“Whose Line is it Anyway?”- September 9, 2001 I desperately wanted to go to this taping, and was beginning to lose hope of getting a chance. However, I was saved by a whoser with an extra ticket offer. We were going to throw a bit of a birthday celebration for Christina in line, but it didn’t quite work out. While I was standing in line, we had an earthquake! I found out later it was about a 4.2 and we were right at the epicenter. I’d never been awake for an earthquake before, and I’ve been living in California for years! I was just standing and talking to Sarah and LKK when all of the sudden, the bush started moving towards me and I felt like someone was pulling the ground out from under me. All of the out of town whosers seemed pretty scared and confused. (Poor Sarah. And we had just been talking about her fears of flying!) This was only the beginning of the traumas of Sunday’s taping for me (::dramatic music::).
We were let into the studio, and my mother and I took two seats on the aisle (the aisle where Drew walks to his desk at the beginning of the show) in the fourth row or so. They were the best seats that we’d had all weekend. We could see everything perfectly. Sure, we’d be seen on camera, but we didn’t really care. Unfortunately, someone else did. After nearly all of the seats had filled up, someone came up to me and asked if I had been there the day before. I said yes. He told me and my mother that we would have to move seats because we couldn’t be seen on camera again. Being on camera is not important to me at all, I just wanted seats where I could see well. They moved us to the worst possible seats in the studio. We were in the third row as far to the left as you could possibly get, and there was a big metal bar blocking the view of most of the stage. I was very upset. I almost didn’t even take notes on the taping at all, but I changed my mind. So here’s what happened: Brad was wearing green, Wayne was in a red striped shirt, Colin was in sort of a blue/purple/red shimmery shirt (which was very flattering on him), and Ryan was in blue. This was a special salute to great American television episode. Every time Drew said this during the taping (which was pretty often), Brad, Wayne, Colin, and Ryan gave a synchronized salute.
Questionable Impressions: They could only do impressions of people who had been on TV, to keep with the theme. Ryan did several “Weakest Link” references during the taping, beginning with this game. I didn’t write down much about this one because I didn’t get all of the impressions. Original airdate: 11/21/01
Let’s Make A Date: Brad was the contestant. (“Save those lips for me, chocolate thunder!”-Brad to Wayne)
Wayne: Womanizing TV evangelist apologizing to his wife, Colin.
Colin: Ventriloquist looking for dummies for his new raunchier act.
Ryan: The life history of Superman
I didn’t laugh much at this one, mainly because I was still upset that I couldn’t see. It was probably a funny game though.
Sound Effects with Audience Members: This was a Charlie’s Angels scene, with Colin as Bosley. I think Ryan was one of the angels. Ryan accidentally called Colin “Charlie” about 3 or 4 times. Colin had to keep reminding him, “I’M BOSLEY!” each time with increasing frustration. It was funny. I wrote down the words “phone call” so I think something funny must have happened with a phone call after the game, but I don’t remember. Can anyone refresh my senile mind on this one? Original airdate: 11/21/01
All in One Voice: New game. In this game, they were split up into two teams of two. Colin was with Wayne, Ryan was with Brad. It’s hard to explain this game. Basically, Colin and Wayne had to sing a part of a song and make it sound like one voice. They were singing a duet with Ryan and Brad, who also had to sound like one person rather than two. However, Colin and Wayne were singing as Miss Piggy and Ryan and Brad were singing as Kermit. Both teams did great impressions and they sounded wonderful together. The title of the song was, “The First Time We Kissed.” It ended with Colin and Wayne doing a karate chop and singing, “Hiiii-yah!” and Brad and Ryan responded with, “That feels good!” (As Miss Piggy and Kermit of course). It was a pretty good game. I liked that they didn’t pair Ryan with Colin, even though they would have done it well together since they always seem to think along the same wavelength anyway. It was nice to see a bit of shuffling.
Duet: They had another special guest for Duet. It was Lassie (yes, the dog). They sang a song to her, and Wayne made fun of her attention span since she kept walking away. It was pretty cute, but I’m getting a little tired of special guests. Whose Line is a good enough show that it doesn’t need all the extra fluff (no pun intended, even if it took them a long time to get the dog fur off of their clothes). Original airdate: 11/21/01
Weird Newscasters: Colin was the host (named himself Jamal Shookup)
Brad: Host of “Inside the Actors Studio” interviewing Colin
Wayne: The title sequence of the new cop/detective show, “Wayne and the Fat Man”
Ryan: From the cast of the show, “Jackass.”
Brad was wonderful as an annoying, pretentious host. I really enjoyed it. I don’t remember much about Wayne’s. I’ve never seen the show “Jackass,” so I didn’t quite get Ryan’s quirk. I’m guessing that it’s a show where people hurt themselves a lot. He kept on pretending to slam his finger in the piano. Then he got down on his hands and knees, crawled over to Drew’s desk, and pretended to smash his head on the neon light! It was hilarious! Then he got up and said, “I’m just kidding. You’d have to be an idiot to do that.” After the game was over and they went back to their seats, Ryan said to Colin, “And, Colin, it would have been funnier if…” and then they both said together, “Your head had burst into flames!” I loved that little bit. I guess I’m going to have to start watching “Jackass” now, just so I can fully understand the joke!
If You Know What I Mean: I was so happy that they decided to do this game. Before the scene began, Brad very subtly pretended to be lifting weights, making a reference to his 200 pound snatch comment. I don’t know how I caught that, it was so quick. I love it when they refer to old shows! Anyway, the scene was three soldiers in barracks. I wrote down nearly everything they said as best I could, since I never count on this game airing. I’m having trouble deciphering my notes since I had to write them so quickly, but I’ll write what I can interpret. Of course, this isn’t verbatim, but I think I’m getting the punch lines.
“I think I’m going to have to drop an otter, if you know what I mean”- Ryan
“I was cleaning out the foxhole, if you know what I mean”- Colin
“I think we’re going to have to go undercover, if you know what I mean”- Brad
“I’m going to have a happy AWOL experience, if you know what I mean”- Colin
“How much ammo do you have, if you know what I mean?”- Brad
“Enough to shoot my bayonet, if you know what I mean”- Colin
(then of course there was a discussion about the size of the “bayonet”)
“I’m an army of one, if you know what I mean”- Ryan
“I’m just looking for a few good men, if you know what I mean”- Ryan
“…in a ship surrounded by sea men, if you know what I mean”- Colin
It was a lot funnier in person than reading it on a computer screen.
Number of Words: This was kind of like a Star Trek scene. Ryan was Captain Kirk (3 words), Wayne was a Cling on (4 words), Brad was Spock (5 words), and Colin was Scotty (2 words- “Just the perfect length for my dialect!”) Colin was hilarious. I love his Scottish accent. He said “Ach, no!” a lot. The scene itself was ok. Pretty much everyone died in the end. As Drew put it, “Make yourself dead, you’re out of the scene.” Good advice for any actor I suppose.
Infomercial: Products for a facelift. I love this game! Colin and Ryan spent a lot of time making fun of each other (as usual). Colin got made fun of for “the big melon” that sat on his shoulders, and Ryan got made fun of for his nose. When Colin made the nose joke, the audience “aww”-ed in sympathy. After the game was over, Colin said, “I put up with the melon jokes and the bald jokes, but then I make one nose joke and…” and he imitated the audience falling all over themselves with sympathy. Poor Colin, the things he goes through! Ryan also took some orange gak-like stuff and stuck it to Colin’s face. It did not look comfortable! At one point, Colin attached something to Ryan’s nipples and twisted it to tighten his face. Thanks to LKK for reminding me of this. I have Colin’s quote “The face is actually attached to the nipples” written down in my book, and I couldn’t figure out why he’d said that. You really cleared that up! :)
Change Letters: “A great game to play at Catholic school” as Drew described it. Drew’s card was badly written, which was pretty confusing. At first, he said that every time they used the letter F, they would have to change it to B. But actually, they were supposed to change the letter B to F. This confused the cast, especially Colin, who started off changing F to B. He caught on after the first one or two lines. The scene took place in the ER. They were looking at an X-ray of someone’s “Falls.” They tried to trick Wayne into saying something about a male deer (a buck), but he wouldn’t do it. When they reshot the pickup and they knew they wouldn’t use the scene, Brad said to Colin, "I'll give you a f*ck for a flowjob." Or maybe he said, "I'll give you a f*ck for a hand job." It was a little hard to hear the last part of the sentence over the audience's laughter. But as Ryan pointed out, "Either way, it's still a great deal." (Thanks to LKK again for reminding me of that last bit.)
SFAH: Again, didn’t write down much. I did write down some of the category of “Baby Drew’s first words”: “Colin’s bald!”- Colin. “Pizza!”- Ryan. Also, there was a category, “Poems about embarrassing moments.” I wrote down Colin’s because I don’t think that it will air. “It was my first time, I felt such elation. Oh no! Premature ejaculation.”
Greatest Hits: Songs of TV Detective & Cop Shows (keeping with the theme of great American television). I think that Wayne and Brad were particularly awesome in this game. Their voices blend so well together. They’re a great team. Colin introduced the Irish whistling folk song, “Leprechaun-vict.” It was a good song, but they mentioned Lucky Charms, so I’m not sure if they’ll be allowed to air it. You know how they are with product names. Ryan said that there was nothing better than grabbing some steaks and a 6 pack and going to the opera, which led into an opera number. They also did a stripper song. Colin introduced the Rolling Stones song, “You, get off of McCloud!” Ryan lost it. He was in hysterics for the entire song, and when the camera came back on him, he was still laughing. He just couldn’t stop. He was to the point of tears. The game got pretty silly after that. They introduced a Honky Tonk song, after some banters about ducks and donkeys (Donkey Tonk).
Press Conference: I was so excited to see the Press Conference podium. I loved that game on the British version, especially when Colin was the guesser. In this game, Colin was guessing, and Wayne, Brad, and Ryan were reporters. Colin was batman announcing he was coming out of the closet. It was a wonderful game. I think Ryan asked him something about extra wide pants. Brad said that he MARVELED at Colin’s strength. I think that’s the clue that gave it away. Wayne asked, “Will you still continue to slide up and down the pole?” Colin said that he wanted to, but he had bruised his dynamic duo. Of course, he guessed correctly.
Film dub: The scene was street gangs arguing over territory. Colin made fun of the hats that they were wearing in the film. He said something about wearing diaphragms on their heads. Original airdate: 11/21/01
Party Quirks: Brad was the host.
Wayne: American TV history
Colin: Farmyard animals that can’t grasp the concept of an electric fence.
Ryan: Sports fans at an event catching themselves on camera.
Colin’s was the funniest in my opinion. I love his animal impressions. He had to make it blindingly obvious for Brad. He started acting like a baby chicken getting electrocuted and exclaiming, “I don’t understand! What’s going on? Something’s surging through me…”
Doo Wop: Brad, Colin, Wayne. The name of the girl was Kathleen. Someone suggested crocheting for a hobby, but they had done it already (Colin: “Oh, thank God!!”). So they sang about Kathleen who died in a freak horseback riding accident. After they finished, Ryan said, “Crocheting would have been funnier.”
Drew Games:
Before they began the Drew games, Dan asked for suggestions. I really wanted to see them do Quick Change, so I suggested it. He didn’t acknowledge me, so I didn’t think he heard me since I was sitting so far away. However, I guess he did hear me, because the first game that they did was Quick Change (A woman sitting in the stairway saw me suggest it and asked if I had been at the taping the night before. She was probably the third person to ask me that! Why is everyone so darn observant? Should have worn a wig.)
Winner: Wayne
Quick Change: The scene was a daytime soap opera. Drew was yelling “Change,” and Ryan, Brad, and Colin were playing. I’ve seen them do it better. They seemed a bit shaky and hesitant at the beginning, but improved by the end. Brad had to change his line about 7 times in a row, which he did well.
Winner: Brad
World’s Worst: World’s Worst TV out takes. The whole game was one big world’s worst out take, I’d say. Colin stepped forward as Alex Trebek and said, “I’m sorry, you didn’t question that form in an answer.” Ryan stepped forward and said, “You are the weakest link. Welcome!” Somehow otters became a running joke of the game. Someone said something about an otter, and from then on, the topic became “World’s Worst TV Otter.” For the most part, they didn’t get much material out of this one.
Winner: Colin (“Oh, thank God!” He exclaimed when he was declared winner)
Props: Before the cameras started rolling, Colin looked at the props and said, “You guys are screwed!” Indeed they were. Again, they had trouble with these props, though not as much as Saturday’s! At one point, Ryan said, “I can’t think of any more ‘cause they painted these about a half hour ago. Whoo!” They did this game twice.
Winner: Brad
Hoedown: TV Star Hoedown. This was a particularly tough hoedown for the guys. Brad was hilarious, and he wasn’t even in the game! I would have given anything to see his face. Of course, I couldn’t because of our seats…I won’t go there. He kept on relaxing and teasing the other guys and putting his feet up on Drew’s desk. Wayne took forever to come up with a hoedown. Perhaps he was distracted by Brad. After a false start, Wayne cried out, “Aw, poopie!” The extent of Wayne’s curse words, I suppose (although when quoting someone else, I did hear him say f*ck at one of the other tapings! I didn’t expect it from him!) Colin was funniest before he even started singing. He sat down for a while. Then he started pacing back and forth as he always does. He measured the distance that Drew was walking and kept trying to match it, just to make fun of him (“OK, how far are you going? Are you going to here now?”). He was walking all over the stage, all the way back to the chairs. At one point he started pretending to sing. He made the arm movements and facial expressions that he makes while he sings, but no words actually came out. It was classic. Eventually he sang something about Dick Van Dyke, Mary Tyler Moore, and Whose Line all being a success because they all featured “characters who had no hair.” Ryan never got a broadcastable hoedown out. First, he sang something about the Weakest Link, but then waved his hands to stop everyone from repeating the ending line. Then he said, “I don’t know why I just did that, cause I haven’t got another one! But I’ll come up with one…” So he stood and thought for a few more vamps, and then said to the audience, “Stop clapping, give your hands a breast. I mean rest.” He knew he would take a long time. Eventually, he sang about how he didn’t understand why they had to do another themed Drew game since they were obviously going to use the one with Sid Caesar. He made such a good point that they didn’t make him redo it. Oh how he hates those hoedowns!
Winner: Brad
Foreign Film Dub: Sid Caesar came out for this game. There was such reverence for him in the crowd. It was amazing. He did sort of a variation of Foreign Film Dub. Colin translated for Sid, Ryan translated for Drew, and Wayne stood at the side of the stage and yelled out different languages for them to switch to. In order, they were French, German, Japanese, Russian, Arabic, and Italian. The title of the film was Escargot. Sometimes, in the middle of his fake languages, he would throw in a real English word. At one point, he threw in, “Garlic” during a part in the conversation where they were discussing information about cooking or something along those lines. Colin translated it as reading information in the newspaper titled the “Garlic Press”. It was extremely clever and I wish I could remember the exact lines. All of Sid’s lines of gibberish were extremely long, and I was hoping that eventually Colin would translate one of his long paragraphs simply as, “OK” or “What?” but he never did. Extra tidbit: My mother caught him using some Yiddish in some of his lines. Original airdate: 11/21/01
Next they did a credit reading with Sid as the winner (“Sid wins? He was only here for one game!”- Brad). He read it in different languages (of course). Apparently, it was Sid’s birthday, so they brought him cake. He didn’t share like Chip did :)
They redid the hoedown. Wayne sang about the TV star Ru Paul, making TV stand for transvestite, rather than television. Nobody got it, and he had to explain. Drew sang something about Shirley and Laverne. I wrote down that Colin sang something about Murray Slaughter. Ryan sang about how he wanted cake. They made Colin redo his hoedown, and Ryan signaled to Dan that he had another one. I almost believed him. He only got through the first line of his new hoedown, which was, “Penis penis penis vagina and some breast.” He asked (with a completely straight face of course) if they thought they’d be able to get it by the censor. I noticed that Ryan hadn’t used the word “penis” in all three days of filming until now. I guess he had to do it eventually!
Credits:
-Colin as Noah. Before he started reading the credits, he looked into the camera lens and exclaimed, “Oh my God, I am bald!” Apparently, this was “LKK’s credit reading,” as she had a little conversation with him before the tapes were rolling. Now that I think back, I do vaguely remember him talking to someone in the audience, but I didn’t know who.
-Wayne & Brad as 50’s variety show hosts (Wayne certainly should know about variety shows!)
-Lassie telling the guys that people were in trouble. Colin started singing, “Lassie, king of the sea” for no apparent reason to the tune of the “Flipper” theme. I also wrote down that Ryan said the line, “I shoulda worn my pork underwear.” Why he said this, I don’t know. If anyone remembers, please inform me! Although coming from Ryan, it’s even funny without context.
-Wayne & Brad as 50’s variety show hosts. That’s not a typo. They did it twice.
They had to do a pickup of Sid’s credit reading so that Drew could plug his website, sidcaesar.com. Sid had already left, and they didn’t need to redo the actual credit reading, but Brad pretended that they did and asked the audience, “Does anyone here look like Sid Caesar?”
They reshot Weird Newscasters. This time, Wayne was an inmate from “Scared Straight” deterring people from a life of crime. Colin’s host name was Keith Myath. After they finished shooting Wayne’s new segment, Ryan knew that he wouldn’t have to redo his. So he said to Colin (without the lisp), “Thanks, Kiss My Ass. Hold this for me, will you?” and he held up his middle finger to Colin.
They reshot Greatest Hits. Colin said they’d be back to their documentary on “Women ‘n Puddin/Puddin ‘n women” in just a moment (Where does he get this stuff?). Something was off about this reshoot. LKK mentioned part of the awkwardness in her report. Here’s something my mother pointed out. At one point, Colin got a glazed over look in his eye while Ryan was talking. Ryan’s expression changed to one of genuine concern for his friend and asked, “Are you ok?” Colin snapped back and replied something like, “Yes, I was just somewhere else for a moment.” It was pretty strange. He must have been getting tired.
Another random tidbit: At one point towards the end of the filming, I think I heard Wayne whistling the first six notes of the theme from the British version of WL. I wonder where that came from!
Since I was sitting as close to the exit as one can get, I had to leave as soon as the show was over to prevent being trampled. I really wanted to talk to the rest of the group, but I needed to get home. I still wish I could have seen the show better, but I guess an obstructed view of Whose Line is better than no view of Whose Line, right?