The 2011 Summer Re-Watch: Monty Python's Flying Circus "The Ant, an Introduction" Review

"And now for something completely different." The line's among the most famous in Flying Circus and the Pythons used the title for their first movie. The troupe experimented with different devices throughout the first eight episodes to seamlessly transition between completely different sketches, bits of film or animated bits. John Cleese, sitting behind a desk in a suit, uttering that line didn't signal the end for other forms of inter-cuts designed to transition into an entirely new sketch but it became the most reliable (and memorable) device.

"The Ant, an Introduction" needed John Cleese behind the desk, stating "and now for something completely different" because the sketches are completely different from one another. The episode begins with a song about llamas and ends with a murder. In between, there's a number about one's dream of becoming a transvestite lumberjack and a mountaineer who deals with a man who only sees doubles. It's a madcap 28 minutes, both funny and weird (as the best Flying Circus episodes are). I'd have specific thoughts on the series thus far but I'm waiting until the end of the re-watch to write those. So, instead, I'm going to use bullet points to discuss the sketches of the episode.

--The episode's notable for its lack of ants. The fourth season of the show has an episode called "Michael Ellis" that spends some time on the purchase of an ant as a pet. Ants have a presence in other episodes as well; however, there's no introduction of the ant, which is well and good--not a criticism but a mere observation. The titles rarely reflect the content of each episode.

--"The Ant, an Introduction" actually features two musical numbers. The forgotten musical number is the Spanish sketch about the llamas. Eric Idle plays a Spanish guitarist, Terry Jones plays a Spanish dancer and John Cleese portrays a man. It's a lively number with all of the pizzazz of salsa music and the song celebrates the llama. The word celebration doesn't do the sketch justice. The song transforms the llama into a mythic creature--one worshipped for being bigger than a frog; a creature with two ears, a forehead, a heart and a beak for eating honey and it has fins for swimming. Of course, the song merely provides the facts of the biology of a llama but the flourish of the singers, dancers and their excitement and admiration for the animal gives the sketch its mythic character.

--The other musical number, of course, is the lumberjack sketch. The entirety of the sketch begins innocently enough at a barber's shop where Terry Jones' 'man' wants a haircut from the psychotic barber who battles every impulse to murder the man where he sits. The sketch is a classic. Every fan acknowledges that. Fans continue to sing the lumberjack song. The sketch, of course, returns to one of the Pythons favorite themes--the plight of the working class male in a job he hates (or a loveless marriage). The barber laments the five years he spent in the barber academy, cutting the same hair every day. The job's turned him into a homicidal barber whose first instinct is to murder than cut hair. There are decades and decades worth of stories from people who went to a job they despised for years. The Pythons studied at elite universities and worked in television but they never forgot the working class population in England nor were there jokes made at their expense.

--Award shows, apparently, always sucked. Award shows, seemingly, were populated with hosts who treated celebrities and artists like the second coming of Christ. Eric Idle's Kenny Lust lampoons the nonsense of it all when introduces "one of the great international artists of our time" and proceeds to describe the person as "a god, a great god, whose personality is so totally and utterly wonderful my feeble words of welcome sound wretchedly and pathetically inadequate." Lust would gladly lick this person's boots. He'd rather swim in a pit of filth than share the same stage with a Great Artist. The incomparably superior being is Harry Fink but he couldn't come.

Award show hosts haven't become any more self-aware than the hosts of 1960s because they'll gladly compare actors and actresses with Greek gods. If we could trace back to the moment actors and actresses became insufferable, it's no doubt the first awards show. The new tradition of the academy awards, when handing out best actor and actresses awards is another actor or actress giving a two minute speech about how great the nominated person is. Yes, nominated actors and actresses succeed in their profession but that success and talent doesn't transform them into superior beings. At the end of the day, they still recite dialogue they didn't write and take direction for how to act and where to stand.

--The last sketch, 'the visitors,' has a traditional comedic set-up. Graham Chapman and Carol Cleveland are on a date and near hand-holding until Arthur Name ("Name by name not by nature!") interrupts the courtship. Name and Victor met three years ago. Victor told Name to drop by whenever free. Name's free and he invited his friends as well. The party quickly becomes nonsensical as more and more people show up. Victor orders the whole lot out of his house. Cleese's character shoots him, and the remaining people sing a song. The episode ends. The Pythons like those dark comic places. 'The visitors' is only the beginning of those dark endings to sketches.

So, overall, it's a solid episode of the Flying Circus. The sketches are silly, funny and memorable. The writing's original and imaginative. I couldn't ask for more.

UP NEXT: "Untitled" http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001O4GY56

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