# What is Monty Python's genius? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 21, 2013, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-monty-pythons-genius/647961 "2013-01-21T23:55:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Springtime\_for\_Spacers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Springtime\_for\_Spacers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Springtime_for_Spacers)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2013, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-monty-pythons-genius/647961/21 "2013-01-22T13:15:19Z")
> [@Staggerlee](#): > > I think the very mundane settings of a lot of their sketches really helps to accentuate the ‘surreal’ aspects of the comedy. It’s hard to think of a more drab and ordinary setting than 60’s suburban England (though perhaps Americans find this somehow exotic?). > > Also, the troupe is pretty funny-looking; lanky Cleese, gormless Palin, stiff Chapman, ugly Idle, maniacal Gilliam and bad-drag Jones. Cleese in particular is a superb physical comedian, the Ministry of Silly Walks is a fine example. And to the first paragraph it was also the drabness and mundanity of 60s British television they were skewering. All of those sketches where three men sit on chairs and talk straight to camera, programmes like that made up a significant proportion of the output. ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2013, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-monty-pythons-genius/647961/22 "2013-01-22T16:33:22Z")
I think the group “had it all” as it were, too. Cleese and Chapman looked and acted so much differently than Palin and Jones. Idle is a fantastic wordsmith. Gilliam added the surreal. They were Cambridge AND Oxford. It seemed like none of them would refuse to try something new or different. I think they were very much like The Beatles - all 6 together was just a super-group of comedy. ---
**Author:** ![BMalion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e274bd/32.png) [@BMalion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BMalion)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2013, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-monty-pythons-genius/647961/23 "2013-01-22T17:20:11Z")
Perfection. ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2013, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-monty-pythons-genius/647961/24 "2013-01-22T19:35:31Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > I disagree about their punchlines falling flat. There were almost no punch lines. I think their humor was almost entirely about the absurd escalation and tension, and rarely was there a satisfying climax at the end. And of course, this is lampshaded at the end of the Argument Clinic when the comedy police show up and arrest everybody on charges of never ending a sketch with a proper punchline and instead just having the “fuzz” show up and arrest everybody… ---
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2013, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-monty-pythons-genius/647961/25 "2013-01-22T21:21:20Z")
Terry Gilliam, _The First 28 Years of Monty Python_,: > [@](#): > > Our first rule was: no punch lines.. [some sketches] start brilliant, great acting, really funny sketch, but punch line is just not as good as the rest of the sketch, so it kills the entire thing. That’s why we eliminated them. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2013, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-monty-pythons-genius/647961/26 "2013-01-22T21:51:21Z")
> [@Mister\_Rik](#): > > And of course, this is lampshaded at the end of the Argument Clinic when the comedy police show up and arrest everybody on charges of never ending a sketch with a proper punchline and instead just having the “fuzz” show up and arrest everybody… There’s _Michael Ellis_ (the one that takes place largely in a department store); Palin complains about the ending and is shown at the End of Show department where they demonstrate a variety of likely endings, and in so doing the show ends.[sup]\*[/sup] And _The Cycling Tour_ where Mr. Pither and Mr. Gulliver are facing certain death in Moscow, a title card announces that there is footage missing, and then they’re safe and sound, everything seemingly resolved in the interregnum. - In a way, that may be the best punchline they ever did. ---
**Author:** ![typoink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecb155/32.png) [@typoink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/typoink)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2013, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-monty-pythons-genius/647961/27 "2013-01-22T23:18:59Z")
It really should be mentioned as well that Gilliam’s animations really ensured that it looked like nothing before or since. Obviously, the show had to be good on its own merits, but those animations, to me, make it ever harder for anything else to even TRY to compare, and they also gave the series a bit of visual continuity that’s rare in sketch comedy. ---
**Author:** ![Hail\_Ants](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/dc4da7/32.png) [@Hail\_Ants](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hail_Ants)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-monty-pythons-genius/647961/28 "2013-01-23T02:15:32Z")
In terms of a more in-depth, overall reason, I would say it’s because they were all upper-middle class, well educated individuals. Except for American Gilliam they all went to Oxford/Cambridge and were certainly good students (Chapman was actually an MD!) They didn’t come up from nightclubs doing stand-up (hence the lack of one-liners and punchlines) then came from intelligent, well written theater. They didn’t just write ‘jokes’, they were comedic wordsmiths. The honed & molded each bit around a definitive (and funny) concept or theme and everything had to fit into it, everything had to move the joke forward and make it funny. And if it didn’t it was discarded. When you see interviews with them they’re the first ones to admit when a sketch or film didn’t really work, and they could describe in perfect detail why. Conversely, they always knew not only _if_, but _ **why** _ a bit \*did \*work. Simply put, Python was comedic genius because each & every member was too! And the combined whole was even greater than the sum of its parts… ---
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-monty-pythons-genius/647961/29 "2013-01-23T02:24:59Z")
They didn’t seem to hate any person, place or thing. But they were willing to make fun of anything at all, regardless of whether anyone else thought it was funny. One of Groucho Marx’s brothers said that Groucho would insult a king to make a beggar laugh - the Pythons were like this. They also had the gift of self-awareness - you could tell they were usually laughing at themselves. I was a 11-year-old in West Virginia when I first saw MPFC on public TV (WQED in Pittsburgh), but I totally understood what these incomprehensible Englishmen were saying. ---
**Author:** ![BMalion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e274bd/32.png) [@BMalion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BMalion)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-monty-pythons-genius/647961/30 "2013-01-23T02:25:56Z")
What he said. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-monty-pythons-genius/647961/31 "2013-01-23T03:06:29Z")
> [@Floater](#): > > I have tried to find the origin of _The Penultimate Supper_, but haven’t come any closer than that it was written and performed by Cleese and one Jonathan Lynn. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6pZUyZEphs](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6pZUyZEphs) Probably from their time in the Cambridge Circus together, though [I have tried to find the origin of _The Penultimate Supper_, but haven’t come any closer than that it was written and performed by Cleese and one Jonathan Lynn. [/QUOTE] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6pZUyZEphs](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6pZUyZEphs) "]that Lynn fellow]([QUOTE=Floater;15924463) doesn’t seem to have done anything since. I’d ask him but it appears I would actually have to PAY to send him a message on Facebook. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-monty-pythons-genius/647961/32 "2013-01-23T03:52:19Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > Depends on the version. I didn’t even know that it was mostly linked together until I saw the TV show on a commericial-free channel, cause before that the links were chopped off to get commercial time in. I _still_ think that even PBS chops some of the links because when I got the DVD set I noticed that it was almost entirely linked, but maybe I just wasn’t paying as much attention back then. > > I am tempted to call the sketch comedy linkage (especially in the midst of absurdity) their particular genius, but I’m not well versed in the history of comedy to know if it had been done before. It’s not just doing linking segments between the sketches – that has been done, though usually with an announcer doing the link (something Python parodied all the time). It was the fact that the links tended to do a coherent theme. The Spanish Inquisition sketch, for instance, appears in at least three parts of the episode. There is one part, then the show moves one as though its over. Later, out of nowhere, someone says, “I didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition” and we get more of the sketch. At the end of the show, someone gives the line in the middle of a courtroom sketch and the Inquisition runs late, not getting there until the credits end and the screen goes black. More traditionally, that would be one sketch and it would be in one piece. The Pythons used it in three segments. I’m rewatching the early shows now, and I’m seeing that sort of thing from the beginning. “The Larch,” for instance, starts out the show, then appears several times until the end, when the slide goes on to another tree. This sort of thing made it more than just disjointed sketches, which was a major part of their genius. ---
**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-monty-pythons-genius/647961/33 "2013-01-23T04:18:58Z")
> [@Seanette](#): > > My personal favorite is “The Pope and Michelangelo”, aka “The Penultimate Supper”. WordMan’s post describes this sketch quite well. I believe it was written for the series. However, it never appeared there. Interestingly, it’s based on an [actual historical incident](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paolo_Veronese#The_House_of_Levi). And in the end, the artist really did just rename the painting. > [@dropzone](#): > > [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6pZUyZEphs](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6pZUyZEphs) Probably from their time in the Cambridge Circus together, though [that Lynn fellow](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6pZUyZEphs) doesn’t seem to have done anything since. I’d ask him but it appears I would actually have to PAY to send him a message on Facebook. Assuming this is not a whoosh, are you KIDDING? The two best political comedy series EVER, _Yes, Minister_ and its sequel _Yes, Prime Minister_ were co-written by him and Antony Jay. A taste, including a perfectly cast Nigel Hawthorne: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIto5mwDLxo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIto5mwDLxo) ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-monty-pythons-genius/647961/34 "2013-01-23T05:11:34Z")
> [@BMalion](#): > > What he said. We said _no punchlines_! ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-monty-pythons-genius/647961/35 "2013-01-23T06:16:55Z")
To me, it’s the fact that MP is funnier in the recounting than in the viewing. Others obviously differ, of course, but that’s been my experience with them. ---
**Author:** ![BrokenBriton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@BrokenBriton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrokenBriton)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 11:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-monty-pythons-genius/647961/36 "2013-01-23T11:27:16Z")
Not to forget, they stood on the shoulders of giants like Spike Milligan and Peter Cook. Both were over 12’ tall. > [@](#): > > one interview with the Pythons in which John Cleese said: “Shows prepare the way for other shows, and sometimes shows that make genuine breakthroughs are missed. Spike Milligan’s Q5 was missed…when we first saw Q5 we were very depressed because we thought it was what we wanted to do and Milligan was doing it brilliantly. But nobody really noticed Q5”. Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam concurred. Jones noted that “watching Q5, we almost felt as if our guns had been Spiked! We had been writing quickies or sketches for some three years and they always had a beginning, a middle and a tag line. Suddenly, watching Spike Milligan, we realized that they didn’t have to be like that” > **[Q... (TV series) | Forerunner in comedy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_%28TV_series%29#Forerunner_in_comedy)** > > Though many found it to be more "hit and miss" than Milligan's earlier work, especially The Goon Show, it is considered by many to be one of the landmarks in British comedy. In particular Q5, which first aired on 24 March 1969, and with its surreal bent and almost stream-of-consciousness format is seen by many as a forerunner to Monty Python's Flying Circus, which debuted a few months later. The Pythons themselves remember that, having seen Q5, they had been forced to scurry around for a new h Sc... ---
**Author:** ![Floater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/dc4da7/32.png) [@Floater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Floater)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-monty-pythons-genius/647961/37 "2013-01-23T12:44:51Z")
In _The Pythons’ Autobiography By The Pythons_ they express their admiration for the [Goon Show](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goon_Show), also a Spike Milligan project. ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Panda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-monty-pythons-genius/647961/38 "2013-01-23T12:50:03Z")
> [@G0sp3l](#): > > His chief genius is surprise. Surprise and fear. Those aren’t the chief geniuses, they’re merely elements amongst his genius. ---
**Author:** ![Quercus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/7ab992/32.png) [@Quercus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quercus)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-monty-pythons-genius/647961/39 "2013-01-23T14:16:39Z")
Well, I’m not going so far as to call MP ‘perfect’ (though I’d like to see them react to being called that). But one thing I’ll add is that they were just intellectual enough, but not too much. For instance, the audience had to recognize (at least two out of three) Emmanual Kant, Nietzche, and Socrates as Philosophers, but didn’t have to know anything at all about what any of them said (except that it was about something more intellectual than drunkeness). And so MP managed to both poke fun at intellectualism, but also make the audience feel that it was normal and appreciated to know who philosphers were. That’s certainly a huge part of their appeal, especially in the U.S., to the kind of people who tend to post on boards like the Straight Dope. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-monty-pythons-genius/647961/40 "2013-01-23T14:28:11Z")
> [@BrokenBriton](#): > > Not to forget, they stood on the shoulders of giants like Spike Milligan and Peter Cook. Both were over 12’ tall. > > > [@](#): > > > > one interview with the Pythons in which John Cleese said: “Shows prepare the way for other shows, and sometimes shows that make genuine breakthroughs are missed. Spike Milligan’s Q5 was missed…when we first saw Q5 we were very depressed because we thought it was what we wanted to do and Milligan was doing it brilliantly. But nobody really noticed Q5”. Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam concurred. Jones noted that “watching Q5, we almost felt as if our guns had been Spiked! We had been writing quickies or sketches for some three years and they always had a beginning, a middle and a tag line. Suddenly, watching Spike Milligan, we realized that they didn’t have to be like that” > > [Q... (TV series) - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_%28TV_series%29#Forerunner_in_comedy) I have heard this before and I am sure it is true. Q5 (even more than the Goon Show) certainly anticipated the surreal aspects of Python, as well as the lack of punchlines. However, as someone who was around, watching these shows at the time, I would like to point out one huge difference. Q5 simply was not funny. After the Goons, perhaps because he no longer had Sellars and Secombe to back him up, Milligan seemed to have lost his touch, and seemed to be just desperately doing stuff that was more and more absurd in the vain hope that it would get laughs. Python, by contrast, was funny from the get-go. I say this as somebody who saw the very first airing of the first show and immediately loved it. Perhaps this is partly because they were a little more rooted in reality than Milligan. That first show, for instance, contained the Mice sketch, which, despite its absurdity, surreality, and non sequiturs, also manages to be brilliant satire on attitudes to both drug taking and homosexuality. It wasn’t just Milligan’s influence, there is a lot of Peter Cook in there too. Although many others were involved, Cook was the true original comic genius behind the “satire” boom in 1960s British comedy, and there was a lot of the absurd and surreal in his comedy too. (I put “satire” in quotes because, in fact, by no means all of it was straightforwardly satirical. What really differentiated it from the comic tradition that had come before was that it was by, and largely for, the university educated, and unashamed of making highbrow references.) Furthermore, Python itself did not come out of nowhere. Cleese and Chapman had already been doing something very similar on _At Last the 1948 Show_, and Idle on _Please Do Not Adjust Your Set_, and Palin and Jones on shows like _The Complete and Utter History of Britain_, were also moving strongly in the same direction. Bringing them together, and adding Terry Gilliam to the mix, made it gel to perfection, but most of the ingredients were already there. (Frankly, as I remember it, the _1948 Show_ was not very different in style from Python, and not very much less funny. Unfortunately, apparently, the tapes, apart from one or two fragments, were not preserved, so it is impossible to properly verify this.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-monty-pythons-genius/647961.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-monty-pythons-genius/647961.md?page=3)