- Palin uses it later. But for now, it's just us and Carol as she strips down, starting with the skirt, the long sleeve blouse, the gartered stockings-- Lush, romantic strings begin to play. No brassy horns here-- this is love! Finally, as she unstraps her bra, on a window washers platform Cleese's Announcer is winched into frame. Consulting his script, unaware of the beauty behind him, he gives the tag line as Carol covers up.

We cut to a forest of stuffed animals.  One of them, the elk, explodes. Get it? Yeah, me neither.

Back to Cleese, who has caught on to Cleveland's nudity. She has abandoned her modesty as well, playfully tossing the last of her undergarments out the window. Cleese watches it go-- then gets back to work, promising us something "more completely different." Palin's "It's" Man plays us in, and the titles roll.

Smash cut to another exploding animal in the forest. The script says it's an owl, but I won't verify that. Although there's still nothing here that can be classified as "funny", unless you hate animals, we're beginning to see the pattern. All of these animals will explode. Let's see what they do with this pattern.

Just another day at the office.

Nearby, Plain plays an actor in a bishop's outfit, rehearsing his line "Oh, Mr. Belpit-- your legs are so swollen." He tries every possible variation, pulling out his silliest voices and accents. Jones, in his usual voice and accent, approaches with pleasant diffidence and tries to start the next sketch by asking for flying lessons. Palin, who insists he's not in this show, (ha! He's right there! or is he?) sends Jones off to ask Carol Cleveland, who sits at a reception desk. All of this, by the way, is taking place in an open field, right next to the forest of exploding animals. Carol leads Jones through a brook, where other suited men stand and chat, past a tea trolley, over a beach, where someone asks her to make a copy, and into a cave, where they are greeted by others (Cleveland's perky "Morning", heard in echoey voice over, cracks me up for some reason). The cave leads to a sewer shed in the middle of a busy London street. Crossing the street, careful to look both ways (Safety first!) they finally begin the sketch in studio. Cleveland hands Jones off to her twin (deja vu!) and the twin takes Jones in to the sketch.

And the sketch is a gem! Jones is looking for flying lessons, and Chapman, the instructor, is hovering over his desk. Chapman plays the absurdity marvelously, hanging up the phone from a distance. (Kids, we used to have to hang phones up by putting the hand piece back in its cradle.) He is also ride, abrasive and domineering. It's a great sketch for Chapman as he yells instructions at Jones, which fail, and then berates him for being so bad at flying. "You make me sick, you weed!" Jones says he wanted to fly an airplane, and Chapman mocks him for being elitist. There's a great joke when Chapman, to prove he's flying and not on a wire, throws a broken hula hoop around him. "It's got a hole in it," Jones objects. "Of course it's got a hole in it! It wouldn't be a hoop otherwise!" The sketch devolves from there, mercifully cut off by Cleese's voice over linking us to the future, where Jones is now a pilot in a cockpit, with Cleese as co-pilot.  A caption reads "Two Years Later".

Digging the 'stauche-burns

Now we get running gag #4, (by running gag, I mean the gags exclusive to this show, as opposed to the Announcer or the "It's" Man.) A BALPA (British Airline Pilots Association) spokesman (Idle, in bitchin' sideburns) interrupts the sketch to point out that it takes 6 years to qualify as a pilot. The previous caption is amended by a new caption that states "Four Years Later Than The Last Caption". The BALPA spokesman returns, grateful for the correction, then tries his luck with other misrepresentations in popular culture, including the song "Fly Me To The Stars"; "There are no scheduled flights of this kind."

Back in the airplane cockpit, as Jones and Cleese try to fly the plane, Chapman bursts in, looking for the bathroom. He awkwardly makes small talk, then leaves the cockpit-- by way of the door leading out of the plane. He says at one point "I'm a flying man," but this doesn't quite seem to be the same character as the Flying Lesson sketch, although the similarities are striking. He lands safely on a bale of hay (running gag #5) right next to a men's room. Where's the BALPA spokesman when you need him. "A person leaping out of a jet plane traveling at 20 thousand feet will not be helped by a bale of hay, and the technology to hit the hay does not currently exist." While we're being a fusspot...

Good times.

Back in the airline cockpit (deja vu!), Carol as a stewardess enters, followed by hijacker Palin, who commands that "Nobody move!"-- and then proceeds to amend his command, allowing for movements to control the plane, involuntary movements, an itch, or being in a moving plane, etc. All that amiably ironed out, he wants the plane flown to Luton. Cleese objects "This is the scheduled flight to Cuba." This is a 70s joke-- in that era, many people were hijacking planes in the States and having them flown to Cuba. This got to be such a regular occurrence, the Swedish embassy in Cuba was on speed dial, as they were the ones who negotiated  the return of the passengers and plane. This was just after we broke off relations with communist Cuba, and cold-war era Americans had no better way to get there. Things changed after a disastrous (and very funny) hijacking in 1972, (which I co-wrote a screenplay about-- Anyone?) and security got much tighter. Of course, post 9-11, Americans find nothing funny about plane hijackings, but Monty Python snuck it in just under the wire, so chill out. The sketch is standard reversal-- Palin boards a plane bound for Cuba, and hijacks it to Luton, of all places. But Palin is a British hijacker, and easily accommodated. They're flying over Luton anyway, how about they just drop him off? Palin happily agrees, he is thrown out, lands on a bale of hay (deja vu!) and catches a bus to Luton-- which is then hijacked to Cuba. (BALPA spokesperson? "One cannot drive from Luton to Cuba, but must board a scheduled British Air flight.") The destination flag on the bus switches from "Straight to Luton" to "Straight to Cuba" and as the bus turns around, we pan across to--

What's so bad about Scotsmen, Monty?

The Scottish Highlands. Bag pipes. Stone Bridges. Kilts. An exquisite voice over from Cleese introduces us to Scotland and Ewan McTeagle, the Scottish poet, who wrote such great Scottish masterworks as "Lend us a Quid 'til the End of the Week." This is classic Python racism, which comes so easily for them, as seen in the Blancmange episode (deja vu! They even show the Podgorny cottage from said episode), but it's also a riff on intellectuals back-flipping the ordinary into an industry. Experts enthuse about the majesty of McTeagle's "work", all of which revolves around requests for money and promises to pay it back. Idle, as a Ian McKellan-esque Shakespearean actor reading such a poem is hilarious, as is the camera work. Finally, Jones (as McTeagle) mutters through the forest clearing with the stuffed animals. This time, a lamb blows up. Cleese, in a ridiculous Scottish tam o'shanter, stands up suddenly into frame and complains about inaccuracies, not only  regarding Ewan McTeagle, but about the BALPA sokesman.

Palin's Lunch Hour, Gilliam's Lunch Hour

Palin steps out from under Cleese's kilt and asks to be left alone so he can examine Cleese. This qick tasteless gag (literally) becomes Running Gag #6.

Have you missed Terry Gilliam? Well, here he comes! We cut to a group of Scottish men in kilts. One of the kilts' dressings turns into a little girl devouring the Scotsman. As she looks for her next meal, she is herself devoured by a disembodied mouth. As the mouth flies off, hands grow like trees, sprout leaves on the fingers. Hand geese fly by. A man rides on a hand horse, and throws a lasso. We pan across a couple of bits, including a woman eating a butterfly off another girl's breast, (expert timing on that one, Gilliam-- well done!)  and it finally links us to the next sketch, as Chapman knits with the lasso rope.

Milkman Idle interrupts Chapman's knitting, but when he answers the door, it turns out that Idle is not a milkman, but a psychiatrist. What follows is an odd mix, as Idle shifts effortlessly from psychiatrist to milkman and back. He offers to take Chapman to the dairy for evaluation, for instance, on his psychiatry truck. On the way to the truck, they pass a meowing cat-- which explodes! There's the laugh! Palin's doctor returns, seeking help for his ego-block, and a pint of yogurt.

Now, stay sharp-- things get a little slick. Jones (with half a moustache) complains about the portrayal of psychiatrists. Cleese complains about the prior complaints, and the complainers fight it out. A 16 ton weight drops on Palin as he complains about all the complainers complaining about the complaining, and that wraps up that sequence.

Milkmaid Cleveland, aborting a bad pun, takes Chapman into Jones' office, but he's busy having a breakthrough with a cow (Audrey) and Cleveland instead walks Chapman to the waiting room-- past the tea trolly and bishop (twice! Deja vu!) and the last surviving animal, a lone bunny, which explodes. (Shades of the killer rabbit and the holy hand grenade of Antioch.)

We cut to the last bit, "It's the Mind". Host Palin promises to explain the phenomenon of deja vu-- but can't get past the feeling that he's done it before. This sketch is a study in how to build comedy with a simple idea. New details keep getting added, the re-added-- the glass of water is my favorite-- as Palin becomes more desperate to escape his consciousness loop. He tracks down Idle's psychiatrist truck, but it doesn't help. The show ends with Palin running for therapy over and over again as the credits play.

There are some great bits here, especially for Palin and Chapman. The show is certainly funny enough. But the show functions almost entirely in the conceptual realm, and it never manages to land on its own bale of hay as easily as the hijacker does. The sketches themselves are short and relatively uninspired, and it is the jokes and the energy that hold them together, as well as the frequent repetition, that keep us intrigued and entertained. Meta-humor, not so much funny as compelling, is the call word of this episode, and it shows how deep the Circusians can play. They don't need jokes, or sketches, to keep us engaged. They can fly without a net. After all, it's not "Monty Python's Flying Circus, and Net", is it? Just keep the arms out, fingers together, knees bent... now flap!

Next week; Episode 17 - The Buzz Aldrin Show