Episode 21 - Archaeology Today

"You hate him, and then you respect him. Then you kill him " - Eric Idle as  Hunter Roy Spim.

Like archaeologists, who gather bones and assemble them, the Pythons would collect material at the beginning of their season, and apportion the sketches across the thirteen episodes, only then creating linking material for cohesion. Just as archaeologists wouldn' try to cram two rib cages into one skeleton, Python would usually try to spread out the sketches according to quality and casting; If Episode 2 already had a Cleese/Palin sketch, they might try to schedule another Cleese/Palin sketch for a later episode. As a result, the shows are usually quite balanced-- everyone gets something to do, and no one dominates. (With the exception of Chapman, the laziest and most hedonistic of the troupe. People didn't write a lot of material for him, but he often dominated anyway, by sheer animal magnetism.)


This particular episode, however, is slightly skewed, with a lot of material going to the group's loner. This is Eric Idle's episode. And after seeing and hearing so much of him, we can use our comedically archaeological skills to divine the man behind the hippie do-- the hyper-intellectual, slightly snarky snob.


Let's get right to it. As always, please get yourself the box set. The lads could always use the money, and it's about time you gave them some. You didn't give any to PBS during that pledge drive when you discovered them. Let's show 'em some love!

Do you know this man?... Neither does anyone else.

We start with the BBC graphic we've discussed earlier-- The lads are making frequent use of this graphic, which is actually pretty cool in a 70's lava lamp way. Idle's voice over announces a choice of viewing. What follows is a series of random jokes that are pretty incomprehensible to an American audience, i.e. me. I think the point of the whole piece is how often the BBC turns to sports to beef up its ratings, to the point where all they show is sports. British sports icons (in other words, non-entities,) are announced to be appearing in dramas, sitcoms, variety shows and mysteries. It is interesting to note that in the middle of this season, Monty Python's Flying Circus was preempted by the Horse of the Year show, so clearly this was a thing. The most impressive thing about this piece is its mass. In the 80 second bit, Idle crams an impressive array of shows and drops a metric ton of names, all with his standard, rapid fire bland yet excited delivery. Even though the jokes fail to land across the pond, the energy and silliness carry us through to the titles, which proceed without incident--

Or do they? At the end of the title, the foot hangs out for a bit-- and then crumbles like plate glass into a heap on the dirt. Time passes, indicated by the rushing of wind, the rising of the landscape, and the disappearance of the rainbow. The mound of shattered foot is soon gone. Trees grow, civilization follows, with a golden city called "Hot-Cha-Cha!" playing rag time. The party ends, as they do, and soon the city is a black, fly-infested hulk. Gilliam tells us that we're all just dust in the wind. As a single 'dozer shoves the condemned city away, a sign is revealed-- luxury flats are coming. (Can I have the condemned city back, please?) An excavator digs the foundation-- and they find something! A perfectly preserved toe from the giant foot! They rush it to the British Museum (thanks for the arrow, Terry!) where the best minds of the age figure out that the toe is actually-- a snout for a wooly mammoth. Why do intellectuals hate other intellectuals so fiercely? Worse yet, what do they have against wooly mammoths? I don't know, but it's funny.

"Toooo-dayyyyy... I hear Terry Jones sing..."

The show title pops up beside the much-maligned mammoth, and we fade to a typical interview set-up. Palin, the interviewer, has Jones on one side, Cleese on the other. Both Jones and Cleese seem vaguely anachronistic-- their ties are vintage bow affairs, and Cleese wears a suit reminiscent of Mark Twain. Palin is modern day, and of course, they're on television. Palin introduces both men as archaeologists, but seems much more interested in their height than their calling. This all takes us back to the Arthur "Two Sheds" Jackson sketch from the first show, but Palin seems to be in charge of this one, and in true "Lumberjack" fashion, he's going to drive this train right off the rails. Palin rhapsodizes about the Watutsis. "Some of them were eight feet tall! Oh! Can you imagine that! Not one on anothers shoulders, no! Eight feet of solid Watutsi!" This drives the insecure Jones into an hysterical breakdown, and Cleese reprimands Palin by socking him in the jaw (missing him by a mile, but it's fun to watch!) Cleese has bought in to Palin's obsession; "I can do what I like, 'cause I'm six foot five, and I eat punks like you for breakfast!" Palin swears revenge on Cleese, who stares nobly off in the distance. It turns out this whole show was just prelude and back story for an old western-- about archaeology.

Awesome shot!

We cut to film of an Egyptian dig. We are solidly in the 1920s. Carol Cleveland's voice over tells us that Cleese is digging and discovering and-- singing? Yes, sort of. Cleese breaks into song, accompanied by organ music and dubbed by Terry Jones. Cleese is legendary for being a bad singer, but he must have been really bad if Jones is an improvement, with his warbly baritone. The effect is hilarious, as Cleese and Cleveland keep breaking into, and out of, and back into, song. The song itself is insipid tripe, bearing no relation to archaeology whatsoever, which makes the archaeological inserts all the funnier.  Cleese acts well in a trench. (That gag will make more sense later.)

Believe it or not, the guy on top is real.

Suddenly, an organ crash alerts Cleese and Cleveland. In a brilliant shot preminiscent of Tarantino or Nolan, Palin stands stiffly on a plateau in his 70's garb, his long-promised revenge now at hand. Jones, cravenly and cowering like Renfield at Dracula's feet, is now Palin's ally. In a strange, surreal special effect, Jones leaps up onto Palin's shoulders, making them cumulatively over 11 feet. Cleese doubles down, or up, as Cleveland leaps onto his shoulders. Each human tower adds a third, and they have a vast, destructive chicken fight, destroying the priceless artifacts that inspired song just a few minutes ago. Hysterically, one of the dummy heads on top falls off before the two heaps collide. The fight scene destroys all and sundry, and only Palin is conscious enough at the end of the melee to announce next week's show. A hand sticks up out of the dirt right next to him, shaped into a fist. Nice little detail, that.

We cut to a PSA by the reverend Chapman, who makes an appeal on behalf of the people who, through no fault of their own, are sane. The camera pulls back to reveal he has an ax embedded in his head. This is prime Chapman, the group's Wilde-ian heir, encouraging his viewers to spread the weird. "It is up to people like you and me, who are out of out tiny little minds, to try and help these people overcome their sanity." His demonstrations on how to do this quickly devolve, and we cut away to another appeal.

Idle, looking very Thatcher-esque, tries to remember who she is and what she's making an appeal for. She confuses her lost name with her favorite singer, fruit, and way to spend a Saturday night-- it's about a minute and a half of frustrating silliness, mercifully cut short by Gilliam as a feral boxer, knocking her flat and turning to the camera for the next comer. The vintage film clip of ladies clapping takes us to the next sketch--

A marriage registrar. Hey! We've done this sketch before, haven't we? Last time, Idle was the registrar and Jones the applicant. This time, Jones is behind the desk, and Idle is looking to switch wives like you'd switch a defective television. It's a slight sketch, well done by all concerned. Finally, Idle complains "All I wanted was a jolly good--" and before he can get the
 dirty word out, a soccer referee halts the play, taking Idle's number (he's got a number on the back of his jacket, handing out the penalty, and re-starting the show. Palin and Chapman, who have been waiting patiently, do their irritating sketch, where Palin can't get Chapman's name right. This whole section of the show is starting to feel like an odd lots bin, where all the goofy sketches with nowhere to go, the oddball exchanges written in the margins, get stuck in as filler. But the lads seem to eel the same way, and they're okay with it, and if they're okay, I'm okay. A soccer whistle halts the play, they abandon the sketch, and we cut to an animated bit--

Hard boiled!

A huge stadium dominated by an even huge-r soccer ball. In a nearby apartment, gangster Mugsy Siegel, a big broad man in an equally broad suit, daintily eats a soft-boiled egg-- which then machine guns him. It's the work of Eggs Diamond, a crimelord hen with a coterie of fedora-wearing eggs. (Spiny Norman makes a brief appearance here-- Enjoy!) There's a nice visual bit where a Victorian fop narrates Eggs' reign of terror. He points at a map, and a bloody bullethole appears. The noir ending is predictable, turning last week's existential question on its head; "Which blew up first, the chicken or the egg?" This takes us to a pitch for other gangster books, a tad more transparent than most ads tend to be. "Buy it now, suckers, " Palin urges, "Sound clever at your next cocktail party."

Dreary Fat Boring Old vomits into her purse.

At a cocktail party, Chapman introduces Palin to Jones, who's name is "A Sniveling Little Rat-Faced Git." This is a fun sketch, as Palin trues to navigate the mortification of speaking to someone with said name. Git's wife and children are no better named. Cleese plays "Dreary Fat Boring Old" to perfection, keeping his voice low, manly and flirtatious as he vomits in his purse. Yes, it turns out that the Gits are as repulsive as their names, painting the house in pus and vomit
and throwing the kids disembowling parties. They follow up with a nice version of the same sketch, which is not funny at all. A nun, played by Cleveland, (what a waste!) claims to prefer the dirty version, and she is slugged by Gilliam's boxer. The man's a beast!

"There's nothing more dangerous than a wounded mosquito."

We follow with a filmed bit. Chapman and Idle play two Australian hunters who stalk mosquitoes and the like with automatic weapons, missiles and tanks. Both are excellent; Chapman says "I love animals. That's why I like to kill 'em." And when the one-armed Idle is asked why he doesn't just use fly spray, he responds "Where's the sport in that?" The (literal) overkill of the insects is hilarious, as is the sportsman mythos the hunters attach to what is essentially an unfair and incommensurate  slaughter. Unlike the opening bit, this film resonates well with American audiences, who suffer from less enlightened but equally brutal and entitled "sportsmen".

Without even the benefit of a link, we cut to Idle and Palin walking down the hallowed back halls of a Justice Court, complete with robes and wig, looking solemn and very important. But you know what's coming, don't you? As seen in many of their live performances, the judges get into the locker room, the robes come off, and they're drag queens, swishing about how cute the foreman is, and how they "waggled me wig" to emphasize a point. Idle is more lushly effeminate, while Palin is child-like and playful. It's cute, but it's a one-joke sketch, embroidered with mincing and costume gags.

In case you haven't been paying attention, (and really, why would you?) there've been five major Idle sightings in the show so far-- the opening voice over (technically not a sighting so much as a hearing,) the PSA, the marriage registrar sketch, the Aussie hunter, and the transvestite judge. Compare this to Cleese (the Archaeologist) or even ol' reliable Palin (the interviewer, the straight man in the Gits sketch, and the brief but somehow not brief enough wordplay sketch with Chapman). But wait, there's more...

Did John Cleese call in sick?

The Pepperpots! We've seen a couple of these ladies in past seasons, such as Cleese and Chapman in the art museum smacking their kids. We tend to associate them with Cleese and Chapman, because Cleese and Chapman usually wrote and performed in these sketches, wherein middle class Brit fraus bandy about odd non-sequitirs and leaps of logic that cast a cruel light on the non-consciousness of British middle class existence. But this is actually the first time that the Pepperpots appear in a sketch that doesn't have another sketch wrapped around them. There's no wacky eating of the art conceit-- just a couple of white, very white, couldn't be whiter, chicks, sittin' around talking. And the cast is not what we would later come to expect. It's Chapman and IDLE! The man is like a body snatcher in this episode! He trundles in, just as Cleese would, and greets Chapman. "Hello, Mrs. Thing." "Hello, Mrs. Entity," Chapman responds. They have a goofy conversation about how exhausting it is to have tea. Chapman is his usual absurd self. Idle, on the other hand, seems oddly pissed off. He's constantly looking down, with pursed lips, like he resents having to be there. Maybe Cleese called in sick, and Idle had to abandon a hot, willing blonde in the green room. It doesn't interfere with the quality of the sketch, fortunately. And the sketch serves as a link to one of the most frenetic, lunatic sketches Python has ever produced.

That's a live rat on Beethoven's head.

Remember Cleese's terrible Mozart from the first episode? Well, he's back, only this time he's playing Beethoven, my personal favorite composer. The opening gag, that Beethoven had a mynah bird, and once he went deaf, the mynah bird would just mime, is already brilliant. As the sketch begins, Beethoven is working on the 5th symphony, and can't figure the notes. The Mynah bird mimes, and Beethoven snarls at him "I'm not deaf yet." "Just you wait," the mynah replies. Beethoven shoots him. "Right in the wing," the mynah squawks. Chapman, as Mrs. Beethoven (yeah, right,) comes in to ask him stupid questions, or vacuum, or anything to keep him from figuring out his symphony. Cleese is all manic aggression, screaming "Shakespeare never had this trouble!" We cut to a series of sweet gags as the great artists of all time deal with domestic bliss, tossing each other ideas. (Idle plays Shakespeare.) This takes us to the conceit of Mozart's son becoming a rat catcher, which brings us back to Beethoven's place, where Colin shoots at the flying rats with a machine gun, while Beethoven struggles to compose. There's a gag with the other tenants of Beethoven's building, there's hilarious practical effects with the rats running up Beethoven's wall, and a great awkward jingle from Colin Mozart. The sketch is random, but not gently, suavely random like much of the Python oeuvre. This bit is violently random, and the gravity of Beethoven brings everything back to him. It's full of lunacy, rage and brilliance, with funny jokes tossed off without a care as to where they land, or if they land. The Pepperpots give us the coda, and we get a final image of Beethoven, deaf and happy at last, as his mynah sings Durante.

The credits return us to the judges, still swishing and gossiping; "I love those Scottish assizes. I know what they mean by a hung jury." Finally, they pull a British in joke, impersonating the BBC announcer who would presumably follow them in the BBC Tuesday night line-up.

A couple of firsts in this show-- no "It's" Man, or announcer saying "And now for something completely different...". A couple of brilliant bits, and a couple of self-aware throwaway bits, tied together with the most meager of linkage material. And a lot of Idle. We can see the necessary limitation of Idle's process. Because he works alone, he tends to write sketches that only require him, and he tends to peter out after a minute or so, circling the drain with a one-joke sketch, however cleverly varied. But there aren't any unintentional clunkers, and some of the bits are genius.
This show lacks the cohesion of their other efforts. While it's identifiable as Python, it's not representative of them-- kinda like a wooly mammoth with a big toe for a trunk.

Next week; Eric Idle