"Has it become just a thin excuse for a multi-national orgy? " - John Cleese as Narrator
After a long hiatus, (sorry, had to make a little money) and looking for the episode, (thank you, SuperPeeves at YouTube!) I am finally able to give you a long-winded account of the other lost episode, the second German episode. Yes, the first one was such a disaster, they decided to do another one. Although, as I stated last post, the first episode was a commercial failure, as well as a cultural crossover misstep, it was also the best example of Monty Python as television revolutionaries. Without the home team (aka live studio audience) cheering them on, without the comfort of British cabaret to fall back on, they flew without a net, and for most of the 40-plus minute show, gave us little that was new in terms of comedic construction, but did it with a new presentation that was indifferent to audience reaction. The sole motivation, it seemed, was to bring chaos to order, and this they accomplished beautifully. The first episode plays like it's being screened covertly, in a basement, with police jeeps roaring by just overhead.
For the second episode. they decided to do away with the German speaking, and instead allowed themselves to be dubbed. Part of the reason for the poor ratings was attributed to the Germans being unable to sell stuff that isn't dubbed-- even to their own people! Let's take a look. As there is no current box set availability, I am posting the youtube links as we push through, in the hopes that you will enjoy the source material-- that has always been the mission here. So let's checken zis out!
We begin with a nice visual William Tell gag, complete with overture. The bulk of the sketch is set up, and the payoff happens so quickly, we're rushed out of the door before we're given a chance to laugh. (Spoiler alert-- good archery takes lots of practice.) The boy manages to make a face that could easily pass as dread or death-- good jab, my anonymous lad!
We pan across 70's Munich, and a Cleese voice over lulls us into the belief that we are watching a financial documentary. But as we zoom in on Palin, with blonde hair and a preternaturally tanned face, we find that it's actually about the ravenous sexual appetite of these economists trying to forge a European common market. Although they normally chase pretty attractive women, it's clear that their standards are not overly high. In a board meeting, the lads interrupt their work to ravage Gilliam in drag-- I'd know that jutting lower jaw anywhere-- even though he's an old cake lady. "Why are these financial experts so keen to get into bed with young girls?" Cleese asks, perplexed. It's a nice and subtle bit-- the media's professed bemusement over sexual scandals like this. Chapman makes a brief appearance as a loony sociologist with a goat, shirley temple wig, leotard and googly eyes, answering Cleese's question. "They're probably just confused." But whatever the reason, Cleese, now on camera, opines, it now calls the common market into question. "Has it become just a thin excuse for a multinational orgy, or is it still a serious attempt to aid the rich?" Cleese is struck by a car, and we go to brand new Gilliam created credits.
The credits show what God's foot thinks of urban blight. The black spot (cancer or gangrene?) makes an appearance, pocking the landscape around a Civil War general or something, before blotting out the camera. Heads on flower stems are picked. A butterfly pollinates a male head, then a female head, which creates a baby head that the spot devours. A spooky tree grows up out of the spot, giving us the title again, and the foot brings us home.
Idle, with long flowing locks hosts a show on Sycophancy, with guests Sycophant Palin, insufferably agreeable, and non-sycophant Chapman, who was just being polite. A documentary follows on "sycophants" which actually turn out to be seals. The documentary moves on to a Mr. Tutankhamun, who has preserved 4 thousand square miles of Bavarian forest to protect the eight mice that live there. There are some brief discursions from this idea-- he's also got a fish preserve, with fish hanging from the trees, and Idle's talk show makes a brief reappearance, with sycophant Palin now transformed into a seal-- but the documentary basically transforms into a cowboy show, with the "miceboys" rounding up their herd. There's a great bit when they brand a new mouse, complete with agonized squeal.
Outside of a Western saloon (this set made an appearance in the last German episode-- do the Germans have a standing Western set up and running?) Jones hears the rumbling of a stampede-- of mice! Animation takes over, as the townspeople shake with dread at the approach of the mice-- and with good reason, because the tiny things bowl the whole town over.
Jones, as documentarian narrator, phases us over to Gilliam as a Walter Huston wanna-be prospector, panning for... chickens! In a great visual gag, Gilliam manages to pull a dry living chicken out of the running stream. He safely stores the chicken, then does the treasure of the Sierra Madre dance, and beautifully, I might add. We then see a team drilling underground for the fowl treasure, and Palin shows us (after a hilarious false start by moustache-wearing Cleese) where the chicken deposits are under North Dakota. Animation follows, with an oil well striking feathered gold. But, as with all good things, some hucksters gotta come along and screw a good thing up. When Gilliam the prospector, aka Gabby, tries to cash in his find, he's told by Chapman that the chicken is fake. ("Fool's chicken", they used to call that in the old west.) Pictures show us other fakes, including a camel that tried to pass for a chicken, and a man from Kent (Kent, Camel... who sponsored this show?!) who did a very poor impression himself.
Well, to sum up-- we've gone from a preserve for a few mice, to a western theme, to chickens as gold, the lads skimming from one odd concept to another, never lighting for long on any of them, They seem more intent on exploring potential silliness than really landing any one concept. It's delirious, fun, but vaguely unsatisfying. There are no real belly laughs, just an almost baroque appreciation for how these men can go anywhere with anything and find something silly in it. Of course, you can find chicken in almost anything, so what's the big deal.
A Gilliamination pulls us out of the loop, with a dark eyed man on all fours in his one room house. We hear the sound of a dog barking. It gets closer, closer-- suddenly, the dark-eyed man claps his hands together, and gets tossed about the room, trying to control whatever is in his grasp. Finally, he proudly rides off on what turns out to be a flea. Yes, we're back in the western theme, and this man is a flea-breaker, looking to compete in the flea dressage for the Olympics. But that, at last, finally, gets us out of the pseudo western and into the pseudo-Olympics.
We've seen the next bit before, because it's hysterical, and why wouldn't they show us whenever they had a chance? Most of Monty Python's live shows have included this "International Philosophy" contest, pitting Greek philosophers such as Socrates and Aristotle, complete with togas and beard, up against German philosophers such as Kant and Hegel, also in beard, but dressed more conservatively, in a winner-take-all soccer game. (The German team includes Beckenbauer, who actually plays soccer for Germany."A bit of a surprise there,"says Palin.) Palin sets us up for a very exciting match, but when referee Confucius blows the whistle-- everyone paces and thinks. Palin tries to make something of nothing, but we soon cut away to Cleese, who announces wrestling.
Here we get another classic live routine, with Chapman pulling out all the yoga stops to wrestle himself in the famous Colin "Bomber" Harris sketch. The sketch pretty much plays out like you'd think, with some wicked contortions and grimaces from the way-too-flexible Chapman. (You lads sure you want him sober?) Cleese gives us the color commentary; "Colin's already working on that weak left knee of his..." After one fall, Colin knocks himself out, and so wins the match, going on to meet himself in the final. Well done, Graham-- a physical tour-de-force that is as smart as it is funny.
Back at the soccer game, the score is still zip-- in fact, the ball hasn't even moved. Martin Luther, the Germans' manager, puts in lightning rod Karl Marx, but as soon as the whistle blows, it's all pacing and thinking. But Cleese as Greek Archimedes suddenly has an idea, which inspires the whole Greek team to action, and they take possession of the ball, dribble it around the thoughtful Germans, and feed Socrates, who headbutts it right in the net. As the Germans argue that the goal was merely an "a priori adjunct of non-analytic ethics," Confucius blows the whistle, and the game is over.
A quick bit of context regarding this sketch-- the lads taped their first German show in 1971, as Munich was gearing up for the Olympics the following year, and the second show was taped in 1973, after the Olympics. What happened in between? The Olympics, namely the infamous 1972 Munich Olympics, which featured a terrorist kidnapping of Israeli athletes and resulted in their tragic deaths. It was horrific, the equivalent of 9/11, only on an international stage. The pressure to not make a joke referencing the Munich Olympic must have been substantial. Monty Python made it anyway, and made it one of their greatest bits. There is a bravery here, as well as humor, that deserves to be appreciated along with the humor.
We pull out from the stadium to a Gilliam vision of downtown traffic-congested Munich. A tiny man tries to speak to a Robert Crumb, big-thighed vision, and she slaps him. Another attempt get him the same result. Outside, a man asks a cop for something, and he is clubbed. Another man asks a vendor, and he is hammered. Mao asks Nixon something, and Nixon cleaves him. War breaks out, blood, devastation, death war and horror, until a nuclear weapon drives all the noise away... and back in the apartment, the man with the big-thighed vision can finally be heard. What he has to say is actually very sweet-- but the woman slaps him silly. So much for giving peace a chance.
We've seen this next sketch before, in several iterations. The one that pops to mind is the "I'd like to buy a bed" sketch, with Chapman standing in a bucket until everyone sings "Jerusalem". In this version, Idle walks into the shop (looks like a real shop, too-- like in a mall) and asks for a hearing aid. "What?" asks Cleese. He can't hear very well, His hearing aid isn't working. He sends Idle to teh contact lens specialist, who is blind. Hilarity ensues, as Jones stumbles in, looking for a refund on his contact lenses, and he's blind as well. Palin and Jones fight brutally without ever touching each other. Finally, Palin and Cleese throw one another out the door, leaving only Idle, who addresses the camera like Groucho Marx. "You should see them when they've had a couple of drinks. Good night, folks!" It's funny, with the obligatory punch line stapled on at the end, and beautifully performed, but nothing really new here. Almost a throwback to their first season.
Next comes the fairy tale. This is interesting, because it marks the first time a writer from outside the usual six lads was brought on board to help out with a sketch. The writer was... Connie Booth, American actress and current (at the time) wife of John Cleese, Connie would later earn huge accolades for her co-writing on one of the best British sitcoms in the history of the BBC, Fawlty Towers. Of course, the fact that she co-wrote it with Cleese couldn't hurt. Her credits since have been a bit sparse, but Cleese defends her by saying she had much more participation in their finished work than Graham Chapman ever had in his work with Cleese. And he would know. It shows how loose an organization Monty Python was at this point. It's also curious that both German shows had a fairy tale bit. Was it the proximity of the dark forests of Bavaria that inspired this?
The tale is about the Kingdom of Happy Valley, where everyone is legally obliged to be happy, or else they are put to death. An illustration follows, with mopey Gilliam tried in a court of happy law for being "very depressed, with malice aforethought." and moaning in defiance of the Cheerful Noises act. When the defense attorney Idle cheerfully claims that Gilliam's wife had just died, the courtroom erupts with loud and endless peals of laughter. The guilty verdict is even more side-splitting, and Chapman, as the judge, dons a red rubber nose and sentences Gilliam to "hang by the neck, until you cheer up."
Now the story properly begins, as the principals are introduced-- King Otto (Jones), singing silly songs on his Hammond organ, the sullen Queen (Chapman) and our romantic lead Princess Mitzi Gaynor (Booth) with huge ugly wooden teeth that she files and varnishes, and a dead pet rabbit. Booth meets Cleese, a Prince (it's official-- he's in the book, presumably the white pages) and falls in love, and together they wade through Jones hilariously insufferable tunes until he agrees to marriage-- provided that Cleese perform a task to prove his worthiness. The task-- leap off the highest tower in the kingdom with nothing but your sword. There's a suspenseful bit, where he seems almost to float down, but it doesn't go well. "He wasn't worthy," mutters King Otto. So Booth meets (if that's the word-- she pretty much rapes him) a second Prince, played by Palin, with long nose and wooden teeth. This time, the adulterous Queen Chapman intervenes, and extracts a more manageable test of worth from Otto-- the legal purchase of some Rothman's (cigarettes.) The next morning, amid a joyous celebration filled with expectant townspeople, Palin's Prince accomplishes the dubiously easy goal-- only to have Idle as Prince Charming arrive on horseback, with elan and a pet dragon that he kills with a pistol. Princess Mitzi chooses him, ignoring Palin's promises of revenge. But later,in the chapel, Palin brings Gilliam, as a witch. (In a nice bit that precurses Tim the Enchanter, Gilliam turns a nobleman into a lamp, then a skunk, then a seltzer bottle, then something tiny and white, then back to a nobleman. "Now watch it, Gilliam growls.) But Gilliam's skills backfire when King Otto refuses to negotiate with terrorists. "I hereby change every person in this cathedral into chickens... except me!" he adds, too late.Witch and congregation are well and truly flocked.
It's a goofy little piece, with few callbacks, no story building, well beneath what Booth and Cleese would accomplish a few years later, but it's full of the Python silliness, and everyone's got a nice part. The silly song the King finishes with became a minor passion of Chapman's during the first Monty Python tours-- maybe he even wrote it. With lyrics like "Ya tee buckety," it doesn't really sound like Booth or Cleese.
The chapel full of clucking chickens grabs the attention of Gilliam's chicken prospector Gabby, and the show finishes with a nice loop as the credits roll. All the Western characters race after the sound of chickens, played over by banjo music. Finally, a bright garish sign reads "Ende". Cleese is there as the documentarian, bandaged up from his accident, and the sycophant/seal sits in a chair nearby. "Why do they do it?" Cleese asks rhetorically. Then he and the seal go out for dinner.
This effort constitutes the last time that the lads all worked together on their TV show. It's a fun episode, with some nice bits and the usual Python stream of consciousness style of comedy, but a bit of a let down. It seems that maybe Cleese was right, and that the lads really had nothing new to do. It would be bittersweet, if not for the knowledge that while taping this show, they began work on the screenplay that would become "Monty Python and the Holy Grail."
So there's that.
Next week; The third album.
