The Half Time Show

"Well, why don't you move into more conventional areas of confectionery, like praline?"

Holy Crap, that's a small guitar!

The stadium lights dim. A stage has been swiftly erected on the field, and the crowd quiets. The television viewers take a break from beating their wives to watch the show. The announcer's whiskey smooth tones echo off the concrete. "Ladies and Gentlemen... Neil Innes!" Oh, boy, is this half-time show gonna suck!

Technically, it's not the half-way point of the complete series of Monty Python's Flying Circus. They created a grand total of 45 episodes. We've dealt with 26 of these shows, which puts us ahead of the game, but only technically. If we break down the creative life of Monty Python as we would a screenplay, (this is an occupational hazard for me, being a screenwriter,) the first season would constitute the first act or set up, while Season 2 would be the first part of Act 2. The late screenwriting coach Blake Snyder coined the term "Fun and Games" for this section, where the promise of the premise is joyfully explored. This is where the bulk of the trailer moments come from.

Extremely apt, because after the tentative start of the first season, the Pythons explode in Season 2 with confidence, fervor and creative genius, as well as achieving an odd coherence of styles. "The Spanish Inquisition" plays beautifully beside "The Architect Sketch." Mr. Gumby becomes the first repeat character, created by the whole group. Many of the Monty Python classics derive from this season, including "Spam", "Dinsdale" and "Burma!" Add to this a deepening appreciation amongst fans. John Cleese found himself frequently accosted with demands to do a "silly walk." (Season 2, again.) Director Ian McNaughton relates the surprise the cast felt when they walked into the studio to tape the show, and found the first row comprised entirely of Gumbys. When fans start to dress up, you know you've got a hit on your hands.

On the marche futile!

Having conquered British television, the lads set their sights on the world of film. No sooner was the taping for Season 2 finished than Monty Python set to work on their first major motion picture "And Now For Something Completely Different". The aim of the film was to distribute it across America and introduce hapless American collegiates to the Pythomenon. (Nah, that'd never work.) They incorporated into a single legal entity to take control of their collective intellectual property. Soon, one might assume, they would take the show beyond the BBC and syndicate for the lucrative American market.

But in the midst of this success, the likes of which none of them had seen before, some cracks in the foundation started to appear at the tail end of Season 2. Some of these cracks, such as the persistent tension between Jones' visionary anarchy and Cleese's relative conservatism, had been visible from the outset. Others, such as the BBCs inclination towards greater censorship, were brand spanking new. Only you couldn't say "spanking" in those days.

There were similar tensions playing out here in the states. CBS had fired the Smothers Brothers the previous year over censorship issues. There was a sense in the board rooms of broadcasting that entertainers, in their zeal to attract young viewers and controversy, had crossed the line into bad taste, and that it was their job to restore the status quo-- after all, the younger audience wasn't the only audience out there, and the other audience was better at writing angry letters. In England, the face of

She thinks you're subversive.

the angry status quo was Mary Whitehouse, a powerful social conservative gifted at tempests in teapots. Rather than attract her attention, BBC programmers would try to clean their own house, rather than invite cumbersome and arbitrary legislation. They targeted shows like Monty Python specifically because it was successful-- and they couldn't figure out why. It must therefore be subversive.

One of the red flags brazenly tossed at the censors was last week's Undertaker Sketch, wherein a mourning son is coerced into partaking of a feast made up of his dead mother, with parsnips and "brocol-lie". Ironically, the co-creator of the sketch, John Cleese, would often be aligned with the censors in the future. He fiercely resisted Monty Python's forays into bad taste, and was even accused by Gilliam of editing an animated piece out of a show involving Christ on a telephone pole. ("He would deny it," Gilliam admits. "He denies everything!") Tellingly, Cleese remembers that the censors never gave Monty Python any trouble, neither at the start nor at the end, believing himself to be less Quixotic than the others about offensive material.

Smile for the camera, John.

In fact, Cleese was becoming less enchanted with the show, and had announced to the group that he was starting to look elsewhere. The others convinced him to hang on for another half season, and then just carried on as though he would never leave. They tried to cover it up, but Cleese was the biggest crack of all.

At the time, nobody in the group wanted to hear what Cleese's beef was, in a betrayal of the group dynamic of listening and debating with one another. Of course, that was only about the material. Their Socratic method never extended to the members themselves. In very British style, they avoided conflict with each other, except for Jones, and in this particular instance, that would cost them dearly. Cleese was prophetic.

Cleese's issue was that the lads were starting to repeat themselves, that rather than breaking any new ground, they were playing in the quarries they had excavated the previous episodes. This concern is ironic, coming from the only member of the troupe who recycled material from previous projects. But he's got a point. A more critical examination of the season reveals troubling similarities between, for instance, the Spanish Inquisition, Ypres, and the Lifeboat sketches. All of them are pumped up as hyper-dramatic fare, then deflated with botched lines, poorly chosen props and clueless extras-- steroidal television transformed into amateur theatrics. The lads drew from this well three times this season. They're essentially the same sketch.

But few of the Pythons were interested in what was wrong when so much was going right, and Cleese's concerns went unheeded. Or maybe he was too British to bring them up forcefully enough to pierce the others' exuberance, or Chapman's drunk.

Blake Snyder's names for the second part of Act 2 include "Bad Guys Close In", and "Dark Night of the Soul".

Next week; And Now For Something Completely Different (the movie!)