Today marks the 40th anniversary of the first episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, so we’re celebrating both the specific troupe but also modern sketch comedy as we know it. Before comedy geeks swapped Simpsons esoterica or Mr. Show references, before a Kids in the Hall line served as the password to the sketch-dork club house, there was Monty Python. Here’s 10 ways they changed comedy, and here’s my favorite Python bit of all time, which isn’t from the TV show but I think still counts:
Is it the best? Perhaps not — that might be no one expecting the Spanish Inquisition, or the Ministry of Silly Walks, or the dead parrot sketch — but Monty Python and the Holy Grail was my first Python, and thus holds a special place in my heart. It launched my whole Monty Python phase, which basically everyone has at one point or another.
PopWatchers, that parrot is just resting. What’s your favorite Python bit ever?
The “Spam” skit and the “Lumberjack” skit are my favorites.
I really love “Bicycle Repair Man”,” The Lumberjack Song”, & “Hell’s Grannies”.
I don’t know the name of the skit, but the exploding penguins
on top of the tv cracks me up every time.
“How did he know that was going to happen?
.
It was an inspired guess.”
“Spam,” “Lupins,” “Architect Sketch,” “Silly Walks,” “Argument Clinic,” “How Not to be Seen,”…my God, I could go on an on…
There is one Monty Python moment that cracks me up: a guy is about to be executed, and they literally have a gun pointed at his head, and are about to fire when a messenger comes up and yells”Stop! A message from the king! Stop!” So they stop the execution and the messenger reads the message, which says “Continue with the execution.” So funny. The rest of the skit wasn’t that great, but that one part was so funny.
Top Ten Monty Python Moments (for me):
10. Spam
9. Adolf Hitler (or Hilter) in England
8. The Piranha Brothers in “Eric The Frog”
7. The Spanish Inquisition
6. Bicycle Repairman
5. The Bishop!
4. A man with a tape recorder up his nose (and his brother’s)
3. The Upper Class Twit Of The Year
2. The Argument Clinic
1. The Lumberjack Song
Lumberjack and the race of the Queen Victorias
The Philosopher’s Soccer game from “Live at the Hollywood Bowl,”
The Lumberjack Song, The Cheese Shop, Argument Clinic, The French Taunting sequences from Holy Grail. I don’t have to narrow this down, right? I love the Pythons and my mom has no one to blame but herself. (She’s the one who told me to rent “Holy Grail” when I was 12 or 13.)
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
Mr. Gumby!! “My brain hurts!”
I also love the witch scene in Holy Grail and the ministry of silly walks. And basically every other sketch mentioned.
I love the dueling documentary hosts who keep stealing the microphone from each other, which ends in a car chase. Oh, and the sketch where the coal-mining son is mocked by his playwright father.
Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam.
My favorite Monty Python skit is definitely the Dead Parrot…”it’s just pining for the fjords!”
And of course, “Holy Grail” – “Bring out yer dead! Bring out yer dead!”
What about that great episode that kept starting over as the announcer, Michael Palin, mentioned “deja vu, that extraordinary feeling that you’ve lived through something before…” And the milkman or “milk float” rolling in: “Psychiatrist! Psychiatrist!”
Or the World War II deployment of the funniest joke in the world, which turns out to be a quote from Freud on comedy:
–My dog has no nose.
–How does he smell?
–Awful!
Four Yorkshire Men and the “Say no more” sketch, and anything from Meaning of Life. “Bring in the machine that goes ‘Ping!’”