Again, I am writing this weeks after the actual taping, so I’ll try to remember what I can. We arrived at the studio, and this time there was a line and they were handing out numbers. We ended up sitting on the floor in the isle next to the stairs, this time on the left side. The entire orchestra was there, as well as the “warm up guy,” Bill (they hadn’t been there at the rehearsal). He talked and danced with people in the audience, gave out prizes, and just generally got the crowd hyped up. Before the show started, the orchestra was playing and Bill was pulling people up on stage and dancing with them. Peter Michael Escovedo (the conductor) pulled me up onstage and told me to jump up and give the orchestra the cue to stop. Bill tried to dance with me (Keyword: “tried.” I guess that’s what I get for sitting so close to the stairs). Then he brought out Wayne, who opened with two dance numbers. Before they started, Wayne caught my eye and gave me a nod of recognition. A feather from one of the dancer’s costumes kept on falling off and getting lost every time they did the dance number, a problem they didn’t have during the rehearsal since it was without costumes.

They did the MJ DA scene once and the birthday scene twice. Wayne, in a giant kangaroo costume, tripped running through the audience. He teased Missy and Jonathan for giving him the heaviest costume and then running off without him, “leaving the brother behind.”

They used the old age home set from the rehearsal to do a “Forward-Reverse” scene. I don’t remember much from that. I’m not crazy about the game.

They did the Siegfried and Leroy scene, this time with some new ad libs, which made Wayne break character. I love when that happens. Jonathan tripped at one point, but they kept going. I was afraid that Wayne wouldn’t be able to get the glass into the box again, but he did.

Wayne did a parody of Notorious BIG as Bill Cosby (Notorious COZ). He did this twice, once reading off of the prompt, and the second time it was partially improvised (this one included more Jello references). Before he started, one of the cameramen announced, “We be rolling!” After a beat, Wayne turned around and said, “Did you just say ‘we be rolling??” It was funny.

He did a gospel (this time with a big back up choir), first about swing dancing. It was amazing. Wayne did some really tough, complex dance moves and was very excited because he’d never been able to do them before. He did another gospel about finding the prize out of the bottom of a cereal box. (Note: When the Swing Dancing Gospel aired, they cut out the part where he went into the audience and preached to us. It’s probably just as well, since the best part was the dancing). The poor guy was working so hard in such a heavy robe and wig, he was a “chocolate fountain” the whole time (his words).

The musical guests were Mos Def (a rapper who sang to a woman sitting about 4 seats down from me named Nicole) and Ben E. King. He and Wayne sang “Stand By Me” together. At one point, Wayne got lost and said, “Oh, we’re on the second verse now?” or something along those lines. Later, when Ben E. King sang his low notes at the end, Wayne said, “Oh, thanks, now you’re making me look bad!” Neither of those moments made it to air. They sounded wonderful together.

They brought back the character of Wayne’s grandmother, this time as an expert on cats. Someone in the audience asked about what you should feed cats, and Wayne said, “You should feed them Taco Bell, In ‘N Out, and Burger King. And this will never be able to air because I just used three product names. Next question please!” They also did a Grandmother skit where she was an expert on laundry.

They did a Question & Answer section, and at one point Wayne got off the stage and couldn’t get back on. He said his pants were too tight. Eventually, he managed to ungracefully drag himself back on the stage without ripping his pants, and he said, “We can clear that, right?” and ran his hand across his throat, signaling that they’d have to cut it. He also said they’d have to cut the part where he sang, on request, a bit of the first song he ever sang in public (I’m not sure of the title, but it’s the song that starts off, “Why are there so many songs about rainbows?”). It was cute to picture Wayne as a little boy singing that song for his classmates.

Towards the middle of the taping, I noticed they were setting up for a scene that they hadn’t done in rehearsal the day before. It looked like a park scene. Brooke introduced the scene (it took her two tries). It was a scene about two vaudeville comedians meeting up years after they stopped being friends and working together. Thanks to the audience’s choosing, the reason they had stopped speaking was that one had stolen the other’s hamburger. The audience was also asked to come up with an annoying tick for Wayne’s character to have. Someone suggested that he sneezed every time a food related word was mentioned. Then Brooke announced the special guest: “Please welcome, from Whose Line is it Anyway...Colin Mochrie!” Well, I nearly fell out of my chair with excitement. Unfortunately, no matter how I turned, I couldn’t see Colin past the cameraman who was completely blocking my view. I had to watch the whole scene on the monitors. The most that I could see of Colin without looking at the monitors was his foot. A very nice foot it was, but still, I was disappointed. Some of my favourite lines from the scene were from Colin: “You didn’t even call after I died!” and, in response to Wayne’s idea that they sing the song that they used to sing together, “Good idea! You start.” Colin even did a little song and dance at the end of the scene. They should have saved Colin for the end, since after that, everything was downhill for me. I don’t remember much about the other scenes.