In "The Chokes", Vince is preparing to run "Vince Noir's Electro Circus", a cabaret night at the Velvet Onion. After hearing famed avant garde filmmaker Jurgen Habermaster will be there looking for actors, Howard tries to get on the bill, but he's up against famous actor Sammy The Crab, and he gets a bad case of "The Chokes" when he's up before an audience.
Meanwhile, Vince tries to join The Black Tubes as their singer, but can only do so if he fits into a skinny pair of drainpipe trousers. He spends the day on various schemes to shrink his legs so he can join their band.
Howard has a chance encounter with legendary actor Montgomery Flange, who takes him on as a student after learning that Howard is up against his hated rival Sammy The Crab. After Sammy the Crab goes Off the Wagon just before the performance, Howard's chance arrives. What will he make of it?
The Mighty Boosh episode "The Chokes" contains these tropes:
- Alas, Poor Yorick: Played for Laughs. Howard's proof that he is an actor is a photo of him in a Hamlet costume posing with a skull, although Vince points out that he and Lester Corncrake doctored the photo and he never actually played Hamlet.
- Artsy Beret: Pretentious film director Jurgen Habermaster wears a black beret as part of his avant garde outfit.
- The Bartender: Parodied. Howard walks into a bar and orders a drink from a sympathetic bartender, who sees that he's feeling down and offers advice. But the advice becomes increasingly dark and murderous and goes on and on, and Howard has to remind him to actually give him his drink.
- Brick Joke: Montgomery Flange resents Sammy the Crab for beating him to a role... playing a crab. At the end of the episode, it's revealed that the juicy role Jurgen Habermaster is looking to cast Sammy in, but ultimately casts Howard in, is also a crab.
- Diet Episode: A variant. The Black Tubes accuse Vince of having overly muscular legs, and demand that he fit into a ridiculously tight pair of trousers in order to join their band. Vince spends the rest of the episode trying to shrink his legs through mundane and magical methods. The "lose weight fast" element is exaggerated, as Vince needs to lose five trouser sizes in a single day.
- Fashion Hurts: Vince goes to extreme lengths to squeeze into a pair of drainpipe trousers, including an attempt to atrophy his legs by going everywhere in a wheelchair. Once he puts them on, they're extremely painful and cause his head to swell up.
- Large Ham: During Howard's acting training, he makes impossibly huge, contorted faces while performing various emotions. His performance at the Velvet Onion showcase consists of him screaming in anguish with such force that it causes great winds to blast the audience.
- Le Film Artistique: Danish filmmaker Jurgen Habermaster is known for his avant garde films. A clip of one of them is all black-and-white footage of people in strange costumes screaming and hitting a piece of meat with a phone receiver, with no coherent dialog.
- Inflating Body Gag: When Vince finally gets into those drainpipes, all of his body moves above the waist, and he is unable to stand upright due to how much his head has been inflated
- Lovely Assistant: When Naboo does his magic act, his "lovely assistant" (introduced as such) is Bollo the gorilla, who does a sexy dance for the audience and helps Naboo with his act.
- Off the Wagon: Sammy the Crab is a dangerous alcoholic who's in recovery. When the members of The Black Tubes get him drunk by pouring beer into his fish tank, Sammy goes on a rampage and murders several of the night's performers.
- Performance Anxiety: Whenever Howard has to act in front of others, he gets "The Chokes", a condition that causes him to literally freeze for long periods of time. Eventually Montgomery Flange helps cure him of it.
- Saw a Woman in Half: Naboo does a variant of this as part of his Stage Magician act. A beautiful woman is sealed in a sarcophagus while Naboo and Bollo insert increasing numbers of swords into it. The last one causes her to scream in anguish as she is presumably stabbed in the head, and Naboo and Bollo have an exchange that reveals they accidentally used real swords instead of fake ones.
- Slipping a Mickey: The Black Tubes pour beer into Sammy the Crab's fish tank, forcing him to become intoxicated. Little did they know he was an alcoholic.
- Status Quo Is God: At the end of the episode, the last one in the TV series, it looks like Howard and Vince are poised to separate and pursue separate careers in entertainment. However, Vince's music career doesn't work out, and Howard's juicy role turns out to be in an embarrassing commercial, and they both return to the shop at the end of the episode.
- Training Montage: Howard's acting training consists of a bunch of short scenes of him being trained cut together with a floating head transition, in order to cram years worth of acting knowledge into one day. Lampshaded later when Vince asks Howard why he couldn't get ahold of him, and Howard indignantly replies that he was in a training montage.
- Variety Show: Vince Noir's Electro Circus consists of a number of unrelated acts, including a folk singer, a magician, an actor, some kind of performing tennis team, and a pop band, all introduced by Vince and playing on one bill together.
- Visual Innuendo: Bollo kneeling at the crotch of a trouserless Vince. It's quickly revealed that they're just trying to get Vince into those unbelievably tight trousers, but Vince's grunting, contorted facial expressions, and the back and forth about "getting there" really make it look like Bollo is giving Vince a blowjob.
