TV Watch: In series TV, how much is too much?

This week we said good-bye to Burn Notice.

by Ken

* This week we said good-bye to USA's Burn Notice, after however-many seasons and however-many episodes. (If you care, you can look it up as well as I can. LATER: Okay, I looked it up: seven seasons -- of 12, 16, 16, 18, 18, 18, and 13 episodes.) My instinct is that it went on a couple of seasons too long, and this despite the creative team's diligent work at creating new and different hells for ex-CIA spy Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan) and his crew -- (ex-)girlfriend Fiona (Gabrielle Anwar), old pal Sam (Bruce Campbell), later-in-the-run add-on Jesse (Coby Bell), and of course Michael's indispensable mother Maddy (Sharon Gless) -- the plots kept coming out the same. And while the detailing was probably as fastidious as in seasons past, it just didn't matter to me. In these late seasons when I half-watched an episode, I didn't feel any need, as I used to, to go back and watch the whole thing properly.

It was certainly clever to make this season's "villiain," James (John Pyper-Ferguson), something closer to a good guy than most of the supposed good guys. That wasn't the change that registered for me, though, which was having Fiona really and truly trying to put Michael in the past and get on with her life. Now that was a change, perhaps because what kept the show going, and kept me watching, was the tight bonds among that core ensemble. In retrospect, the addition of Jesse in Season 4 was a masterstroke. It not only added a core character but added one with no past ties to the others, so that the bonding process with them became an intriguing process in its own right.

The show certainly never embarrassed itself, and had a number of compelling and original seasons, and maintained a certain viability to the end.

* Also this week, USA's Royal Pains, featuring Mark Feuerstein as newly minted Hamptons "concierge doctor" Hank Lawson, completed its fifth season (seasons of 12, 18, 16, 16, and 13 episodes), and here again you can't accuse the creative team of repeating itself. But their idea of "new" ideas has always veered to the preposterous, like the whole business of zillionaire Boris Kuester von Jurgens-Ratenicz and his on-again, off-again hereditary illness, made bearable by Campbell Scott's unflappable dignity in the role.

Again they've held on to an appealing "core" group, but additional supporting players have been shuttled in and out. I've been increasingly put off by the element that probably the producers and much of the audience considers one of the show's fascinations: the leering ogling of the Hamptons' richfolk. At the end of the show, we were told to watch for a new season in summer 2014. I can wait.

* Fawlty Towers racked up a total of 12 episodes in two seasons (1975 and 1979), three-plus years apart. John Cleese, who co-wrote all 12 episodes with Connie Booth, has explained that the reason there weren't more episodes is that they were so hard to write. I've always found it fascinating that in the first season they were still married, and in the second season they weren't.

If there's anyone who disagrees that those 12 episodes represent one of the greatest achievements in TV history, I'm guessing we wouldn't have much to talk about. By the way, I note in the Wikipedia article that BBC execs of the period have fallen over themselves saying that they didn't see anything funny in the scripts. Raise your hand if you're surprised.

* Recently I wrote with awe and delight about a DVD re-watch of seasons of Friday Night Lights, the amazing series focused on a small town in Texas and the role high school football played in its life, with career-defining performances from Kyle Chandler as coach Eric Taylor and Connie Britton as his wife, Tami -- and a large and superlative surrounding cast. The show was on NBC's chopping block after most every season but managed to make it to five seasons -- of 22, 15, 13, 13, and 13 episodes).

In a DVD audio commentary for one of the early seasons, executive producer Jason Katims and co-executive producer Jeffrey Reiner talk about the unusual way their show was produced: shooting enough material to produce an initial cut maybe a half-hour longer than most shows do even before they cut down to the 42 or so minutes of a network prime-time drama. The key was to provide material to create the best possible show in the editing process.

That has to be an expensive way to produce a show, and I assume has something to do with the network's paring down of the later seasons. But in a later audio commentary, I'm guessing for the Season 3 premiere, Katims and Reiner talk about how much they liked the 13-episode "arc." It did mean they couldn't do the kinds of individual-character digressions they'd done before, but it also meant that they could really plan out that "arc." Reiner wasn't around for them all, but the team produced three sensational 13-episode seasons.

* Speaking of the importance of the editing process, Six Feet Under creator-producer Alan Ball has said that it played a huge role in his show, which had three seasons of 13 episodes followed by two of 12 on HBO. As I recall, he credited the intensive editing experience with the capacity to transform a good episode into a great one.

One of these days I plan to rewatch SFU start to finish. My recollection is that there were a lot of great episodes.

* If you haven't seen E! Entertainment's hour-long tribute to Modern Family, obviously occasioned by the show's leap into syndication this fall, as it enters its fifth season of new episodes), you should try to. There's the obvious pleasure of tracing the history of a show in which all the important decisions, but there's also a fair amount of information that may surprise you, as it surprised me.

Notably, there's the information that once the show got into production, co-creators and co-showrunners Steven Levitan and Christopher Lloyd, both of whom were used to running shows on their own, found themselves stepping over each other during actual production, with too much time being consumed by it to produce its order of 24 episodes (which all four of its seasons to date have been -- it seems to me that 22 or 23 has become a more usual number). The solution they arrived at: They alternate episodes as showrunner.

Now 24 half-hours a year seems to me a brutal drain on a creative team's resources. Can you imagine John Cleese and Connie Booth, plus however many other writers they would have had to bring in, cranking out a few 24-episode seasons of Fawlty Towers? Modern Family seems to me the exception that proves the rule -- far from exhibiting signs of strain, the show seems to me if anything stronger than ever going into Season 5.

Obviously it matters that the show relies on a large cast of characters, which makes it that much less unlikely that any individual character is played out. It matters too that Levitan and Lloyd have assembled a team of outstanding writers, and that for story ideas they're drawing on their accumulated experience of family life. But I wonder if it doesn't also help that the co-showrunners, who I assume are both involved in the planning of all the episodes, each have on-the-ground responsibility for only 12 episodes.

I can't wait to start rewatching the older shows. I've written about my experience with The Big Bang Theory, which I like a lot in first run but didn't come to really appreciate until I began seeing the same episodes over and over and over in syndication. I had no idea (a) that they would hold up that well and (b) that I would keep discovering new cherishable things in each episode.


Is Modern Family going to hold up in syndication as well as, say, The Big Bang Theory?

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For a "Sunday Classics" fix anytime, visit the stand-alone "Sunday Classics with Ken."

And now for something completely different: Midnight calling, Monty Python-style

Michael Palin's Pole to Pole journey begins, logically enough, at the North Pole. But in the Pole to Pole book Michael explains that, while most of the journey took place between July and December 1991, no pilot could be found foolhardy enough to risk landing on the increasingly treacherous Arctic ice as late in the summer as July, and so the first leg of the journey, from the pole as far as Tromsø, Norway, was in fact carried out and filmed earlier, in May 1991.

by Ken

In my ongoing project of establishing myself as the world's most shameless Michael Palin toady (that link is where where we saw the start of of MP's third travel series, Full Circle, his journey around the Pacific Rim; but also look here and here), I've stumbled across an anecdote I can't resist sharing for the benefit of Monty Python fans.

The anecdote is from the early going of the second of MP's big serialized filmed journeys for BBC, Pole to Pole, which began at the North Pole and over the second half of 1991 was designed to work southward, as closely as possible along the 30th-degree East meridian, through Scandinavia, the Soviet Union, Turkey, and the whole length of Africa, and on to the South Pole. (That, I stress, was the design. The actuality proved different in a number of ways.) Pole to Pole had been preceded by a 1989 trip Around the World in 80 Days, which fell into Michael's life serendipitously (he was at best the BBC's third choice, though they didn't mention this to him at the time) but in fact fit a longtime life plan he had formulated, as we read in his now-published two volumes of diaries: Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years and Diaries 1980-1988: Halfway to Hollywood (apparently still not published in the U.S.), which takes us literally up to the day of his Around the World departure.

That plan, based on his considerable professional success in his 20s and early 30s, was to retire at 40 and devote himself to writing travel books -- that is, the kind of travel books he would want to read. Now I don't know if we could call what he's done these last 25-plus years (he turns 67 in May) "retirement," and he was already 45 by the time he boarded the English leg of the Orient Express heading round the world, but I think it's safe to say that he wound up doing something even better: inventing his own form of video travel series -- and, yes, publishing a book on each journey. And the books, based mostly on his diaries of those periods, complement rather than duplicate the actual series, as I'm in the process of discovering.

PALIN'S TRAVELS ON DVD

By the way, since we last talked about the DVD editions, when I noted that the U.K. Region 2 PAL edition of The Michael Palin Collection could be had for a fraction of the price of the U.S. edition, the availabilities have changed somewhat. There is now an American Michael Palin Collection (on 19 DVDs) that includes all the series through New Europe, offered by Amazon.com for a mere $224.99; other Amazon vendors are selling it for a bit under $192. However, in the U.K., the 19-CD Palin Collection has been superseded by a 20-CD set called Michael Palin's Travels, including in addition the 20-years-later sequel to Around the World, which Amazon.co.uk is selling at the moment for £46.98, or about $74. If you can play Region 2 PAL DVDs, this might be a time to spring into action.

Note: U.S. shoppers need to beware of the "bargain" combo package Amazon is currently offering: the 19-CD Palin Collection, which of course includes New Europe, plus a separate copy of New Europe, plus -- I swear this is what's listed and pictured -- a copy of the original Around the World (I presume what was intended was the new 20 Years Later show, but if they ship you the original series, don't be surprised; it's what they promised, after all) -- all for a combined price of (are you ready for this?) only $314.97! What did P. T. Barnum say about the frequency of suckers being born?

Oh yes, the anecdote! Sorry about the distraction -- er, distractions.

At this point in the Pole to Pole journey, Michael and his traveling crew have made their way down from the Arctic port city of Tromsø in the north of Norway, first farther up the northern coast in order to be able to get into Finland, then down the length of western Finland -- necessarily straying well to the west of the 30th East meridian -- to Helsinki. After arrival in the Finnish capital, and an afternoon and evening with no planned activities, and an opportunity to enjoy the luxuries of "civilization" after the rigors of the Scandinavian leg of the journey, Michael has gone to bed, hoping for the benefit of a full night's sleep.

At a quarter to midnight the telephone rings. It's a particularly insistent Finn who wants to talk to me for his university newspaper. In vain I point out the time, the fact that I was asleep, and the work I have to do tomorrow.

"I am down here in the lobby," he persists.

"I am doing an article, please, on John Cleese and I think you know him . . ."

That does it.

"I am in bed. I have four months' traveling ahead of me, and I have no time to talk about John Cleese!"

Somewhat surprisingly, this seems to amuse my caller greatly, and only then do I recognize in the cackle of non-Finnish laughter the unmistakable tones of a tall fellow Python.

"I just rang to see how you were getting on," wheezes John cheerfully . . . and I remember how much he enjoyed doing Scandinavian accents.

A younger Mr. Palin and Mr. Cleese find themselves famously unable to reach agreement as to whether the "Norwegian blue" parrot under examination is dead or merely "resting" ("tired and shagged out") -- or perhaps "pining for the fjords"? (Note: We saw a complete version of the legendary Parrot Sketch here. We also watched here as Mr. Cleese, now as Basil Fawlty, tried to cope with the profoundly hard-of-hearing Mrs. Richards, who you'll recall refused to turn her hearing aid on because she didn't want to run the battery down -- in perhaps the same way, I was trying to suggest, that so many Americans prefer not to turn their brains on.)

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Too cheap for HDTV? A multi-region DVD player lets you watch Michael Palin for a song and thank gawd he's not Sarah P

With a Palin bonus: The parrot sketch!

A view from Sarah Palin's porch? No, it's a satellite image of Big Diomede and Little Diomede islands in the Bering Strait between the easternmost tip of Asia (Siberian Russia) and the westernmost tip of North America (Alaska).

"I know I'm here for only a very short time, but I hope I'll learn something."

-- Michael Palin, to Sokun, the abbot of the Zen Buddhist temple of Buttsuji in southern Japan, in episode 2 of Full Circle, the "good" Palin's 1995-96 filmed journey counterclockwise around the Pacific Rim

by Ken

Full Circle actually begins in Alaska, on the U.S. island of Little Diomede, in the Bering Strait, opposite the uninhabited Russian island of Big Diomede, the famous closest point between our two countries. On the evidence of the scenes shot on Little Diomede, and then in Nome, and on the still-very-Russian Kodiak Island, I get the distinct impression that Michael Palin knows more about Alaska than the Other Palin (no relation, as he has been at pains to point out).

Having just watched this episode for the first time in many years, I was reminded that a subliminal connection between the Palins has been operative in my brain since the Unfortunate Palin came to my attention.

As a longtime geography buff -- it's one of the things that Howie and I have always had in common, though it's led him to do all sorts of actual traveling and me not so much -- I of course knew the names and geographical significance of the two Diomedes. I never expected to see them, though, or even to come as close to seeing them as I now have in Full Circle. I not only doubt that Princess Sarah has come this close, but doubt that she has the slightest interesting in doing so. It was, I think, her very lack of interest in anything outside the orbit of her sequestered brain, that led her to make such a grotesque hash of the actual physical relationship between Alaska and Russia. She barely knows where Alaska is, and probably can't imagine why anyone would even want to know where, uh, that other place is.

The word I'm circling around is "curiosity," and of course it's one of the defining characteristics of Michael Palin's travels. His curiosity may not be exactly infinite, but it's quite large enough to encompass any people and places his travels take him to. I'm quite sure, for example, that at least as of the time of his visit to Little Diomede and Nome, he knew more about the people who would one day be Governor Palin's constituents than she ever did.

Michael Palin is also the most congenial of traveling companions (it's hard to imagine anyone enjoying the company of Princess Sarah except desexed men who enjoy the fantasy that she might at some point jump their desiccated bones), and one of the funnier. In the second episode of Full Circle, as he makes his labyrinthine way, suitcase in tow, to his meeting with the abbot of the temple of Buttsuji, he notes the effect on his awareness of how much he's traveling with, reflecting, "By the time I climb yet another flight of stairs, I'm ready to renounce all worldly goods, beginning with my suitcase."

Of all Palin's TV journeys, Full Circle is the one that, until now, I had seen most of. Now, however, I've just knocked off his Around the World in 80 Days and Pole to Pole (a trip intended to take him from the North Pole to the South Pole along the 30th-degree east longitude meridian, before a couple of rather large detours, one large and the other massive). After years of coveting, I've now got my very own copy of The Michael Palin Collection, which brings together, in addition to the three titles already mentioned, a pair of Great Railway Journeys, Hemingway Adventure, Sahara, and Himalaya. The more recent New Europe I bought separately.

What set me to coveting the Palin travel set, beyond how much I'd liked the parts I'd seen and how much I hadn't seen, was the existence of this set, at an incredibly modest price -- in the U.K. Back when I started scouting this stuff, most of the Palin travel films weren't even available in the U.S. The problem with buying them from the U.K., of course, is that they're in PAL and have incompatible regional coding.

I see now that the Palin Collection is actually available in the U.S., for something like $225. Back in the day, who knows? I might have paid it. In fact, I paid about $70, and about another $17 for New Europe. What I did was, finally, after years of coveting, to buy one of those increasing number of DVD players that play all TV systems and all regional codes.

You can get them incredibly cheap, but with electronic equipment I'm often almost as afraid to pay too little as too much -- there's an awful lot of crap being sold. In the end, I was pleasantly surprised to find a model as tempting as my new Pioneer DV610AV-S, which even plays SACDs, for $100 including shipping. (Just to be clear, this is a model that's not intended for the U.S. market, and is presumably not warranted by Pioneer. But I trusted that the vendor would back up the merchandise, and in fact it has worked perfectly out of the box.)
Naturally, once I committed to ordering the multi-region DVD player, I had to have something to play on it, which in my mind amounted to an "all systems go" for placing a whopping order with Amazon.co.uk -- starting, of course, with the Michael Palin Collection. But there was a ton of other stuff that either isn't available here or is available there at a fraction of the U.S. price.

Like the complete Inspector Morse mysteries, with a price differential, as I recall, similar to that of the Palin set. And there were the great Le Carré Smiley miniseries, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley's People. Tinker Tailor was actually the first thing I watched. (I own bootleg VHS dubs of both series in a PAL-to-NTSC conversion so appalling as to be unwatchable -- but I watched them, a bunch of times.) And there were a couple of BBC Dickens minseries, and the original Brideshead Revisited, the British Queer As Folk, and the remake of The Forsyte Saga (I'm still scouting U.S. vs. U.K. editions of the original series), and the complete Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister (which I've got on VHS, but do I watch? and it was so cheap!).

I've already got a shopping basket (in the U.K. it's a "basket" rather than a "cart") brimful of more goodies: seasons 1-3 of the Inspector Lewis mysteries, a tribute to the Two Fat Ladies, the complete Kavanagh Q.C. and Hustle and The Office (which I like much less than the American version, but it's cheap, and maybe it'll grow on me), a set of three BBC Oscar Wilde films (again too cheap to resist), and a preposterously cheap collection of 14 Hitchcock films. Of course the prices keep changing while the stuff is in my basket, but I think of it as like playing the stock market, except with no money at risk. Every time I log in to see my shopping basket, I get an announcement of prices that have changed, usually a matter of 20p or 30p. I've also had price drops of £5 to £7; those were my good days in the market. Not long ago some item -- I think it was one of the many versions of the "complete" Monty Python -- went up £5, and I chucked it right out of the basket -- I still don't know which of the many U.S. and U.K. editions to buy anyway.

I realize that if I were allocating my televisual dollars (or pounds) wisely, I would be saving up for a nice new HD TV. But I'm OK with my present TVs, including the 19-inch Sharp in the kitchen that I bought used in the early '70s from the neighbor of a friend, and was sure I'd overpaid for -- except that the damned thing is still working OK 35 years later, and refuses to stop working.

I don't really have either the asking price or the proper space for the kind of HD set I'd like. I guess I finally decided that the money would be better spent on stuff I actually watch. For what it's worth, my Pioneer DVD player up-converts to however many lines the righteous folk with HD sets enjoy. When funds permit, I'll probably buy another multi-region DVD player for my other "major" TV, so I can watch the PAL DVDs on either.

Meanwhile I continue studying my financial reports. The British complete Rumpole isn't necessarily cheaper than the American, but it reportedly has subtitles, whereas the American edition apparently doesn't -- and for British TV in particular I find they come in increasingly handy. Hmm, a quandary. Maybe I should just get back to Full Circle. Michael was headed for a ferry from Japan to Korea.


A MICHAEL PALIN BONUS: "PINING FOR THE
FJORDS"? YES, IT'S THE DEAD PARROT SKETCH

With the great John Cleese, of course (and brief appearances by Terry Jones and Graham Chapman):

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John Cleese Rants: It's Harder To Laugh Now

-by NOAH

This morning, my wife sent me an interview, by Logan Hill, with a true comic genius, John Cleese. It’s in the new issue of New York Magazine.

Cleese is in New York to, among other things, promote the October 16th reunion of Monty Python and his newly re-mastered Fawlty Towers DVD setand is currently working on a new project entitled “Why There Is No Hope.” That’s a subject I often think about, especially when I hear the vomitous spew that routinely gushes forth from the mouths of politicians, corporate sleazebags and other suit wearers. I’ve never met Cleese, but I have always been a huge fan, a fan of his contempt for nonsense, upper class twits and their pathetic, gullible defenders, and general idiocy and human foibles. The interview gives a nice sampling from the mind of John Cleese. He speaks of his ex-wife, who now gets a yearly seven figure sum from him as “the special love child of Bernie Madoff and Heather Mills.” Along the way, he jabs at hotels and the profits above quality model that American business now seems to be based on, and, of course, those dreaded Republicans. Regarding Sean Hannity, Cleese offers:

What you begin to see is how funny life is. You turn Sean Hannity on and there is wall-to-wall insanity. They have absolutely no idea what clowns they are.

That nails it for me, because that’s exactly what I see when I put on Hannity or any of the other usual suspects, or hear the latest lunacy from the likes of Michele Bachmann or this week’s prize winner Rep. Louie Gohmert, who likened being gay with necrophilia and bestiality publicly, with no sense of shame or irony, right on the floor of Congress, in front of cameras no less.

I think we all go through life thinking, at times, wouldn’t it be great if…

Life often seems like satire itself to me. For several years now, one of my wouldn’t-it-be-great-ifs has been, if I could add a laugh track from some old 1950s sitcoms -- really, didn’t they all use the same one? -- to all of FOX. I don’t mean just on my TV, but on everyone's! It would put FOX’s programming in proper context. I’d even add periodic circus music and add in clips of tricycling chimps in party hats and juggling clowns too. Only then would people see what a bizarrely comic genius that Roger Ailes guy truly is. Cleese kinda already sees it, but Cleese, unlike Ailes, means to be funny for real, and his humor has deeper meaning than most. It is often said that great comedy comes from psychic pain, and Cleese is proof positive. I was heartened by his comment on Sean Hannity and his vicious but fair take on other things Repug. As he says, “It would be funny if it weren’t so dangerous.” Clearly, the man has no tolerance for clowns and buffoons.

When asked, “As politics gets more childish, does satire get harder for you?,” Cleese responds with deductive reasoning at its best.

Yes. Take Sarah Palin-- so many Republicans love her. I suddenly realized that in order to actually understand that someone is not very bright -- or to be brutal, that they’re rather stupid -- you really have to be more intelligent than them. Most Republicans aren’t smarter than Sarah Palin. It’s true.

My laugh track idea would definitely benefit Hannity’s loathsome show. There are times when I marvel at his inability to construct a context for his sentences. He has great trouble putting his thoughts together. He’s just in such a hurry to utter whatever talking point that Drudge or Frank Luntz have programmed him and his ilk with on a given day that he just spits it out and it just lies there to be eagerly lapped up by the really lost causes that walk among us. So, I muse, does he know exactly what he is doing, just playing on the fools and tools in his audience for megabucks? Is the reason that he can’t string two sentences together without getting flustered or flubbing it because, either consciously or unconsciously, he knows he’s flat out wrong? Or is he just the thuggishly stupid man that he appears to be?

Almost buried in the interview is a real pearl. When discussing one of his most famous characters, Basil Fawlty, Cleese talks about how Basil always behaves badly out of fear. In Basil’s case, it’s his drill sergeant of a wife, the perfectly named Sybil.

Basil’s awful. He’s a terrible, shallow creature, completely obsessed with class. Ah, but he is funny. We laugh at Basil because, although he behaves appallingly to other people, a lot of the time it’s because of his fear that Sybil will get very angry. We also feel sorry for him. When people behave badly out of fear, it’s much funnier than if they were just behaving badly because that’s their default mode.

We live in scary and farcical times. It seems that everyone is under pressure of one sort or another, some self-made, some not. Cleese’s comments have an eerie familiarity. Interviewer Logan Hill then asks,

“And we recognize our own worst impulses in him?”

Oh, yes. I think that there’s an enormous number of people in England who, given enough stress, behave very much as Basil does. That marvelous book Emotional Intelligenceby Daniel Goleman has this tremendous phrase: “Stress makes you stupid.” So the more stress you put on the protagonist in the farce, the stupider he gets. That’s one of the delights of it. They make worse and worse mistakes.

The mistakes keep coming in our world, tsunamis of them, and they are coming more and more often. There are plenty of such people here in the good ol’ USA too, Mr. Cleese. They may be named Chuck Grasshole and spew about offing grandma, or they may be named Max Baucus, stuffing his pockets with cash. Neither political party is immune to the fear, and they turn their fear upon us. Some people fear the unknown, and some people fear not being re-elected and thus losing their place at the corporate trough.

Some people can’t make sense of an America that elected Barack Obama. They fear his culture. They fear that his religion is different. They just fear. Period. “Stress makes you stupid.” Some make millions, nightly diagramming incoherent conspiracies on a blackboard for millions of fearful and gullible TV viewers. When I was a little kid, there was a guy on TV named Jack Barry. One of the features of his show was that kids could buy a special sheet of see-thru plastic that would adhere to the screen so that you could faithfully copy or embellish whatever he drew up that day for us impressionable minds. It was called Winky Dink. Man, that was power, but, Jack Barry never abused it (although, he did later get caught up in a quiz show scandal). Then again, Barry never made millions or had an evil piece of crap named Roger Ailes backing him.

When asked about a recent incident, the F-Bomb on Saturday Night Live, Cleese goes on to say,

I think the older you get the more you begin to realize what a madhouse we live in. People get upset about things that don’t matter at all and people don’t really get upset at all about things that matter a lot. You’ve got a rotten, rickety old legal system that anyone with money can manipulate -- and nobody goes around saying this; they go around worrying that somebody said "fuck." I mean, frankly, it’s pathetic and so completely half-witted that you give up any expectation of any kind of rational behavior of any kind, in any way, as you get older. It’s a madhouse. There are small pockets of sanity, but the rest of it is irretrievably second-rate at best. So when these things come along now, I just shrug.

It can be depressing. But you have to let go of the idea that this can ever be a decent and rational place. I already have quite a lot of material for a new show I will call Why There Is No Hope. I’ve tried it out. A friend said it was fascinating afterwards because the more I destroyed people’s hope that this could ever be, in any way, a rational planet, the more they laughed.

Lest you think that Cleese has given up all hope, he offers hope for President Obama, while also offering a succinct and logical explanation for the unseemly behavior of contemporary Republican politicians.

If there is no hope, you must not trust Obama.

No, I have real hope for Obama, because I think without the slightest doubt he is operating from a considerably higher level of mental health than we’re used to in our politicians. I think that’s what frightens the shit out of Republicans. Because if you put very mad people in a room with very sane people the mad people start feeling madder, do you see what I mean? Whereas, if you put mad people in together -- if you put the Gestapo in together -- they’re all sort of reinforcing each other’s madness and everyone’s happy.

To me, the interview is one nail hit squarely on the head after another. The mind slaves of the true elitists will grumble that Cleese is an elitist. Tough. But, let’s hope he’s right about Obama. I do agree about the President’s mental health. My little mental jury is still out on the rest, but somewhat hopeful.

Joe The Plumber-- The Movie

Ken and I haven't done much analysis of the Joe The Plumber phenomena. Fortunately John Cleese has-- and with a Bill O'Reilly bonus poem: