Episode 37 - Dennis Moore

Cat Choked on Lupins

"Look! The cat's just choked itself to death on them! I don't care if I never see another lupin 'til the day I die!" - Michael Palin as Male Peasant.

Last week's show was a bit of a stinker (although technically it was the last show recorded for this series, as opposed to the fourth-to-last broadcast.) It was shorter than the other shows and still felt incredibly padded and slight, despite massive production values. It made one feel as if (and this is supported by opinions of people like Terry Jones,) the lads were creatively spent and unable to come up with the makings of a great show. This could be forgiven-- the third season thus far has been spectacularly innovative and brilliant, and even their less perfect efforts are better than others' home runs.

But as we see in this show, news of their creative dearth have been exaggerated. They've still got a few volleys left in their comedic cannons. And this one gives the Cleese/Chapman team a shot at the long filmed bits that Palin/Jones typically hog to themselves. Idle will do a Cleese/Chapman spoof. Styles will blend, bleed together, and new, miraculous sketches will emerge, way too ambitious to ever make it onto one of their stage shows, but classics nonetheless. Let's check it out!

And buy the box set, already. It's not like those lupins are doing you any good in that vase.

How's this going to turn out?

We're watching "Boxing Tonight" on the telly. The boxers are Jack Bodell (1969 British heavyweight champion, in red trunks) and Sir Kenneth Clark, (an intellectual TV host, in tweed suit and pipe, played by Chapman.) The results are predictable, but still hilarious. You don't need to hang a surprise twist on everything. Sometimes, the expected result is more than  enough, if no one in the sketch is expecting it. Bodell interrupts Chapman's dull lecturing with a gut punch and a right cross to the chin, laying him out. And then, they give us a twist-- Bodell, by winning the fight, goes on to be the new Oxford Professor of Fine Arts. Idle is hilarious as the referee, shouting gibberish during the count. Finally, Cleese steps in as announcer, and speaking into the hanging mike, he utters his magic words-- "And now..." Jones' Nude Organist plays from one corner, and Palin's "It's" Man gasps his sibilant syllable, looking like Bodell knocked him out as well, wearing boxing gloves. The titles roll.

A beautiful pastoral setting, with an 18th century horse-drawn carriage trundling along a county lane, flutes accompanying the peaceful scene. Suddenly, the tranquility is shattered by a call of "Stand and Deliver!" One unlucky redshirt goes for his rifle, only to be shot dead. The highwayman, John Cleese rides up on his horse, a gun in each hand, a mask over his face, and a bob haircut down to his shoulders. This is... Dennis Moore!

So begins the epic-ish tale of Dennis Moore, a Robin Hood type character who steals from the rich and gives to the poor. He's got a couple of problems, though. First off, he easily gets boggd down in pointless details. (He would love this blog!) Warning nobody else to move, he digresses into a lengthy and hilarious explanation of how many of his guns are still loaded and how good a shot he is, most days. Soon, the passengers (Jones, Cleveland and Reverend Idle) get sucked in to his diatribe, arguing with each other over whether a tree in the distance is a willow, when all Dennis Moore wanted to impress upon them was that he could hit it, usually, if it weren't too windy. Finally, Moore has had enough. "It's a hold-up, not a botany lesson!" And we get on to his next problem--

Note the "non-Cleese" in the saddle.

He steals lupins! At first, the passengers act like he's "out of his tiny mind". But in this world, for reasons passing understanding, lupins have some value, and this coach is the "Lupin Express". Sure enough, when Moore searches the coach himself, he steps out with a whole bouquet of brightly colored flowery stalks. Lupins, one assumes. With that, he leaps on his horse Concord and rides away. (The name Concord gets a huge laugh from the audience. I have no idea why. If anyone out there knows, please chime in.) The Fred Tomlinson singers, in their finest Butch baritones, sings his theme song. "Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore..." to the tune of Robin Hood-- just in case you missed the similarities. He tosses them off to peasants Palin and Jones, who are less than enthusiastic about the bounty of color. It's a lot of fun seeing all the different ways they try to hide that Cleese and horses are distant strangers at best. When robbing the carriage, Cleese is almost always in close-up, and when riding, there's clearly a double in the saddle.

A title comes up announcing the end of the Dennis Moore's adventures. We cut to that very title on a television in a squalid, cluttered home. Set decoration has really become important to the Pythons-- this looks little like a set, more like the British version of a Cracker Barrel. This is the home of Mrs. Trepidatious (Chapman, in full pepperpot mode). As she sits, Idle steps in, as Mrs. O. (Is she the one the story is about?) Chapman complains about her arm "hanging off", and Idle asks her what her horoscope says. This simple question elicits one horrible pun, and two long lists of synonyms, one for horoscope (which is pretty impressive) and one for "predict" that includes a "sing-along" from teh studio audience as Chapman points to a card with all the different words. (I think I heard Gumby in the crowd.) Finally, some Chapman-esque silliness. When asked what her sign is, she says "Nesbitt"..Ridiculous, right? Of course. Her real sign is Derry and Toms (a London department store.) The silliness just goes on and on. Even the names keep changing, as tides of silliness wash over the characters and their reality.

This is a very sweet but minor bit. It feels like Idle doing a rip off on Cleese's Cheese Shop sketch, which after all is nothing more than a list of cheese. In terms of Pepperpot duo, Idle tries to hold up his end, but his falsetto keeps fading and re-emerging, and he displays an impatience that Cleese never had. But thrown in there is some classic Chapmanesque silliness, as well as beautiful observational humor. Chapman's horoscope describes her as a lizard, but mentions spectacles. "It's very good about the spectacles," Chapman admires.

Testing their reflexes

Finally, Jones floats down from the heavens with a Dr.'s bag, to check on the Chapman's bad arm. After a not-so-brief but funny bit where he angrily tries to get his bag open, we get some tossed off gags about money-grubbing doctors. The bag is filled with money, a stethescope ("What's that doing in there," Jones mutters, and throws it out a window. It lands on Chapman as a doctor, who brushes it off like a disgusting snake.), and a gun, which he uses to rob Mrs. Trepiditious. There's some visual silliness thrown in-- a safe, hiding behind a framed portrait, of a safe, a hand inside the safe offering the valuables, like "Thing" in the Adams Family, and a reflex test that gets the biggest laugh of the sketch-- but really, this whole second part of the sketch is a link.

We'll soon have you down to nothing.

Doctor Palin and nurse Cleveland go from bed to bed in a hospital ward, taking all the cash they can get from their patients. "We'll soon have you down to nothing," Palin assures, as Cleveland frisks patient Gilliam for ant loose change.One of the patients is named Millichope, as in the cameraman Ray, so that's nice. Millichope is attached to an IV filled with pennies. And all of these jokes come to you from the land of socialized medicine.

Gilliam the animator takes over, gives us an ambulance with "Securicor" written on the side. I'm betting that Securicor is like "Brinks" here in the states, and there's a juxtaposition of banking and health care. This seems to be borne out as the ambulance stops in front of a house, two uniformed attendants take a stretcher in, and bring out a man-- as well as gold, jewels and a safe, all piled on the stretcher. The ambulance takes off. We get a nice slow burn bit (reminiscent of the flying pig in Ep. 2) with a portly pedestrian, seen from behind, crossing a strange, barren landscape. The ambulance passes from right to left, very far away, then closer from left to right. The pedestrian turns his head to see, otherwise frozen, as the ambulance crosses, closer each time. We know what's coming, don't we? Like with Kenneth Clark getting knocked out, the joke rests in the inevitability, and the anticipation thereof. Yes, the ambulance runs him down-- but it's good enough to stop and take his pocket watch with a long rubbery arm. Justice is restored by a  strange man/toad on a lily pad which eats the watch with its long tongue. But now the man/toad is a slave to the clock, serving one undignified clock-ish function

 after another, finally dealing with the ultimate indignity, being part of a time bomb. Lesson for all the man toads out there-- don't eat the watches.

Portentious music takes us to a panel show, with four men sitting around a moderator. Titles and set decoration tells us that this show is "The Great Debate". The question being discussed-- should there be another television channel. (Apparently, at the time of this sketch, there were only three. It makes you wonder how they got by without the other seven hundred and eighty four that we enjoy today, plus Netflix.) After a long musical build-up, Idle, as moderator, introduces the guests. Chapman plays a Mr. Sappenheim like the Merchant of Venice, which gets a laugh, but for the most part, it's all played very straight and important. But when Idle puts the question to his guests, they each answer in one word, and the show is over. Get it? Long set up plus zero content equals hilarity. (Shout out to my friend Rich Bogle, who once wrote a sketch about the

"State of the Union" address. After long hours of pundits speculating on what the President would say and how it would be received, the actual address consisted of two words-- "We're screwed." Poor Mr. Cronkite is left with hours of television time to fill, parsing those two words-- and they didn't get much help from the opposition party. I do loves my funny peeps!) 

Palin voice-overs the next shows coming up, including a 11g-part series of the George 1st, the king "who hasn't been done yet." It's great to see Python mocking the stodgy BBC offering, because God knows Americans are too insecure to do it themselves. In a party with big wigs and drawn on birth marks, Palin and Jones give us a history lesson dressed up as party chatter, with Cleveland chiming in with an occasional "It all falls into place! More wine?" Palin's contempt for this type of television oozes from every pore. Fortunately, before this drivel can go on for too much longer--

In a bunch! In a bunch!

"Stand and deliver!" Dennis Moore swings in from the window. "Your life, or your lupins!" Everyone at this party is guilty of holding concealed lupins, and they all give them to Dennis Moore ("In a bunch! In a bunch!" he yells, impatiently.) who then swings back out of the window, and according to the sound effects, gallops away on Concord. Despondent, the upper crust bemoan thier fate-- but Cleveland has a trick up her skirt. (I'll bet it's a good one!) She has concealed a last lupin in her garter belt. It's a sad, broken lupin, but it cheers the party nonetheless.

To the accompaniment of his jolly jingle ("Soon every lupin in the land will be in his mighty hand!"), Dennis Moore rides to the peasant's cottage. Inside, the room is festooned with lupins. Palin wears lupins. Jones lies sick in bed, covered in a blanket of Lupins, and Palin tries to feed her lupins to make her better. Moore steps in, very pleased with himself. "I've got something," he sing-songs. Is it medicine or food or wood? "No. Lupins." "Oh, Christ!" Palin explodes. The lads having established thestrange world that values lupin, with people stealing them and hiding them, Palin calls "bullshit!" In classic Cleese-ian, he yells at Moore, itemizing how useless lupins are. "Why don't you steal something useful? Like gold and silver and jewels..." "Hold on. I'll get a piece of paper," the hapless Moore says, his mind blown.

And he's back off, riding through the woods. The singers back him up, but they've run out of lyrics. "Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore, dum-de-dum-dum plight..." With the upper crust in the midst of yet another historical diatribe, Dennis re-storms the party (apparently breaking the same window as he swings in,) and announces "Stand and deliver again! Your money, your jewelry, your... hang on..." He consults his list, which includes "pussy cats". He rides back with a huge bag of swag, actually marked "Swag". Too big to carry, he has to drag it behind Concord. He drops it off at the peasants house and rides away, as the title again tells us it's "The End". Another happy ending.

I love how they're creating a long-ish sketch with Dennis Moore, but are treating it as a linking device itself, using it to structure the show. Each segment is a self-contained parody of Robin Hood, interrupted briefly by regular(?) Python bits. It's a l;ot like the undertakes from season 1, but with a building story of its own. Have they ever done this before? I don't think so. 

Un, duex, trois...

Idle breaks in with a voice over, calling back Dennis Moore's confusing exactitude. "It may be the end of that, but it's certainly far from the end of... well, in fact it's the beginning... well, not quite the beginning..." All of this in aid of announcing the "Ideal Loon Exhibition". A variation of the "Silly Party Bi-Elections" sketch, we have goofy, random behavior framed in the setting of a soulless exhibition. My favorites are the French exhibition, Cleese's "Scotsman with Nae Trews" exhibition, ("Nae Trews" meaning "no trousers", with a line of ladies peeking under the kilt) and Chapman hanging blithely by two tire chains over what we're told is a pot of "condemned veal". A nice gag at the end shows the judges in a beauty contest. Idle wins. Of course he wins. He probably wrote the sketch.

Another animated bit from Gilliam follows, with subjects of newspaper photographs escaping from their papers. (Who could blame them? This is England, after all.) It turns out they're being stolen by a bandit. A cop with bulging binoculars e
xecutes "Plan 13-A", which turns out to be a Bugs Bunny rip-off. A Cop with wheels for legs rolls out a black disc. He lays it on the ground-- and it's a hole! The burglar falls into it, and the cop wheels the hole away like the disc it sometimes is. He rolls it into a jail cell, tosses it up onto the ceiling, and, hole again, the burglar falls from the hole into the cell. Wile E. Coyote better get a credit for this episode. Despite the ancient quality of this particular gag, it gets a big laugh from the audience. Maybe they aren't as familiar with Warner Brothers tropes as we are here in the states.

Nice little bit here that they only glance on. We get a close up on Idle, waxing Shakespearean gibberish. It turns out he's in a liquor store, buying a bottle of sherry. (They call it "an off-license.") He finally concedes to Cleese that he's "caught poetry." Cleese can relate. "I used to suffer from short stories." "When?" Idle asks. "Once upon a time," Cleese starts, and he falls off the wagon into a story of-- Dennis Moore! He's back! We squiggle away from the "off-license"...

Dennis Moore restorms the upper crust party. Although they're still talking history, everything else has changed. They're naked, except for their bloomers, and eating gruel from a large bucket. When Moore crashes in (same window?), he asks for their riches, but they scarcely respond to him. He angril threatens to shoot them between the eyes-- then pulls back again, trying to be more accurate. "Well, not right between the eyes... obviously I don't have to be that accurate..."  Finally, her gets around to collecting the last of their wealth-- the spoons they're eating the gruel with. Jones thrusts the broken lupin at him, "Might as well take this, too," but Moore refuses. "I've gone through that stage."

The singers accompany him back to the cottage, "Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore, etcetera, etcetera." Things have changed at the cottage. Paintings hang from the thatched walls, and the peasants themselves are somewhat entitled, tossing his spoons aside. "Silver? I wouldn't have it in the house!" They task Moore to steal something nice, like a Velazquez for the outhouse. "All right," he agrees, a little hurt, and off he rides.

But on this trip, the singers give him some tough love. "He steals from the poor, and gives to the rich! Stupid bitch!" Oh, the moment is so sweet! We've seen characters talking to their own voice overs, or some narrator-- but to the background singers? Cleese comes to a complete halt, and addresses the camera. "What did you sing?" The singers speak their lyrics. "Blimey," Moore mutters. "This redistribution of the wealth is trickier than I thought." Lest we confuse him with the other hippies, Cleese lets his conservatism out a bit, piercing the vision of the Great Society like Ayn Rand, only with a sense of humor.

We haven't seen the old ladies applauding lately, but we do now. The applause links us to Palin's latest game show, "Prejudice", "the show that gives you a chance to have a go at Wops, Krauts, Nigs, Eyeties... " you get the idea. (I thought Wops were Eyeties.) After the list of slurs, we get a title saying "All facts verified by the Rhodesian Police". Get it? Because those guys in Rhodesia are racists!

It's actually a fun little bit, exorcising our demons at the same time as mocking them. He corrects a viewer who couldn't find anything wrong with the Syrians, and announces the results of a contest to come up with a derogatory term for Belgians. My favorite, "The Phlegms" gets edged out by the less subtle "Miserable Fat Belgian Bastards". Cleveland, in a Vegas showgirl get up, holds up the winning cards. But what brings the crowd to its feet is the latest segment of "Shoot the Poof." As the contestant signs in, he is shot--

By Palin, on film as a gay 18th century aristocrat, who is in turn shot by-- Dennis Moore! As the credits roll, Moore holds up another carriage, has all the riders bring out their valuables-- and splits them evenly amongst the passengers. Making comedy and solving the world's problems. Although things go south (or north) when passenger Jones tries to hide a tiara. "It's absolutely pointless trying to do this if you're going to cheat. It really is awful of you..."

A couple of quick gags finish us off. A doubledecker bus drives away, with inconsolable judges inside, the losers of the judicial judging from earlier. The puss passes a hospital sign that warns off any "cheque" users, and we're out.

While this episode lacks the mind-bending ambition of prior episodes this season, it's still a solid success, all the jokes landing well, and it's great to see Cleese broadening his scope a bit. It's great news that he conceded to do the third season, if only to create Dennis Moore, a very nice bit of televisual spoof and social commentary. The rest of the stuff hangs off this masterwork as beautiful accessories. If last week felt like a last gasp, clearly they've found their second wind.

Next week; "A Book at Bedtime"