New Whose Line! Episode 6: The Exciting Wilson Bethel

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!

(Watch it here!)

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!

New Whose Line! Episode 5: Colin & Ryan at the London 2012 Olympic Games

Featuring Wayne Brady, Jeff Davis, Colin Mochrie, and Ryan Stiles!

Plus Special Star Guests Mary Killman and Mariya Koroleva, from the “Participant” ribbon-winning U.S. Olympic synchronized swimming team!

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

Chihuahuallywood Director: Jeff and Ryan are criminals cutting through an electrified barbed-wire fence to break into a warehouse, when security guard Wayne arrives in a jeep full of guard dogs to stop them. Colin directs, instructing them to redo the scene as fratboys, and “sexy”.

• Well, this was alright I guess. It’s always fun to see Wayne’s mic pack straps that look kind of like a thong peeking up above his pants, because he’s a sexy bald tramp. I’m not so sure that I needed to see him reprimand Ryan for comparing his genitalia to the wrong dog breed though. There wasn’t time for the third style, but apparently there are still penis reference quotas that simply MUST be met.
• I love how Ryan actually tries to take the scene in an emotional direction, like a REAL actor, but then Jeff goes “fuck that, look at the warehouse!” This also brings up the question of why prisoners would want to go to this warehouse in the first place. Wouldn’t you think that they’d try somewhere that, y’know, doesn’t have cops right behind you? What is this, Florida? (Florida would definitely be the state that would keep a warehouse somewhere like on a prison compound...)
• When Aisha read out the scene, I was under the impression that the “electrified barbed-wire fence” and security dog-jeep were implied to be protecting a warehouse, and Jeff and Ryan’s characters were just ordinary ne’er-do-wells. She never mentions or even implies anything prison-related, and yet there Ryan and Jeff are, fabricating a prison out of abso-fucking-lutely NOWHERE. I guess they believe that all the criminals have already been locked up, thanks to our stellar criminal justice system!
• Does Jeff really believe that there’s anyone in college who doesn’t know how to get high? He sounds more like a twelve-year-old who’s trying to seem “adult” by snorting Pixy Stix. None of the high, all of the damaged nasal cavity! (Cavity. Eh? Eh?)
• Notice that Jeff throws away his first can of beer, only to pull that second can out of his pocket, already opened ahead of time. I know these things shouldn’t bother me, because these guys don’t do the kind of detail-oriented world-building improv that actually cares about precise mime skillz. BUT IT STILL DOES SOMETIMES. What the fuck, Jeff? It’s gonna get all warm and flat and stale and super-gross, and that’s assuming it doesn’t just spill all over your pocket! C’mon!!

Women’s Duet: Wayne and Jeff sing to Bafflingly Special Star Guests Mary Killman and Mariya Koroleva, who got to go on vacation to London last year, in the style of a boy band.

• I’m a little disappointed that Aisha made so many references to Wayne and Jeff being unable to control themselves at the sight of women in bathing suits, since we thought she was going to help Whose Line become less of a boys club. The others were actually trying to make things as non-creepy as possible! Plus it’s somewhat bizarre that Aisha brought so much attention to the swimsuits, since they’re actually pretty modest, all things considering.
• Not only do Jeff and Wayne make it through this game with almost no sex jokes (not even Jeff’s now-traditional filthy rhyming couplet), they make it though with almost no jokes at all, because they’re too busy being totally weirded out. And, um, so was I. Mary and Mariya just dance and laugh and count to themselves, completely oblivious to everything that’s going on around them. Like GIGGLING SWIMSUIT ZOMBIES.
• I’m wondering if the girls worked out that “dancing” routine ahead of time, or if they realized, “Oh crap, we can’t just stand here, we gotta start doing something. Uh... just do whatever arm things we do while in water! Smile and nod, smile and nod!”
• Just look at those smooth moves, though! That’s Olympic 11th-place caliber dancing right there!
• I think Ryan and Colin’s laughing contains a teensy bit of schadenfreude, considering that both of them have suffered eye injuries over the show’s tenure. Wayne’s had this coming for a long time!

Four Word Rewind: Colin and Wayne are snowboarders who are performing crazy stunts when Wayne wipes out disastrously. Ryan is the fearless paramedic who arrives on his snowmobile, and Jeff is Wayne’s distraught girlfriend who skis to his aid.

• Oh, so this is a Whose Line thing too now? As part of this season’s ongoing quest to turn Whose Line into Trust Us With Your Life Version 2.0, this even uses the same pre-recorded disembodied voice as Trust Us! Is it Wayne? It sounds almost but not quite like Wayne, and if it is, I wonder how weird it is to take orders from one’s disembodied self! Whose Line’s probably an interesting show to do high...
• Isn’t it just hilarious when the performers play this game so completely safe that they don’t screw up once? Isn’t it just so funny that we’re getting a bunch of repetitions of one long syllable? Isn’t it funny? Isn’t it?? LAUGH, DAMN YOU!
• This game appears to be controlled by some sort of rudimentary comedy robot that is programmed to respond to every somewhat amusing action the improvisers take with a hearty REEEEWIND and then another FORWARD, so they effectively have to do it three times in a row. And there’s probably an egg timer attached that triggers the final BACK TO THE TOP. Fun fact: as a result of this behavior, most words in this scene actually are said exactly four times!
• When someone is giving mouth-to-mouth, it’s important to pump them like a fireplace bellow, as Colin so cleverly demonstrated. Especially if that person doesn’t even technically require mouth-to-mouth.
• Wayne and Colin are such incredible snowboarders that they can snowboard with one snowboard on each foot! Snowboard!

Living Sequinery: Ryan and Colin are two adventurers and they are hacking their way through a snake-infested jungle, and when night falls, they make “sparkly, pretty” camp. Not Very Special Star Guests Mary Killman and Mariya Koroleva provide the props that you probably shouldn’t actually interact with.

• This has what it, in theory, an unusual dynamic for Living Scenery: Ryan and Colin seem to go out of their way to avoid even minimal physical contact with the ladies. Except, that doesn’t actually take the scene in a different direction at all. They still crack all the usual filthy jokes, but they only follow through with them after much hesitation, if at all, so it’s just more awkward than anything. Maybe this is NOT an improv game that should be played with people you’re worried about offending!
• I think I can only recall one time in my memory that Ryan and Colin DIDN’T have to use the props in an outdoorsy activity. This game was already getting very stale, but now it’s starting to rot. There’s only so many times you can laugh at the exact same jokes. Ryan and Colin have two girls half their age in bathing suits and they’re trying not to grab onto any part of them that might get them arrested. Comedy!
• When you’ve got a terrible game, Colin’s reactions are usually the best part. I particularly like his brief “SHIT, I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH THIS” gesture when their fire curls up into a ball for no reason!
• Apparently being firewood means doing your best Thriller hands! Man, these girls really are zombies!
• I think every single round of Living Scenery ever has involved backpacks that are put on to much fanfare, worn for about five seconds, and then discarded, never to be seen again. They don’t ever seem to keep anything in them, but they sure are insistent on taking them! Because how else will Ryan keep his back so terribly out-of-shape?
• Remember kids, next time you’re in the wild, just play London Bridge if you ever encounter snakes! They love nursery rhyme games and will get too distracted to feast on you!
• After seeing Mary and Mariya attached in an attempt to convey length, let me just say that I’m glad this was a snake-infested jungle, and not a centipede-infested jungle. (I’m sorry.)

Horizontal Scene: Seductive housewife Jeff has invited hunky electrician Colin over to fix the light on her ceiling (IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN), when her husband, Wayne, comes home unexpectedly in the middle of a storm. The styles used include Twilight, kung-fu film, and disaster film.

• This was, well, Sideways Scene, but they actually managed to remember the scene all the way through the end this time! That must be a new record! Granted, by the time we’re in kung-fu, the scene has deteriorated to the point where everyone’s just blandly restating the original scenario Aisha gave them. “I am an electrician!”
• And the final style was obviously used to make sure the performers remembered that they were supposed to be in some sort of storm. What were they even going to do with that style anyway? Have a supposed “blackout” so they could find an excuse to do more not-cheating?
• Whose Line’s budget for this game only covered five props, which we’ll be seeing in varying combinations for years to come. This arrangement is conspicuously similar to the apartment in the previous episode; the only difference is the removal of the sawhorse fan. So, in the absence of a gag about dangling from said fan, we get a joke about dangling from the light instead.
• Apparently being in the same room as the electrician when your husband comes home counts as cheating now? Why isn’t country music all over THAT one?
• I’m sad to report the temporary disappearance of Creepy Blue Stanchion, but I’ll keep you posted in the coming weeks! Perhaps it felt that Mary and Mariya fulfilled the Creepiness Quota more than adequately on their own, so it decided to just stay home this week.
• While Jeff is soulless and conceited enough to be a good Bella, we’re totally missing out on his Keanu!Edward impression! Also, apparently now Bella can fly. Or make snow angels, whatever.

Women’s Duet-its: Wayne, Jeff, Colin, Ryan, and Pointlessly Special Star Guests Mary Killman and Mariya Koroleva are Olympic synchronized swimmers practicing their routine.

• I realize they wanted to milk the guests for all they were worth, but didn’t we already see a practice session in the first game they were in? It’s pretty much just an excuse to make Colin and Ryan do it, and for Wayne to try to sneak off only to get dragged back in. And I didn’t realize that synchronized swimming practice consisted mainly of jazz hands!
• Don’t you just love it when the style for the credit reading is a situation in which people wouldn’t ordinarily talk much?

GOD YOU GUYS JUST TELL US WHAT YOU THOUGHT OF THE EPISODE ALREADY ALRIGHT??

• This episode earns a resounding ‘meh’ for it’s bland games and equally bland guest stars!
• It’s not a great episode of Whose Line, but it’s a pretty damn okay episode of Trust Us With Your Life!

FINAL THOUGHTS

• If it’s possible for synchronized swimming to be funny, I think it might have already completed it’s quota in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. That’s pretty much all I could think about when I was watching that Duet in this episode, anyway! Because the swimmers looked to be about as good as Austin was.
• Did you know that professional synchronized swimmers apply Knox-brand gelatin to their hair, to hold it in place while they’re in the water? Isn’t that weird? Anyway, I seriously think this would’ve been funnier if it consisted of a bunch of unflavored gelatin jokes. Missed opportunity! Hopefully an episode in season two will feature the reanimated skeleton of Rose Knox as a special guest, giving the show a shot at unflavored gelatin redemption.

NEXT WEEK ON NEW WHOSE LINE: It's a gravy-soaked night of dry, flaky comedy with a side of grits, as special guest Wilson Bethel stops by to remind you that he stars in the CW's critically panned Hart of Dixie, and fourth-seater Gary Anthony Williams probably hopes you don't remember that he starred in the WB's critically panned Blue Collar TV!

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!

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!

New Whose Line! Episode 2: Glee Club It!

Featuring Wayne Brady, Heather Anne Campbell, Colin Mochrie, and Ryan Stiles!

Plus Special Star Guest Kevin McHale, from a holiday-themed Febreze commercial circa 2007!

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

Scenes from a Hat . . . AFTER DARK: It’s Wayne and Heather “vs.” Colin and Ryan as they act out: “Things you shouldn’t say right after sleeping with someone for the very first time”, “Lines you wouldn’t hear in a weight loss commercial”, “Things you can say about your favorite pair of shoes, but not about your partner”, and “Bad things to say when running for office”.

• “Okay, I guess we’re done, how would you like to pay for that?” Oh Ryan. For making so many jokes about prostitution, do you REALLY think that any hooker worth her salt would give up the goods without deciding on pricing beforehand? You had to have learned SOMETHING from Drew’s tenure on the show!
• Naturally, laughing at someone’s lackluster sexual performance, laughing at their tiny penis, or forcing yourself inside them because you thought they might be a lady would all be perfectly acceptable if you’ve already slept with them in the past. It’s only really awkward if you do it the very first time!
• It’s interesting how Wayne made the same “It’ll be better after the operation” joke during SFAH on the old WL, and the crowd reacted with the same laughter and applause expected. Maybe CW audiences are just more mature, further proven by watching the sophisticated and tasteful Perfect Score - Tuesday nights after Whose Line!
• Or maybe they found Wayne’s joke distasteful because they’re under the impression that Drew got a sex change operation and is now an attractive black woman, and they’re just like, “Dude! He’s right there!!” Whatever the case, I’m just curious about what this means for Ryan’s Deranged Crossdressing Pervert Guy that he played in, like, every other scene on Improv-a-Ganza. If they’re not okay with that anymore, then NOW how will he work through his many, many, MANY issues??
• It’s actually sort of jarring to see political jokes on the new Whose Line, when I’ve been so used to hearing Tony Slattery’s delightful jabs at a newly-deceased Richard Nixon! And amazingly, the Mitt Romney joke somehow seems MORE dated by today’s standards.
• Dayum, Mitt Romney, you totally just got STILESED! You’re not just gonna take a lighthearted crack on a quasi-popular TV improv comedy show lying down, are you? Huh? ARE YOU??
• The end game banter really cements the fact that I like Aisha as host, since she’s finally making it so that it’s not entirely small dick jokes. Small dick jokes have been done to here and back, and we don’t have nearly enough thinly-veiled queef jokes out there! Comedic equality means everybody’s uncomfortable!
• And seriously, how great are everyone’s reactions to that? Wayne seems genuinely shocked and perhaps even a little uncomfortable; Colin just looks confused; Ryan smiles because it reminds him of a Two and a Half Men joke, and that gig pays better than this one; and Heather, probably being a major squeaker herself, laughs knowingly.

We Need To Sing About Kevin: Wayne sings to Exceedingly Special Star Guest Kevin McHale, who stars on “television phenomenon hit show Glee”, in the style of the long-forgotten game, Gospel.

• Surely Kevin deserves credit for stepping up and actually singing after Wayne pretty much forces him into it, even if his singing didn’t really say “gospel” to me, so much as it said “country being played on a record player at the wrong speed, after one too many beers”. (Then again, ALL country music takes place after one too many beers.)
• Surely Wayne also deserves credit for suggesting such a thing; as he certainly let Kevin sing more than he allowed people like David Hasselhoff to - most likely for good reason.
• Fans of paying more attention to the seated performers than the ones actually playing the game will love this, because Heather and Colin’s sit-dancing is nothing short of adorable. Even Ryan manages to crack a smile and tap his foot a bit! Almost like a non-crazy person!
• This is almost making me wish they’d involve more interactive styles in the future. Something fun for the whole family, like headbanging or moshing!
• By the way, this game is just called Song Style now. It only took them 23 years to realize that they haven’t used multiple styles for this game in, well, 23 years. Who knows how much longer it’ll take for them to realize there’s only one Ryan Stile!

Glee Dub It!: High school choir teacher Ryan is helping Awkwardly Special Star Guest Kevin McHale rehearse for the lead role in a big singing competition, when Kevin’s archrival Wayne comes in to prove that he can perform better. Colin provides Kevin’s silky smooth voice.

• For the sake of leading off with positive positivity, I think any gave involving Colin singing is automatically hilarious, and this was no exception. He spends at least half of this game just letting off a loud, booming “MOOOOHHH”, and somehow it never stops being funny! Ever! It’s almost unfair!
• Kevin should be grateful to this show for teaching him the stylings of “Old Canadian” cow yodeling. Ryan may not think that draws in the crowds, but what does a guy like Ryan Stiles know about comedy anyway? 
• Kevin is actually pretty good at this, too! He actually bothers to pay attention to what Colin says, so he actually throws in some specific physical actions rather than just absentmindedly flapping his gums. Notice, for instance, the way he throws in an awkward wobble when Colin’s voice wavers, or the way he accompanies the aforementioned bovine bellowing by actually contorting his face like a cow. (What? Someone being compared to a cow non-insultingly? That’s practically unherd of!)
• The insulting is saved for when Rextel shows up and decides that he deserves the role of primadonna lead with an accent! The gauntlet is thrown for a “sing-off” and Kevin rightly adjusts his trousers to be sure he’ll be able to hit those high notes!
• It’s actually rather sweet how Ryan steps in to keep his good buddy Colin from passing out during the “sing-off” (which Wayne handily loses by making the rookie mistake of never bothering to sing), and also, to keep the studio audience and the folks at home and himself from having shattered eardrums.

Double-O-Sideways Scene: Colin is James Bond seducing Heather, a beautiful Russian spy, when acrobatic master criminal Wayne enters to attack them. The styles used include poltergeist film (or Poltergeist film?) and Cirque du Soleil.

• I have the same complaints against this game now that I had last year when it was on Trust Us. It’s only really novel the first time you see it, then all you can focus on is the way it goes nowhere and all the styles are designed to keep it that way, because everyone’s too busy crawling around a giant gym mat. By the time they get to Cirque du Soleil, they seem to have forgotten entirely that there’s a crude, minimalistic line drawing of a bed in this scene. It’s as though playing two improv games at once is sort of difficult!
• Physical comedy like this I think works better in live shows, rather than taped performances. Once you realize “Oh, it looks like Colin really IS doing a handstand, hooray!” you wonder what else you can really get out of it. It’s at least clear that Wayne lives to play this game, as he constantly makes the ceiling entrances his own.
• The one good thing about this game is the way Ryan’s forced to get out of his seat and sit on the stairs, like a particularly gangly bum. The only thing that would’ve made it better is if they’d let the camera awkwardly linger on him throughout the entire game instead!
• Colin appears to be playing the little-known French version of James Bond, if his accent is any indication. One would think that his Scottish heritage would come in handy for more than just Scotty or Braveheart, but no!
• “Excuse me, I’m working on kicking your butt!” ~dialogue that isn’t any of the Bond movies, but totally should be!

The Helping Hands That Smiles Back (Until You Bite Its Head Off): Ryan is a carny at the local fairground, hard as that may be to believe, and Grass-Regurgitatingly Special Star Guest Kevin McHale is a tourist visiting his stand, which is just an awkward mishmash of vaguely carnival-themed things. Colin provides Ryan’s hands. Well, and his forearms too.

• I like the way the props department decided that a “tourist” costume comprises a blue zip-up track jacket. Please tell me where was actually a debate about this before the taping, with different members of the show’s production crew arguing passionately about what shitty whitebread article of clothing most wholly conveys the essence of tourism. And please tell me that this season will get a DVD release, with commentaries, so I can listen to the cast and crew rehash said arguments for my amusement.
• I didn’t realize how much I missed seeing Ryan being made to eat something disgusting! He shovels in a (thankfully fake) goldfish that’s sure to give performers flashbacks to their fraternity hazing, then pulls a Mr. Burns on election night. (Like with the ibuprofen, I wonder how long it took them to pick up the half-chewed fish from the carpet?)
• The mere act of getting up to play Helping Hands has given Ryan a spontaneous sore throat! And it’s obvious that his sore throat is the only reason he didn’t make this character Kinda-Sorta-Italian. But do you suppose that Kevin had the forethought to be British specifically so this game would still reach the requisite Helping Hands Bad Accent Quota? Either way, it wasn’t enough but I appreciate the effort, guvna.
• I don’t know what surprised me more, the fact that Ryan’s popcorn trick actually worked, or the fact that Kevin had no qualms about catching and eating something that came from someone more than twice his age who just finished chewing up a plastic goldfish? Also, Ryan seemed to come down with some sort of ailment in the middle of the game, so hopefully Kevin doesn’t come down with some voice problem that really makes him sound like an old Canadian!
• So, what the hell was the “circus flatbread”? I’m as baffled as Ryan! If I had to guess, it looked kind of like a funnel cake, but made of foam rubber, and freshly steamrolled. Hopefully next time the props department will remember that Colin can and will pick up every single thing they put it out and shove it down Ryan’s esophagus. (Not that he really minds.) Now that they’ve solved the tourist uniform dilemma, there should be nothing standing in the way of them not trying to kill him, right?

Credits That Also Don’t Acknowledge Jonathan Coulton: Udder-Explodingly Special Star Guest Kevin McHale joins Wayne, Heather, Colin and Ryan comprising the members of a glee club preparing for a show.

• Ryan looks weirded out by the rest of them trying to sound like opera singers, while at the same time channeling his Show Stopping Number dance moves. It’s like he doesn’t know any other dance move besides “extend arm and leg at once and hope it looks good”.
• If you can make out what everyone’s saying when they’re all shouting incoherently at the same time, well, your ears are much better at being ears than my ears are, that’s for sure!
• When Ryan makes the obvious joke that Kevin, who plays a character in a wheelchair is suddenly walking around and standing, the others seem to react in horror rather than elation. Perhaps medical miracles are an underused genre in horror movies! (Insert your own Human Centipede joke here.)
• Can we cut it out with the credit readings that are blatant references to the thing the special guest is known for, that was surely already the subject of one or two games earlier on? Can we please? Can we please get rid of that so we don’t have to deal with Aisha making half-hearted winking jokes about it TWICE in each episode? It’s one of the very few things she does that I actually find grating, so please. Dan Patterson, I will give you a cookie if you just do this one small favor for me.

GOD JUST TELL US WHAT YOU REALLY THOUGHT OF THE EPISODE ALREADY ALRIGHT?

• A sizable improvement on the first episode. The guest star managed to show me not to judge an actor by his cover, and it all seemed to flow much better. My only real complaint with this episode is the choices of games, namely things like Sideways Scene that I think can be removed in favor of better things. And can we please get ourselves a Hoedown on this show? Laura Hall and Linda Taylor’s new hairstyles need more screen time!
• In a grand Whose Line tradition, yet another episode is firmly above average in my eyes primarily because Colin finds something really annoying and then does it a lot. That’s not to say there weren’t other games I like, as Scenes from a Hat and Helping Hands were good fun too, but... c’mon. MimimimimiMOOOOHHH, guys.

FINAL THOUGHTS

• Am I the only one who really thinks that Colin needs a better shirt color? Pink has never really been a good color for him, especially that salmony shade. It makes him look older and like his flesh is just sorta blending in with it. Put him in light blues or just make him suffer through those Hawaiian shirts again. That’ll get ya some cheap laughs!
• And why does Aisha get the most pathetic Whose Line-branded coffee cup ever? I swear they just printed out the logo on regular paper and taped it to a regular black mug! I know Whose Line’s main allure to networks is that it’s incredibly cheap to produce, but c’mon, guys. She does daytime TV, on a real network. She’s used to so much more in her televised drinkware. Spring for the extra twenty bucks to get her a real mug. You’ll thank me later.

NEXT WEEK ON NEW WHOSE LINE: Special Guest Star Candice Accola stops by to read embarrassing secrets from her Vampire Diaries, while Keegan Michael Key makes his debut as fourth-seater and searches for even more fruitful ways to humiliate himself!

New Whose Line! Episode 1: Rise from Your Low-Rated Grave!

Featuring Wayne Brady, Gary Anthony Williams, Colin Mochrie, and Ryan Stiles!

Plus Special Star Guest Lauren Cohan, from National Lampoon’s Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj!

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

Let’s Masticate a Date: Gary is the taco-munching bachelorette. Wayne is a shock jock on-air with his posse. Colin is a love robot who is recharged by kissing people. Ryan is Colin’s bickering parents who are trying to teach him the facts of life.

• Even in its latest incarnation, Whose Line is still producing completely organic and not at all contrived excuses to make men kiss each other! I’ll bet you probably didn’t even realize that’s what they were doing here, because this one’s particularly subtle.
• You know Whose Line is back when Colin’s kissed Ryan and Wayne within the first four minutes. Just the look on their faces lets you know this is a matter of course for them now. One can only hope “Ryan’s Lip Lube” is eventually available to the general public, presumably after the giraffe-testing controversy dies down.
• Do you think Gary felt disappointed at all that he wasn’t included? I’d like to think he had to cry himself to sleep that night, unable to cope with the despair of never getting a chance to taste Colin’s old, dry Canadian lips...
• Gary drowned his sorrows in gravy, no doubt.
• Ryan Stiles’ incredibly sensitive take on alternative lifestyles: “It’s not right to kiss other men. That’s what women are for!” (SO COME KISS YOUR MOMMY INSTEAD COLIN)
• I think it was a good move to start the episode off on a familiar game, especially one that we haven’t seen for a while! We didn’t have a lot of laughs but we had our guy-on-guy action, and isn’t that what Whose Line is all about? Personally, I’d like to see one where the kissing quirk isn’t Colin’s and goes to someone else, maybe even the fourth-seater. I’d wanna see who he/she goes for first.
• Yeah, this was a pretty standard and none-too-original LMAD setup, but nostalgia isn’t all bad. And at least they’ve scaled the quirks back from the elaborate character biographies they used in the last batch of Whose Line tapings. In fact, Gary’s guesses are far longer than the quirks themselves! Admittedly, I would like to see a performer - doesn’t necessarily have to be Ryan - try to portray one person with multiple personalities as well as a distinct second person who does not, and have it be perfectly clear who’s who.

The Walking Dub: Ryan and Extremely Special Star Guest Lauren Cohan are young lovers/zombie apocalypse survivors taking shelter in an abandoned nightclub, where they meet Lauren’s ex-boyfriend Wayne, a bartender who himself is slowly turning into a zombie. Colin provides Lauren’s voice (but she’s still free to do any kicking herself).

• When Ryan says he’s gonna grab his bow-and-arrow, I wonder if he didn’t actually mean a crossbow, which would perhaps be slightly more useful against zombies. These are the kinds of brainless mistakes that will ensure he’s one of the first to die/undie when the Totally Real Zombie Apocalypse comes! (As a White Mage, I’ll be just fine.)
• Lauren has obviously been so traumatized by her daily run-ins with zombies that her physical instincts kick in! It’s more of a “yo, personal space” foot-shove than a kick, though. C’mon, that’s even less dignified than Liu Kang’s whoopity-whooping bicycle kick.
• She dresses like the oldest daughter from an early 90s Miller-Boyett sitcom, and she shatters ribcages about like one too!
• It was strange to see Colin doing the voice for this game instead of Wayne, but this actually made me happy to see that they’re letting the roles be switched up. I’ve often wanting to see more of the performers in other settings to see how they do, like when Colin hosted exactly one game of Party Quirks on the US version.
• The more I hear jokes about how these guys are old people who will be dead people someday, like Colin’s, the more aware I become that someday they actually will be dead people, and those jokes will suddenly be incredibly awkward and uncomfortable. And they’d be about a thousand times more awkward still if it’s all caused by Ryan finally snapping and taking everyone else out, as he occasionally looks like he’s ready to. Enjoy the morbid, depressing dead person jokes while you can, is what I’m saying.

What’s in the Baggie in the Bag?: Wayne is a crime victim who has been knocked out and is just now regaining consciousness, as purse-toting police detectives Ryan and Colin look him over and examine the crime scene. Tonight’s purses, courtesy of audience members Katrina and Sherry, contain such exciting things as beverages, shoes, glasses (regular and sun), dental floss, and all the powerful black market narcotics you could ever want.

• “No pulling out a ham sandwich from your pocket.” Take that, Archie Hahn! (It’s doubly funny, because I imagine Archie Hahn primarily subsists on dry enriched-white-bread-and-pressed-ham-product sandwiches. And self-loathing.)
• Ryan giving Wayne several things to drink made me think he was gonna give him really stale coffee or smuggled-in booze. You couldn’t even pretend it was something interesting? Comedic opportunity wasted!
• “I’m a Part-Time Woman” sounds like a great title for a country song, though we’ll have to wait till the rednecks of America get a little more comfortable with the concept of crossdressing first. Seeing how undeniably stylish Ryan and Colin are with their purses can’t hurt, can it?
• Ryan has obviously missed his calling as a magician - look at how he managed to conjure up that shoe! All he needs is hot coffee poured on his hand and he’s ready for Vegas, baby.
• Laugh all you want at the idea of pigeon witnesses, but I think that was actually a plot element in Mr. Monk Goes Home Again. Well, I guess that pigeon was more a piece of evidence or a victim than a witness per se, but close enough. The point is, pigeons are endlessly useful to the astute investigator, so why not reward them with drugs?
• This was an interesting new game, but I honestly wonder if it was entirely thought through. I certainly hope the women were allowed to refuse having their bags brought up, though I think they did ask for volunteers. At first glance, it looked like the pills scattered on the floor by Ryan were actually ibuprofen, so they should probably be grateful nobody pulled out tampons!
• Don’t be silly, Tails. I’m sure they wouldn’t allow dangerous weaponry in the studio! My favorite thing about this game concept is that it’s a completely unique take on the idea of audience suggestions. I like it, even if it amounts to little more than Ryan and Colin digging through ladies’ personal possessions and pulling out things and nervously asking, “Is this funny? Anybody? No? Well, um, what about this?”

Senselessly Segregated (and Sexual) Scenes from a Hat: Gary and Wayne are forced to stand by Aisha on the left side of the stage while Ryan and Colin get the right side all to themselves, as the performers collectively act out: “Things you can say about your lunch, but not your girlfriend”, “Things you don’t want to hear just before moving in for a kiss”, and “Unlikely lines (read: group poses) from hair commercials.”

• How great is Colin’s moderately ashamed look to the audience after the doesn’t-spread-like-it-used-to joke? “Enjoy your reprehensible filth, assholes!”
• Somehow Gary manages to make every joke, even the sexual jokes, about the fact that he’s fat. Achievement unlocked?
• “Hey look, two weenies!” Thank you, Gary, I appreciate the implication that a one-weenied girlfriend would be a perfectly acceptable thing. This is exactly the sort of progressive social outlook you’d expect from a Blue Collar TV alum.
• I’m noticing that they finally seem to be allowed to get away with more in the sexual jokes, which is refreshing after the constant censorship of the old version. The suggestions did seem a bit plotted, but knowing this audience, they probably had a ton of those thought up. Something I’d like to see happen in the future is something that the old Whose Line tried to do for a while - switch out the hats! So much opportunity!
• In later episodes, I recall Drew explaining that the Aggressively Patriotic Hat had been supplemented with “some of our own” scenes, but here Aisha seemingly implies that the Subtly Colored Hat contains only audience suggestions. Either the audience is savvy by this point, like you said, or she’s lying to everyone like a lying liar. Alternately, they just made Dan Patterson sit in the audience with the commoners while he wrote them down, so it’s technically not a lie. (Is he still directly involved in this? Probably not, but it’s more fun to imagine that he is.)

Night of the Living Scenery: Ryan and Colin are two thrillseekers at a luxury Aspen resort, about to try out a variety of extreme sports. Wayne and Rib-Shatteringly Special Star Guest Lauren Cohan exist only to be objectified.

• TOBOGGANING IS THE MOST EXTREME MOTHERFUCKING SPORT IN THE WORLD BECAUSE SOMETIMES YOUR HANDS GET STUCK AND YOU HAVE TO BE PRETTY MOTHERFUCKING HARDCORE TO RISK THAT SHIT
• It’s completely obvious that Wayne really missed playing grab-ass with Colin, as he does it right out of the gate. I’m no tinhatter, but I seriously think that Wayne’s got it bad for that Canuck. They’ve even got more or less the same haircut, and only couples do that, am I right? And Colin goes ahead and picks him when he could have the pretty lady! That tease.
• While I didn’t care for this game - I never really like Living Scenery - I will say that I hope Colin and Wayne eventually confess their true feelings for each other, freeing themselves to express their love using the full spectrum of normal human sexual behavior, rather than continue to put adjustment dials on increasingly unlikely items. I mean, Wayne, if you think this is fun now, try experiencing a twistjob sans pants. You’ll never go back!

The Walking Dead-its: Colin and Nipple-Bruisingly Special Star Guest Lauren Cohan recite a list of people who have turned into zombies, as the others turn into zombies behind them, in what is surely a sly reference to the popular and long-running Resident Evil video game series.

• Why doesn’t Colin have an Executive Producer credit yet? Ryan and Wayne have them! Aisha Tyler will probably get one if this manages to run for more than one or two seasons! Why not Colin? It’s because he’s Canadian, isn’t it?
• I actually didn’t notice Ryan going off to fetch the rest of the audience to mob the stage, which led me to believe they came on their own and that’s sorta frightening. No wonder Colin gave such a girly, pants-to-be-darkened scream.
• See? I TOLD you it would be extra-awkward if Ryan Stiles ended up being responsible for everyone’s death - and surely leading an army of audience-zombies counts! It’s going to be VERY difficult to rewatch that round of Dubbing ever again . . . . . .

So, what about Aisha Tyler? Was she any good?

• I was pleasantly surprised to see how well she seemed to fit in! She’s bubbly, she has the air of knowing what she’s doing, and I was actually sorta disappointed they didn’t use her for any games, which I hope they do. She’s good at bantering with the performers and keeping it from becoming a sausagefest, though I will say she should probably tone down the “I’M HAVING SO MUCH FUN YOU GUYS” voice, since it comes off weird if she’s not careful. But I’m really liking her so far!
• Despite my early pessimism, I too have to admit that she’s actually a pretty great fit for Whose Line. She’s a calmingly confident presence with the ability, unique among this show’s hosts, to diffuse situations where the guys start leaning maybe a little too misogynistic. Which is neat! For whatever reason, Drew always came across as the sort of guy who objectified women. To a degree. Y’know. With money. Don’t make me come right about and be libelous, guys!

And what of the new fourth-seater, Gary Anthony Williams?

• He sorta strikes me as a one-trick pony, but it’s obvious he was having fun and that’s nice to see. He seems nice and he managed to give me some laughs, but I’d like him more if he didn’t make every joke about his obvious girth. Drew Carey he ain’t.
• Were you aware? Gary Anthony Williams loves food so much that he can’t go more than a sentence or two without mentioning some sort of food item, in as stomach-churning a fashion as possible! On the bright side, he seems like a nice enough guy and he appears to have enjoyed himself, so he’d be welcome to return someday. Maybe staple that stomach first, though.

And the episode as a whole?

• It wasn’t perfect and they have things they need to tweak, but it did my heart good to see the gang back together. I think they need to give more variety to the quirks and hat suggestions, and maybe try to figure out how to do the purse game without jeopardizing someone’s medication, but other than that this was a decent start and one that kept a lot of people watching through to the next show! And since ratings are kinda really important (please don’t let this die please PLEASE) I’d call it a success!
• This episode’s downfall is that it all feels very familiar. Of course, that’s entirely intentional - it just makes sense to start off with an episode that says, “The Whose Line is it Anyway you remember is back, and comfortingly the same as ever!” And, I’ll admit, despite the tiringness of some of the let’s-make-guys-do-sex-things-together suggestions, it worked for me, for tonight. It just feels nice to see Whose Line back...

Final thoughts?

• Seeing Whose Line back really made me realize just how much I missed it. The show itself had been off the air for 9 years and ABC Family stopped showing re-runs, and while my obsession has waned significantly from my adolescence, the show will always have a special place in my heart. It’s what shaped my sense of humor, it helped me through rough spots, and it led me to meet the best thing that’s ever happened to me, who also helped me write this. Y’know, the same stuff I spouted when I saw Whose Live. I’m glad to see it back.
• It’s funny that Aisha should mention Twitter in Wayne’s intro, because seriously guys, have you read this dude’s tweets? He types like someone’s mom! It’s no wonder he’s the only improviser they actually bothered to dress somewhat appealingly tonight - he brings Whose Line the MILF-y sex appeal that it so desperately wants and needs.

Animal Crossing: New Leaf ~ A Joint Review

Hello, loyal readers! Tails here.

And Jesseh. I’m also here, and I’m also essential to this, so don’t forget about me!

And we’re doing a joint review of Animal Crossing: New Leaf for the Nintendo 3DS!

This was actually my first Animal Crossing game, so I can’t say I’m really clear on what their, um, old leaf entailed, or whether this leaf is even really new by comparison, as opposed to simply refurbished.

That’s why two reviewers are better than one! I’ve played the previous instalments from the GameCube, DS and Wii, and I can tell you that...it’s not really that much of a new leaf. More of a “smoother leaf”, but I don’t think that’s as marketable a cliche.

But did you play the Japanese-only one(s) for the Nintendo 64? No? Then you can’t be TOO smug about it!

I suppose you’ve got me there!

See? I’m essential to this. I said I was, and now I’ve proven it.