All The Words, Vol. Two – Monty Python's Flying Circus, 1989 ★★★

Monty Python: The Spam Years

Genius is hard to capture, and hard to sustain. The impulse to keep doing what works often misleads; so too can the desire to change things up. If you do something that makes a large portion of your audience uncomfortable, the challenge can be that much greater, particularly if you are dependent on government sponsorship while honing your craft.

All this comes into play when reviewing this second, final volume of one of television comedy’s most legendary achievements, “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.” Vol. Two collects transcripts for the last 22 episodes of the famous series, those airing from December 1970 to December 1974.

For those who know and love Python, your table will be full: Absurdity, satire, grand guignol, scatology, hairdressers climbing Everest, highwaymen stealing lupins, men dressed as loud women exploding without warning. But note also less consistency on the menu:

Waitress [Terry Jones]: Well there’s egg and bacon; egg, sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg, bacon and spam; egg, bacon, sausage and spam; spam, bacon, sausage and spam; spam, egg, spam, spam, bacon and spam; spam, spam, spam, egg and spam; spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, baked beans, spam, spam, spam, and spam; or lobster thermidor aux crevettes with a Mornay sauce garnished with truffle pâté, brandy and a fried egg on top and spam.

The good news: Monty Python blew up their established formula in ways that kept you wondering what they were going to try next. The bad news: A willingness to try everything and push boundaries in sketch comedy meant more time spent in cheap laughs/no laughs territory.

Five of the six Python members send up BBC broadcaster Alan Whicker as residents of "Whicker's Island," from the first third-season episode. From left to right: John Cleese, Michael Palin, Eric Idle, Graham Chapman, and Terry Jones. Image from http://mentalfloss.com/article/86894/14-facts-about-monty-pythons-flying-circus

The really bad news: star John Cleese left after three seasons, resulting in a final season showcasing a surprisingly weaker and scattershot effort that fortunately ended after six shows. Cleese’s departure from the program was a body blow that sealed its fate; after leaving the BBC the troupe would take their act on the road and into cinemas.

In my review of Vol. One, I noted a parallel evolution of Monty Python with that other British milestone of the 1960s, the Beatles. There are lots of parallels. The Beatles did two German-language singles; Monty Python did two German-language episodes. Both retailed productions of themselves performing at The Hollywood Bowl. Beatle John left to pursue art projects with his wife Yoko; Python John left to eventually make “Fawlty Towers” with his wife Connie Booth.

One thing the Beatles have over Python is the evenness of their performing legacy across their career. Every year they were around, they released singles and albums that remain established cultural touchpoints. Monty Python? Not as much. Vol. One is stacked with sketches and exchanges that remain memes today; Vol. Two is less familiar that way.

There are certainly bits here people will remember:

Man [Michael Palin]: I came here for a good argument.

Mr. Vibrating [John Cleese]: No you didn’t, you came here for an argument.

Man: Well, an argument’s not the same as contradiction.

Mr. Vibrating: It can be.

Man: No it can’t. An argument is a connected series of statements to establish a definite proposition.

Palin and Cleese haggle over the nature of arguing itself in the classic "Argument Clinic" sketch from the third season. Image from http://www.ysgolymor.com/the-seven-samurai-of-an-ib-extended-essay/.

Mr. Vibrating: No it isn’t.

Man: Yes it is. It isn’t just contradiction.

Mr. Vibrating: Look, if I argue with you I must take up a contrary position.

Man: But it isn’t just saying “No it isn’t.”

Mr. Vibrating: Yes it is.

A lot of material in Vol. Two is not this familiar. I was a devoted viewer of “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” when it aired on public television in my high school and college years; reading this book brought the same moments of warm familiarity as did Vol. One but also connected me to a lot of stuff I had completely forgotten about.

Fourth Doctor [Graham Chapman]: We’ve every facility here for dealing with people who are rich. We can deal with a blocked purse, we can drain private accounts and in the worst cases we can perform a total cashectomy, which is the total removal of all moneys from the patient.

Make no mistake; some of this material is deservedly forgotten. I could have done without some of the more tedious later episodes, like one single-sketch piece in the third season where Michael Palin as a bicyclist goes on a cross-European journey in the company of an inventor who alternately thinks he’s a Eurovision Song Contest performer and Leon Trotsky. There is also a lot of name-checking famous people with silly activities that stops feeling inventive and becomes pretentious the fourth time around.

But “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” did have a lot of fuel in the tank, as at least the first half of Vol. Two shows. The show was redefining itself, moving away from stand-alone sketches and playing more with viewer expectations, starting an episode by setting up a pirate film or an Icelandic saga before switching to Cleese behind a desk announcing: “And now for something completely different.”

Dennis Moore (a stunt double here, Cleese elsewhere) steals lupins from the rich and gives to the poor until everyone complains. "Blimey, this redistribution of wealth is trickier than I thought," he muses. Image from https://nerdist.com/most-underrated-monty-python-sketches/.

Observe how a seemingly standard BBC adaptation of T. S. Eliot’s Murder In The Cathedral becomes an advertisement for slimming jeans:

First Knight [Eric Idle]: Absolve all those you have excommunicated.

Second Knight [Terry Jones]: Resign those powers you have arrogated.

Third Knight [Michael Palin]: Renew the obedience you have violated.

Fourth Knight [John Cleese]: Lose inches off your hips, thighs, buttocks and abdomen.

In a brilliant, detailed blog well worth checking out, “Fish Slapping Dance,” an anonymous fan who seems about the same age and nationality as I goes through each television episode, referencing the DVDs rather than the books, in making the case that much of Python’s most imaginative and hilarious TV work came during its less-regarded third season. He writes:

Season Three stands as their greatest accomplishment, in my opinion. Many of the episodes are more complex and daring than any of their movies. They border on brilliance, if not actually occupying it.

His perspective is a bit different than mine, being that I’m reading them in transcript form. As mentioned in my review of Vol. One, the animation by Terry Gilliam is barely represented in these books, and of course the visual component is entirely gone, but for a handful of grainy photos. I get what he means about the third season, though.

Another great third-season sketch. Researcher Anne Elk (Cleese) has a controversial theory about the brontosaurus, but interviewer Graham Chapman has a devil of a time pulling it from her. Image from https://nerdist.com/most-underrated-monty-python-sketches/.

Cleverness abounds, along with a surrealism by turns twisted and playful. A typical bit involves a scene run over an almost-static BBC logo where a shaky network announcer is coached through his perfunctory announcement of the next program by another announcer:

Dick [Michael Palin]: Good man. Now remember your announcer’s training: deep breaths, and try not to think about what you’re saying…

Or a sketch about cannibalism aboard a ship is followed by a viewer’s complaint the problem is grossly overreported: “Yours etc. Captain B. J. Smethwick in a white wine sauce with shallots, mushrooms and garlic.”

Biting the hand that feeds you can be fun; Vol. Two reveals a serious appetite in this department. Digs at the BBC abound; so do more openly sexual material and knocks at religion:

Bishop [John Cleese] (porn merchant style): Our religion is the first Church to cater for the naughty type of person. If you’d like a bit of love-your-neighbour – and who doesn’t now and again – then see Vera and Cicely during the hymns.

None of this would cause a flutter today; the material here most likely to offend is an occasional ethnic and homosexual stereotype, some of which do shock. Never mind Python was very liberal for their time in those departments; the woke police would definitely complain now. Whatever. Some of us are still free enough to enjoy it.

Terry Gilliam strikes a blow for a more liberated RAF in a famous Biggles sketch from the third season. Gilliam emerged from his perch at the cartoonist stool to act more in the later shows. Image from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0650989/

The real cringe-inducers come in the fourth season. Surrealism devolves into an all-encompassing randomness where an entire episode is devoted to 18^th-century ballooning or a man’s quest to buy a pet ant at the mall. It may sound like fun, and sometimes plays better than it reads, with the acting and animating skills the post-Cleesian Pythons brought to the fore. On the page it is deadly:

Father [Graham Chapman]: Gorn!

Mother [Eric Idle]: What’s gorn dear?

Father: Nothing, nothing. I just like the word. It gives me confidence. Gorn…gorn. It’s got a sort of woody quality about it. Gorn. Gorn. Much better than “newspaper” or “litterbin.”

Even the stage directions testify to a lost sense of purpose:

In the bed are a party of four Japanese businessmen in suits with lapel badges, two lady American tourists with rain hats on and cellophane over their hats and cameras, three other moustached English gentlemen in pyjamas, four Tour de France riders, three Swedish businessmen, and Winston Churchill. In the corner of the room are three Tour de France bicycles…

A typical fourth-season sketch, where a psychiatrist (Chapman) holds a skull trying to prompt Hamlet (Terry Jones) to do one of his famous bits. Amusing for a little while, but too soon beaten to the ground. Image from https://www.allmovie.com/movie/monty-pythons-flying-circus-hamlet-v210946 

There are glimmers of greatness in the fourth season, like a vignette featuring the Third Worst Family in Britain and John Keats’ terrifying reading of his latest anteater poem. But the overall flabbiness in written form makes this harder to enjoy, and the long stretches of check-out-what-I-learned-in-Oxbridge runs out its welcome fast, at least for me. Quite a dip from the more familiar gags of Vol. One, and from the more grounded explorations of the Python formula we get here from the last episodes of the second and across the third seasons.

Cleese has said he feared Python was repeating itself too often, which combined with the strain of working with an alcoholic writing partner (Chapman) led to his exit from the show. You do see some evidence of repetition, where getting the runaround at a pet store back in Season One becomes a cheese shop in Season Three. These still work for the most part as variations on a theme.

But the arid plains of the fourth season make me glad they called it quits when they did, at least on the small screen. As the Fish Slapping Dance blogger bravely notes, Python was never as brilliant in movies as they were in their television heyday. TV was the medium that showcased their talents and sensibilities best. You get an ample amount of both the cream and curds in Vol. Two.