Episode 27 - "Whicker's World"

"Eventually you get evil-smelling flocks of huge, soiled budgies flying out of people's lavatories, invading their personal freedom." - Graham Chapman as  Mrs. Conclusion

 Okay, this is one of my favorites.

It was an early autumn night in Florida. I had made the television my own on Saturday nights in the mid 70s. There was "All in the Family" followed by "The Jeffersons", then "Mary Tyler Moore" and Bob Newhart" followed by the Carol Burnett show, all on CBS. This kept me busy from 8-11. But at 11:00, unless I wanted to watch the local news, I had to change the channel. Our local independent station, WTOG, had starting showing Monty Python's Flying Circus. I had already purchased the "Live at City Center" album, and I'd seen earlier snippets on variety shows like Dean Martin. But this was the first time I'd ever actually seen the Monty Python television show, albeit with commercials. 

Boy, was I confused! I could barely understand what was being said, let alone what was going on. Let's see what I'm talking about and go through the episode together, bit by bit... that is, if you've purchased the box set. If you haven't, here's yet another link to do so. Seriously, without you, it's just so much masturbation. Join in!

We begin with a sweeping shot of a majestic yet barren landscape. The orchestral soundtrack (that fans will find familiar from "The Holy Grail" movie, still three years away,) blares its horns as the title informs us this is "Njorl's Saga"!  Iceland, 1126. The camera pans onto Viking Palin, who clears his throat to read from a scroll-- but the camera keeps panning right off him to Jones as the Nude Organist! Jones lacks the smarmy self-satisfied grin that Gilliam brought to the role last season. He also lacks the tan and the bow tie, replacing it with a pale, pasty lunacy, leering over his shoulder at the camera with a crack-toothed grin. Cleese as the Announcer says "And now..." Palin as the "It's" Man gets his word in. And new credits open the show.

"My bad."

The lads return to one of their favorite sets, the courtroom. Jones plays the stentorian Judge, Idle the abashed defendant, Cleese the prosecutor, Chapman the oft-wounded constable and Palin the silent juror, with a number of other jurors who look a lot alike, even though many of them are women trying to pass as men. Normally, when Python goes to court, we get a series of slight little gags assembled like a comedy train. This time, not so much. The lads have a sketch-- one sketch, and it's funny. Idle is guilty of an insane number of murders, having left more bodies in his wake than the retaking of Grenada, and whilst being captured, he has added to his lustre by nearly killing the arresting officers. But, in the dock, he's so nice about the whole thing, that everyone decides to bring his sentence down to a manageable six months suspended. It's hard to tell if the lads are spoofing the leniency that accompanies moral relativism, or meditating on how easy it is to get away with murder when everyone loves you. What is easier to spot is the darkness. Monty Python throws the gauntlet down right off, with a harsh yet hilarious take on mass murder. This feels like an Idle sketch, with his "Academy Award" admission of guilt.As the courtroom sings him out with "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow..."

Gilliam takes over with a strange bit that takes us further into a literal darkness. A deranged convict finishes the song (stealing Gilliam's voice) and the final note cracks his head, sending the parts tumbling down his neck. A detective and constable climb up onto his shoulder and leap down the neck hole in pursuit. A chase through the convict's body ensues, down ornate staircases, architecture dripping with viscera, flooded with blood and fluids. Soon, they are dodging apples and garlic and swimming through the stomach acids. Uncharacteristically, Gilliam just fades us out, as if he were bored with the whole thing, and we return to--

Njorl's Saga!  Cleese in V.O. promises us a "terrible" Icelandic saga! When Palin's Viking objects "It's not that terrible," Cleese must stick his head into frame to clarify "I meant terribly violent." The saga begins. Idle's voice over narrates as Jones strides out, bedecked in beard and furs, to his little pony. But Idle's narration gets bogged down in excessive lineage, as Njorl patiently waits to mount his horse. A Jones V.O. chimes in, apologizing for the first V.O., only to get bogged down in its own lineage. Finally, Cleese voices over with an appeal for suggestions on how to get the saga started. An address is read, different from the address on screen, and we--

What is she putting on her bosoms?

Cut to a tiny, wood-panelled office. Cleese pours himself some tea as a secretary sprays stuff on her bosoms. Wait, what? No explanation is given, although the script tells us its deodorant. Must be a British thing. Cleese addresses the camera, interrupted briefly by Njorl in a car, and explains that the voice over mess has been fixed by the North Malden Icelandic Saga Society. You may not have noticed it, but the real sketch has finally been set up, and that was the first joke. Away we go...

Back to the saga, Njorl is roused by the end of the voice over. Flustered, he mounts his horse and rides off. It begins to feel like an Icelandic saga, until Njorl reaches his goal-- North Malden! This Icelandic wanderer trots his steed through a typical London suburb, complete with city boosters to welcome him, and the viewers, to the glories of North Malden.

Idle's voice over transitions from hushed to huckster. Cleese's voice over must step in and apologize for the clear hijacking. The rest of the film, he promises, will adhere more closely to the spirit of 12th century Iceland.

But there's no limiting the imagination of desperate city fathers. A fight scene follows, with one shameless plug after another for North Malden. During the battle, interspersed with banners proclaiming the wonders of North Malden, a phone conversation between Cleese and the North Malden Mayor (Palin) can be heard-- in voice over, of course. It's all funny, conceptually, but the many streams flow over us like a fugue. It's difficult to pick and focus on any one thing. The real message is anarchy as different interests struggle for control of the narrative, and no one wins.

Back to the courtroom. Chapman, in the dock, plays a television executive rationalizing his choices for television broadcast. The boys take a whack at the easiest target there is-- the hand that feeds them. Keep in mind, in between seasons 2 and 3, the lads had a lot of work on other shows, none of them as rewarding as Monty Python. This is their savage little strike back, as they go ahead and call regular television "bland garbage."

Gilliam laughs. Palin tries not to.

Once Chapman's dragged off and sentenced, we get on with the real sketch-- Eric Njorl is brought to the stand. (As they call him in, we get a call back to the earlier lineage joke, as well as a sound effect of someone being clubbed over the head-- a first for the Python's, I believe.) Njorl is brought in wrapped like a mummy in bandages, with a fur hat on top of his head. Given his tight wrapping, he's unable to raise his right hand to take the oath, or raise his voice in testimony, or raise any part of him (except for apparently the naughty bits.) This little sketch is the diametric opposite of the first one. This time it's the defendant, guilty of such crimes as "conspiring to do things not normally considered illegal," who has been brutalized by Palin the mad dog constable Pan Am. It sticks to the central conceit, despite a couple of gay jokes thrown in. Palin is awesome as the rabid lapdog of the status quo, lunging after Njorl, and anyone else, with his rubber truncheon. Funny thing-- while Pan Am gives his testimony, they clumsily switch out Njorl for a wrapped dummy, dropping something in the process. You can see constable Gilliam crack up. Palin almost loses it as well, but he blusters through. "He assaulted myself and three other constables while bouncing around a cell." Finally, they question Njorl, only to find he no longer occupies the bandage. They pop off his head and find he's hollow-- the second hollow criminal in this episode. This links us back to--

The Gilliamination. Peering into the vacant neck hole (I've never used the phrase "neck hole" so often, much to my chagrin) they find the Detective and constable from earlier, still searching for the escaped convict. As they wander of into the dark, the convict appears behind them, escaped and free-- only to have his head chopped off by the sharp red line on a stock market graph. Ain't nothing but a link, and this resolution is much (pardon the pun) sharper than the last go round. Terry is finding his legs.

The stock market is standard Idle fare, a man saying funny things at a desk at high speed. This time, it's naughty corporation names. "Nipples rose dramatically during the morning, but then declined by late afternoon." He's doused like the dog he is, and we move onto--

An animation. The water came from the bucket of old Mrs. Cutout, who then takes a transdimensional doorway to the laundromat, where Mrs. Premise (Cleese) and Mrs. Conclusion (Chapman) are talking philosophy and budgies. This is another great Pepperpot sketch, an inane dialogue about putting down your pets while on holiday, (the old Cleese/Chapman hostile magic is back!), when the conversation lapses into personal freedom and Sartre. Mrs. Premise just happens to know said Sartre, having met him on a previous holiday. A phone call in pigeon

"Oh, merde."

French juxtaposes existentialist philosophy and mundane phone chat; When will Jean Paul be free?... He's been trying to figure that one out for years. And off they go, to Paris, by raft, so that Sartre can resolve their argument. .

Now, things get a little vertiginous. As the Pepperpots near shore, they accidentally hit North Malden, ("It's a right old dump!") and the North Malden boosters are at it again. Idle steps in as Alan Whicker singing the praises of North Malden. Cleese cuts in as Head of Drama, with the secretary still spraying her boobs. He takes us back to the Icelandic Saga.

Orchestral swells-- Only it's the Pepperpots, not Njorl. The orchestra slows down, deflated. The ladies have taken a wrong turn to Iceland. "Paris must be over there, then."

In Paris (cue the accordion!), they find Sartre's flat, surrounded by men in berets and striped shirts. Shamelessly stealing the apartment directory bit from the "Mozart Rat Catcher" sketch last season, ("Jean Genet and Friend? Hmmm...Marcel Marceau Walking Against the Wind Ltd... ") they find Mrs. Sartre at home, played by Palin. She's another Pepperpot, a cigarette clenched in her teeth. She talks like a woman but coughs like a man, my Mrs. Sartre. A brief bit juxtaposing mundane chitchat with the higher faculties of philosophy. "Revolutionary leaflets everywhere! One of these days, I'll 'revolutionary leaflets him. If it wasn't for the goat, you couldn't get in here for the propaganda." (Yes, there's an actual goat eating pamphlets.) They finally pose the off-screen Sartre their question, the answer is comically brief, Chapman mutters a scarcely comprehensible "Oh, coitus!" and a plane returns them home.

The Goat!

Finally, a brief, stand-alone bit of brilliance that gives this episode its name-- Funky jazz music leads us into "Whicker's World". Alan Whicker was a globe-trotting British journalist with an eminently mockable style who had his own show called "Whicker's World". Here, the lads actually take us to
a literal place called Whicker's World, an island populated entirely by Alan Whickers. Addressing the camera in this hilariously halting nasal self-importance, all the lads take turns, handing off the mic to one another as they search desperately for someone to interview who isn't a Whicker. The thrill of this bit is its seamless execution, as different
Whickers tag in and out of the same monologue in long takes. The hand-offs speed up as sentences shorten to clauses, and finally, at the end, (okay, they're cutting at the end, but it's still fun) to a mere word. This is a tour-de-force, an exhilarating bit of comedy that propels us to the end of the show, even into the credits, which have the Whicker name inserted throughout, and make us sorry it had to end.

All in all, a very funny show that seems to be drifting away from the standard sketch format. Only two of these pieces could work as stand-alones, the mass murder sketch and Whicker's World. Everything else is part of an overall narrative as complex as it is hilarious. The multiple streams of the Icelandic Saga weave with the Pepperpots Sartre-ian quest. The jokes and sketches that used to keep us in a tight orbit are gone, for the most part, and we are left to drift with the lads in zero gravity. But the mass of their brilliance still coheres a shape out of all this randomness and we can still get it. It might take a couple of viewings to truly appreciate it all, but we can do that now. We're not 13, and we're not watching it on the local UHF channel and waiting around for the reruns.

Next Week; Mr. and Mrs. Brian Norris' Ford Popular!