Cast: Greg Proops, Wayne Brady, Colin Mochrie, Ryan Stiles, and Drew Carey

Weird Newscasters: Greg (anchor); Colin = talking parrot (co-anchor); Wayne = aggressive old drunk who used to do the sports (sports); Ryan = Siegfried and Roy whose act is going dangerously wrong (weather)
I was fascinated by the quirk readings at the beginning of this game. Sometimes, the cast members don't respond after hearing the quirks, but tonight everyone seemed to be responding. And not to just their own quirks. Greg's reaction to Colin's parrot quirk almost mirrored Colin's response. Both seemed amused and dismayed. Greg laughed out loud to Ryan's Siegfried and Roy, while both Ryan and Colin thought the "dangerously wrong part" was amusing. Once the game got underway in earnest, Greg slipped easily into his host role announcing himself as "Sickuv Survivor". A nice change from his usual sexually oriented names. But I was disappointed to hear Greg recycle an old joke that wasn't even originally his. I knew the punch line to the "Psychic convention canceled" because I had read the joke in a magazine several years ago. Okay. Maybe they weren't exactly the same. The joke I read was about the bankruptcy of the Psychic Friends Network — shouldn't they have seen this coming? But the two are similar enough that I easily guessed Greg's "Due to unforeseen circumstances" was next. I don't mind Greg recycling jokes. I just expected a better caliber of joke, that's all. I wasn't disappointed for long, though, because I enjoyed his Shakespeare plays written by a guy named Skip joke and the excellently delivered line, "You don't know him."

Moving on to sports, Wayne seemed to break up at himself early into his routine. After the game, Drew said that Wayne seemed to be the child of Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor. I'll agree with the Bill Cosby part. But I never saw the Pryor in Wayne's performance. (Admittedly, I'm not an expert on Pryor.) For a moment, I thought Wayne was stuck and couldn't figure out where to go with his performance. So I was impressed when Wayne used the parrot reference to get him out of the jam. And then finally falling off the stage as a way to end his segment was nice. (Did you notice the headphones on the seat next to Drew's desk? Possibly from the still never seen action replay game.) Finally, we get to Ryan's Siegfried AND Roy. Starting with Roy, Ryan corrected Greg for misnaming him, "Ryan? Who is this Ryan?" Then Ryan abruptly shifted into Siegfried and nearly lost his composure. For some reason, Ryan found playing both roles amusing and almost started laughing. I don't know if Colin started playing into the bit as a way of focusing Ryan, but it had that effect. Once Colin had joined the skit, Ryan was certainly going to take advantage of him. Sticking his head into Colin's mouth. (I'm not sure Colin was expecting that.) Then feeding Colin to the lions to distract them from himself. (Or themselves — since Ryan was both Siegfried AND Roy.) Unfortunately, Colin was funnier than Ryan was expecting, and once again, Ryan nearly lost his composure. Ryan managed to hang in long enough to bring Colin back to life as part of magic act, but just barely. On the whole, not one of Ryan's better attempts at maintaining a straight face.

There was some nice after game banter between Drew and Wayne as they traded Bill Cosby impersonations. With Ryan reminding Drew that there was still a show going on at the end. I personally enjoy these in between bits because they contribute to the illusion that I'm actually there in the studio. So I don't mind them. But if Colin's talking parrot bit was edited out in order to make more time for this banter, then my only comment to that is: WRONG DECISION; BIG TIME.

Two Line Vocabulary: Ryan = the President who has just been caught with a woman; Colin = President's female press secretary; Greg = President's advisor
The debut of a new game. The first reaction we see to Drew announcing the new game is all four players cringing or bent over in laughter. It reminded me a lot of the introduction to If You Know What I Mean where the players obviously don't enjoy playing the game. But on reflection, I honestly don't think they were responding to the announcement of the 2 Line Vocabulary game itself. I think we saw the leftover from some other game or banter. My reasoning for this is based on Wayne's reaction. Since he didn't play the game, there was no reason for him to react as strongly as he did the game's announcement. Of course, that's total speculation on my part, and I could very easily be wrong. One thing I'm sure of though is that Greg had to urge Colin and Ryan down with a "Come on boys" while Drew was talking.

In this new game, two players can only say 1 of 2 sentences throughout the game. The third player can say whatever he wants to say. In this playing, Ryan could only say "God, I love you" or "How does that feel?" Colin could only say "I didn't know you had one of those" or "That's completely disgusting!" Greg had the unlimited vocabulary. The player with the unlimited vocabulary should be the one to control the scene, I think. And with such a verbal player as Greg is, I expected this to go really well. So I was surprised that Greg seemed to be lost in the scene. Rather than leading it as I expected, he seemed to spend most of the time reacting. Principally to Ryan who was the dominant player. Unfortunately, with only 2 lines to say, Ryan couldn't do much in the way of promoting the scene narrative, and that's where the game fell flat, I felt. I thought the drive to move the scene forward should have come from Greg, and it just wasn't there. But I was impressed with all the different nuances Ryan managed to get into his 2 sentences. (I was also impressed that when he shook the beer, Ryan mimed putting his thumb over the hole in the can to keep the beer from coming out. Nice, subtle, realistic touch.) I haven't mentioned Colin too much. Colin seemed to struggle to get into the scene at all. Only succeeding a couple of times, I thought. Reacting to Ryan's crying — "That's disgusting!" — was one of the most successful.

Despite the problems with this playing, I'm not ready to dismiss this game. I think there's potential here. Right now, I'm inclined to believe that the playing suffered either from badly assigned roles and sentences or new game kinks. Perhaps both. I can envision successful playings where the person with the unlimited vocabulary guides the scene and sets up the other players to come in. I just don't think the game worked like that this time. One final thing — unrelated to all the other comments about this game. I always like to try and guess the actual taping order of the games based on references — visual or verbal. It's just a little game I play. This game was taped sometime after Party Quirks was played. You can see Ryan's Party Quirks card lying on the floor behind his chair. The other quirk cards are on the tables, but Ryan's card on the floor is the easiest to see.

Party Quirks: Greg = host; Wayne = determined little old lady who likes tight butts; Colin = increasingly violent bouncer clearing the bar at closing time; Ryan = the third of each animal species trying to talk its way onto Noah's ark
Unusually for him, Greg actually looked back at the players' to see their expressions while they were reading the cards at the beginning. I guess he was reacting to the audience's reaction to the players' reactions to their quirks. (That sounded like a mathematical recursion problem, didn't it?) And I guess Greg must have planned on going to that canceled psychic convention because he went to answer the doorbell before Drew actually rang it. Wayne's little old lady with the tight butt fascination was probably the most amusing quirk of the three. I certainly think Greg got more fun out of this one than any of the others, anyway. I maintain that a straight man role like Party Quirk host is extremely difficult and requires a good comedic sense and a good stage presence in order to be successful. And I think Greg aptly demonstrated both here as he took Wayne's quirk and built it into something even funnier by playing it up. (And if you still aren't sure of what I'm getting at, compare Kathy Greenwood's reaction to Colin's similar butt sandwich quirk with Greg's and decide for yourself how important the "straight man" is to comedy.)

Odd. I'm not sure how I got into a discussion about straight men and their extreme importance to comedy. But somehow I did. Stream of consciousness writing, I guess. Final comment on Wayne's performance. Wayne's dismissal of Drew's butt almost happened out of camera range. (His hand itself is actually off camera.) And I have to admit that I missed it the first time, so Drew's post game banter was very confusing to me. Watching the game again, I made a point of looking out for it. Wayne's laughing at Drew's reaction is far more noticeable than the dismissal itself. The dismissal is almost a "blink and you'll miss it" kind of thing.

(I'm beginning to think I talk too much. Beginning, you say??? Shaddup. LOL) Colin didn't seem to know what to do with his bouncer quirk other than walk around with his shoulders hunched. (Did you see Wayne and Ryan imitating Colin at the end of the game?) When you think about it, though, it's not entirely Colin's fault. His quirk said that he was supposed to be throwing people out at closing time. But he couldn't throw out Greg. Greg's the party host. He couldn't throw out Wayne — at least not until Greg guessed Wayne's quirk. (Colin threw him out after that.) Ryan was never in playing area long enough for Colin to throw out. So the only one left is the dog who wasn't supposed to be there. So mostly, Colin walked around with his shoulders hunched. Looked painful to me. I still haven't figured out what animal Ryan was imitating the first time. It obviously was a horned animal. A bull? Or were they ears? A rabbit? I don't know. I got the elephant one, though. (I'm not that bad a guesser!) Ryan's comment about having some friends inside was probably the best way of indicating that he was trying to come in as an additional animal. But I agree with Drew. I don't think Greg would have ever really figured out the third animal reference. Judging from Greg's reaction, I think Greg agrees with Drew and me. (Points to Drew for not being such a stickler about the quirks this time. I agree that Greg got close enough each time to earn the gimme.) Final question: did you notice that Wayne handed his quirk card to Ryan to read while Greg was working through Colin's quirk?

Greatest Hits: Songs of the nurse; Ryan and Colin sell; Wayne sings
I liked Colin's documentary name at the opening, "Impotence — Shaken But Not Stirred". He does come up with some excellent titles. The pager going off during the introduction was one of those bizarre real world things that make WLiiA unlike almost every other comedy on television today. For any ordinary sitcom, the scene would have been reshot. For WLiiA, the actors just make it part of the joke. Look down at the belt. Turn the pager off. And then rag on the person with the real pager ("or Really Nnoying without the A"). Quick thinking, Ryan, I liked it. Actually, I liked Ryan and Colin's banter throughout this game. The jiggy versus jiggly debate before the reggae song. The songs of the nurse never stopping after the particularly long reggae song. The turn the CD over for the rest of the song after the unusually short rap song. And the crème de la crème, the banana splits at the baseball field. Which was the introduction to no song whatsoever. The editors just kept it in because it was funny. Very funny. Speaking of the banter, Ryan had a hard time keeping a straight face during Colin's intro to the rap song. I can't decide though if he was laughing at Colin or laughing at Wayne and the band. I'm inclined to think Ryan was laughing at the band for a change, since he seemed to be looking at them a lot during the introduction.

And while we're speaking of the band, I felt like we were watching a musical representation of Goldilocks and the Three Bears listening to the songs. The first song, "400 Dollar Bill", was too long. The second song, "I'm Tired of Wearing White", was too short. The third song, "I Wish I Were a Doctor", was just right. I guess that's just the nature of improvised songs though. (Didn't you love Colin's expression when the third song started up? I guess he wasn't expecting to hear that type of music for a rockabilly style.)

Three-Headed Broadway Star: Wayne, Drew, and Ryan sing "You Fill My Life with Jello"
This was just an okay Three-Headed Broadway Star song for me. The lyrics made sense for the most part — except for Ryan's banana reference. I don't think there is banana Jello, is there? (I know it's a pudding flavor, but I don't think there's a pure banana Jello flavor.) And because the lyrics made sense, the song didn't seem very funny or memorable to me. I prefer this game when the lyrics are more bizarre or absurd. But that's just personal preference. Did you notice that Drew forgot to say "We'll be back" until Ryan reminded him?

Credits: all four = aliens looking down from their spaceship
A little disappointing by the US standards. Although I'm glad not all four tried to read the names at once. If they had been reading all at once, I probably would have missed the one highlight of the reading: Greg saying in character, "I have never noticed someone named Sanfilipo before." And Colin dropping character to respond, "Oh, yes." I just thought that was funny for some reason. I guess I was surprised that Greg was surprised. Surprisingly.

Best Game:
You know, this is a really hard one to pick. Nothing truly stands out from the others. I'd probably give it to Weird Newscasters except that I'm highly offended by the editing of Colin's performance. I'd give it to Greatest Hits based on Ryan and Colin's banter except that the songs (especially the first reggae song) detract from the game. And even though Party Quirks was Greg's best game, I don't think the game as a whole was up to Party Quirks standards. FUDGE. I'll give it to ... oh, blast. I guess Weird Newscasters wins. But only with a big red warning flag that someone needs to explain why Colin was so heavily edited. Maybe if we get a Best of Season 3 uncensored we'll find out why.

Overall Comments:
Despite the negativity in the previous paragraph, I thought the show has its moments. And on the whole, I thought there were more moments, than not. So I feel positive about the episode. It won't be on my top 10 best season 3 episodes, but I'll definitely put it on my rewatch list. And I still have my fingers crossed for 2 Line Vocabulary. I think there could be something in that game.

© LKK 03/18/01