Episode 17 - The Buzz Aldrin Show

"...None of your blood caked on the walls and flesh flying out of the windows inconveniencing passers-by with this one, I mean, my life has been leading up to this." - John Cleese as Architect Wiggens

Perfection is dynamic, not static. This creates a problem for the sedentary. We sit and obsess over minute details in the belief that we will achieve perfection, but usually, perfection can only be attained on the run. It requires hard work and massive skill, true, but it also requires happenstance and grace, both momentary and short-lived. The bitch of it is, we work as hard and as skillfully on the imperfect as we do on the perfect. Harder! Skillfully-er! What the fuck, Perfection? Why you gotta do us like that?

This week's show is perfect-- for the first ten minutes. And while the glow of that perfection carries over to the next few minutes, the remaining show does not, cannot, live up to the start. But they try, oh, mama how they try! And the imperfection of Monty Python still outshines the pinnacle of most other sketch comedy shows.

Let's check it out. Pull out the sixth disc from your box set, and we'll all watch together. If you haven't yet purchased your box set, what the hell are you waiting for? The perfect moment? Didn't you read the first paragraph? Perfection is dynamic! Get off your static ass and buy the box set!

An animated pastoral setting gets us laughing right away, as Gilliam's animated perv makes an appearance as a caterpillar, with eight spindly legs sticking out from the trench coat. He finds his narrow home perched on a leaf, and he crawls under the blankets. The audience knows where this is going, but Gilliam makes us wait, with clock ticking and snoring indicating the passage of time. Finally, the bell goes off-- and the gayest butterfly ever erupts from the sheets, with neon wings. The perv has been transformed into a game show host, with blond boufant hair, pencil thin moustache, red suit and bow tie. It didn't matter that we knew what was coming-- Gilliam's over-delivery still surprises us. The butterfly flies out of frame, and Cleese's Announcer, sitting calmly at his desk (customized with propellers), floats up into frame. You know the line. Palin in close up gives his line from the beach, and we roll the titles.

A very proper voice over from Cleese accompanies a graphic apologizing for what follows-- and what follows is GUMBY! After a year and a half of development in miniscule film clips, the Gumbies get their own show! They stand before an office building, all five of them in matching costume (Chapman's sweater vest is rolled up over his belly,) and announce the next sketch.
Palin's take on the character is the one the troupe has adopted-- slow, bellowing voice, hands hung low and cupped in gorilla posture, and every word emphasized by the torso bobbing up and down. We also see something new here-- the violence of the Gumby. Having announced the sketch, the camera does nothing. They impatiently direct the camera up, with increasing urgency and volume. We'll see more of this violence in future sketches. (Also new is the Gumby "Hellough!" greeting.)

The camera finally gets the memo and pans up. We fade into a room, with Chapman addressing Palin and Jones. Two model buildings are on the table in front of Chapman. We got us a sketch here. Only-- the Gumbies are still screaming outside. Chapman, too distracted to get the sketch going, screams "Shut up," and we get the next new Gumby modification; "Sorry!" Chapman finally throws a bucket of water on them, and we cut to a quick shot of them, dripping wet (way too wet for one bucket), looking around trying to figure out what just happened.

Now the Architect Sketch begins in earnest, with Chapman introducing two architects, both vying for the same gig. Cleese, as Wiggins, is first. His bit is brilliant. I'm partial to Cleese because of the covert hostility he brings to almost everything he does, but here the hostility is overt the top! First, as he descries his building, which is supposed to be a "block of flats", he includes details like rotating knives and soundproof walls. It soon becomes clear that he is describing a slaughterhouse. When asked is he's proposing to slaughter the tenants, Cleese responds "Does that not fit in with your plans?" When it looks like he's not going to get the job, he yells at the suits-- then tries to take it back, sucking up so that they'll make him a Mason. It's shades of Fawlty Towers as Cleese's anger burns bridges which he then tries to crawl across. Cleese is great, and Palin and Jones are also great as they politely but clearly dismiss him, "Thennnnk yooooou," avoiding eye contact.

Idle follows with a straight forward "satire" as his hi-rise model topples and bursts into flame right there. The sketch seems analogous to "The Towering Inferno", yet said movie doesn't come out until 1974! So what is this bit a satire of? There was a tower block collapse of a building in Great Britain in 1968, called Ronan Point. A gas explosion took out a load bearing wall, and a corner of the building completely collapsed. Could this be what they were mocking? At any rate, it wasn't a "Towering Inferno" reference, like I'd always thought it was. Idle uses the word "magnalium" which is a flammable aluminum alloy. Was anyone expected to get this joke? Still, the gag is a visual one.
 Despite the partial collapse and spontaneous combustion of the model, Jones and Palin decide the price is right.

Now comes a great bit-- Idle shakes hands with Jones, and it's a wacky Mason hand shake. Cleese pops his head in and addresses the camera-- "It opens doors, I'm telling you--" and they show us the handshake again in slow motion. Only they don't bother with hi-tech gadgets like slow-motion film. Idle and Jones just shake hands more slowly. Idle gives a frozen, grimace-y wink that is hysterical! A voice over asks what other ways are there of recognizing a Mason. We cut to film clips of silly behavior, all accompanied by the near-hysterical laughter of the audience. The final nail in the Mason coffin is Chapman, wearing horns, an apron, hat and shoes, and a sash saying "I'm a Mason".
Amidst the silliness, the message is clear-- all that Masonic hokum is more about getting attention than avoiding it. We cut to an animated bit as they try unsuccessfully to recondition Chapman's Mason with a large hammer and a nude lady.

Now we cut back to the Gumbys, who shamble on screen in a film clip. They announce the next sketch, "The Insurance Sketch", and in almost a direct repeat of before, they start to angrily insist the camera get over there. No bucket of water this time. And now the perfection begins to ebb. I love the Gumbys as much as the next man, who is probably a Gumby, but to be frank, we did this already. The only twist this time is that there is no twist this time. Suddenly we're in a cluttered office, with Palin looking all shifty behind the desk, and Chapman looking as dull as he can look. Chapman even gets a caption identifying him as the "Straight Man" (heh.) What follows is a rather uninspired sketch about "Devious" insurance agents. There are a couple of nice moments-- Palin introducing himself, Idle walking off with his free "nude lady", the inducement to sign up, and Chapman's casual decision to abandon the sketch-- but it's no great shakes.

Get it?

A quick word about Chapman in the show so far-- he's hardly in it. He seems to play only utilitarian characters whose job is to lay out exposition and set up jokes-- the straight man indeed. In reminiscences of the show, the surviving cast members suggest that Chapman was not the hardest worker-- more of a hedonist than a writer. If that perception existed, this might explain why he gets such measly roles. Still, as the only golden boy in the mix, with his romanesque profile and his massive height (second only to Cleese,) and his innate silliness, he never fails to draw the eye, even when he's got nothing to fucking do. He leaves the insurance sketch, and by doing so gets one of the biggest laughs in it. While Jones may have been primarily responsible for the stream-of-consciousness aspect of the show, it's beginning to seem to me that Chapman was the source of the silly. He just exudes absurdity.  Anyway, back to the show...

Just as the Insurance Sketch seems consigned to extreme ordinariness, (now that Chapman's left,) a bishop's crook suddenly slams on Palin's desk. It's the Bishop! Another Palin-esque sharp right turn into a completely different sketch.

Things pick up now as Gilliam gives us one of his most inspired works yet-- a brilliant spoof of a 60s TV action show credit sequence. The credits themselves are funny, but what Gilliam accomplishes with the spoof titles is exhilarating, eye-popping, and right on the money. Never before have his gifts for animated mimicry been so completely revealed. It must be seen to be believed.

Jones rides the wave for a bit, as his Bishop, a scarred, guttural tough guy in a bishop's robes, cycles through town with his clerical coterie, tracking down a series of silly religious assassinations involving babies that explode upon baptismal impact and rocketing pews. Jones is good as the Bishop, if a tad incomprehensible, but the sketch fails to hold up. Though a spoof of the old 60s procedurals, the Python lads have zero interest in coming up with a phony case.

Having just failed to stop the bloodshed, he then aimlessly wanders through town in an exact replay of the Hell's Grannies bit from last year-- the same brassy music, the same dolly shot, the same extras getting nudged aside. Finally, he hears a call for help from Idle's vicar from the previous scene, and the crook comes down again on Palin's desk, and it's Deja Vu all over again as the fake credits roll. Not only is it deja vu as in we just saw that a few minutes ago, it's Deja Vu as in they did this joke last week with "It's the Mind"
repeating over and over again.

"This is where we came in" say the Potters, (such an iconic name nowadays,) and they leave the theater playing this endless loop. They then go home-- to the street, in an odd conceptual filmed bit-- very funny and clever, if a bit too understated to gain the approval it deserves. The Potters live in a nicely furnished apartment, only without walls and a roof. "The builders haven't been, then," Palin (Mr. Potter) says. Idle shows up as a film documentarian, eager to chronicle "the appalling conditions under which you live", but Chapman (Mrs. Potter) chases him off with a stern "Don't you start doing a documentary on us!" It's bits like this that Monty Python was created for-- a nice interesting concept they can explore briefly without worrying about sketch structure, punchlines and twists. Homeless couple. Bam!

In the end, though, it ain't nothing but a link. Chapman, wanting a bath, finds Alfred Lord Tennyson in the tub, reciting poetry. "The poet's been installed, then," Palin explains, and now we get a sales pitch for renting famous poets, with an animated jingle. This takes us into a rather goofy sketch of Jones (as a lonely, libidinous housewife) getting her poet "read" by Palin's inspector, much as you'd read a gas meter. But given the functionality of the sketch, Palin might as well be reading the gas meter, or delivering ice. It's a porn fantasy is all, only played for laughs, as Jones tries to seduce Palin by complimenting his "torch." The "Poet in the home" bit is the baseline of the sketch, but they do almost nothing with it, instead giving us a rather standard and pedestrian "awkward seduction" bit. There are a couple of odd beats-- Jones goes to the door before it rings, and just stares at the camera with a come hither smile until Palin starts the sketch. Then, after he reads the Wordsworth under the stairs (patient, patient Idle,) there's this long moment of silence as Palin gathers up his things. Jones can't try to stop him from leaving until he tries to leave. The whole thing feels under-rehearsed.

Hang on to your torch!

Jones, trying to stall Palin, asks about the weather, and Palin lapses into a weatherman character as he responds, even pulling down a weather map in her otherwise normal vestibule and addressing the camera with his smarmy game show host delivery.  This takes us on a brief round robin as Palin signs off, and a BBC announcer gives choices of viewing (including a debate with a nude man-- you'll see.) and a funny meta-gag. But that's only a brief diversion. Jones, the sexually frustrated hausfrau, turns off the TV and makes the big push on Palin, who has reverted back to the inspector character. The sexual clinch brings us to the nude man interview, (Chapman, the nude man, complains about "titillation for it's own sake,") which brings us back to the Bishop. The whole show, from the Insurance Sketch on, has been a self-contained comedic eddy of interesting ideas thrown at us like confetti, with no apparent interest in developing the idea past its one-line pitch. The only developed bit is the seduction scene, and that was the bit with the least potential.

But if the lads are flawed, they're flawed in a self-aware way. An "An Apology" card comes up, and Idle apologizes for the constant repetition, repeatedly.  This takes us to an animated bit involving men bouncing on a BWW, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Gumby princes. The Gumbys announce the Chemist Sketch, and we're off to the third part of this rather rigidly delineated show.

Pharmacist Cleese (haven't seen much of him since the Architect Sketch) rudely tosses out medication to mortified customers. "Who's got the pox? Who's got wind?" A BBC apology follows, with a stern list of words the BBC won't allow. Of course, they can't say the words that can't be said, and they get some laughs out of disallowing "Kn*ckers" as well as "Kn*ckers." One of the naughty words is "Semprini" (an English pianist-- maybe they meant "pianist" was a dirty word? Eh? Eh?). The Chemist sketch begins again, and Cleese asks "Who's got a boil on his Semprini?" Bobbies cart him off. He was warned. Jones takes his place as a "Less Naughty Chemist", complete with sign on the shelf and placard on the chest. Idle, as a mustachioed customer, delivers a bad pun that they almost delivered in the prior show, ("If I could walk that way, I wouldn't need after shave.") which brings in the bobbies and aborts the sketch. Finally, Palin (him again!) stands in as a "Not At All Naughty Chemist", and Idle steps in,

Wink, wink! We're doing a sketch!

sans moustache, as yet another customer. What follows is a pretty mediocre sketch that gets the bulk of its laughs by reminding everyone that its just a sketch, with actors moving the clock hands to indicate the passage of time, and characters standing by the cameras when they should be downstairs in the basement. Idle even addresses the camera and says as much. There are references to the Parrot Sketch, as well as the Spanish Inquisition, the first indication that Monty Python is aware of its own fame and celebrity. A "Man on the street" segment interrupts this post-modern sketch, with Gumbys and The Spanish Inquisition Cardinal making appearances.

Anyone want flying lessons?

But we're soon back at the Chemist, where a shoplifter has brought in the fuzz. Chapman storms in as Constable Pan Am. No longer the straight man, Chapman comes in and messes shit up! "I should warn you that anything you say will be ignored," he shouts, punching, onomatpoeia-ing, stealing and singing his way to the end of the show. Maybe this is really why they make him the straight man. Once he gets going, it's all his. Idle and Palin practically disappear before our very eyes as Chapman sends a radio transmission to Buzz Aldrin with his mind. This takes us to a final apology, a Buzz Aldrin closing credit sequence, and a final word from the Gumbys, post credits.

Ultimately, the show is a bit of a disappointment. Though it begins so exquisitely, it ultimately becomes a victim of its own cleverness. The lads spend more time mocking what they do than they spend doing anything. Maybe that's the point, but it leaves me a bit empty.

Still, the show is notable for the official embrace of the Gumbys, codified in live action and animation as an official Python original. The Gumbys are a rare bit of alchemy-- a character that wasn't created so much as evolved, from a show that tended to avoid repeating characters. Like proud parents, the Circusians will continue to trot the Gumbys out, but this was the first time they became frame-worthy. It's ironic that, despite their reputations for smart humor, it is the utter moron they all fell in love with. Isn't that the way it always goes?

Next week; Live from the Grill-o-Mat".