Hi, all! Jess here. Due to various circumstances, Taylor’s sitting this one out, and I’m flying solo this week. I’m not necessarily claiming that the extremely boring synchronized swimmers temporarily broke him, but I’m also not necessarily claiming that they didn’t at least contribute. Don’t worry, he’s fine, and he’ll be back as normal next week! In the meantime, I’ll do my best to regurgitate the general thoughts he’s shared with me as competently as possible.
Starring Wayne Brady, Gary Anthony Williams, Colin Mochrie, and Ryan Stiles!
Plus Celebrity Guest Wilson Bethel, from 78 episodes of The Young and The Restless!
Weird Chestbursters: Colin anchors. Gary is an upbeat old Cajun musician who is hard to understand. Wayne is an entire episode of Oprah’s Favorite Things. Ryan is a grotesque hostile alien posing as a weatherman, whose disguise is wearing off.
Gary did a good enough job - Taylor would like to congratulate him on creating convincing gibberish that doesn’t sound like “someone decided to throw Esperanto and a Scottish accent in a blender” - but nonetheless I’d like to draw your attention to GARY’S PRIORITIES: His Cajun musician does only two extremely easy-to-miss musical things, namely throwing the word “zydeco” into one of his Cajun rambles, and mime-holding a banjo for, like, one second. On the other hand, he makes a point of interrupting the game to lick Colin’s hand, and he also makes far more obvious references to his love of devouring chickens and alligator tails!
Wayne, meanwhile, does a great job of making his lame quirk funny. Let me rephrase: Wayne does a suspiciously great job of making his lame quirk funny, as though he has a long-standing beef with Oprah and/or her Favorite Things, and has been awaiting the day when he would finally be given an organic opportunity to knock her down a peg or two on national television! Still, it works really well, with the minor caveat that having a megalomaniac literally just scream “MEEEEEEEEEEEE!” is what passes, and has passed, for satire on Family Guy, and therefore it’s kind of sad. But the audience reactions are great, aren’t they? I don’t know what’s funnier - the fact that Wayne eventually manages to wear down almost every single person in the audience until they gave in and checked their seats, or the three or four people still adamantly refuse to join in regardless. “You won’t make ME cooperate with a very simple and reasonable request, nosiree!”
And Ryan seemed to be sleepwalking through this, pretty much. He hasn’t really been justifying his position as the all-important weatherman in the new series, has he? Or maybe he was deliberately portraying an alien from a society that lacks the concept of enthusiasm. Yeah, that’s it.....
Oh, and after taking some time to think about it, maybe I was too hard on Gary. As Colin has proven over the years, not all improvisers can be singers, and this game proves quite handily that he isn’t one either. You’re absolved of your sins, Gary!
Wilson Duett: Wayne and Gary sing to Wilson, who plays “bad boy Wade Kinsella” on the CW’s critically panned Hart of Dixie, in the style of motown.
Waitasecond. Gary IS a singer? And a fairly competent one at that?? YOU LYING SON OF A LYING BITCH! You’re un-absolved of your sins, Gary!
In all seriousness, this was not a talent I expected Gary to have, so I’m pleasantly surprised. I appreciated how well he nailed the vocal style, even as I was too ignorant to get most of his references! Judging by their stony silence, I think most of the people in the audience didn’t know who Wilson Pickett was, and neither did I. (But Taylor did, and presumably the reference successfully took him back to a time before he was born.) And then there’s the “turn your head and cough” thing, which just seemed random as fuck to me when I first watched this, because I’ve never seen Hart of Dixie and wasn’t even aware that it’s a “medical” “drama”. Judging by Wayne’s little breakdown, he’s never seen it either! But he hasn’t seen any of the shows that the celebrity guests have been from, so what’s new?
By the way, fans of Gary Anthony Williams yaoi will appreciate that this game involves the implication that he was COMPLETELY SHIRTLESS in an unaired game, combined with the visual of him seductively rubbing another man’s chest. (Wilson gets bonus points right out of the gate for not freaking out about this, by the way.) Myself, I’m just pondering why “Dixieland” is used as a euphemism for sexy washboard abs, and not.....you know where I’m going with this, right? Weenies.
I know I didn’t really have anything to say about Wayne, but Tails would like compliment him on the Mason-Dixon Line line. I’m mostly passing this along as an excuse to say “Mason-Dixon Line line”.
These Guys Weigh an Obscene Amount: Gary and Colin are two bickering buddy cops who have been suspended from duty for being out of shape, joined by Wayne as the showoff police fitness coach forcing them to exercise. The styles included a Paranormal Activity movie, a penguin documentary, and America’s Best Dance Crew.
Okay, I know Ryan can’t play this because of the toll his freakish gigantism has taken on his spine, but making Gary do this seems about as mean-spirited. Especially since it’s a scene about how he needs to get back in shape. Do you have no tact? He’s not very good at the game’s physical component - a bit like a turtle stuck on its back, trying in vain to flip itself back over, I’d say if I was also mean-spirited - but nonetheless he appears to focus so much on the physical component that his dialogue consists almost exclusively of just narrating what he’s going to do right before he does it. Also, he sounds a bit like a post-pubescent Meatwad here, for some reason.
Because none of the five props the show bought for this game are things you’d find in any gym anywhere, tonight’s Sideways Scenery consists entirely of things the props department could throw together at the last minute with black construction paper and electrical tape. The weight-lifting bench is especially, um, nice.
I still don’t understand how they choose when to be specific with their styles, and when to be vague. Like the penguin documentary thing. Gee, I wonder which of the many famous and financially successful penguin documentaries they’ll do! Followed immediately by America’s Best Dance Crew, which someone like Colin would obviously watch religiously and thus be able to differentiate it from the many other reality dance competitions out there!
CBS UPDATE: Creepy Blue Stanchion is back this week! And, to make up for missing last week’s episode, he (yes of course it’s a dude, just look how phallic it is) manages to simultaneously exist in two different physical locations here! We shouldn’t be surprised, though. After all...
Rub-a-Dub-Dub, Three-Headed Man in a Tub: Wayne, Ryan, and Wilson sing “I Can’t Live Without Your Rubber Duckie”.
Holy shit, they finally played a game that involves an audience suggestion! Aaaaaaand I’m starting to understand why they don’t do them more often: Aisha seems to have a hard time making anything out when multiple people are talking at once. (She must hate most of the credit readings she’s seen so far, too.) Wilson, meanwhile, seems to adore being bombarded by a thick wall of indistinguishable audience shouting, given that he is grinning widely the entire time he’s doing it. Because he’s high, on drugs.
Come to think of it, though, this game came from the same taping as What’s in the Bag, the only other game we’ve seen that relied on audience input in any way. Was this the only taping they used audience contributions at? Because that would be really really dumb!
In theory, now that this game has a genre-neutral title, they could actually do songs in styles other than Broadway musicals. But, nope, I guess they’re not going to anyway. Oh well. Remember the fabled taping where they supposedly tried Three-Headed Country Star? Did that ever actually air? I couldn’t bring myself to watch most of season eight, I confess. (In all fairness, ABC Family couldn’t bring itself to air the back half of the season either.)
Anyway, it was nice to see this back, even though this was far from being the most interesting playing we’ve seen. The word choices are a bit on the safe side. Wilson does a creditable job, in that he only says two words in one go on a single occasion on his first playing whereas Drew did it, like, half a dozen times, every single time.
Helping Harts: Ryan is a knowledgeable and sophisticated senior citizen doctor in a small Alabama town, teaching medical student Wilson about “medical stuff”. Through a miracle of modern medical science, Colin’s arms have been grafted onto Ryan’s body.
Ryan’s nametag is a bit hard to make out, so I’m not positive about this, but his character’s name appears to be Franklin Hill. Huh. That’s really boring. Maybe it’s supposed to be an in-joke for the crew, though. Perhaps someone who works on the show grew up in Franklin Hills, a suburb of Los Angeles. Or perhaps someone is a fan of the fermented beveragery of Pennsylvania’s Franklin Hill Vineyards. Or perhaps someone is a fan of the educational futurism stylings of Franklin Hill & Associates, LLC. The possibilities are endless, really - and that was just the first page of Google results!
Despite including such nasty props as “cough syrup”, “petroleum jelly”, and “urine”, this playing is actually one of the tastiest Helping Hands they could’ve hoped for! The pee is obviously just frothy apple juice, the generic Vaseline appears to be a hearty banana custard, and if what Ryan says about the cough syrup tasting alcoholic is accurate, it’s probably wine due to the similar color. (There’s also an unused bottle of rubbing alcohol on the table, which is probably water or something lame like that.) Isn’t it amazing and shocking and outrageous how Ryan made the totally spontaneous decision to consume these substances that were replaced with obviously edible things? I don’t know how they do it!
In all fairness, though, this was at least more fun than the last playing, with Kyle Richards’ blank stare. Wilson actually cracks jokes! They’re not always funny, but he does! He responds to the things Ryan says quickly and without hesitation! He even takes the bullet for Ryan and volunteers to drink the gross room-temperature apple juice! But the most important thing, I think, is that he seems to genuinely be having a great time. Do you suppose he’s actually a fan of the show? It would make sense. Whose Line is probably VERY fun to watch when you’re high on a combination of weed, alcoholic cough syrup, and nitrous oxide!
SHAMEFUL CONFESSION: I have as much trouble putting on latex gloves as Colin does here, and I can’t even use standing behind a tall dude as an excuse. :(
Alcoholicredits: Wayne, Gary, Colin, and Ryan are bartenders showing Wilson their best cocktails.
It’s good to see that everyone on the show still finds Dan Patterson to be completely loathsome! It just wouldn’t feel right if they liked him, even a tiny bit! However, I wonder what Ryan’s issue is with Associate Producer Juliet Morrish, whose name Wilson gets wrong by the way. Either that, or “Julienne Morrish” was supposed to be a mildly carrot-themed pun on her name. (Probably not.)
This is the most fun I’ve had with an episode since the first week of the new series! I’m not gonna lie, I’m irritated that we still haven’t had a single episode sans celebrity guests, but at least Wilson fit in pretty well. Much like audience members participating in games like Sound Effects, it seems like younger male celebrity guests seem to do the best, simply because they’re more willing to humiliate themselves in front of a bunch of people. In fact, guys seem to ENJOY humiliating themselves in front of a bunch of people!
Also, as this was his second and final episode of the season, it’s time to hand down my VERDICT ON GARY ANTHONY WILLIAMS: Despite how negative my comments might’ve seemed tonight, I do like him! I guess I was just hyper-focusing on him because he’s new blood. Well, he wasn’t the funniest performer, but I think his ability to get so many words in edgewise around these guys was remarkable. Doesn’t that alone merit bringing him back sometime and seeing how he does once he’s actually acclimated to the environment? I’d say YES. (Only time will tell if his debut is as successful as this season’s other upcoming fourth-seater debut, Nyima Funk, whose episodes the CW is clearly so proud of that they’re putting off airing them for as long as possible!)
FINAL THOUGHT: Before this episode aired, I had a dream about watching it with Tails. However, since I’ve never seen Wilson Bethel in anything and really know nothing about him, my brain used Jack McBrayer as a stand-in for him. Everyone kept calling him Wilson Bethel, of course, but he was clearly Jack McBrayer. Dreams are weird. (Sorry, I guess these aren’t funny every week. Oh well.)
NEXT WEEK ON NEW WHOSE LINE: Popular condensed soup heiress Heather Anne Campbell spends her second and final chance for glory this season sitting on the sidelines and watching Wayne Brady sing to lovely Lisa Leslie!
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