New Whose Line! Episode 12: Please Return to Your Low-Rated Grave

Starring Wayne Brady, Nyima Funk, Colin Mochrie, and Ryan Stiles!

Plus Special Guest Star Shawn Johnson, from the greatest commercial in the history of humankind!

(Watch this episode here!)

Hardcore Sex Scenes from a Hat: The guys (and the token lady) act out “If Sesame Street characters appeared on other shows”, “Tattoos that you don’t want to discover on a new partner’s body”, and “The spells Harry Potter tries when he thinks no one is looking”.

TAILSPRESUMPTIONS: I think I’ve officially decided that I love Nyima, since she managed to save this game in more ways than one. She actually made them feel like honest SCENES from a hat! How many other people can say that? She’s like an improv superhero – snatches jokes back from the jaws of failure! Able to leap bad punchlines in a single bound! The Sesame Street scene is particularly interesting, as we learn a little something about all four performers. Nyima shows off a decent Cookie Monster, Wayne does a pretty good Elmo, Colin does an homage to one of my favorite bits ever, and Ryan… I’m beginning to question if he’s ever seen Sesame Street. If it’s possible to miss a show that’s run for 50 years while having three children, then he really IS living under a goddamn rock.

JESSICRITIQUE: Hey, look, the SFAH hat is so empty that you can actually see the bottom when Aisha lets us take a look inside! The only logical conclusion is that AISHA TYLER IS SOME SORT OF CONJURER. Well, if we’re going to make this game a showcase of magic anyway, I say they might as well take the next logical step for hat-based improv illusionism: SCENES TAPED TO THE BACKS OF FLUFFY WHITE BUNNIES. On top of that, Aisha is a top-class impressionist, busting out a spot-on Fran Drescher laugh in response to Ryan’s aggressively lame Big Bird Apprentice joke. Why isn’t she headlining her own show in Vegas yet?? Mocking aside, though, this was actually pretty good (aside from the Harry Potter scene in which Wayne makes the same joke twice), as New Whose Line SFAH goes! In particular, The Mysterious and Enigmatic Nyima Funk does great for her first time out, even saving Wayne’s “long-awaited” rest stop joke. I suppose anyone who earns an enthusiastic, passionate “YES!!!” from him deserves at least an “okay, you’re cool, come back next year” from me, right?

Poops: It’s Wayne and Colin (two of those shitty off-brand lollipops with the loopy sticks) vs. Nyima and Ryan (two big, floppy blunts) in a fight to the death… of comedy.

TAILSPRESUMPTIONS: Sadly, not even Nyima’s influence can save this travesty of a game. She tried her best, but being paired up with Ryan and things that are obviously meant to resemble fecal matter didn’t help the odds much. Not to mention her rather obvious Star Wars misquote. For a minute I thought that the CW was just messing up with its subtitles, but nope! At least it’s easier to understand than whatever the hell Colin and Wayne were attempting to do when sticking their heads in those things. I have no idea what they were trying to accomplish. I know it looks dirty, but… in what way?

JESSICRITIQUE: Why, Jess? Why did you go and get yourself roped into writing about every game this season? What can I even say about this? There’s a joke where Nyima forces us to imagine her with buttcheeks so surrealistically packed with collagen that they just dangle from her body, like a two-tailed cat. (A catsune?) So, um, if your fetish is for girls with tailbutts, this is probably the game for you? How would that even work if she ever wanted to try anal? You’d need, like… some sort of pulley system to hold them up and out of the way, I guess. I probably shouldn’t search Google for buttcheek pulleys, right? Okay, I won’t. Meanwhile, Aisha Tyler is all like, “HEY, GUYS, LOOK AT ME, EARRINGS ARE THE HEIGHT OF SATIRE!!” There. Analysis! Happy?

Magic Matt’s Lameprov-a-Ganza: Flirtatious handyman Colin is painting the apartment of sexy housewife Nyima, whose gangster husband, Wayne, arrives to find the door locked. The styles used include a Harry Potter movie and King Kong.

TAILSPRESUMPTIONS: This was actually better than all of the other Sideways Scenes I’ve seen on this show. Not because of anything explicitly funny the performers did, but because everything seemed to get out of control and unpredictable very fast. With Nyima scooting slowly over to the door not knowing that Wayne’s dropping in, Colin hiding under the bed and suddenly finding Wayne on top of him, and bending and eventually breaking the “props”, this had me laughing just in a sense that I had no idea what the fuck was going on. And I imagine that the performers didn’t either. Though it did drive the unfortunate fact home that a lot of these scenes are being calculated in order to form what feel like very forced running gags.

JESSICRITIQUE: Okay, Dan Patterson and company, I have a bone to pick with you. It seems like every single time you have a woman on the show these days, or even a guy playing a character explicitly designated as female, she’s the obvious villain of the scene because she’s cheating on her man. And it’s never the man who’s bad for cheating, always the woman. Even in Maggie Q’s round of Dubbing, where Ryan played a womanizing senator, Maggie’s character was STILL the only person in the scene actually called out for cheating! It never bothered me back in the day, when I was really into the fandom and believed that every single thing on Whose Line was perfect and wonderful, but now that I’ve stepped back and taken a good hard look at the situation, it’s like...

"...the fuck is wrong with you losers?"

Living Syrupery: Ryan and Colin are frisky newlyweds enjoying the amenities of their luxury RV before exploring Yellowstone National Park, the Pear Capital of the World! Nyima and Shawn Johnson provide the tiny props.

TAILSPRESUMPTIONS: Can it be true? A game of this that actually managed to make me laugh? Miracles DO come true! Ryan really seemed insistent on that whole frisky newlywed thing, and apparently it’s okay for Colin to get too hot for prime time when he’s doing it with a fellow performer and not the guest, which I suppose makes sense. But with a luscious, viscous temptress like Mrs. Butterworth on board, how can things not get a bit frisky? Am I right fellas? After a wild fling with her, you’ll definitely need a shower, now in the fancy London Bridge model. But if you find a sexy honeymoon to be at Yellowstone Park in an RV, you probably don’t have the highest cleanliness standards.

JESSICRITIQUE: Hey, remember the last Living Scenery with tiny, almost inconceivably wholesome Olympic athletes? Remember how Ryan and Colin still felt like they had to make a few token jokes about doing dirty stuff to them even though they clearly had no desire to and never followed through with it? Remember how weird that was? Well, they’re still going to do that every single time, but at least Nyima is here now, and she’s clearly down for just about anything. Including being a popular brand of pancake syrup, apparently! One big laugh is one big laugh more than this game usually gives me, so I feel contented. FUN FACT: If you start typing “is Mrs. Butterworth” into Google, the first suggestion is “is Mrs. Butterworth black”. People really want to know! The race of our imitation maple syrup is important! And now they want to know more than ever, I’m sure, because how else will we know if Ryan is a terrible racist for saying that or not? Well, I can’t speak for Pinnacle Foods Group LLC, but the very first person to portray Mrs. Butterworth in television commercials was white. A white man. Ah, America! Anyway, you can decide for yourselves how offensive that makes it.

Waynest Hits: Colin and Ryan sell Even More Songs of the Plumber, as performed by Wayne in the styles of rockabilly (“Snake It!”) and Hawaiian ukulele music (“My Husband’s Home”).

TAILSPRESUMPTIONS: This is probably my favorite game of the evening, not just because it’s one of my favorite games that hasn’t been tainted by the revival, but because it’s hilarious to see Colin be 3000% done with Ryan’s shit here. And considering that Ryan was telling him rather obviously about it, Colin has every right to be sighing and facepalming the whole game through. It was interesting to see Ryan attempt to be topical and Colin pretty much completely ignoring it to bring back an old joke he made during Remote Control, as well as conjuring up some bizarre scenario in which turkeys can cluck. But of course, the crown jewel of this game is the music, and while the first song was catchy, the second song was actually surprisingly beautiful. From time to time I forget that Wayne really does have a very pleasing and versatile voice, and this is a style I wish they’d break out more often.

JESSICRITIQUE: Here’s a game that tries really, really hard to make a bad first impression! It’s about a topic that has already been done twice on various versions of Whose Line alone, and I generally assume they did one on Improv-a-Ganza too. It doesn’t help that said repeat topic is one that virtually guarantees jokes about poop and/or pee, and sadly I’m not the kind of person to laugh at those words or the fact that I just used them. But, y’know what? Sometimes first impressions can be deceiving! As it turns out, it’s one of the best games of the season, and certainly the best singing one. Wayne has come so far as a performer, and the Hawaiian song gives him a chance to showcase that in a style that Whose Line hasn’t done to death yet, which is obviously nice. And on the other side of the stage, we have a particularly tight version of the modern “Ryan says something dumb and Colin reacts without being given the opportunity to say much” shtick. This was a rocky season, but thank Arceus the last proper game managed to end things on a high note, right? It’s almost enough to make you forget that this is the second game tonight promoting the unfortunate stereotype that all handymen are fucking your wife right now even as we speak! Something something erectus giganticus.

PIECE DE TAILSPRESUMPTIONS: I’m happy that they chose this episode to end the season with, since I feel like it’s one of the better ones. The special guest was downplayed enough to not feel like it was being shoved down our throats like a generic taco, and it had some decent laughs and good games to its credit. It’s incredibly depressing to me when I think of how happy I was when Whose Line was back on the air and how let down about it I am right now. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy it was revived, since the world doesn’t feel fully in balance to me if these guys aren’t on TV being funny, and there were some good things about it too. There were a few funny games, one or two of the guest stars didn’t feel completely out of place, and Wayne is honestly better and funnier than he ever was on the old version. I just feel bad that he’s finally come into his own when the rest of the show is turning out to be such a big disappointment. I will tune into the second season, since there’s no way I wouldn’t, but I want the show to get a big revamp. Ditch the guest stars, or at least get people who are interesting, or better yet, funny. Have Aisha participate in games. Bring back more of the old cast and let the newer ones actually do something. Bring back more of our favorite games and give them a better rotation. Stop making everything feel so calculated that it feels like the true improv is gone. It’s called Whose Line, so make it feel like Whose Line! We’ll all be better off for the trouble.

ONE MORE EXTRA JESSICRITIQUE: A few months back, I was so excited to hear that Whose Line was returning from the dead, but we’ve seen by now how that optimism has been turned on its head. In an odd way, this episode feels like it was re-edited at some point in an attempt to diffuse the criticism of the special guest gimmick, by including only one game with Shawn Johnson. That, of course, has the problem of making you wonder EVEN HARDER why she’s there, because it feels like such an afterthought. But never mind that. This is one of the best episodes of the season, and while it has most of the same problems as the last eleven, it also has a few moments that remind me of the show I used to like, before the Neenas and the Veenas and the Richard Simmonses of the world took over. Next season, naturally, I hope they lay off the special guests, choose to air a wider variety of games (this season contained ZERO playings of Party Quirks and Hoedown!!), incorporate audience suggestions more, hire more competent editors… you know the deal. I get the feeling that they won’t, but for now this episode gives me reason enough to enjoy the fantasy that they will. Oh, I almost forgot! There’s one other change that they NEED to make…

YES I AM 100% SERIOUS ABOUT THE BUNNY THING I MEAN IT

New Whose Line! Episode 11: Alleged Football League

Starring Wayne Brady, Jonathan Mangum, Colin Mochrie, and Ryan Stiles!

Plus special guests Chloe Butler and Monique Gaxiola, from the Greater Los Angeles Metropolitan Statistical Area Temptations!

(Watch it here!)

Hollywood Darth-rector: Luke Skywalker (Ryan) and his “faithful android sidekick” C-3PO (Jonathan) are preparing to destroy an enemy force field when Dark Vader (Wayne) speeds in on a hoverbike to attack them. Colin directs, wisely instructing them to redo the scene as used car salesmen and as porno au fromage.

TAILSDISSECTION: It’s really starting to get frightening to consider just how much Ryan has never experienced in his 54 years on the planet! He doesn’t have email, doesn’t use any social networking sites, barely speaks to people on the telephone, and now he doesn’t even know something that ANYBODY should know by pop cultural osmosis! I would say he’s like me and is more of a Trekkie than a Jedi, but it’s clear to anyone by now that he’s faking his way through that too. Ryan’s misquoting is almost as confusing as Wayne’s chagrin at being cast as Darth Vader just because he’s a black guy, when Darth Vader’s voice was provided by a rather famous black guy. But then again, Wayne doesn’t have the best luck when it comes to voices, especially since his Hulk Hogan sounds more like Macho Man Randy Savage with a cold. Ooooh yeeaaahh!

JESSICANALYSIS: Wasn’t the first, or at least one of the first, Hollywood Directors in the UK version about Star Wars? If Whose Line was being cancelled after this season, this would’ve been a great way for things to come full circle. But, alas, they’re making more. What a shame. It’s a pretty good scene, though. Jonathan did great, and I enjoyed the brief glimpse of his C-3PO… though I also have a minor nitpick about the used car salesman style. Why oh why wasn’t Wayne the manager Jonathan consulted, instead of the invisible person? Not that Wayne’s alternate role as a somewhat offensive ethnic stereotype wasn’t a good alternative. Ryan’s dumb guy mix-up was pretty amusing here as well. (CONFESSION TIME: I too have seen neither Star Wars nor Star Trek, though unlike Ryan I have not lived under a rock my entire life, so I can actually differentiate between the two!) As for the cheesy porn, well, I’ve already resigned myself to the fact that this game must always involve “DO IT SEXY!” or something similar. Also, this game must always involve an awkwardly edited ending, because nothing they do after the sexy one matters apparently. SEXY!

Do It: Waynathan sings to Chlonique in the style of the Rolling Stones.

TAILSDISSECTION: Y’know, I’m really starting to wonder if those girls actually know the rules of football. Do they know the AFC from the NFC? Can they name five teams and describe their logos accurately? I think those two are just a couple of fake sports girls who try to dress up all sexy without even bothering to learn about the culture! FAKE SPORTS GIRLS! Though to be fair, Wayne obviously never got picked for football either, considering how he couldn’t catch a ball that was rather gently thrown at him from a close distance, and how he fell like a sack of potatoes from a rather light push. Jonathan kept his face scrunched up for most of the game in a vain attempt to do a Keith Richards impression, and he succeeded… if Keith Richards was incredibly constipated and not strung out on six decades worth of drugs. It’s almost like getting cheap eye candy as “special guest stars” doesn’t really make for good comedy! Go figure!

JESSICANALYSIS: Okay, so, I’m not necessarily against the idea of women playing sports in sexy lingerie. The way it’s marketed is definitely icky but, y’know, do whatever you want wearing whatever you want, nobody has any right to tell you different. The thing I really have a problem with are the way that nobody put any thoughts into how to incorporate those shoulderpads into the rest of their uniforms organically. They’re wearing a bra and panties and then these comically oversized shoulderpads! What the fuck, man? As you might’ve expected, they’re really awkward special guests, too. They do that thing that all special guests on Whose Line with physical claims to fame do, where they try to do a little routine demonstrating their talent, but they just come across looking like a normal average Joe (or Joanna) badly miming that thing, despite ostensibly being a quasi-notable professional at it! To their credit, Wayne and Jonathan didn’t contribute to the sheer awkwardness of this round, at least. If you can ignore the left half of the screen, their song is actually pretty fun, even if Jonathan’s Keith Richards seems to have perpetually just been kicked in the rolling stones.

(W)hat’s in the Bag: Captain Kirk (Ryan) and Spock (Colin) have beamed down to a planet’s surface, where they capture and examine a distressed (and neurotic) alien lifeform, Wayne. The exciting assortment of items in Suzanne and Rosie’s bags include a lovely white hat, empty water bottles, a fat sack of pistachios, and a highly suspicious sponge.

TAILSDISSECTION: Dammit Jim, if you’re gonna do a Star Trek scene in a game that revolves primarily around doctors, why didn’t you include the character who’s an actual doctor! You didn’t even pack an honest-to-god tricorder in those bags of yours! At least Ryan knows enough about Star Trek to know who William Shatner is, but not much of anything else about the series. Colin pretty much completely gives up on being Spock, but I think not being assigned the role of Scotty for once threw him off-guard. The purses also didn’t give them very much to work with. Well, less than usual, anyway. This game needs a bit of an overhaul, like maybe if they actually started making their own purses with harder things to just explain away or repeat the same jokes about? But then again, they really have forgotten that this is an improv show, it seems. Can’t make things TOO hard for the improv veterans and one less experienced guy. Sigh.

JESSICANALYSIS: Omigod, it’s a What’s in the Bag scene that isn’t about doctors! Except, in practice, it is. Ryan commits to his Shatner impression for all of one line before he’s the same doctor character he always in this game, slicing people open with the power of the sun all willy-nilly. I admit to being a little puzzled by the given scene, too. Did they seriously plan on including both a Star Wars and a Star Trek game in this taping from the outset, which is both terrible editing as well as a remarkable coincidence given Ryan’s mix-up? Or did the powers-that-be decide on a whim to ditch the scenario they originally had planned for this game specifically so they could make fun of Ryan? It really feels like the latter, but I really hope it’s not. I know the style for the credits is decided during the show because it’s often a reference to something, but I always assumed that every single other game with pre-prepared suggestions didn’t tamper with them after they started taping, because girls are naïve. I feel deflated, somehow. The fact that this scene involves the ridiculousness of Woody Allen Matthew Broderick as a sickly alien helps boost my spirits a bit, though. Similarly, Suzanne and Rosie may have been made fun of on national television, but at least they now have a one-of-a-kind photo of Colin teabagging Wayne.

Tired Premises from a Hat: Waynathan and Rylin are required, for some reason, to stand on opposite ends of the stage in order to act out: “Songs that celebrate divorce”, “If dogs went to therapy”, and “Conventions you don’t want to be invited to”.

TAILSDISSECTION: I was surprised to see how well this game started out. SFAH is normally my favorite Whose Line game, but I have my expectations set pretty low for the reboot. But this actually made me laugh quite a bit! They had good suggestion after good suggestion… and then they got to the convention suggestion and they went back to sucking. But the first two were good! This doesn’t exactly please me, however, since it feels like the quality of the games and even the performers have gotten so low that even the slightest deviation from boring is enough to get me excited. I’m trying not to be jaded, I really am.

JESSICANALYSIS: Do you suppose the CW put off airing the Colin and Brad special last week simply so Colin’s joke here about doing mouth-to-mouth and getting lost wouldn’t air so close to the Two Man Group one where he does exactly that, to a duck? The answer: no, of course not, the CW does not give a shit about this show being incredibly repetitive, it was stupid of you to ask, etc. Anyway, this is one of the better Sceneses from a Hat of the season, at least for the first two suggestions, and I’d like to specifically commend Jonathan on being utterly adorable as an excited dog. (But what the fuck do you mean if dogs went to therapy?) The third hat-scene is, of course, where the jokes about butts and wee penises go, and then there’s Ryan’s joke about the Republican National Convention, which is funny but a little odd. Ryan has never really been a political comic, but he’s suddenly had Republicans (and more specifically Mitt Romney) on his mind all season. Was this some sort of personal bugbear for him at the time, even though it was a few months after the election? Or did he just discover (possibly by way of Greg Proops) that saying “Republicans, am I right people?” is a surefire way to make audiences in LA cheer without requiring any actual effort at all?

Alarming Scenery: Ryan and Colin are firefighters asleep in their station when they get a call that a fire has broken out in a department store. Chloe and Monique have absolutely no problem with being regarded as objects.

TAILSDISSECTION: Let’s face it; you could all see this game coming a mile away. Ryan and Colin spend a whole game acting like creepy old men while stubbornly trying not to be creepy old men, and the girls do bizarre shit while showing off as much of themselves as possible. It’s getting so overdone that I’m almost wishing Ryan and Colin WOULD start copping feels just so something different can happen! It’s very bad when I’m wanting people to violate other people’s space just for entertainment, and it’s also bad when this game is starting to make me roll my eyes at any attractive or provocatively dressed woman that comes on this show! That’s a big sign that this game really needs to stop being played, or at least needs a giant revamp.

JESSICANALYSIS: Y’know how they ALWAYS dress Ryan and Colin in untucked dress shirts that are extra-long in front? It didn’t occur to me until this episode that maybe they do that so you wouldn’t be able to see if, um, shall we say, either of them became particularly excited by a round of Living Scenery. I…… really wish this hadn’t occurred to me. Oh god. God. NO. C’mon, Jess, try to distract yourself from that. Try to think of something you actually enjoyed about this game. Um. Well. There’s really only one thing that amused me, and that’s the way the powers-that-be made Chloe and Monique carry their helmets out, only so they’d have to immediately set them down on the side of the stage to get them out of the way. This season is pretty goddamn stupid, is what I’m saying, and you have to be able to laugh at it or you’ll go insane. (Alternately, I could stop watching, but that sounds like too much effort.)

TERMINUS TAILSDISSECTION: Remember when I was actually excited about Whose Line being on TV? Remember when I was still optimistic about the games and the styles and how it was all new and exciting and something I haven’t seen in awhile? Yeah, me neither. I think my honeymoon period with the reboot ended a few episodes ago, and there’s only one more episode left for this season. This episode had a few laughs in it, but it was mostly overshadowed by my annoyance with their choice of special guest and repetition of games that didn’t include the guest. Hopefully the next episode will leave this season going out with a high note instead of with a bad taste in my mouth.

CONCLUSIVE JESSICANALYSIS: Each of the non-special-guest games tonight has at least one fairly funny thing going for it, so of course they had to make the special guest games even sadder to compensate. The worst thing, though, is that I know that most of the people who will agree with me about not enjoying Chlonique’s guest spot will do so for reprehensible reasons. “They’re wearing skimpy clothes,” those people will say, “and therefore they are bad sluts.” (These people rarely have a way with words.) And, y’know what? That is BULLSHIT. Who gives a fuck what or how much they’re wearing? How does that make Chloe or Monique any less of a person? No, they’re only bad special guests because they don’t know the first thing about improv, so they’re a really awkward fit (and the fact that everyone is actively encouraged to objectify them doesn’t help). If you find a girl who CAN improvise - like Heather Anne Campbell or The Mysterious and Enigmatic Nyima Funk for instance! - then she can go ahead and improvise while wearing whatever she goddamn pleases. She can do it wearing weird lingerie with mismatched football shoulderpads. She can do it wearing ten sweaters and twelve pairs of snowpants. She can do it wearing nothing. She can do it wearing a fucking chicken suit for all I care! It doesn’t matter!

NEXT WEEK ON WHOSE LINE: In the exciting and dramatic SEASON FINALE - so important is this episode that the CW won’t even upload a promo for it to their website lest they spoil even a minute of this high-octane thrill ride - Nyima Funk gets to play one, maybe two games before being shuffled into the background in favor of special guest Shawn Johnson! (SPOILER ALERT: Despite being named Shawn, she is a lady and doesn’t actually have a Johnson at all.)

Colin and Brad: Two Man Group

Hello, loyal and not-so-loyal readers! At one point, the CW was considering airing a truncated version of this special last week, in New Whose Line's timeslot… and then they decided to shove that off for sometime in the fall. Anyway, we found out it was actually on Netflix, and New Whose Line was a repeat last week, so why not watch it now regardless, we thought! This review contains SPOILERS, so consider yourself warned.

Bodies Moving Bodies: Somewhere in Belgium, Colin and Brad set out to find a last-minute attic chicken for Poultry Day, only to find it crawling with gross icky spiders. Big Joe moves Colin and Considerably Smaller Amy moves Brad.

TAILSVIEWPOINTS: I was actually pleasantly surprised to see that Colin managed to make the game instructions entertaining! It didn’t feel like it was slowing the show down as it normally did, so I’m honestly not sure why we don’t just make Colin the host of Whose Line. It would be a good way to make up for his lack of Executive Producer credit! Poor Amy looks so lost as Brad goes off-stage, even when her husband nudges her and goes, “Uh, I think he’s waiting on you.” The couple does do pretty well at this game, especially Joe, who makes sure to show Colin’s relief after he no longer has to crush his testicles! Though I was wondering his intentions when he tried to actually “lift” Colin into the attic! Normally I don’t like this game, but Colin and Brad managed to make it go smoothly, and we managed to get some talented movers, so I was happy to see it here!

JESSICALIZATIONS: I’ve noticed that audience members seem much more comfortable playing this game in a theater venue than in a television studio. On Whose Line and its ilk, the audience members just stood around and giggled and clearly did not pay attention to the scene or even really understand how the game was supposed to work. Here, and in the Colin and Brad and Night of Improv shows I’ve seen live, it’s very much the opposite. Could it be that being surrounded by television cameras makes people nervous? The cameras they used to film this were probably smaller and crappier and not the least bit intimidating to all but the faintest of heart. Ahem. Anyway, Joe is good at this! I appreciate that he let Amy know she was supposed to move Brad’s head, thus preventing a Ryan-esque overlong “I want to look but I can’t” gag. Thank you SO MUCH for that, Joe. If only it had been in his power to stop the “touch him here if you want him to go home with you” routine as well!

Super Audience Sound Effects DX+: Colin and Brad try not to run afoul of bears and/or alcohol withdrawal on a thrilling whitewater rafting expedition. Rather husky Packers fan Jeff provides Colin’s sound effects, whereas Brad’s sound effects are provided by AN ENTIRE ROW OF PEOPLE HOLY SHIT.

TAILSVIEWPOINTS: I also normally dislike this game heartily, but it was saved by Colin and Brad’s special touches. I’ve never seen the sound effects done in the audience like that before but it made things much more enjoyable! And the one Colin brought on stage was enthusiastic, which is always a plus. The duck rifle made me laugh a lot more than it should have, since I’ve been known to accidentally do a duck voice when practicing my gunshot sounds. (…I like to practice for this game just in case, SHUT UP.) I also have to give props to the guy who did the “Ahooga” noise, since if I were given something I wasn’t sure how to effect, I’d just go for something unexpected too. Biggest laugh in this game is when Colin gives the duck CPR and they both just sort of look like they have no idea how they got to this point. If all Sound Effects games were played like this I would have no problem with them.

JESSICALIZATIONS: A duck? That’s WACKY. Continuing the “differences between live improv and Whose Line” theme, I like that Colin goes out of his way to ask for someone who actually wants to do this and thinks that he or she is competent at it. It’s as though their show is actually trying to be enjoyable for audience participants, instead of deeply humiliating! And so, in that vein, there’s the microphone-passing thing, giving a lot more people a chance to play just a smidgen of Sound Effects. It’s been a whopping eight years since the Colin and Brad show I saw, so this gimmick is new to me… and I like it! The highlight was probably the ginger kid, whose duck-fired-out-of-a-rifle sound is pretty much the best thing ever, and my affection for it is only partly ironic, I assure you. The lady who giggles awkwardly and then makes us wait too long for a plainly enunciated “urp” is also pretty great, though burping contests in general are up there with megaphones on my list of Sound Effects Tropes that Need to DIE DIE DIE. Another colossal disappointment: despite the tantalizing mention of Colin wearing tap shoes, Brad doesn’t even try to goad Colin into dancing. :(

Wine-Stained Scene: Brad confronts his neighbor, Colin, whose dog has been pooping on his lawn, in the style of a kung-fu soap opera… for some reason.

TAILSVIEWPOINTS: I think it’s safe to say that any game I don’t like should just be played by Colin and Brad, since they always manage to do it a million times better. The tacky 1970s wallpaper really makes this scene, and it proves just how much the styles just sort of make everything worse. Just the two they had going from the audience was perfect and it didn’t make the scene feel bogged down! The physical feats in this game are good, but it’s also not just that, there’s plenty of comedy to carry it. Another impressive feat is how Brad somehow managed to not kick over the wine bottle, which made me doubt that it was real and just a part of the wall until proven otherwise. And we all know that every good discussion ends with wine on the wall and all over each other. And the laughter born of pain from accidentally pulling a door on top of yourself. A very refreshing Sideways Scene after all the stanchion-possessed ones on the new series.

JESSICALIZATIONS: My sole Colin and Brad show was in 2005, before they introduced Sideways Scene to the game rotation, so this is actually the first time I’ve seen their version. I actually found it kinda funny! Then again, I found the Trust Us F&TS-lite version funny the first time, too. The second time I saw the Colin and Brad version of this game, I’d surely complain about the windowsill wine thing, which I gather they use every goddamn time, and of course the “kung-fu soap opera” business is just as transparent as any of the genres used in the other version… but for this moment in time, I’m actually a little happy that I got to watch a Sideways Scene. How rad is that? The way the window surrealistically floats halfway off the wall into the inky black void is just icing on the cake.

We Are the Love Doctor (Whoa!): One word at a time, Colin and Brad answer audience questions about relationships, love, sex, romance, or none of those things.

TAILSVIEWPOINTS: I think I’ve seen this game played before, and I like it! It’s a good rapid-fire improv game with audience suggestions, and it helps that the dirtiness is really coming straight from the audience themselves for once. I thought that the first guy with the mullet surprisingly had the deepest question of them all, and he seemed satisfied with the answer! Much less satisfied than Colin was at Brad getting all the good spaces during the baldness question! Also, the lesbian couple who asked the question about third parties was really cute. If you’re reading this, ladies, don’t be a stranger. Rawr.

JESSICALIZATIONS: Finally, a game where Colin and Brad are actually at the mercy of audience suggestions (at least in theory)! I really like that! Granted, there are some questions that audiences will almost always ask. I bet they get the one about coming out of the closet a lot, because gay people are ridiculous, and the “how much wood could a woodchuck chuck” thing is probably one of the go-to questions for the requisite wiseass in the audience. And I guess it’s natural that Colin and Brad would eventually settle on their favorite answers to repeat questions. Unlike other repeat material from their show, though, I don’t really blame this. You want new answers, audience people? Then ask them new questions! As for this specific playing, well, I really appreciate The Love Doctor’s explicit endorsement of threesomes (and also, the simple factual observation that Three’s Company is NOT fun).

Jeopardubbing!: Colin hosts, because he is a Canadian person. Groovy-belted Jennifer (voiced by Brad) is contestant #1, part-time martial arts instructor/full-time exotic dancer Josepus Pescatore. Brad is contestant #2, average Russian citizen Grabsac Turnankoph. Shirt-tucker Mike (voiced by Colin) is contestant #3, “alphabet interpreter” Reginald van Dussenhoff.

TAILSVIEWPOINTS: It’s amazing how much the lack of ‘celebrity’ in a title can benefit a game! Plus it actually managed to make me like dubbing, provided Brad can always be one of the ones playing. I choked on my room-temperature pink lemonade as soon as I heard Brad’s ‘cigarette hag’ voice for Jennifer, and she seemed to be rather tickled by it as well. The audience members were great sports and the jokes were quick and witty. However, despite the jokes being funny, I really don’t need you to tell me what the puns are referring to, Netflix subtitles. Why do you think I wouldn’t have made all of these myself?

JESSICALIZATIONS: The rules for the Colin and Brad version of Improv Jeopardy sound really confusing on paper, but it’s actually fairly intuitive once you get started. The most confusing thing is the use of cards with pre-established categories on them, which doesn’t seem strictly necessary for any particular reason! If they’re gonna do that, they should at least take the really obvious ones out of there, like the outer space one. Is there a chance of an American audience responding with anything other than “URANUS!!!”, all in unison? Of course not! Regardless, Colin and Brad put on a tight show here, and I’d argue that it works better than the Whose Live version, largely because Colin and Brad are just plain punnier. (This also trumps the Improv-a-Ganza version, which included Colin and Brad sometimes, by allowing Alex Trebek’s extremely filthy name to go COMPLETELY UNBLEEPED.) By the way, of all the Whose Line-related men who routinely play women, Brad is probably my favorite, because nobody goes for the voice nearly as hard as he does. His decision to voice Jennifer as Clamantha on semi-successful behavioral medications is truly a sight to behold!

Non-Alphabet Interpreter: Brad interviews Kevin, a mall law enforcement officer, with Colin providing a physical interpretation “for the hearing impaired”.

TAILSVIEWPOINTS: It might just be me, but I’m starting to think these games were filmed out of order. Since didn’t they do a Victoria’s Secret underwear joke in one of the games before this? Or maybe this was him trying to call back to that after he realized the mall cop wasn’t going to give him much to work with. This is probably the only weak audience participation game we have so far, since he seems unsure of what to do now that they’ve called him up there, and seeing Colin do fake sign interpretations can only go so far in way of comedy. Though Colin is correct, most of us mall cops/security guards are indeed on drugs. That makes the segways even more fun!

JESSICALIZATIONS: Really, Tails? I actually like this game! In fact, I wonder if Colin and/or Brad bothered to pitch this for Trust Us, because if there’s any game that could incorporate a celebrity life story without it feeling horribly out of place, this would be it. And I’d argue that this playing actually benefited from having a relatively boring profession, in the same way that the rather similar old version of Sound Effects was often better when the scene started out mundane before spiraling into insanity. Actually, the thing that got on my nerves was Brad’s meddling in the interview to force it to be about sexy ladies’ sexy underwear! I love panties and bras as much as the next person, but not every job can directly involve them, okay? By the way, just so we’re clear, this game about sensitively providing an interpretation for the hearing impaired appears in the same show as Sound Effects. Think about that for a second.

The Mildly Unpleasant Game: Colin begs Brad to cover his shift at a coal mine so he can spend his anniversary with his wife. Emma from the audience instructs them to continue the scene in the styles of Questions Only, If You Know What I Mean, and Letter Substitution (replacing S with K).

TAILSVIEWPOINTS: This game wasn’t necessarily bad, but I would feel sort of cheated if I were picked for it. I don’t see why they couldn’t have had just some automated creepy voice off-stage telling them to switch games – actually, scratch that, maybe this way is better. But still, I wonder if the girl wishes she could've had more to do with her one chance to be in the show. At least she got a prime seat for the game! The games themselves were well done, with Letter Substitution even managing to hold up despite its length…if you know what I mean.

JESSICALIZATIONS: Silly Brad, this isn’t actually a game you played on Whose Line! It’s a list of other games you played on Whose Line! Everyone remembers the popular and beloved Whose Line game that was called Letter Substitution on Whose Line, right? Now, I’ve heard that they usually use five game-styles for The Torture Game, if one were to actually go see them live. If that’s true, I certainly hope they’re shorter than Five-Minute Letter Substitution is here! As for If You Know What I Mean, well, it sounds really robotic the way they actually say “if you know what I mean” after every sentence, doesn’t it? On Whose Line, they would at least mix things up occasionally with phrases like “if you catch my drift” or “if you understand the double-meaning of the sentence I just said, which is about fucking, just to be clear”. (Okay, they may not have used that last one.) On the whole, this was kinda fun to see, but I don’t understand the name “The Torture Game”. Colin, who historically has struggled at some of these games, does okay for himself, and Brad seems to enjoy all three of them far more than any human being should. Maybe they mean it’s torture for Emma, who was surely hoping for a better audience participation role. This one blows!

Mousetrapsweeper: Colin confronts Brad over the theft of his mail, in the style of opera, starting on Q.

TAILSVIEWPOINTS: This game we’ve all heard of, naturally. Something I’ve noticed in larger shows with more than these two is that it’s just them trying to maneuver their way around mousetraps and have it be a game where we cringe and laugh out of reflex because they’re hurting themselves for our amusement, but here they actually have styles and a specific game in mind while they’re doing this insanity. I really enjoyed this playing of the game for that reason, because the alphabetic opera was a good way to distract from the fact that they might lose appendages if they aren’t careful. And it’s nice to see them play dirty and try to circumcise each other too.

JESSICALIZATIONS: This seems to be Colin and Brad’s most famous game, because excitable audience folk start shouting out its name as soon as Brad makes the most basic of allusions to it! And yes, it’s very funny the first time you see it, maybe even the first two times. I saw this at my Colin and Brad show in 2005, and this was very familiar. Sure, the genre thing is new, but it doesn’t matter much when Colin can barely be bothered to pay attention to the dialogue in the first place. And there’s the oddly named Chamber of Doom, which is inconsequential at best as an addition to the actual game, but it sure makes for a great visual gag, doesn’t it? It’s nice that they’ve tried to spice things up, but the fact remains that my own live Mousetraps experience eight years prior also involved Colin making a Mochrie of the rules by removing his blindfold (I think they used less pants-shittingly terrifying ones back then) and throwing traps directly at Brad, who steadfastly pretends he can’t hear the entire audience telling him that Colin did this.

PENULTIMATE TAILSVIEWPOINTS: I thought this was a hilarious special with a lot of high points, and the low points aren’t even really low enough to mention. Colin and Brad play off each other remarkably well, and both of them are improv veterans in their own right. I found myself laughing hard and often, which is exactly what I expect from Whose Line and its performers. The only real negative impact of watching this special is it made me realize just how much the new Whose Line isn’t living up to my expectations, and how much I miss basic things like audience suggestions. The special itself is wonderful, and I highly recommend you check it out or go see Colin and Brad if they come to your town.

SWEEPING JESSICALIZATIONS: Would I recommend checking out this special? Yes, certainly, it’s at least worth a rental or a Netflicking if you liked Colin and/or Brad on Whose Line - and I think we could agree that they were among the more likable individuals to appear on that show. (Bear in mind, of course, that this is a bare-bones low-budget direct-to-DVD comedy special without special features, so it’s hard to recommend actually buying the thing unless you’re fairly hardcore in your Whose Line and Whose Line-related people fandom… which I am, despite my negativity, I swear!) Would I recommend catching An Evening with Colin and Brad live? Also yes, certainly! They seem to put on a consistently tight show, and even if they have a weaker than usual night in your city, the magic of live improv still makes it feel impressive at the time. Would I recommend doing both of those things? Only if you’re willing and able to accept the truth that An Evening with Colin and Brad is a semi-improvised stage show wherein audience suggestions are deftly interwoven with a somewhat smallish variety of fallback gags that they rely on to ensure a consistently entertaining experience for the average first-time attendee, since this is after all far more expensive than catching a local improv troupe! (Now, since Whose Line is completely free to us, they have much less of an excuse for repetition…)

New Whose Line! Episode 10: Meat Maggie Q!

Starring Wayne Brady, Nyima Funk, Colin Mochrie, and Ryan Stiles!

Plus special guest Maggie Q, from Balls of Fury!

(Watch it here!)

Not-Very-Good Director: Batman (Ryan) and Catwoman (Nyima) must use every gadget that they have to escape a room in which spiked walls are closing in on them, likely the handiwork of the nefarious Joker (Wayne), who arrives on his jetpack to taunt them, I assume. Colin directs, instructing them to replay the scene as high-energy game show hosts, like they’re in a hip-hop video, and as if they’re magnetically attracted to everything.

TAILSCOGITATION: Aaaand mark! It only took 10 episodes for them to make a Drew reference! This show is being much more timely than Drew’s version, which took about 200 episodes to make a reference to Clive Anderson. I really like the new girl so far, she’s quick, she’s clever, and she does a good Eartha Kitt. Ryan is obviously doing his best bland George Clooney Batman, and Wayne is doing… I’m not sure what Wayne was trying to achieve. But that’s usually the case in any game I see him in. Also, Gerbil Girl’s special power is fitting those monstrous water bottles inside her, apparently! That’s sort of impressive!

JESSICAWORDS: At last, I get to meet the final fourth-seater for this season! My first impression is also that Nyima’s Eartha Kittwoman impression is actually pretty good. Female impressionists are a rarity on Whose Line, so it’ll be interesting to have her around… assuming she’s not a one-trick pony like Jeff Davis. My more negative second impression, though, is that Nyima (no, spellcheck, I do NOT mean Maiman, what the fuck?) has an unfortunate knack for making things cringeworthily awkward, including the fatal mistake of making everybody think about Ryan’s old man penis. In fact, everyone seemed a little off here: somehow Wayne avoids having to do anything musical in the hip-hop video style, and Colin seems to be deliberately playing a version of his usual director without any catchphrases or people skills of any sort. That being said, I also appreciated the oblique reference to Drew. It’s reassuring to know that, even now that he’s at a healthy weight and somehow looks younger than he did when he hosted Whose Line, it’s still regarded as deeply insulting to be compared to him!

Thoughtdubbing: Maggie is a heavily armed assassin trying to seduce and kill Ryan, a womanizing senator, in a swanky hotel room, when Maggie’s former lover, Wayne, arrives with plans to kill them both. Colin translates Maggie’s mime routine for the benefit of the visually impaired.

TAILSCOGITATION: You know you have a star guest of the highest caliber when they start corpsing within the first joke. I think I might’ve misjudged the other stars or took their ability to keep straight faces for granted. True, they sometimes giggled or cracked a big grin, but that was just to show they were having a good time. They didn’t completely double over in laughter right out of the gate. Maggie clearly can’t be the greatest spy in the world; all we have to do is have Ryan bombard her with jokes until she agrees to tell us all her secrets! And she’s also one of the worst players we’ve had in this game! How hard can it be to just make sure your lips are moving when Colin is speaking? It’s a good thing we got the first Ryan and Wayne kiss ever or there’s no way this game would be in any way memorable.

JESSICAWORDS: Why does Maggie’s character even need to seduce Ryan in the first place? She’s already got him alone in a hotel room with no way to defend himself! If she was trying to extract information from him, sure, fuck the dude’s brains out, but if her only goal is to kill him, any assassin worth her salt should be able to get the job done in this scenario without having to consult her vagina. Ergo, the humping is solely for her enjoyment, not work. Wayne is perhaps justified in his jealousy, is what I’m saying, if rather misguided with the double murder thing. Then again, it’s clear that this character is just like Maggie Q herself: a heartless seductress who loves toying with the fragile hearts of men almost as much as she loves the color black. Her first target: Colin Mochrie. He’s not hurt for long, though, because he’s adorably irresistible to black people. But who will be her next target—and will they be as lucky?

Ewwwwsflash: Nyima and Ryan are lazy news people who are incapable of getting off of their stools, so they rely on Colin to go outside and report in front of footage of a snake eating a large white rat, and unrelated footage of a tarantula just chillin'.

TAILSCOGITATION: They might as well just change the name of this game to “Let’s Freak the Hell Out of the Audience”. They’re pretty much making this a cringe/gross out game and it’s making the game lose its appeal for me. What made this game good in the first place was putting something funny or wacky behind Colin, so the audience could be laughing and having a good time, and while they occasionally did freaky stuff (key word being occasionally) it was still quirky enough to get laughs. Now it’s just going for cheap shock value that doesn’t make you come away from it going, “That was a good game!” It’s more of a “thank god that’s over”, and we care less and less if Colin actually gets it right or not. Although I will say that Nyima is a good clue giver, so points to her for that.

JESSICAWORDS: I’m now fairly certain that the guy who picked the footage for Newsflash this season is a serial killer. I wonder what delightful footage they used for the playings they didn’t air! Grizzly bear attacks? Chainsaw juggling bloopers? Puppies who just caught their spouses cheating? I hope someone turns this dude in before he inevitably has Colin report in front of grainy footage of military executions! I mean holy shit this is getting dark for a lighthearted improv show! Even Ryan points out that this is a real downer compared to “the Wayne thing”, which makes you wonder why it was in the episode at all… so now I’m suspicious of every single one of the editing people I called out two weeks ago too! But, oh well, I guess we can all put this behind us. It’s not like there were any hardcore vegans in the studio who might find this to be especially cruel or anything. We really dodged a bullet there!

What’s in Dr. Bag, PhD?: Wayne is a teenager who wants to join the Army, but not before military doctors Colin and Ryan test his physical and mental fitness. The items in the bags included such exciting things as jackets, makeup, cotton swabs, perfume/mace, nuts, and wallets with MONEY and A DRIVER’S LICENSE.

TAILSCOGITATION: Oh wow! I wonder what kind of scene we’re going to be getting this time! I hope they’re doctors! Because y’know, doctors carry around bags! I know I’ve always seen my doctor carrying a bag! They’re just total bag people! It’s eponymous with the profession! *gasp* They ARE doctors?! And they’re treating someone?! And it’s Wayne AGAIN?! CALLOO CALLAY! Oh, wait! Wait! Colin and Ryan both do the same jokes that they did in the other games?! Be still my heart! If it weren’t for Ryan macing himself accidentally, this wouldn’t have gotten any reaction out of me at all.

JESSICAWORDS: First things first, I’m gonna have to call Colin out for not one but two recycled wallet-related jokes in a row! Not to overanalyze a bad joke or anything, but why is the “looks like dinner’s on me” gag even supposed to be funny? Because that audience member… has a lot of money on her personage? Take that, lady who manages her money well enough to have disposable income at this specific point in time! I’ll admit that I usually derive at least a little enjoyment from seeing Ryan writhe around in agony for laughs, though. And even a cynical bitch like me can appreciate the sheer joy that the audiencefolk seem to experience when Colin and Ryan riffle through their things. “Ohmigod, did you see that?? They ate one of my mixed nuts! MY mixed nuts!! On NATIONAL TELEVISION!!”

Irish My Hands Would Be More Helpful: Ryan is an enthusiastic Irishman working for the Irish tourist board trying to persuade potential tourist Maggie to come to Ireland, by offering her a variety of unappealing Irish foods. Colin provides Ryan’s Irishmanly hands.

TAILSCOGITATION: Now, I would say that this game might be a bit culturally insensitive, but we all know that the Irish don’t count when you need an ethnicity for cheap laughs, so it’s okay. Something I didn’t know upon entering this game is that Maggie is a vegan, which would explain why she was somewhat disgusted by the things on the table. However, even the pea mush was too displeasing for her palate to handle! I will give her credit for actually trying it, though. It’s difficult to make a game where we only watch Ryan get drunk and make funny faces interesting, and… this was no different, really.

JESSICAWORDS: Everyone knew Ryan was gonna get hammered eventually, so why not just jam the bottle in his mouth literally as soon as the round begins! Because, y’know, Ireland. Okay, what next? Well, personally, I would’ve loved to see Ryan and Colin perform a jig with that violin, but I suppose that had to be edited out to fit in all the icky food jokes. As an avid pea lover, I don’t understand why both Ryan and Maggie act like they’re the most disgusting thing ever. Split peas are still peas, and peas kick ass! On the plus side, we were wrong last week: Maggie did, in fact, take a bite. She bravely gulped that pea down like it was an insignificant lab rat! Ryan came to realize that Maggie, against all odds, still had some small amount of goodwill left for the show, and so he sought to crush it forever by smothering his soda bread with the flesh of the noble cow, hellishly stewed in a murderous liquid stock with traitorous vegetables. (You can tell I’m officially sick of Helping Hands as a game, because I’m making up weird shit like this now.)

SUPREME TAILSCOGITATION: This episode didn’t really get a rise out of me, other than some rare giggles here and there. Whose Line is constantly dipping into the darker side of bland, as well as throwing some dark stuff in there to gross out and shock the audience. I didn’t enjoy the guest star (all guest stars are bad until proven competent on this show), I’m sick of the game choices, and I’m coming off of games uncomfortable more often than I should be. And if my thoughts sound similar to thoughts I’ve given on previous episodes, that’s because they are. I hope this show gets a massive overhaul for its second season, or I fear it’s doomed for good.

FAMOUS LAST JESSICAWORDS: This episode starts out well enough with an ably acted Hollywood Director, but the combination of Maggie’s sub-audience-member ability to keep her shit together and Satan’s Newsflash put a bad taste in my mouth from which even a brilliant episode couldn’t recover. And I can’t even judge Nyima yet, because she was treated in the same fashion that American Whose Line treats all female performers. And, as if this episode wasn’t already enough of a bummer, Aisha saw fit to wear her grandmother’s nicest shower curtain tonight. *sigh*

NEXT WEEK ON WHOSE LINE: Repeats, apparently. They were originally going to air Colin and Brad: Two Man Group as a special, but now they’re doing that in autumn I guess, and they didn’t move the last two episodes back a week, for whatever reason. So, yeah. Repeats. Because the one repeat a week wasn’t enough.

THE WEEK AFTER THAT ON WHOSE LINE: Sexually exciting football players for old men to objectify, with their penises!