Friday, August 2, 2013

New Whose Line! Episode 4: Kyle XX

Featuring Wayne Brady, Jonathan Mangum, Colin Mochrie, and Ryan Stiles!
Plus Special Star Guest Kyle Richards, from The Million-Dollar Dixie Deliverance!

a review/wall of snark by Jess and Tails, who had more or less the same thoughts on this episode


Weird Newscarriers: Colin anchors, reciting a pun he thought of ahead of time. Co-anchor Jonathan is an excited game show host announcing the grand prize, Colin. Sportscaster Wayne is in the video game Grand Theft Auto. Ryan is a day in the life of a female supermodel.
  • Can you believe this is only the second quirk game so far on New Whose Line? We’ve been interested in seeing if this game would return, and it has, to moderate success! The best thing about it was, without a doubt, Jonathan trying to carry Colin over to Aisha, and doing so about as competently as a three-year-old trying to carry a cat for the first time. (Be sure to pay attention to Colin’s “I’m not gonna complain because I’m a good scene partner but SERIOUSLY DUDE WHAT THE FUCK” face!) The worst thing about it was, without a doubt, Wayne also doing a bit with Aisha immediately afterwards, as if it would be novel a second time within the same minute. And Ryan also did some stuff too.
  • Oh hai new news music! We’re not sure how we feel about you yet, but we’re definitely acknowledging that you are here, and you certainly sound very newsy if nothing else!
  • The closed captioning misquotes Colin’s tiny pianist joke as “penis”, thus helpfully demonstrating that VITAC understands what it was a pun on. You’re welcome, hearing impaired people! (And 5’10” is average we’ll have you know!)
  • Jonathan wins a prize for the first bald joke of the new show that was actually made at Colin’s expense! And it’s the shiniest prize we’ve given away all year!
  • In case anyone wonders why they don’t make Aisha do the winner game thang, just watch her interaction with Wayne! “Oh jeez, I was really hoping you wouldn’t talk to me. Money? What do I have that I could use as money? Ummmm. Shit. It’s so hard to find any good money props on my desk, with all this paper in the way- oh my god YES! I have cards! Good thinking, Aisha! Hey, Wayne- oh. You’ve moved onto a different bit already. Well, that’s okay, I don’t actually have your money that I was just holding in my hand a second ago! So, forget you ever saw that, okay?”
  • Ryan pulls an almond from one of his shirt pockets, but then just five seconds later declares that he forgot to put on any clothes, so we have to conclude that this chick’s just walking around with almonds glued to her boobs. Now you know what separates the regular models from the truly super models: it’s the chestnuts!

P.E.T.A. (Props with the Excessive Talking about Animals): It’s Wayne and Colin (the old Nickelodeon logo, recolored light pink and sliced in half) “vs.” Jonathan and Ryan (a pair of silicone buttshovels).
  • In case you didn’t keep count, because you’re not obsessive-compulsive for some reason, there was a whopping SEVEN animal impressions in this short round: a seal, a pair of baboons, a turkey, a pair of flies, a relatively lame Colin dinosaur, a beloved cartoon mouse hideously mutated as the result of a tragic nuclear disaster, and a seven-wanged bull. (That’s two milking-a-male-animal jokes already this season! Already more than enough for us, but at this rate, odds are they’ll squeeze out at least one more before the season’s over...)
  • Wayne, having basically played a pimp in the last game, starts this game out by also playing a (polydactyly) pimp. That’ll get people to stop shouting quotes from that one Chappelle’s Show sketch at him for sure!
  • As soon as we saw Jonathan and Ryan’s prop, we knew it would inevitably be used as a butt. To their credit, they had the self-restraint to wait and do one other joke before resorting to it, but still. Are we all twelve years old here?

The Dubbing Down of America: Ryan, the owner of a Beverly Hills fashion boutique, is tending to a demanding customer played by Questionably Special Star Guest Kyle Richards, when “rival housewife” Wayne enters wearing - gasp - an outfit that Kyle wanted for herself! Colin provides Kyle’s voice for this compelling human drama.
  • This was bland, but to be fair, it’s not really Kyle’s fault. She does everything expected of her in relatively competent fashion, from flapping her gums and waving her arms hysterically to doing the splits without hesitation as though that bit was worked out before the show or something! On the other hand, she's still not without blame, in the sense that Special Star Guest Dubbing’s tolerability depends on how much comedic mileage Colin can get out of their profession, and it turns out that being one of many interchangeable materialists doesn’t do much for him. Oh well.
  • Like Hollywood Director, Dubbing almost invariably involves Wayne as the obvious antagonist, and we’ve accepted that this shall always be so. However, we still don’t understand why it specifically revolves around some sort of impromptu competition more often than not, even when it doesn’t make sense. “I’ll prove I can wear that dress better than you by besting you at a physical challenge of my choosing!” (And then the dress gets destroyed and NOBODY gets to have it!)
  • Despite the shallow nature of this scene, it was nonetheless deep enough to make Jonathan stroke his chin contemplatively in the background.
  • POP POLL: What’s more baffling, Kyle’s haircut that appears to be designed specifically to cover her breasts for a tasteful Nude Scene, or her ill-fitted outfit that makes it look like someone just threw a tarp over her seconds before she went onstage?

Spyin’ Wayne’s Seen: Wayne and Jonathan are undercover cops bugging the apartment of notorious gangster Colin when he bursts in, fleeing from a shootout, and catches them in the act. The styles included The Exorcist, “martial arts film like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”, and superhero movie.
  • Once you’ve seen one Sideways Scene, you’ve sideways seen them all! Wayne tries to liven things up by electing to combat a mighty ceiling fan WITH HIS BARE HANDS, but it doesn’t really work, because Jonathan already did a bit with said ceiling fan. First Aisha in Weird Newscasters, and now this. He’s really slow tonight!
  • Weird selection of styles here - one a broad genre, one a specific film, and one a somewhat odd pairing of specific film and the broad genre it falls into. If they’re gonna be lame and use styles that are obviously pre-selected to make people levitate and crawl on the ceiling and shit, they should at least be professional and consistent about it!
  • But why use those gravity-defying styles in the first place? The most successful bit in this game (insomuch as Sideways Scene bits can be successful) consists of Wayne and Jonathan precariously balancing on wobbly furniture, giving this game a taste of realistic physics! Shouldn’t that alone tell them that the styles are focusing on entirely the wrong thing?
  • What kind of apartment has a ceiling fan (strapped to a sawhorse!) and a separate dangling light fixture less than three feet apart? A really bad apartment, that’s what! And that’s not even the weirdest thing about the secret Sideways Scene room. You can briefly glimpse a lone blue plastic stanchion sitting just off the red mat, with no apparent purpose, and it’s kinda creeping us out!

I Just Flew In From Beverly Hills and Boy Are My Helping Hands Tired: Sassy female flight attendant Ryan is showing a first-class passenger, Fabric-Swimmingly Special Star Guest Kyle Richards, all of the amenities on his cart. Colin provides Ryan’s forearms.
  • We’ve seen Ryan get hammered in Helping Hands before, but we haven’t seen him get hammered in Helping Hands as a masochistic Liberace/Disney-style Mad Hatter, so why not? Just imagining the backstories that would’ve lead to either of those people becoming stewardesses is FASCINATING.
  • Since contributions from non-seated guests rarely match up to those from the seated performers, we have to give Kyle credit - she is every bit as good at Helping Hands as Kathy Greenwood! She even occasionally utters a word or two, as when she helpfully notes that “delish” is short for “delicious”. The one guy in the audience who actually appreciated the martial arts film clarification was probably glad to have this one, too.
  • Tails, who has flown before, would like you to know that most flights don’t have proper meals anymore. But if they did, yeah, it’d almost certainly be cold and you’d have to mash it up in order to eat it, so this is accurate in spirit if nothing else! And Ryan seems to enjoy it anyway - at least more than whatever was in the GOD-IS-THAT-SMOOTH bottle. Taylor’s money is on cheap bourbon; Jess thinks it looks a lot like vanilla extract. (It’s still alcoholic!)
  • Other amenities on Whose Airline is it Anyway flights include complimentary neck pillows (which may be used as absorption devices in case of pasta), complimentary leis (which Kyle feels the need to smell even though they’re obviously fake flowers), and a tiny model airplane for everyone on the larger, more impressive airplane to stare at (which is just STUPID).

Golden Statuette-its: Wayne and Colin are two bitter actors accepting an award, in some alternate universe where pairs of actors regularly accept awards together.
  • Of the five episodes that have aired so far, this is the only one that doesn’t shoehorn the “special star guest” into the credits. Maybe Kyle stormed out after Helping Hands and refused to participate further, for she was outraged at almost being forced to consume the coffeepasta of the common man. Whatever the case, Dan Patterson gets Jessica’s cookie even earlier into the series than we expected. It’s not even stale yet!
  • I wonder how Jonathan feels about his name being used as a slang term for testicles. For that matter, how would you, the reader, feel about your name being testicle slang? We’re genuinely curious!

GOD YOU GUYS JUST TELL US WHAT YOU THOUGHT OF THE EPISODE ALREADY ALRIGHT??
  • It was a step up from last week, at least! Kyle was largely useless, but that pretty much goes without saying for special guests. They can’t all be as willing to embarrass themselves in front of a live studio audience as Kevin McHale, after all! (SO WHY ARE THEY EVEN THERE?) And Jonathan doesn’t get to do a lot, but he did alright in his Whose Line debut so we’d love to see him come back. It’s still possible, since Colin is the only regular who isn’t an Executive Producer, and Wayne and Ryan are monstrous sadists who don’t care one iota about Colin’s feelings!

FINAL THOUGHTS
  • The points-don’t-matter jokes, always the height of satirical hilarity, include a potshot at the Kardashians tonight. Haha, it’s funny because the Kardashians are shallow and none too smart! Completely unlike the classy and thoughtful Real Housewives of Beverly Hills! Only on Bravo! Check your local listings!

1 comment:

  1. I really love this format for your review a lot better than your older one, so I hope you keep using it! :)

    I also agree with you on most parts of the show, I thought it was a very funny show and the special guest didn't bother me as much as past ones have, so I enjoyed it pretty well overall.

    I was also surprised by the new Weird Newscasters music and while nothing will ever replace the old tune in my heart, I will do my best to come to love this new tune. I just hope we get more playings of Weird Newscasters, and other quirk games too, since those are more my favorites than Props, or the abundance of Living Scenery and Dubbing they've been playing lately.

    I also agree that Jonathon made a strong debut and I hope he gets more to do in future episodes, if not from Season 1 then 2 for sure.

    I really enjoyed the Credits this time since it was without the special guest, and since it felt more like UK Credits, which I always enjoyed. I hope we get more mash-ups of Credit Readings with some combination of only the four performers in future eps.

    Also, I sadly have to agree with you that Aisha wasn't great at interacting with Wayne, but I am going to cut her some slack since I think she does seem nervous about this a little bit, and I think once she's more used to the show and the guys, she'll be more on her game when they wander over to her.

    Overall, I loved your new review-style and I can't wait to read the next one! :)

    ReplyDelete