Title: Live from the Grill-o-Mat
Original Airdate: 27/10/1970
Guest starring: Carol Cleveland, Connie Booth, Ian Davidson, Lyn Ashley
Live from the Grill-o-Mat snack bar in Paignton, it's: an episode of the game show Blackmail, a meeting of the Royal Society of Putting Things on Top of Other Things and their attempts to escape the cameras, the television show Current Affairs, a house falling apart around a visitor, a school production of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, a butcher who alternates between insulting and not insulting his customer, and a documentary on the boxer Ken Clean-Air System.
Tropes:
- 1-Dimensional Thinking: Ken Clean-Air System's jog comes to an abrupt halt when he encounters a parked car in his way. He ponders the situation for a few moments before setting off back the way he came.
- Blackmail: The eponymous gameshow in the eponymous sketch. Compromising footage of people has been obtained by the producers, the footage covering the whole gamut of embarrassment potential from evidence of homosexuality to evidence of multiple child sex offences. If the subject doesn't pay a significant amount of money, relevant parties such as spouses and the police will be informed."That's £3000 for us not to reveal your name, the names of the three other people involved, the youth organisation to which they belonged, and the shop where you bought the equipment."
- Breaking the Fourth Wall:Praline: Hang on, we may still get in this show as a link.Praline bends over to the floor; animated versions of the Pythons are flying through a tube under the floor.Brooky: Oh, that's clever. How'd they do that?Praline: Colour separation, you cottonhead.
- Continuity Nod:
- The bishop rehearsing his line and insisting "I'm not in this show" is the same guy who was doing the same thing in episode 2-3, "Deja Vu".
- Eric Praline and Brooky are told that their chat show has been cut, but if they can find a piano stool, they may get on the show later "in film". Later in the show they do in fact turn up as the piano player and the guy turning pages of sheet music.
- Credits Gag: Lyn Ashley, then married to Eric Idle, was listed in the credits as "Mrs. Idle."
- The Ditz/Dumb Muscle: Ken Clean-Air System.Manager: The great thing about Ken is that he's almost totally stupid.
- Early-Bird Cameo: The Nude Organist make his first appearance, although he is played by Terry Gilliam instead of Terry Jones.
- Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?: Eric Praline starts his new chat show by introducing us to his co-host Brooky, who is also his flat mate, and nothing else, he'd like to emphasize that.
- Live Episode: Not really, of course, but the Framing Device has Cleese's BBC announcer guy live at the Grill-o-Mat diner, introducing sketches. Ends with Cleese's character, who is more nervous than most of his BBC announcer characters, on a bus on the way home, murmuring about how the live broadcast was a failure and his career is over.
- Medium Blending: A rare example of the live action and Terry Gilliam's animation being mixed, as the gang escape from the hotel conference room only to find themselves, still in live action, appearing in an animated sequence.
- Mood-Swinger: The butcher who alternates between insulting and polite with each line.
- Not What It Looks Like: Eric Idle's character is asked to wait in a room. The second he's left alone, the mirror falls off the wall by itself. Cue this trope over and over again until three people are dead and the entire house is destroyed.
- Serial Escalation: The accidents sketch. Starts with a mirror falling off the wall, then goes to a bookcase falling apart, a maid getting stabbed, the proprietor falling out a window, the butler having the ceiling cave in on him, and ends with the whole house exploding. All in about two minutes.
- Shout-Out: The whole sequence where the gang is trying to tunnel out of the videotape meeting room and under the film exterior (see Video Inside, Film Outside, below) is a goof on The Great Escape. Suddenly they have Nazi guards out of nowhere, and they have a pommel horse to hide their digging as the escapees did in that movie.
- Video Inside, Film Outside: Graham Chapman, on videotape, looks out of the door. The moment he does so the scene switches to 16mm, and he declares, "Good Lord, I'm on film! How did that happen?" After repeating the experience with the room's other doors and windows and determining that they are "surrounded by film", the characters come up with the idea to dig an underground tunnel; while not actually shown, it would have worked because such a scene would have been filmed on set and thus on video.
- Despite basing a whole sketch around this premise, they still avert it later in this episode, where the sketch about the house falling apart is all on film even though it's set indoors.
- Visible Boom Mic: When Ken jogs in a street, a visible boom mic is seen as the camera shakes.
- Walk This Way:Sir William: OK, quickly, run this way.
Others: If we could run that way... (he cuts them off) ...sorry.
