Episode 45 - Party Political Broadcast

“And to all of you, not forgetting those of you who may be halfway in between, without whom of course and not forgetting who made it all possible, when and will be back until then and so it’s good night from me and here’s wishing you a safe journey home and thank you for watching the show. Don’t forget it was all great fun.” - Michael Palin as the Emcee

(Sniff) It's okay. I can do this... The last episode?! Are you serious?!... it's okay. Just, do the thing. Will one of you buy a friggin' box set?! Can't you see the pain I'm in?!... it's okay. You can watch them again. At least you have the box set. Let's just rip it off the wound, and just... just...

We start right off with a blue screen, yellow letters announcing a “Party Political Broadcast on Behalf of the Liberal Party”. What follows is like no political ad I’ve ever seen. We meet the Garibaldis, a family of five in a cluttered little cluster of rooms. Idle, who plays Mama Garibaldi, does the ironing. Not clothes, of course, but surprisingly malleable teapots and creamers. At the nearby table, Palin, preppy and spotty in spectacles, sweater and short pants, reads the paper, The Daily Scun, while Dad Jones, tousled and unshaven, sits on a toilet eating “A No Weet” cereal and praying for a bowel movement. Jones waves a bit of the paper towards Gilliam, in a fat suit on the couch behind them, rapaciously devouring can after can of beans, with the beans spilling all over his chest, while Chapman, as a teen-ish woman, makes herself up at the table in a slutty two-tone leather skirt. She applies make-up liberally and poorly, more Emmet Kelly than supermodel.  There’s also a sheep dog near Gilliam, hoping for a scrap of beans.

That’s the set up. The sketch itself is essentially a slice of life for this terrible family as they listen to the soccer game, with a team made up almost entirely of people named Pratt. (A joke, most probably, but we have movie stars named Pratt these days.) Jones complains about the paucity of bowel movements in his life. Palin is apparently accident prone, breaking almost everything he touches. Chapman insists on staying out ‘til 3 a.m., even though she’s a member of Parliament, and denies that she was snogging with last night’s date, even though Jones overheard some lewd behavior. Idle fights off Ninjas from the Liberal Party at the front door. And Gilliam wants more BEEEEEEANS!

(The beans gag, it should be noted, is before Mel Brooks’ similar treatment of the legume in Blazing Saddles, although it is doubtful Brooks actually saw this episode before he shot the iconic film, so it must have just been in the zeitgeist.) The sketch has no build, no real narrative—it’s mostly a bunch of visual gags that play out over a steady roll of laughter from the audience. Idle ironing the radio, the prize inside Jones’ cereal is the Pope, Palin breaking things, a Tarzen-esque postman, and the disgusting cesspool that is Gilliam. The dialogue is random—Chapman’s sexual proclivities and Palin’s curiosity about Rhodesia.

But that’s okay—the family is only the start of the sketch, co-written by Neil Innes, which is a game show about the Most Awful Family in Britain, emceed by the spangly Palin. The Garibaldis, while pretty terrible, only rank at #3 on the Disgust-o-Meter, according to the judges. Idle, a judge, complains “I don’t think there was the sustained awfulness we really need.” Second place are the Fanshawe-Cholmleighs, a family of upper-class twits. Idle, Palin, Chapman and Jones all natter simultaneously, and yes, it’s pretty awful. It’s great to see the twits again, and at home this time, instead of on the field. But even they pale in comparison to the Joddrells, a family so disgusting, they can’t be shown on television.

Jones’ judge character, in a mink coat, reveals in upper class tones that “Mr. Joddrell, the old grandfather, when he licks the....” Palin has to interrupt to avoid the inevitable censorship, but she still manages to compliment his gobbing as accurate and consistent.  

We cut back to Idle and Gilliam, as ladies, and Jones, an old man, watching the show on television as Palin signs off. They’re a pretty awful family, too, but they can’t get past the Joddrell’s. Another spate of visual gags, including a hilarious puppet cat that has attempted a lunge through the wall and gotten stuck halfway, and Jones using a loaf of bread to wipe the cat feces off his feet. Chapman rings the doorbell of this awful family to try to sell them Icelandic honey, but soon confesses that there’s no such thing.

Chapman has a nice moment here as a woman with sideburns and beard, complaining about Iceland. “Listen, cowboy, I got a job to do. It’s a stupid pointless job, but at least it keeps me away from Iceland!” (Shades of Galaxy Quest, anyone?) They push Chapman out, closing the door on someone in a bowler, suit, yellow badge and rubber mask waving from the threshold (Who is he?) before the credits roll.

Over Western-style music and a black and white etching of an old West battle, cavalry vs. Indians, Palin’s V.O. reads the titles which set us up for a Western epic battle. But no, we cut to a doctor’s office. It’s kind of like a David Mamet movie—we expect the twist if you do it every time.

As with the prior episode and its Eisenhower shrine, we start with the same shrine with a different picture. We roll out from it, to find ourselves in Doctor Chapman’s office. He’s “treating” Gilliam’s “naught complect”, and the treatment is a bag to be worn on the head, a bell, and a sign that says “For Special Treatment”. He takes all of Gilliam’s money, throws it in a safe behind him (which “cha-chings” happily), and tells Gilliam to “Get out… Dirty little man.” It’s almost quaint to see how the lads see doctors, as opposed to the poor overworked cowering things that the insurance companies have neutered. Or maybe this was just wish fulfillment on Chapman’s part, since he actually was a doctor. “Oh, the money I could have made… and being drunk wouldn’t have been an issue at all!” Back to the sketch, Chapman calls for the next patient, and it’s Jones, blood spurting out over his nice blue suit. “What seems to be the trouble?” Chapman asks.  Jones was actually fine until the waiting room nurse stabbed him. But before Chapman can do anything about the wound, he needs the proper form filled out. While the spurting Jones tries to fill it in, Chapman practices his golf swing and his peasant shooting. Jones faints on the form, blood pooling on the carpet beneath him, and Chapman inspects how far he got. “Surely you knew number four!” Chapman remonstrates. “It’s from the Merchant of Venice! Even I knew that one!”

Oh, Nurse...

While Jones blots his own blood from the carpet on his hands and knees, Nurse Cleveland (oh, how the phrase leaves me weak!) steps in with a gun. “Doctor, I just shot another patient. I don’t think there’s any point in your seeing him.” She heads back out with a sword while Chapman outlines Jones’ options. “I’ll stop the bleeding, but technically I shouldn’t even do that, on marks like these…” But a scream from the waiting room announces that Cleveland has done her good work, and returning with blood all over, she announces that there are no more patients, so she and Chapman go to lunch, leaving Jones to bleed out while he corrects his form. “Thank you, Doctor,” Jones croaks as they leave.

This bit of bloody sadism comes to us courtesy of Chapman and co-writer Douglas Adams, he of “The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy” fame. Not content with his on-camera cameo last week, he and Chapman worked up this hilariously old-school sketch, and it feels soooo good. Reminiscent of the famous Saturday Night Live sketch, with Dan Ackroyd as Julia Childs, (“Save the liver!”) but preceding it by a few years, the focus and clarity of this sketch stands in stark relief to the parade of scarcely-connected gags that came before. It’s not particularly fresh or innovative, but it still manages to slay—literally, if Jones’ outcome is as predicted.

On to the next sketch. Idle wears a British army outfit, replete with medals and badges. But as we pull back, we see that his uniform isn’t strictly regulation. Beneath the tunic, he wears a tutu, knee socks, and women’s character shoes, while he dictates a letter complaining in stentorian tones about the previous sketch. The typist is a big-hatted bishop named Brian played by Palin. When Idle asks for a readback, Palin reads something all biblical, but it seems to satisfy Idle. Well… not completely, as it turns out. Because Idle insists that they “stop pretending”, and in true British fashion, they each declare their… moderate, or not very large… feelings for each other. “I don’t suppose there’s much we can do about it,” Idle asks rhetorically.

“Not on television, no,” Palin responds. What follows is kind of touching, actually—as close as Python ever really came to pathos, apart from the David Frost sketch. These two characters, on television, are tragically disenfranchised from following their hearts because they’re characters on television, and the regret that suffuses their every line is a little heart breaking. But they don’t play it long—just enough to get the censors nervous. As they lean in towards each other, Idle asks Palin to take another letter. And we’re out—

And at the opera. In a Gilliamination—the first of the show—an opera tenor in a burgundy tux, standing alone in a huge empty but ornate space reminiscent of Versailles (except for the floor, which is reminiscent of a barber pole,) sings Wagner (“Wagner, Max!”), specifically a strange, doodly “Flight of the Valkyries” tune. But, apparently, not everyone likes Wagner. A cannon rolls in from the other side of the frame, pointed directly at the tenor. The tenor picks up the gauntlet and continues singing, only to have the cannon fuse lit. As it burns down, the tenor keeps warbling, until the cannon fires, and the tenor pulls into his tux like a snail into his shell. But! Miracle of miracles—no cannonball has erupted. Relieved and happy, the tenor sings with renewed vigor. Then things get strange. The shell comes out of the cannon, but at a snail’s pace, taking forever to emerge from the cannon and creeping across the room, defying all laws of physics by staying afloat at that (lack of) velocity. The tenor, relieved anew, continues his aria, apparently confident that the shell constitutes no danger. But when the shell finally reaches him—BOOM, right? Wrong! The shell hits the tenor, and then just drills into the tenor, until it disappears without sight into the tenor’s bulk. Even the tenor did not see this coming, halting his song once in surprise. But once the shell has been absorbed, there’s no reason not to finish. The tenor blasts his final note (voiced by an echo-y Palin, by the way) to great applause from an unseen crowd. Acknowledging the adulation, the tenor boOOOOMS! as he bows. A nice study in sustained anxiety brought to you from the warped mind of Gilliam.

We cut quickly to another blue screen with yellow letters, this time reading “An Appeal on Behalf of Extremely Rich People Who Have Absolutely Nothing Wrong With Them”. In case you can’t read, Palin voices it over for you. On film, Chapman sits behind a desk, all kindness and warmth and moustache, a flask and glass of brandy at his side, and a lamp that looks like Gilliam drew it on his other side, a jarring blue screen behind him. I keep waiting for weird images to pop up on the screen, but it’s all Chapman as he delivers his pitch for the poor afflicted, only not poor, and not afflicted, and not even an appeal, really. He just wants to raise the awareness of the average man on the street, who “can’t appreciate the pressures that vast quantities of money just do not bring.” After showing us some examples of wealth, he points out “It’s only human to say ‘Oh, this will never happen to me,’… and of course, it won’t.” Then he wraps it up, asking for no gifts, no matter how large or small.. Instead of going broad, as Mr. Neutron did last week, this solid spoof of the Victim Generation goes deep, keeping a very tight focus on its unique selling point and never straying beyond it. But every line builds beautifully on the concept. Well done!

Towards the end of his “appeal”, we see Jones (as a pepperpot) watching Chapman on television in her living room. The doorbell rings, and after a couple of quick callbacks to the opening scene, she answers the door, humming “Anything Goes In” to herself. Idle’s at the door. Jones starts to ask “You must have come about…”

“Finishing the sentences, yes.”

What follows is yet another sold bit. Jones has difficulty finishing her sentences, so she has contacted a specialist, Idle, who will coach her into more self-sufficiency. All of this information is revealed in sentences started by Jones and finished by Idle. After they’ve had some fun with that, Idle explains the process, coaxing Jones to finish his sentences, thereby finishing a sentence for herself. When Jones finishes a sentence and realizes she has done so, the moment is one of revelatory empowerment. Now the roles have been reversed, and following that logic, Idle shows Jones to the door, and she leaves. The lads are on a roll, three very nice if contained bits in a row. This one has the feel of the Argument Clinic in its Apollonian discipline, and although they could have taken it further, it’s a sweet little nugget—Not at all offset by the return to random as soon as Jones leaves. Cleveland, Idle’s off stage wife, has just had another baby—her twelfth since lunch, and oops, there’s another one. This tag-on raises a lot of questions that can’t be answered. Was Cleveland really Jones’ wife? How did Jones, a woman, impregnate her. Didn’t Jones mention a husband in the sketch? (She did.) So all of reality reshuffled once Jones learned to finish a sentence? I guess the real question is, was this random joke worth shredding the prior sketch? (It wasn’t.)

There's the guy in the rubber mask!... and there's Stonehenge.

Back to Jones, on film, as she walks down a British driveway towards her destiny, Flight of the Valkyries playing behind her. She passes an all-female road repair crew, wearing dresses, etc. She walks through a city, over a hill, through a field, finally to arrive at her glorious destination—Stonehenge! Where a man isn’t necessarily a man. Palin steps out with microphone to belabor the point, in case you can’t read or see. “This is Stonehenge!” he announces—“And it is from here we go to Africa.” The man in the suit, bowler, yellow badge and rubber mask steps in and waves. And who is he again?

Still on film, in the deep forests of Africa, we meet intrepid but oh, so British explorer Palin, in a bush outfit, blond hair, and dripping with sweat—actually, pouring with it, in twin waterfalls from beneath his shirt, trailed by four black “natives.” Palin is in turn trailing the famous Walking Tree of Dahomi, and after six months and three days, has finally caught up with it. He waxes rhapsodic about all the various gaits this tree might have used in its journey of four thousand miles, while dripping sweat—only to be told by a whispering native that this isn’t the tree. The tree has moved on. They head off after it, and we see that the natives aren’t carrying supplies, but saxophones. They look a little bashful to be jazz musicians, but what else could they be, if they’re not natives?!

Later, Palin gives us an update—they haven’t spotted the famous walking tree, although apparently there are many trees that walk, and skip, and bushes that sidle. But they have spotted a Turkish Little Rude plant, a plant that imitates the pale buttocks of a Brit—it even farts when you drop it! And that’s not even the headline.  There are natives playing cricket! But that fails to get the now spurting with sweat from many holes Palin interested—not while there’s a Puking Tree on the other side of the clearing.

Gilliam has to take over, just to bring focus to this enterprise. An animated professor knitting himself a straitjacket in a Medieval room, announces that they had found the legendary Bat Men of the Kalihari—a cricket team lost in time. This is a riff on the Bush Men of the same place, famous for having been passed by as history marched on, still living the old ways. Having one of the old ways be cricket is a great idea—let’s see what they do with it.

The discovery of the Bat Men prompts a further discovery of rare footage of the Bat Men of the Kalihari taking on W – a team made up entirely of men named Pratt. This is where we came in, yes? Now, while cricket is a very strange and exotic sport to me, I’m pretty sure it’s not supposed to be played like this. Crickteer Jones steps up to the wicket, prepared, and the native bowler/pitcher throws—a spear, impaling Jones, who complains just a bit before collapsing into the sticks. Another cricketer gets one through the leg. One gets the head chopped off, which is caught by the catcher. Needless to say, it’s a one sided match. Chapman reads off a list of results, all of them varying the central theme—this Pratt retires injured, this Pratt retires very injured, this Pratt beheaded and bowled… I don’t know what it means but it sounds funny. Bloody funny.

And there goes the head!

We pan back to see that this whole thing is being watched by spangly Palin, the MC of the Most Awful Family in Britain M.C., only now a banner that reads “Sport” has been carelessly draped across the “Awful Family” sign. He says “That’s all from us”—True that—and we cut to the closing credits. The Monty Python font is used to spell out “A Party Political Broadcast on Behalf of the Liberal Party”, and instead of the big military band playing the theme, we get Neil Innes, on guitar, poorly picking out the tune. A fond farewell from the lads, or an admission that, after four years, they were still inept at all this? The sour picking is soon replaced by the military band as the silly credits roll.

But as the credits finish, we cut to Cleveland dancing energetically on a table, while four drunken Brits, one of them the bowler, suit, yellow badge and rubber mask man, dance around her. Idle comes into frame as a newscaster, sternly announcing the silly news. Millions of pounds lost at the stock exchange when someone coughed—we’ve seen that happen when software coughs. Capital punishment reintroduced in rugby—yeah, that’s what the soccer dads over here do.

After a bit of this, he sends it on back to… himself… and then over to Palin, on the Paignton Pier. (Hey! Paignton! One of my favorite locations, from the Grill-o-Mat episode!) Palin announces that “It’s from Paignton that we can take you back to the studio!”

(The bowler yellow badge rubber mask man is there, too.) Back at the studio, Chapman, in swim trunks and scuba mask, with an impaled otter on a spear, sends us back to spangly Palin, who sends us back to Idle, with Cleveland dancing in the background. Idle announces an upcoming documentary on Ursula Hitler and her Magical Bees, as he switches out seats with Jones. But before Jones can speak—we cut away. This is a nice, dizzying round robin, getting all the lads in for one last wink at the camera—except for Gilliam, noticeably absent.

Finally, we cut back to the graphic that started this all off, the Party Political Broadcast. Palin reads it off for us—but gets an attack of the giggles halfway through and can’t continue. Others seem to laugh along with him. The announcer tried to take it seriously, but he just couldn’t hold it. It was all too silly. Fade to black.

And, at last, the lads pull out one of the better shows of the season, with some solid sketches. In this “meme” era, all anyone really remembers from this episode is Gilliam screaming “BEEEEEANS!” from the filthy couch, but there’s so much more that deserves our fond recollection—the Patient Abuse sketch is awesome, and the Two Characters in Search of a Gay Boink (not the official title) is also quite good, as is the “Finishing Others’ Sentences”. And although the writers resisted the temptation towards commenting on the “last show” dynamic and getting all maudlin, I’d like to call your attention (as if I needed to), to Carol Cleveland dancing gleefully on the table, surrounded by drunk, rubber-faced Brits.

Could there have been a better final image? I don’t think so. Given the tenuous relationship between women and men, especially in England, with all of its upper class embarrassment and pompous rectitude, things can get messy. Add professional comedy into the mix, with its use of the baser instincts and a natural inclination towards hostility, and you get a very heady and intoxicating brew. This was all indicated by the role of gender in Monty Python—their insistence on playing the female parts, and their resistance to writing material for Carol Cleveland (until the movies, that is) suggests a discomfort with, even a subtle hostility towards women. But at the same time, they liked them, and used them often as objects for sexual lust. I guess what I’m saying is, most human endeavor is in the service of getting laid. And at least five members of the troupe wanted to be laid by women. And chicks dig funny guys. There, at last, is the truth—not only of their feelings for women, and Cleveland specifically, but of the motivations behind their silly behavior. They’re going to keep grabbing at the dancing woman on the table for as long as they can, and hope that she favors their silliness. This is an eternal struggle.

This is the last episode of nothing.

Next Week; Graham Chapman