Saturday, July 27, 2013

New Whose Line! Episode 3: The Unoriginals

Featuring Wayne Brady, Keegan Michael Key, Colin Mochrie, and Ryan Stiles!
Plus Special Star Guest Candice Accola, background singer from Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert!


a review/wall of snark by Jessica (in green) and Tails (in red)


Planet Hollywood Director: On a space station, Ryan examines an alien lifeform with android assistant Keegan, when mother....alien Wayne bursts in to attack them. Colin directs, instructing them to redo the scene as bitchy fashionistas and as guests on the ever-relevant Jerry Springer Show.
  • I’m pretty sure that this is a game from an unaired Keegan Michael Key episode of Drew’s Line, where the performers coincidentally wore the same outfits they wore for this new taping, and now they’ve digitally inserted them onto the New Whose Line stage and replaced Drew’s intro with a newly shot intro by Aisha. How else could you explain every single thing about this game?
  • There were still some things that have changed over the years. Colin’s “angry director” has much less of an edge to it. Oh Colin, please say you’re not too old to be our favorite angry Scotsman! I will gladly supply you with throat lozenges!
  • My first impressions of Keegan: He’s good at making sound effects, and he makes a convincing robot. I can’t wait to see the many other talents he’ll bring to the table!
  • Keegan looks as though he’s not sure whether he wants to be doing Data or C-3PO, since when you’re trying to play a robot with a slowed accent and a sense of politeness, there certainly isn’t a lot of choice there! 
  • Have you noticed that Wayne’s main role in non-musical games is to burst in and attack people? So far in the new series, he’s done it as a zombie bartender, a Bond villain, and now a proud mommy. This is racial profiling, isn’t it? They’re having Wayne Brady take these roles because he’s a big, intimidating black man, aren’t they?
  • Since I didn’t see Colin get handed any slips of paper, I’m curious as to if he was coming up with these suggestions himself. Considering Ryan’s plaid that looks like a paper towel pattern, Keegan’s 50s-era futuristic shirt, and Colin’s overripe-grape shade of purple, I don’t think fashionistas are really the way to go, Col.

Here’s Some Items We Custom-Made To Look Kinda but Not Too Much Like Naughty Body Parts: It’s Wayne and Colin (pair of fuzzy grey strips of floppy bacon on sticks) vs. Keegan and Ryan (pair of elephant earplugs with holes in them that defeat the purpose).
  • Despite taking a break of nearly a decade from playing this, Props is more or less the same as ever... and I’m not really a Props fan in the first place, so that’s not a good thing! Still, Colin’s team often has a couple ideas just silly enough for me to enjoy, like Old Mr. T, or the (implied) brutal murder of a beloved cartoon character. (It’ll grow back - cartoon bunnies are like real-life starfish.)
  • The props were sort of lacking this time around, but there’s not a whole lot you can do with corn holders and off-brand Swiffer dusters, and the game itself is getting old. Though I would like to congratulate the show’s 10,000th reference to Madonna’s pointy boobage!
  • Notice how Wayne instantly straightens out his fuzzy bacon strip after Colin’s “tribe of erectile dysfunction” joke. And he did the same kind of thing in last episode’s SFAH, with his Amazing Inflat-a-Cock. Obvious overcompensation! But don’t feel too bad, Wayne; Ryan does it too. If nothing else, I’m sure your tiny penises are perfectly adorable. Like Diglett!
  • If their penises are that long and floppy, don’t you think the problem is not only the weight, but the fact that anybody would pass out from lack of blood to the brain if that thing got an erection? Think, man!
  • Just listen to the unreasonably enthusiastic CHEERS AND APPLAUSE after the Coneheads joke! I think every young person in the world who still remembers the Coneheads, by some bizarre coincidence, ended up attending the very same Whose Line taping!
  • “I’m confused.” You can slowly see it dawn on Colin that he has the prop facing the wrong way, but even when he does it’s not quite right, and he still gives a “what’s wrong with you people?” look to the audience. I think even he has problems believing that there are people who still enjoy this game!
  • I find the joke about Dracula’s plaque-ula interesting because it ties into the vampire theme, that nobody was technically supposed to know about. But Aisha definitely knew, because it’s gotta be somewhere on those cards. Ryan and Wayne probably knew, because they’re big important Executive Producers. Keegan and Colin possibly knew, because how many other things are there to talk about while you’re waiting for games to be set up and whatnot? And we in the home audience obviously knew, because the CW has been flaunting THE EXTREMELY FAMOUS CANDICE ACCOLA in promos for weeks now. Basically, I’m saying that this is an improv show where every single person, including you, knows a hell of a lot ahead of time!

Vampire High School Musical: Wayne sings to Expectedly Special Star Guest Candice Accola, who is the star of (read: a supporting character on) a CW programme called The Vampire Diaries, in the style of Latin pop.
  • In theory, I like the fact that this song is mostly about how Wayne has never actually seen The Vampire Diaries, like me! In reality, I’m too busy being annoyed at how he compensates for that by just singing “my sexy vampire” fifty times in a row. Perhaps he would’ve been better off forcing her to sing against her will too!
  • What, you’re not even going to offer her a chair? RUDE. Candice is nice to at least join in with the dancing, even if she does look creeped out for most of the game. You can also see the moment where Wayne is like “Wait, you’re actually gonna turn around so I can ‘stake you from behind?’ I didn’t think you’d really do it!”
  • I do, however, like the way Ryan nudges Colin after Aisha’s French pronunciation of “on pointe”, as if to say, “Dude, you’re Canadian, and there are French people in Canada, so you must LOVE this!”

The Emperor’s New Hats: It’s Wayne and Keegan on the black stool “vs.” Colin and Ryan on the white stool (which is also black).
  • This is the first Whose Line game that doesn’t involve an audience suggestion, host suggestion, specialized prop, unexpected musical interlude, or unique element of any sort, isn’t it? It’s just four horny old guys reciting all the sex jokes they’ve memorized over the years. OH MY GOD WHOSE LINE ISN’T REALLY COMPLETELY IMPROVISED IT’S THE SCANDAL OF THE CENTURY! (No, but seriously, this is pretty much the bottom of the barrel as far as improv games are concerned.)
  • The game has become so oversimplified that it even seems like the performers are just stealing material from each other. Why would you waste your time coming up with something original when you can just use the same set-up the other guy did with a different payoff?
  • On the bright side, seeing Colin embarrass himself horribly is always good fun. I’m honestly curious what the joke was supposed to be in his head, because I can’t imagine a version of it that isn’t total homosexual filth. He made a hand puppet sex joke in the last episode too, come to think of it. I think what Colin’s really embarrassed by is just how close he’s coming to revealing the true depth of his shameful puppet fetish.
  • “And so how big are your hips? Oh jeez, was it that creepy, I creeped myself out!” Keegan, I sorta interpreted the audience’s silence as “you weren’t funny” and not “you wanna find out if the girl has childbearing hips.” You need more creepy old man training! True creepy old men don’t stop when they make people uncomfortable!
  • The colorful splotchy backdrop is actually some kind of STATE-OF-THE-ART IMAX MONITOR THAT CAN DISPLAY CHEAP CGI HEARTS! No wonder two boxes of hats weren’t in the show’s budget anymore - this sounds expensive! What a time to be alive!

Sir Edmund Livingscenery: Colin and Ryan are two intrepid mountaineers facing various obstacles in a bid to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Keegan and Uselessly Special Guest Candice Accola stand in as various objects to be used (invariably) suggestively.
  • Congratulations to this episode for managing to feature an incredible three of my least favorite games! Y’know what? From now on, if there’s a round of Props or Dating Profiles or Living Scenery in an episode, you can just assume I didn’t like it and grumbled bitterly at my TV screen or computer monitor the whole time unless I say otherwise. Okay? Okay.
  • I’m getting kind of sick of this game, which I didn’t even really like to begin with, and I wish there were other situations they could put these guest stars in. They’re obviously going with the easy “stand there and look pretty” route, but they didn’t give the audience members that same courtesy before! Let the actors be crappy or surprise us, that’ll give them more fodder than just “be creepy and wiggle around on her butt!”
  • “I’m gonna fire a mortar out of the mortar.” Okay, Ryan, you can call either of those things a mortar, technically, but choose one and only one. Got it? Oh, by the way, lots of people climb Mount Everest these days. You could’ve very well killed fifty or more people in that avalanche! Won’t someone please think of the Sherpas??
  • Poor Ryan, even for him all the guest star games are running together too. “Are we doing Dubbing or Living Scenery? The second one? Okay.”
  • Ryan also confuses magic 8-balls with ouija boards for a second. Despite his blazing white, increasingly Dr. Wilyish hair, Colin is by far the less senile of the two. Not only that, he’s far stronger than Ryan as well! Either that, or KEEGAN WEIGHS LESS THAN A TINY LITTLE GIRL.
  • I’m starting to think that having more women and other bald men on the show was part of Colin’s contract. He’s having way too much fun getting revenge for these kind of jokes.
  • Candice didn’t get actually get to say words during either of her two games, but she got to endure jokes about men twice her age wanting to put their penises in her butt in both of them. And that’s almost as good, right?

Credit Bleeding: Wayne, Keegan, Colin, Ryan, and Ass-Humpingly Special Star Guest Candice Accola are high school students gossipping about which of their friends are vampires.
  • Hehehe. “Mark Levenson”. I wonder if he’s upset that Candice couldn’t even get his name right, or if he’s just pleased that a pretty girl tried to say his name at all.
  • Ryan’s all “I’m just gonna do my Bela Lugosi impression and hang out in back.” Good on you, Ry.
  • As someone who’s never seen The Vampire Diaries, read The Vampire Diaries, or absorbed the essence of The Vampire Diaries into my bloodstream via osmosis, this feels much more sensible to me if I pretend that “vampire” is some sort of colorful teenage slang for sluts.
  • I really hope Candice's dialogue here isn't what you actually see on The Vampire Diaries, otherwise Clueless called, they're a much better movie.

GOD JUST TELL US WHAT YOU REALLY THOUGHT OF THE EPISODE ALREADY ALRIGHT?
  • This was exactly what I was hoping the Whose Line revival wouldn’t be. There’s styles and jokes similar if not identical to episodes from nearly a decade ago! If not for Wayne’s throwaway references to Honey Boo Boo and Justin Bieber fans - okay, and the presence of Aisha Tyler - would you even know this episode was from 2013? And then there’s the sex jokes with absolutely no semblance of spontaneity. It’s not shocking and outrageous if you’re just DIRECTLY TELLING THESE GUYS TO DO IT. Also, despite my early optimism about Keegan, as it turns out, he was only so awesome at the first game because he is little more than a sound effects robot - a technical marvel no doubt, but not really good for improv shows that require performers to do things other than make sound effects and be robots. (On the bright side, I’ll almost certainly enjoy next week’s episode much, much more!)
  • I greatly enjoy familiarity, but upon repeated viewings I started to see really clearly what’s wrong with this episode. While I love that it still has that Whose Line style we hold close to our hearts, these new episodes feel so calculated. It’s getting to the point where I can guess what games will be played and in what order every time, and if we’re already getting sick of that by episode 3, how will it be in episode 12? They need to figure out a way to keep things fresh and new.

FINAL THOUGHTS
  • It’s too bad that they discontinued host games for the new season, because this episode would’ve benefitted from sending Aisha out into the field for a rousing game of Newsflash. Tons of fun indeed! Also, all you potential 8-bit Whose Line fangame creators take note: Wayne, in his ensemble from tonight’s episode, could accurately be represented in sprite form with only two colors.
  • Aisha Tyler is still an incredibly enthusiastic host, so enthusiastic that commercial breaks seem to make her think that she needs to ANNOUNCE IT INCREDIBLY LOUDLY! I know the host needs to project their voice when they’re about to announce commercials, but it’s sort of jarring when she’s talking at a normal tone of voice two seconds prior. We’re hearing you loud and clear, Aisha. I’m glad you’re having fun.

NEXT WEEK ON NEW WHOSE LINE: Be sure to catch back-to-back episodes featuring Kyle Richards of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and the United States Olympic synchronized swimming team! It's most certainly not an hour of television designed to burn off their two worst special guests as soon as possible, nosiree!




1 comment:

  1. I think I liked this episode more than you two did, though that's because I automatically like episodes more when the 'special guest' doesn't talk very much, lol. I thought Hollywood Director was a fun game this time, and yes, Tails, Colin sometimes comes up with his own suggestions for the game since I remember him doing that on old WL too. Also, don't you two consider Ryan an honorary Canadian? I think on a past ep he even called himself Canadian once, so I always think that way about both of them, lol.

    Props made me laugh with the question mark confusion and Plaqueula, so I gave it a pass. I agree that I wish Wayne had been a bit more creative in Song Styles and I missed the hats in the new Hats-Without-Hats game, but Colin's screw up made me laugh quite a lot, so again I'm giving it a pass. It seems like Colin always messes up when he's trying to use a ventriloquist-type joke, since he did that before once when he had that jack-o-lantern in a playing of Hats. I wonder what it is about small 'beings' on his hand that throws him off.

    Living Scenery, yeah, that was the worst game to me, but eh, as I said, when the guest doesn't talk I consider it a victory so again it wasn't totally horrible for me. Then Ryan did his vampire impression in the Credits again and I was laughing, so I ended the show in a happy mood.

    While I do see your point and agree that this episode did seem very similar to what we've seen before, I don't think it's terrible if one or two episodes end up like that. I look at is at a way to ease people back into the show and to prove that they aren't making any drastic changes to the style of the show, which some older fans might have worried about. So I'm cutting them slack for this one, although if they continue to avoid fresh and new games, I'll start worrying along with you that this really is the end for innovative Whose Line. But for now, I'm still optimistic and enjoying myself. :)

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