My most immediate and virulent turnoff. This was Terry Gilliam, right?
Oh, look. It’s a stop-action cutout paper foot squashing a cutout paper hippo. With a cutout paper zeppelin hovering in the background?
OMG HILARIOUS!!!
Parrot Sketch
Lumberjack Song
How Not To Be Seen
Spam
Spanish Inquisition (Follow-up Torture Scene)
Bruce
Ministry of Silly Walks
Argument Clinic
The Cheese Shop
Upperclass Twit of the Year
Confuse-A-Cat
From Meaning of Life:
The Crimson Permanent Assurance - Part 1 - Part 2 (Not so much a true Python sketch as it is just a short film by Gilliam, but worth including)
Find the Fish
That’s only 13 or 14 I can come up with off the top of my head. There are other good ones, I just can’t think of them right now and I’m dead tired in any case.
The problem is, beyond a few universally enjoyed bits (say, the argument clinic), everyone’s list will be different.
No, it won’t.
Sort of. I tried to pick the most popular sketches, the ones that get quoted over and over. Some of them, like Confuse-A-Cat, are admittedly simply the ones that managed to make themselves memorable to me, but I’d be willing to wager quite a bit that nearly everyone who claims to like Python will have, say, the Dead Parrot Sketch and the Spanish Inquisition in their list. I did try to go for what was funny, not just popular, but those are the sketches that, of all the ones I’ve seen, I remember without provocation and remember laughing at.
An example of 1 is hardly anything, but I claim to like Python while not actually caring much for the Spanish Inquisition.
I suppose I’ll have to resign my membership on this board shortly…
That’s true, but Bosstone’s list should be a good start. If I find I can’t get enough of the show, I may venture into other episodes and sketches.
Thanks very much for that list, by the way, Bosstone. I’ll definitely give those sketches a look.
I find parts of it funny, but not most of it. I love the penguin on the telly and Luxury Yacht and a few assorted others, but it may be some time period I don’t get.
I LOVE Jack Benny, but I didn’t before I started listening to old radio shows. Jack Benny’s TV show is pretty unwatchable without listening to his radio beforehand simply because so much of Jack is a running joke. He may start a joke and carry over two or three shows before the punchline.
*Burns and Allen * also have a lot of inside jokes, but are more able to stand alone than Benny.
But perhaps Monty Python is one of those period pieces. Like with Burns and Allen, Gracie visits Ronald Reagan…
Gracie) Hello Mr Reagan
Actor) No, no me not Mr Reagan, me Mr Reagan’s Chinese Boy
(ABSOLUTELY HUGE LAUGH) Now this laugh is so big because by this time, the late 40s, everyone knows the next line out of Gracie’s mouth.
Gracie) Well, I didn’t know he had a Chinese wife?
Or like on Happy Days when Fonzie or Chachi would enter and the audience would scream and scream. It’s sounds horrible but that’s just how popular they were back then.
So it might be a sign of the times