A whacking great waffle about Whose Line.
Mar. 7th, 2008 12:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
whathoA week or two ago I got hold of the Whose Line is it Anyway? seasons 1 and 2 DVDs. They are my joy and delight. I am primarily loving them very much. I love the variety of people appearing in it in the early days - Sandi! Paul! Griff! Other people! - and there are sometimes people I've never heard of (like Archie Hahn with his enormously upsetting hair), but occasionally they're all right as well. I love it. I love that Clive looks young and fluffy. I love that they do 'Authors'. I love Paul Merton like you probably wouldn't believe. I love that he did the best rap in the entire world that went 'Last night I had some cake ... no, no, start again', and it was supposed to be about hangovers, and patently people being slightly bad at the games and knowing so is much funnier than their being slick and confident. I don't love the rap game. I do love the march game. I love that Stephen Fry doesn't even attempt to sing. I love that it's the early days and it's all faintly idyllic. I love that when they were the only two left at the back during the Christmas special, Greg Proops left his chair and went to sit in one of the vacant chairs next to Tony Slattery. I love Peter Cook. I love that Mike McShane spanked Tony slightly with a big rainbow-coloured fan.
Also I've been reading a Whose Line wiki thing that makes me very cross. It says things along the lines of 'Ryan Stiles is far and away the best performer' and 'Caroline Quentin is one of a very few female performers to hold her own alongside the men', which, you know, bog off - not that Caroline isn't lovely and brilliant and funny, but so are Josie and Sandi and so would plenty of other women be if they could be bothered to find them and just bog off again. And it says that the programme really found its stride when it settled on a fixed two or three performers with a limited number of guests, which I very much disagree with. That's basically saying that it needed to narrow itself down to the Ryan and Colin show and do away with the variety. And that the programme was better after people like Paul Merton and Jim Sweeney and Sandi Toksvig had stopped appearing in it. And that's just a very silly thing to say. Oh, Ryan Stiles made me fairly exceptionally annoyed during a props game where Tony Slattery just pipped him to a joke and he humphed around and looked put out, because woe betide he should get less than 200% more screen time than another performer. Never mind. I don't mean to say he doesn't make me laugh sometimes, because he does, quite a bit, but I don't much like that he's so widely accepted as the best thing in the programme, because he's sort of not. There we go.
I've lately taken a diversion into the 'on demand' episodes, though those turn out only to be seasons 5-8 - exactly what Dave's been showing for the last two months. But still. Probably soon I should go back to seasons 1 and 2 and address my issues with John Sessions. I was wondering whether or not I'd had issues with John Sessions. I'd read about how a lot of viewers do because he can come across as quite smug and show-offy, but I'd seen Tony Slattery described as smug as well and I entirely fail to see how that applies. Seething with distracting mannerisms sometimes, but I don't see where smugness comes into it. But sadly I think I do with John Sessions. I'd only previously seen him in QI, where he did sometimes tend to recite lists of facts instead of, you know, making jokes, but I didn't find it horrendously irritating. He made me laugh fairly. But there is something hugely vexing about him in Whose Line. I don't care about the 'too highbrow' gubbins, because that isn't the point. I care that sometimes he's just not very funny. He's capable of being extremely funny but he does sometimes sacrifice that at the expense of showcasing his literary knowledge. And his literary knowledge could be a massively useful tool if he was more selective about it, but he goes for obscurity when it's not necessarily the most humorous option. And that's what I don't like. Also his hogging the stage like a beast.
I love nearly everything else though. That's more or less all. I want Willie Rushton to have been in it, but that's a pretty hopeless thing to want from all angles. Everything else is fairly fine. Good.
I can't explain how many other things I ought to be doing.
Also I've been reading a Whose Line wiki thing that makes me very cross. It says things along the lines of 'Ryan Stiles is far and away the best performer' and 'Caroline Quentin is one of a very few female performers to hold her own alongside the men', which, you know, bog off - not that Caroline isn't lovely and brilliant and funny, but so are Josie and Sandi and so would plenty of other women be if they could be bothered to find them and just bog off again. And it says that the programme really found its stride when it settled on a fixed two or three performers with a limited number of guests, which I very much disagree with. That's basically saying that it needed to narrow itself down to the Ryan and Colin show and do away with the variety. And that the programme was better after people like Paul Merton and Jim Sweeney and Sandi Toksvig had stopped appearing in it. And that's just a very silly thing to say. Oh, Ryan Stiles made me fairly exceptionally annoyed during a props game where Tony Slattery just pipped him to a joke and he humphed around and looked put out, because woe betide he should get less than 200% more screen time than another performer. Never mind. I don't mean to say he doesn't make me laugh sometimes, because he does, quite a bit, but I don't much like that he's so widely accepted as the best thing in the programme, because he's sort of not. There we go.
I've lately taken a diversion into the 'on demand' episodes, though those turn out only to be seasons 5-8 - exactly what Dave's been showing for the last two months. But still. Probably soon I should go back to seasons 1 and 2 and address my issues with John Sessions. I was wondering whether or not I'd had issues with John Sessions. I'd read about how a lot of viewers do because he can come across as quite smug and show-offy, but I'd seen Tony Slattery described as smug as well and I entirely fail to see how that applies. Seething with distracting mannerisms sometimes, but I don't see where smugness comes into it. But sadly I think I do with John Sessions. I'd only previously seen him in QI, where he did sometimes tend to recite lists of facts instead of, you know, making jokes, but I didn't find it horrendously irritating. He made me laugh fairly. But there is something hugely vexing about him in Whose Line. I don't care about the 'too highbrow' gubbins, because that isn't the point. I care that sometimes he's just not very funny. He's capable of being extremely funny but he does sometimes sacrifice that at the expense of showcasing his literary knowledge. And his literary knowledge could be a massively useful tool if he was more selective about it, but he goes for obscurity when it's not necessarily the most humorous option. And that's what I don't like. Also his hogging the stage like a beast.
I love nearly everything else though. That's more or less all. I want Willie Rushton to have been in it, but that's a pretty hopeless thing to want from all angles. Everything else is fairly fine. Good.
I can't explain how many other things I ought to be doing.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-07 02:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-07 03:14 pm (UTC)Don't read the wiki thing. It's all a bit painfully wrong.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-07 03:38 pm (UTC)Paul McCartney is not singing in my ear. You have won a bit there. I like that even though Paul McCartney has come to see you and sing for you you are still just messing about on livejournal and not actually giving him your attention or anything. You're so cool like.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-07 03:56 pm (UTC)Paul McCartney's gone away. My blaseness backfired.