Thank The Lord For Your Presence # 13

Last night's episode of Thank God You're Here (TGYH) was another fine one, although not as good as last week's.

I know someone who'll be pleased with this review! And I also know that she Googles herself, so I'll just try to attract her attention like last time, hang on:

JULIA ZEMIRO JULIA ZEMIRO THANK GOD YOU'RE HERE JULIA ZEMIRO JULIA ZEMIRO JULIA ZEMIRO JULIA ZEMIRO THANK GOD YOU'RE HERE JULIA ZEMIRO JULIA ZEMIRO JULIA ZEMIRO JULIA ZEMIRO THANK GOD YOU'RE HERE JULIA ZEMIRO JULIA ZEMIRO JULIA ZEMIRO JULIA ZEMIRO THANK GOD YOU'RE HERE JULIA ZEMIRO JULIA ZEMIRO JULIA ZEMIRO JULIA ZEMIRO THANK GOD YOU'RE HERE JULIA ZEMIRO

There. That should just about do it. If you're not sure what that's all about, read this before continuing.

So anyway, here's why Ms Zemiro will be pleased with this review:

I didn't think she sucked!!

She was easily the third-best performer on the show, and has nothing to worry about being labelled as 'the worst' by choosing to read on. Speaking of which, it's about time I got into reviewing the episode properly.

Shane "I like hooters" Bourne started off by introducing us to the evening's guest stars: Matthew Newton, Julia Zemiro (where have I heard that name before?), Russell Gilbert and Ryan Shelton (who is so new to TV that not a single image of him can be found online ... but he appears in Real Stories with best mates from university Hamish Blake and Andy Lee).

Julia was the first cab off the rank this week, and she was dressed up as a private school girl. Shane got her to spin on the spot before entering the scene, just in case there were any perverts out there who needed such a mental image to be getting on with. Once the scene started, it was clear that Julia's character, Caroline, was the school captain who was being raked over hot coals for her various misdeeds. I was highly impressed with Julia's lines about the "No Fat Girls" sign she'd allegedly put up in the common room ("That was for the Year 9ers; they're all a bit muffin top"), her reaction to seeing herself on the cover of Ralph magazine, the way she danced to the beat of her own mobile ringtone (which she didn't realise she had), her attempts to speak in Latin, Italian, French and "Greek", her reaction to the SMS she received about the vodka being in her locker ("YES!"), her one-time-only date with underworld figure Bobby Viviano, and her translation of the school motto ("All facts, using verbs, are difficult"). Quite amusing stuff.

Matthew Newton was up next, and his scene was indisputedly the best one of the night. Not just because of the "ground-breaking firsts" of not using a blue door to enter the scene and having an opening line that was only very loosely-based on the title of the show ("Thank God you're alive!"), but because of what Matthew was able to do with it. He was pretty much firing on all cylinders with this one, and made so many fantastic jokes, the eventual 'winner' of the night was a done deal at this point. Any other result would have had the audience baying for judge Tom Gleisner's blood. Matthew entered the scene through a curtain at the back of the set, which revealed him climbing through a car half-lodged in the wall of a very frightened couple's livingroom. As he exited the driver's door, he stood up, saw the carnage he'd caused, and opened the scene with "Oops". As the dialogue progressed, it was revealed that we were in a second story apartment, that Matthew had been drag racing, and as his friend 'Earnest' (also in the car, as it turned out) revealed, Matthew had been texting Earnest's mother at the time of the accident. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Right at the start of the scene, Matthew pointed to the smashed-in TV set and asked the couple, "You weren't watching anything, were you?" They asked him why it happened, and he answered that he saw their lights on and thought he'd join them. The home owner described hearing a screeching of brakes, to which Matthew replied, "Yeah, that was me. Sorry." When he tried to sit on their couch and both actors tried to prevent him from doing so, he made an amusing attempt to pull against them. For a few seconds, they played tug-o-war with Newton himself, with Matthew claiming that his leg was sore, before he finally relented, saying, "Alright, but if anything goes wrong with my leg, you know I'm gonna hold you responsible." Other highlights included when the woman recognised his car from nearly running him down in the car park the other day: He suddenly turned on her and shouted, "You're the b*tch with the kid!", and when the man challenged him with, "You're just lucky no one was killed!" and he responded with, "So are YOU!" and a grin that spoke volumes! When Earnest told Matthew that his L plate had fallen off, the woman exclaimed, "You're a Learner?!" to which Matthew immediately replied, "I'm a Legend!" There were plenty of laughs in this scene, and Matthew carried himself perfectly throughout (jumping up into Earnest's arms and cheering with him over the destruction they'd caused), but the only thing I think he missed out on was when the cop entered the room through the blue door. He stayed in character by looking scared of the policeman, but I thought he missed the perfect opportunity to say, "Thank God you're here" to him, which I'm sure would have garnered a massive laugh. Even so, when he explained the story to the cop and finished by saying that since "coming in here" he's copped "nothing but abuse!", it was a great close to an incredibly entertaining scene. The boy is talented, there's no doubt about it.

Unfortunately for Russell, he had to follow the brilliance of Newton's scene. And Russell, who was clearly very nervous, wasn't in his best form at all. He was the weakest of the four performers, although his gear in the final scene and some of the pre-recorded stuff helped to redeem him somewhat. Russell played the part of a William Shatner-esque sci-fi star attending a convention for his long-dead TV show. Crazed fans and a full spacesuit helped him realise what he was doing there, but the laughs were few and far between. Probably the funniest thing he did in the scene was the part where he pretended to turn invisible. In itself, that was a little unfunny, but by the time he'd hovered around the set a bit, saying, "Where is he? Where is he?" and then 'turned off his invisibility' and said, "I'm back", it had become more amusing and got a deserving laugh from the audience. Otherwise, most of his scene seemed uncomfortable and light on laughs. I didn't mind his "You're probing!" line when asked a question about his romance with Corporal Julie (who Russell should have clarified as being Corporal Frank Julie or something if he wanted to get an extra laugh), but te pun almost seemed to be missed by most of the audience. Either that, or they were just too startled by how unfunny this legendary Australian comedian was being. Considering how the promotional ads for the episode were heavily pushing Glbert's appearance on the show, I thought his solo scene was disappointing. I've seen him live, and I know he's capable of much more than we saw on display here. In fact, Russell provided us with more laughs during his pre-scene interview with Shane on stage. When Shane said he looked good, he replied deadpan that he'd been working out (which is obviously not the case), and then said he'd bought an IKEA franchise three years ago, but he hasn't opened it yet because he's still trying to put it together. Boom-boom, etc - but it was much funnier gear than his actual scene.

The fourth and final solo scene was performed by relative newcomer Ryan Shelton. I'd say Ryan was the second funniest of the four last night, and he was dressed in lycra and ski boots, and carried a hoola-hoop. When Shane presented him with ensemble cast member Rebekah Foord to accompany him through the blue door (and she was wearing a matching dancer's get-up and ski boots), it became clear what Ryan was about to be. He was a contestant on a dancing-based reality TV show. Ryan demonstrated that he's more than just the friend to two other comedians who are riding their celebrity coat tails when he came out with such hilarious lines as what went wrong at the beginning of his routine ("I fell into the audience ... and started kissing a lady"), how his previous partner was doing in the hospital ("She has about a day"), and explaining what's so great about Rebekah ("She's a lesbian"). When asked why he wasn't even puffing, he replied without any modesty whatsoever that he's "extremely fit". His comment that everyone enjoys seeing a lesbian get punched was so bizarre it was very funny (no offense to anyone out there; I certainly don't share this view!), and the French name for his trademark "flourish" ("The Pastry") was highly amusing. Finally, I very much loved his description of what viewers should do if they want him to remain in the competition: "They should give me a call, and ask nicely, and I'll come back."

The first pre-recorded bit was set in a mechanic's garage, with a woman coming to complain about the bill she'd received earlier that day. Julia's best line was in answering the woman's question about where her missing tyres were, yelling off camera that they sometimes "get kids in here NICKING THINGS!" Russell offered to give the woman a lift home, Matthew asked if there were any overweight people in the car to require a dashboard re-alignment, and Ryan explained that there was a brand of gas called petrol. He also gave an insight to his abilities by saying they aren't very good mechanics, so the woman's missing engine had been sent off to mechanics who know what they're doing. He then offered her another customer's car if she kept quiet about it.

The second pre-recorded bit appeared to be a segment for Totally Wild, presented by actual an presenter of the show, Jessica Skarratt. She was reporting on a flight simulator that actual pilots use for training, and of course our hapless guests were the useless pilots in question. Russell was in finer form here than in his solo scene. When asked the best thing about being a pilot he answered, "Probably the best thing is I get to bring on as much luggage as I want." When the simulator was running later and it looked pretty bad, he advised Jessica that she might want to put her head between her legs "and kiss your bum goodbye." Ryan explained that the stripes on his shoulder signified how many passengers he's lost, said that it takes a good pilot between ten and fifteen years of hard training to become qualified, or it could take a really crap pilot between five and ten minutes. When Jessica asked what one of the gadgets in the cockpit does, he answered that it gets Foxtel. He also said that a lot of people don't realise that a lot of piloting is "guesswork". Over the intercom to the passengers, he advised them to buckle up because he's had a few whiskys this morning. When Jessica handed Matthew the instruction manual and asked what it was, he replied that it was The Da Vinci Code. Before using the intercome to talk to the passengers, I appreciated his 'vocal exercises' to warm up first. But I don't mind saying (whether she reads this or not) that Julia's comments in this segment were the best. As Jessica entered, Julia was wearing the headphones and pretended not to be able to hear her. When asked what being a pilot's all about, she said, "A lot of this," and then proceeded to flick a lot of overhead switches. Later, she tried to flick one that didn't budge, and she exclaimed, "Why doesn't that work?!" And finally, when the automated "Pull up! Pull up!" started to sound repeatedly, she got snippy with it, yelling, "Do it yourself! Do it yourself!"

And that brings us to the final scene, which was a telethon. Russell was even better here than in the pilot bit, so clearly he needed a little time to warm up on the night. Playing a TV cop show actor, he said Wacko the Bear was "grin-and-bearing it", said Wacko loves it when you blow on his tummy, described the Grow Well Foundation as a group that started growing trees 26 years ago "and yeah, they're growing well!", and said that his show was a cop drama with a twist ... of lemon. Julia went a little M-rated with her description of her singer persona in a lagoon, rubbing herself and so on (presumably in a film clip or something), and seemed to be enjoying herself in this scene. Matthew Newton made up a phone number for the country viewers that in no way resembled the one shown on screen, and Russell had to read out a purposely impossible tally from the screen. Probably the most amusing appearance in this scene, however, was the small section featuring Ryan with a group of four children (two boys and two girls). When we cut to them, we "accidentally" overheard him asking them if "the sneakers" are hard to make, and then explained to us that he was with four identical twins (?), whose names were Matt, Matt, Madeline and James (the last one being a long-haired blonde girl). A most enjoyable episode indeed!

Thankfully Tom avoided public calls for his beheading by awarding Matthew the winner of the night, and I hope it wasn't the last we'll be seeing of him.

It would appear that last week's official TGYH link was in fact this week's link, which must have been posted too early. So at the time of typing this, you can still watch and/or download Matthew Newton's exceptional car crash scene by visiting this site.

And by the way, if you're at all interested in buying the entire ten-episode season one (complete with special features), then you might want to check this out.


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A special hello goes out to Lizzie ("Buffy-Kitten"), Rose and anyone else who found me via the TGYH Community LiveJournal. You can find my episode recaps by perusing the list of TGYH links in the sidebar on the right. I hope you enjoy your stay. Contrary opinions are welcome (if expressed politely), and general healthy debate is encouraged. But please don't feed the animals.


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