Thank The Lord For Your Presence # 19

This week's episode of Thank God You're Here (TGYH) was an exceptional one; Wifey and I were laughing throughout the whole show.

Shane Bourne introduced us to the evening’s performers: TGYH Creative Consultant (and therefore I daresay a contestant who’s just there for the fun of it and will probably never ‘win’ an episode) Glenn Robbins, Fox FM breakfast radio co-host Jo Stanley, ‘Son of Bert’, filmmaker and recent pay TV sitcom star Matthew Newton, and Nova FM (in Sydney) radio co-host (and twice-failed TV show comedian) Merrick Watts (he’s the one on the left in the photo). I wasn’t sure what to expect of Merrick, because my experience of his work was less-than-praiseworthy. I never liked his TV shows with comic partner Tim ‘Rosso’ Ross very much – neither the one on Channel Nine or the one on Network Ten. And the only other times I’ve seen much of him have either been too fleeting, or weighed down (in my opinion) by Rosso. However, within the space of the hour that followed, I was surprised and delighted by Merrick’s input and heartily agreed (for once) with the decision to anoint him the winner of the night.

When mentioning that this episode was TGYH’s penultimate episode for the season, ‘judge’ Tom Gleisner stooped to a new low in Lame Joke Territory, saying that they'd probably turn up over summer on "20 to 1 moments with the biro, or something", and he held up his pen as he said it. There was an eerie silence in the studio following that remark, and only crickets could be heard chirping in the background, until someone on the far right of the audience coughed and broke the spell.

Glenn’s comment during the opening introductions showed that he’d been watching Stephen K Amos last week and (like me) thought the Brit’s method of turning his audience against him at the top of the show was a ridiculous step. When Shane mentioned what a fantastic audience they had, Glenn turned to the crowd and asked, “Is there a group in from a modeling agency tonight?” Shane then asked him about his boy band dancing in Boytown, and Glenn showed his ‘head-through-a-hoop-on-your-own-shoulder’ move, which he claims is all you need to know to be able to dance in a boy band. Coming out moments later dressed as Santa, we discovered that Glenn was the epitome of a bad shopping centre Santa. Answering complaints from his supervisor, he explained that the reason most of the kids he’d seen that morning had come out crying was because “If they give you a bit of cheek, you gotta give ‘em one … Just give ‘em a bit of a whack as they’re going off.” Some of the strange things he confessed to included telling the children Santa lived in Pentridge, and that he’d be arriving this year on the back of a push bike without any pants. When one little girl asked for a pony, his reply was reportedly: “Piss off!” He recounted the names of Santa’s reindeer as Rudolph, Kenny, Chris, Davie, Bert and Nathan, and his version of ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas (where Santa was busting for the toilet and ended up going behind the Christmas tree) was slightly different to the original. We were shown pictures of him at work with some of the children, holding one small boy up by his ankles (“I told him that’s where his present’s gonna go if he doesn’t behave”), and with his feet up, reading FHM (when asked if he thought that was appropriate behaviour, he replied excitedly, “Ohh, I reckon!”). When one of Santa’s Elves came in to say that the boy had stopped crying but the mother was demanding an apology, he told her to say that if the mother wants her credit card back, there’ll be no trouble. It turns out that Santa had told the boy he’d get chicken pox for Christmas “… Because he gave me the sh!ts!” But his best (and bluest) line of the scene was when he explained why he insists that the mothers sit on his knee: “Santa only comes once a year …”

Matthew was up next, and I was greatly entertained by the fact that we appeared to have our first-ever ‘sequel’ scene on the show (or very close to it, anyway). After making reference to Matthew’s previous exceptional performance on the show when he portrayed a young hooligan who’d crashed his car through the wall of a second-storey apartment building during the introductions, Shane again made mention of the unusual entrance of climbing through the shell of the car from the back of the set … as he led Matthew around to the back of the set and had him climb through what turned out to be a crashed aeroplane. He was the pilot, and Matthew was smart enough to realise it would pay to ‘act’ the role the same way he portrayed the car hooligan the other week. Appearing at the top of the inflatable slide from the door of the plane, with the assembled passengers on the ground below, he greeted them with a full-arm wave over his head, a massive grin, and a cry, “Guess who?!” before sliding down the slide with a ‘Weeeeeeeeee!” When one passenger says it appears that they’ve crashed, Matthew replied, “Yeah. Sorry about that,” before laughing maniacally: “Hahahahahaha!” The passenger then asks how that happens, and he answered, “Let me explain aeronautics to you, alright? So you’re in the air, the engines stop, you fall, you crash, you’re done.” He went on to describe how rocking the plane from side to side is how he gets his groove on, hugged ensemble cast member Nicola Parry (one of two female cast members who seem to constantly have moves made on her), and the oxygen mask with the kid’s koala facemask attached to it was a “symbol of Australia”. And then, down the slide came his co-pilot, who was played by Ed Kavalee (the same ensemble cast member who played his rowdy friend in his car crash scene last time). Also playing essentially the same character, Ed congratulated Matthew on his flying skills and his ‘landing’. Seeing the similarities to his previous scene, Newton immediately jumped up into Ed’s arms in the same way he’d done it several weeks earlier. The audience clearly understood the significance of repeating this strange greeting! Ed said, “I fell asleep for a few minutes, and BANG!” Matthew replied, “Yeah – I won’t tell you what I was doing to you while you were asleep.” Ed and Matthew then boasted to the horrified passengers about Matthew’s barrel-roll and loop-de-loop abilities, which Matthew then demonstrated by doing a somersault on stage. We heard that Newton’s warning to the passengers about the crash had been: “If you’re not strapped in, grab someone by the hair.” Despite the dense tropical rainforest appearance of the set, we learnt that the plane had originally skidded and bounced off Ayres Rock (why didn’t they call it Uluru?), and then ensemble cast member Rebekah Foord (the other of the female cast members to constantly be hit upon) asked angrily, “Can I say something to you?”, to which Matthew replied seductively, “Anything!” She rolled her eyes and he asked if he could buy her a drink. He then assured everyone that he knew how to find water in the sand, and then when he tested for it, he said flatly, “Nup – there’s no water here.” He finished the scene by suggesting they play hide and seek in the plane’s engine. When asked if he was seriously recommending such behaviour, he asked, “Why not? It’s not working!”

After the scene, Tom asked him if he felt the producers of the show had it in for him, and his reply was genius: “Yeah. I like the way you separate yourself from them, by the way. ‘The Producers’!!” That comment alone had him winning the night at that stage, IMHO.

Jo was the third guest of the night to don her improv shoes, and she certainly enjoys herself on this show – which is great to see. When Shane remarked that her costume was so similar to what she’d normally wear that she could be playing herself, Jo said, “I’m not very good at playing myself”. As quick as you like, Shane replied, “Aren’t you? Not what I’ve heard,” which made the audience laugh … and a few seconds later, Jo got the joke as well and joined in. It turned out that Jo’s character was a former Neighbours starlet who’d spent three years in London making a name for herself as a singing star, conducting an interview in a hotel room with a journalist from Rolling Stone magazine. When asked what her highlight was from the three years she spent in London, she answered, “The Tube”. Jo inadvertently caught the actor (former Neighbours bit-man himself – he played Toadie’s lawyer boss Tim Collins until they wrote him out of the show … despite them calling him, sight-unseen, over the phone fairly frequently for the purposes of putting a fire under Toadie when necessary) off-guard when she stalled for time by asking for his name again. Clearly unprepared for the question, he couldn’t remember the name of his character for a second, and made one up. “It’s Darren.” Bzzzt! Then, after remembering his character’s name, he clarified: “Greg Darren.” Bzzzt! A simple rewind of the tape later, and we clearly heard him being introduced at the start of the scene as “Greg Reardon”. This then had the actor laughing, and Tom noticed it in his comments afterwards. Jo, meanwhile, was lost in her own panicked world of confusion, so she didn’t realise what had happened. “I’ve done so many interviews … Greg, Darren, … I don’t mind.” When her assistant re-entered the room and held up two (scant) pieces of clothing suitably only for a nightclub, asking which one Jo wanted to wear ‘this afternoon’, Jo pointed to the first one and complained that there was way too much fabric in it, then pointed to the skimpier of the two (with a bikini top) and asked, “Where am I s’posed to put my hip flask?” It turned out that she was going to be attending a funeral, so she said she was the ‘act’ – the plan was that she’d jump out of the coffin. When the journo showed Jo the cover for her latest CD, picturing her with boxing gloves on, her hands in front of her chest, and entitled, ‘Still Angry’, she responded with, “I thought those were my breasts! But they’re …” but couldn’t think of the words. “Boxing gloves,” the journalist finished for her, deadpan. We learnt that she sang a duet with someone we don’t ordinarily associate with music, and she confirmed that it was John-Michael Howson. The journalist then mentioned the rumour that she had a mystery man in her life, but she wouldn’t reveal who it was because then it wouldn’t be a mystery anymore. But she didn’t need to – in walked her mystery man, wearing a hotel bathrobe and with a towel over his head so we couldn’t see who he was. When he pulled the towel away, we saw that it was Mark Holden from Australian Idol. The audience - and Jo - broke up into laughter, and Mark turned to Jo, pointed to the journalist, and said, "Greg Darren's here!"

Finally, on walked a very drably-dressed Merrick. As I said, my expectations were low - so really, he couldn't go wrong. But in point of fact, he was surprisingly hilarious. He started by explaining to Shane that this was exactly the sort of comedy he likes to do: No preparation. He then confirmed that he normally wears the kind of outfit he had on (grey jumper and bland slacks) to parties ... dressed as a librarian. Upon entering his scene, the woman who turned out to be the headmistress of the school at which he was a teacher berated him for being ten minutes overdue. Almost as if he were a schoolkid himself, he replied, "Oh, sorry I'm late." (It was funny when you heard it at the time!) Introduced to the parents waiting for him as Mr David Straughn, the father greeted him as 'David', to which Merrick immediately replied, "Call me Straughnie". As the headmistress left the room, Merrick said to her departing back, "Thanks, Beryl". The parents then asked him about their child Chris, and Merrick began by complimenting them on how smart their son was ... only to be reminded that Chris is a girl. "But he looks like a boy," Merrick said without batting an eyelid. Chris' main strengths are apparently her fighting ability, her arm wrestling skills, and her Chinese burns. Reading from the report card he'd written for Chris, her mother asked what Merrick had meant by 'vivacious discombobulator'. His answer was perfection: "Well, she's been quite vivacious, and then she discombobulated on the table." He said it so casually, too - which made it all-the-more hysterical a response. But he wasn't finished: "At first I didn't want to say anything 'cos I don't know if it's, like, a family thing - do you discombobulate?" And then he got out of the situation without having an actual description forced from him by dismissing their confused looks with a patronising: "It's a big word; I'll explain it to you another time." After stressing that "A is the highest mark I give", it was pointed out that he'd awarded it to their daughter for a subject she wasn't taking, and when presented with Chris' science project (which looked suspiciously like a certain contraband substance growing in a small plastic flowerpot), he agreed with disgust that he's told Chris many times to do it with seeds, not with plastic. It turned out that 'Straughnie' had missed a lot of classes, but his excuse that he travels around to all the "non-schooled" children in the world and teach them (in places such as Africa and Mildura), he very nearly talked his way out of it. Then the parents hit him with the accusation that home economics class simply appeared to be him getting the girls to cook his dinner for him. His response was an angry: "Well they've gotta learn at some stage, and guess what, lady - they're not learning from Mum, are they!" He explained away the 'class' where the students wash his car as environmental studies (where he teaches them to use a bucket rather than a hose), and then when two girls entered the room, each holding a freshly steam-cleaned shirt, remarking that he was right; their physics assignment proved that using steam really does help iron his shirts better, all looked lost. But without skipping a beat, he pointed at the two girls and said sternly: "What's wrong with this picture? ... I sent away three shirts!" It was an exceptional job, and well on par with a more seasoned performer on the show, not a first-timer.

The first pre-recorded bit placed the guests in the role of Lotto co-host (featuring 'TV personality' Susie Wilks), as well as three very stern-looking government officials. Jo called them The Three Stooges, Matthew called them "The Boys!" (giving each one in turn an increasingly elaborate and silly handshake), and Merrick called them Gary, Rob and Gary. When asked what he'd be getting up to on the weekend, Merrick replied that he'd just be watching the highlights from the Lotto package. Then Merrick explained his view of the proceedings if there were no division one winners: "We take the money home. Don't we? Guys?" Glenn's sign-off was: "Have a dip ... you ... dip-head!" (Although, technically, I just may have misheard him slightly.)

The second pre-recorded bit cast our brave soldiers as some sort of celebrities who were having their backyards inspected by Aussie TV icon Don Burke, re-living a much-loved segment from the now-defunct TV show Burke's Backyard. When Don complimented Matthew for having the best foliage he'd ever seen, Matthew embraced him in a warm and very close hug (which tends to be a bit of a trend with him). Glenn explained that his 'unique' way of tending to his lawn is to roll around on it with baby oil smeared all over his body. When Don pointed to a large tree and asked "What's this yellowy thing here?", Merrick replied (in a tone that implied Don was a bit thick): "It's a tree, Don". One which apparently selected himself ... from a catalogue. When discussing a group of shrubs, Glenn advised that "... the trick is, every week, throw something in there that's dead". When they encountered Jasper the amazing dog who was able to perform a skill that no other dog can perform, Jo explained that Jasper could walk on his front paws (then proceeded to lift the dog halfway off the ground by its hind quarters to demonstrate), Merrick instructed Jasper: "Look at Don! Look at Don! Okay, look at me now, but look at Don!". Glenn tried to get Jasper to perform a range of tricks that included jumping through his arms (shaped like a hoop), and climbing on his back (for reasons unknown, I'm sure), while Matthew's Jasper seemed the most skilled of the lot, because apparently he can say the alphabet in Danish. Glenn said that the house was owned by Colvin, the chip manufacturer before him, and it burned down because of chip fat. Jo's career highlights included the Gold Logie ("I was really excited to old that for Lisa McCune"), Merrick explained that the A.C.R.O.S. 2004 award (which he pronounced "The Ack-ross") stood for "Australians Caring Rather Ominously ... Sometimes" ... before adding in a patronising tone: "And that's what we do". Jo;s hobby is collecting photographs of celebrities she's never met, while Merrick picked up a photo of Nelson Mandela, and started to tell Don the story of the time he lost his 'foster child', before breaking down in tears. (At the time I thought it was very funny and clever ... but as I type this up, I wonder if it wasn't just a little racial insensitive / downright racist?) At the end of the bit, Don asked each of them to give their 'famous sign-off' to the camera. The most notably of them was Matthew's "Word to yo mama", before kissing his fingers and then 'saluting' them to the viewers, and Merrick's ultra-bogan and ultra-cheery "Good on yas an' 'at!"

The group scene was a highly enjoyable one. Glenn and Merrick were expert panelists during the TV coverage of an election, Jo was the ALP candidate, and Matthew was the Liberal Party candidate. Glenn's 'expert advice' on the voting results he's been watching come in around the country were summed up with the words: "Big surprises all around the country so far. We've had some major results in the north, some minor results in the south, and a really weird result ... up the middle." He also explained how they're not using exit polls this year; instead they simply count the legs of the voters and then divide by two. Then later, when ensemble cast member Ed Kavalee threw back to him by asking 'David' a question, Glenn went to answer, and then asked, "I'm David, aren't I?" (and yes, he was). Merrick was a statistician who adopted a strangely 'dorky' expression for most of this scene. He was wearing a brown cardigan, so he seemed to be dressed in his own 'party' wardrobe for most of the night. When asked, Merrick said that the figures they were seeing were telling us that all the numbers have come in, and that they've made up a big number. The 'Poll-o-meter' graphic we were shown of the results in the Senate so far was telling us "... that people are voting". Red represented Labor, blue represented Liberal, green represented Independents, ... and apparently yellow represented "... people who can't be stuffed turning up to the polls to vote, not even for a sausage in bread; it's a disgrace!" He was asked for his predictions, and he told Ed: "I'm seeing a full moon come into Uranus ... and Sagittarius? You're gonna come into some money." When they crossed to Lyn's very sedate headquarters, she described the scene as 'electric' - despite all available evidence to the contrary, and her best attempts to elbow everyone into livening up. Partway through the cross, she suddenly caught a case of the 'satellite delay', but this thankfully passed again shortly afterwards. Discovering that she'd polled less than 1%, she announced that they were very happy with that, and "I expect we'll go out and get a pizza" to celebrate. Matthew, meanwhile, is one who's never too shy to use all available props at his disposal. When we cut to him, he was drinking from a glass of wine and already showing the signs of drunken celebration - which was quite amusing. When asked what he thought it meant that he's lost a few seats, he slurred that people were just jealous, but he's won the election anyway, so "congratulations to me". When asked what the Prime Minister (sorry; I wasn't sure which picture was the best one to use there) had said when he'd rung earlier, Matthew's ultra-quick reply was another nod to his famous and much-loved car crash scene from all those weeks ago: "Legeeeeeeeeeend!" And when asked how he was going to celebrate his win, he stated simply, "It's whisky and hookers all the way".

It was a thoroughly enjoyable episode, and Merrick was truly deserving of his win. For a special guest just out of the blocks, he did an exceptionally funny job - and that's coming from someone who's decidedly not a fan of his work or humour under normal circumstances. I was very pleasantly surprised. The other three were all very good, and there probably wasn't a 'weak' performer on the show. I find it hard to believe that next week's the finale. Ten weeks seem to go by so quickly, it's scary. I hope this show returns to our screens early next year. I'm gonna miss it.

In the meantime, Merrick’s teacher scene is available for viewing and/or downloading at this site.


----------


STOP THE PRESSES!!

Check out this story. It was written back in June, near the end of the first season of TGYH, but the part to look out for is towards the end of the second page: "Working Dog deliberately kept the first season of Thank God You're Here short because 'it feels more special if you know it's finite'. There will be a second season and then, most likely, the team will move on." ... WHAT?!


.