Cast: Wayne Brady, Chip Esten, Colin Mochrie, Ryan Stiles, and Drew Carey

Superheros: crisis = no teleprompters; Colin = Presidential Candidate Man; Ryan = Toddler Doing Everything for the First Time Boy; Chip = the Mosh Pit Kid; Wayne = Can't Control His Stallion Man
Since presidential candidates usually have full heads of hair, Colin begins the game by putting on a wig and grooming himself. He checks his gleaming white teeth and practices a campaign bullet in the mirror — "I will not cut taxes," spoken with crossed fingers to protect himself from the consequences of lying. Stepping out of the bathroom in order to rehearse his full speech, Presidential Candidate Man notices ("Holy vote!") the absence of teleprompters and is suddenly rendered speechless. After struggling to get through the security guards, in comes Toddler Doing Everything for the First Time Boy to help out. Down on his knees, Ryan gives a little cry and as every good presidential candidate does, Colin goes over to kiss the baby on the head. Like most babies, Ryan spits up in response and looks perplexed. Colin reaches in to clean him off but Ryan spits up again on Colin's hand this time. Right about now, Presidential Candidate Man looks like he's had about enough of babies and backs off. Ryan toddles forward after him. I suspect Ryan was planning to suckle Colin then, but Colin didn't understand what Ryan was intending to do and kept backing away. Ryan gave up trying just as Chip hopped in. The Mosh Pit Kid promptly disturbs the Presidential Candidate Man's neatly coifed hair who reaches up to straighten it in between bashes from the Mosh Pit Kid who ricocheted back and forth from the Toddler to the Presidential Candidate Man. Once again, a gag is forestalled as Chip prepares to run into the audience only to be interrupted by Wayne's arrival.

Between the Mosh Pit Kid bouncing from person to person and Can't Control his Stallion Man who tries valiantly to contain his horse, there's a lot of unpredictable stage movement going on. The Toddler wisely decides to move upstage to use the table and chairs to help stand up although the Mosh Pit Kid managed to find him up there as well. As for Presidential Candidate Man, he spent most of the chaos with his hands upright trying not to be stepped on by Mosh Pit Kid's unpredictable antics. When Can't Control his Stallion Man finally controls his horse long enough to talk, he offers up a solution to the crisis before his stallion pulls him offstage — "Just use these TV sets. They'll double as teleprompt....." (Points to Wayne for inventing a solution that if not particularly clever was at least not as simplistic as some of his other solutions.) Finally, we get a resolution to the two cases of gagus interruptus. Chip tries again to run to the audience. This time, he manages to land on laps of the some front row people who didn't seem to mind having Chip sprawled on top of them. As Chip straggles back to the stage and then departs, Toddler Doing Everything for the First Time Boy toddles over to the Presidential Candidate Man for a little breakfast. (Watch Ryan pause in mid-toddle when Chip returns from the audience so that Chip can exit without being upstaged.) After a few suckles, the baby is satiated and toddles off, leaving Presidential Candidate Man to ponder the sacrifices he has to make in order to become president. Drew's comment to Colin afterwards, "That one kinda backfired on you, didn't it Colin? I thought you had him there until he started sucking on your nipple" — puzzled me a little at first. Then I remembered that Drew often introduces this game as one where each performer will try and "screw up" the next performer behind him which probably explains the "I thought you had him there."

Sound Effects: Ryan = captain of the Titanic; Colin = his new bride; getting romantic in their cabin moments before the iceberg is about to hit
Watch Ryan's and Colin's reactions after Drew announces what the next game is going to be. Drew seems to be concentrating on whom he will pick for volunteers and delivers the game announcement in this almost absent-minded tone that catches the performers off-guard for a moment. Both look a little confused by the announcement. Ever the romantic, Ryan starts the evening with his new bride by serving her flat champagne with a delayed fizz. (I wonder if he paid extra for the delayed fizz?) The new bride decided she wanted some fresh air and went to open the porthole, only to discover by the sound of the wind that it was already open. By the time of their third sound cue, though, unsuspecting audience members Trish and Melissa had more or less gotten the hang of timing their sound effects to the action so that when the newlyweds had clinked their glasses, the sound came in right on time. The next thing for Trish and Melissa to work on was the sounds themselves as the ship's twelve o'clock horn and seals barking apparently sound very similar to Ryan. Suddenly, Colin spots an iceberg. Oh, no! They're going to hit! And everyone on the ship starts screaming. Ryan tries a little reverse psychology on the women to get them to make a crash sound by mentioning how everyone on the ship is screaming when what he really wants is not screaming but a crash or a bang. I have yet to see the reverse psychology tactic work, and it doesn't here either. You can actually hear the women talking to each other as they try to figure out what Ryan intends. The result? The women just scream louder. Eventually, one of them catches on after a not quite as subtle hint, and the Titanic crashes into the iceberg and apparently blows a tire at the same time.

Ryan and Colin rush into the oddly echoing stairwell. (Points to the women for even remembering to provide an echo — odd or not.) Where they reach a watertight door. Ryan begins to open the creaky door crank only to discover the rats leaving the sinking ship. (I was impressed with the woman who thought to provide a creaky sound as Ryan turned the door wheel. I was even more impressed with how quickly Ryan reacted to the sound and turned it into escaping rats.) Finally, the newlyweds make it topside only to discover that the band's still playing. Colin: "What's that song they're playing?" C'mon Colin, admit it. You were just setting the women up, weren't you? Did you really expect them to remember under the pressure of the moment that the band reportedly played "Nearer My God to Thee"? Let alone remember how the song goes? Melissa's expression at your cue spoke volumes. I think you were just paving the way for Ryan's "Sound of Silence" joke. Shame on you. The piccolo dismayed the women, as well. As soon as Colin mentioned the piccolo, one of them moaned, "oh, no!" Despite that the piccolo music was delivered right on cue. So was the sound of the lifeboat being lowered on its pulley — although the water splash was a little late. As Ryan so courteously pointed out. Apparently though horn sounds are extremely problematic sounds to make — first seals then dings. The women never quite mastered that sound effect.

All kidding aside, I thought Melissa and Trish did an admirable job considering that "it's really hard to do". They made a genuine effort to follow Ryan's and Colin's cues — even the trick clues like the band's song — and to provide appropriate sounds to the best of their ability. For me, this was one of the better playings of the audience members-supplied sound effects games.

Three-Headed Broadway Star: Wayne, Chip, and Colin sing "You Have a Beautiful Bald Spot"
First off, did you notice Colin's expression when the title was suggested? Three things come to mind when I think about this game. The first is Colin's amazingly bizarre lyrics. Yowzah! Brilliant as a "professor". And your bald spot can reflect "lasers"????? I don't envy Wayne having to follow Colin in the rotation for Three-Headed Broadway Star. At least Chip got a chance to recover while Wayne struggled with finding an appropriate follow up to whatever nonsense Colin delivered.

Speaking of Chip, his singing is the second thing that I always notice when I watch this game. His voice is extremely lyrical during this song, and it is extraordinarily beautiful. I don't remember any other game where he sounds this lyrical, and it catches my breath every time I hear it. It's difficult to describe. Chip delivers his words as if he were the romantic lead in a Broadway musical without falling into the slightly campy style that WLiiA Broadway style songs tend to have. I don't know how else to describe it.

The third thing that I always notice is the electronic sound effect that happens in this game. I do not know the correct term for this. But all three singers' voices' are electronically augmented to sound fuller or more spatial than they normally would. Imagine for a moment that you can actually see the sound emanate from your TV. If you were sitting directly in front of your TV, the sound coming from it would be shaped like a cylinder. But for this game, the sound is expanded so that it's shaped like a cone and spreads out wider than the TV itself. The contrast between Drew's introduction and the song itself is quite noticeable. You don't have to have a fancy surround-sound TV to hear it either. I can still hear the difference on my cheap monaural TV as well. I wonder if the effect is something that was done live so that the studio audience could hear it too? Or is it something that can only be heard on tape after the recording?

Whose Line: Ryan = Delilah; Colin = Samson, angry with Delilah for cutting off his hair as the Philistine army approaches
There's a little pre-game action that I should mention. As Colin comes down, he slips his hand into his pocket and then suddenly turns back around to his chair. I couldn't figure out what he was doing when it suddenly hit me what was happening. Colin still had the Hollywood Director styles in his pocket and didn't want those papers mixed up with the Whose Line lines. While Colin and Ryan are getting their scene description, you can see the papers sitting in front of their water carafe. Apparently, one of the papers didn't land on the table when Colin tossed them because you can see Chip lean down towards the floor and out of camera range. When he sits back up, he's bawling something up in his hands and tosses it over his shoulder back to the area behind the chairs. It's a good thing Colin remembered those papers were there. It would have been an interesting game of Whose Line if the papers from the two games had mixed up.

Ryan begins the game by mentioning that he needed hair extensions because the Philistines were coming. I was surprised that Colin didn't follow up on that lead because he normally would, so I assume he didn't make the connection that the extensions were made with Samson's hair at the time. Ryan doesn't push the point and follows Colin opening instead leading up to the first supplied line "Hold me close and call me Ginger." Which Colin does and then flips the meaning of ginger around, commenting "You smell like paprika." (Am I the only person who thinks that paprika doesn't have a smell?) Afterwards, Colin bemoans, "I don't know what to do!" and read his line, "Aren't you hot in that wet suit?" I mention this because the set up for the supplied line is very uncommon. For years, the supplied line has always had a proceeding set up line. "I've been meaning to tell you." "My father / teacher / mother always said to me." "The most frightening battle cry ever known." These are typical set up lines for Whose Line. Ryan actually uses a variant of the "I've been meaning to tell you" later when he says, "For the last two years, I've wanted to say". But when Colin read his first line, he did not set up it. If you hadn't seen him read it, you would not have known it was coming. Not even the tone of his voice on "I don't know what to do!" implied that a supplied line was coming. And I really liked that. All of a sudden out of the blue without warning, the ground under the scene shifted. The line's impact is greater when it is unexpected.

Although the delivery was good, the wet suit line itself didn't provide too much inspiration for either man, so they went back to the scene they were developing. Colin wanted to know what happened to his hair. Ryan gave it to Jim. Jim the tinker? Yes. Now, he's the strongest tinker in the land. Colin: "Who needs to be a mighty tinker? He tinkers. He doesn't TINKER!" Based on his hand movements, I'd guess that Colin doesn't know what a tinker was. Ryan: "Why does everything you say sound sexual?" Maybe Ryan doesn't know either. Or maybe as Colin says, that's just the way he does things. Ryan complains that their relationship hasn't worked for years. They just get drunk every night and play stupid games. The comments anger Colin who tries to work out his frustration by pushing the pillars. Unsuccessfully. So first he'll fluff the pillars. Then Ryan reaches over and easily breaks the pillar. Colin is shocked. Ryan pats the hair extensions by way of explanation bringing in the idea he had tried to introduce at the beginning of the game. This time Colin gets it. Colin: "You can fight the Philistines." But Delilah doesn't want to. Setting up his last supplied line in the traditional WLiiA manner, Colin tries to convince Delilah in that way he knows she loves, that way that just makes her butter (butter???). "Hop on. I'll show you what this baby can do!"

This was a good game of Whose Line — not one of the great classics, but respectable none the less. As I said, I liked the effect of not preparing for the supplied lines, and I hope that the method is used more often. Also, it was nice to have Ryan playing the woman for a change. Even nicer that he chose not to play the female role campy as he sometimes does.

Irish Drinking Song: All four sing about getting mugged
Who would have guessed that such an ordinary topic would turn into such an extraordinary game? Wayne started the song in the first person and the others followed suit. The man was on a date when they were mugged in the parking lot. Everything in the game was proceeding as you might expect until Colin sang that he started crying. Look at Ryan's rather panicked expression as he tries to think of a reason for why he was crying at the same time as coming up with a rhyme for Chip "so fast" phrase. The result — "I started crying / At the stone I passed!" Where on earth did that come from, Ryan? Wayne and Chip lose it from the sheer surprise of the idea. Colin and Ryan carry the bulk of the refrain. Since Chip still hasn't recovered in time to start the second verse, Ryan steps in and starts a second round of the refrain making this game the first one in which the refrain is sung twice mid-song. By the second round, Chip is ready to sing again. The song slows a pace. Wayne has some trouble creating lyrics. Almost every thing Colin and Ryan sing sends him laughing. He does manage to name the mugger Tim though. And in another of those odd WLiiA coincidences the hero of the song is also named Tim, according to Chip. According to Ryan, hero Tim still hears from mugger Tim. Wayne: "From .... Often" (Great lyric, Wayne.) Chip: "He writes a little letter" Colin: "It's as soft as cotton." (If the great Sir William Gilbert can rhyme "often" and "orphan", then I suppose that Colin can rhyme "often" with "cotton".) And Ryan starts the last verse. "Someday I'll write back" implies that there hasn't been any mutual correspondence yet. But Wayne changes the meaning significantly by singing, "He is my best friend" Chip: "And we both are pen pals"

Colin: "He put the stone back in my end."

Each performer manages to sing some part of the refrain and coda. But only Colin — mildly amused by his co-workers' reactions — manages to sing it all. Everyone else is collapsing at the sheer absurdity of what Colin has wrought. Wayne is almost on his knees. Chip is doubled over. And Ryan is hiding with his back to the audience. The performers' reactions are actually stronger than the audience's is although many in the audience are mimicking Drew by wiping their tears. I think Colin's line hit the others so hard because of their intense concentration. That line blew their concentration to smithereens, and there was nothing they could do but laugh. Chip was singing the line on his way back to the chairs; Ryan joined in and then gave a much louder reprise after he sat down earning a brief smile from Colin who then decided to play the post-game banter cool as a cucumber. Even after Ryan's "That was smooth" compliment, Colin was the epitome of cool, "Try that Cole Porter" earning another round of laughter from the cast for his efforts.

I must agree with Ryan's comment immediately after the song ended. "Oh, Lord. Oh, Lord." That pretty much says it all.

Helping Hands: Ryan = angry football coach (Colin = hands) trying to inspire quarterback, Drew, at halftime
Drew and Ryan are wearing costumes for this game. Drew is dressed as a football player, and Ryan is wearing a jacket. No big deal. Costumes have been worn for Helping Hands before. But for the first time that I can remember, the hands provider is in costume too. It's about time. It's always been a personal pet peeve of mine when the hands provider doesn't wear a costume but the front person does. I've always thought the arms not matching the body hurt the illusion of the single person. So points to whoever finally fixed that after all those years. Drew and Ryan start the scene almost simultaneously with Ryan winning scene control by quacking louder. Ryan: "Quack, quack, quack. You were throwing ducks out there." Throwing ducks?? Is that a football cliché, maybe? I dunno. Drew seems to think that the point of the Helping Hands is to get Ryan to put as much food in his mouth as possible. (Who knows maybe that is the point of Helping Hands.) This time Drew showed some restraint, and we actually got some non-food action in before. Ryan plans on showing Drew some plays on the board, but since Colin has the action figures in his hands, he'll use those instead. (Thank you for pointing out that they weren't actual size. I hadn't picked up on that, Ryan.) Finally, though come the food hints. Drew's tired and needs protein. Eat a banana then. Ryan will take half, and Drew will take half. Well, since Drew is wearing a helmet, Ryan will just eat both halves. Just before Ryan spits the chewed banana into Colin's hands, switch your attention over to Chip in the background. He wasn't paying attention when Ryan actually spit the banana out. The audience is laughing. Drew is eww-ing. Colin is tossing the remnants back and forth. And suddenly with a shock, Chip realizes what has happened. You can actually see the moment register on his face when he catches on to the event. Speaking of facial movements, be sure to notice Ryan's face after Drew convinces him to eat the orange. That must have been one bitter or sour orange for him to scrunch up his face like that. And no, I don't think he was acting just then. One more thing for Ryan to put in his mouth. Some water from a thermos (actually a water bottle). By then, I would have thought that Ryan would like something to drink, but I guess getting back at Drew by spitting the water out was more important. All in all, I don't think Helping Hands is one of Drew's better games, but I do like that he's attempting different games occasionally. And I think this one was better than other playings he's done. But it's still not up to the standards of non-Drew Helping Hands games from the past.

Credits: all four = toddlers learning their first words
Since the toddlers were learning their first words, I suppose it's appropriate that only two names were mentioned the entire time. Colin managed to get out most of Jimmy Mulville's name. And Chip was trying and trying and trying to say Levinson. But the fun in this credit reading was in watching Colin zoom toddler-style around the set nearly stepping on Chip who had toddled over for a close up at the camera only to fall over after looking in the lens. I enjoyed this credits reading. It was fun.

Best Game:
To me, there are three games which are potential candidates for Best Game. Superheros, Whose Line, and Irish Drinking Song. I liked the clever way Colin handled a potentially boring Superheros suggestion, and I enjoyed the chaos that the Mosh Pit Kid produced. I'm always up for a good game of scene game like Whose Line. However, Irish Drinking Song cannot be denied. Not only did it make me laugh the loudest and the hardest. (Yes, I was wiping my eyes afterwards too.) But the sheer joy the other cast members felt at Ryan's and then Colin's lyrics makes this game the show's highlight for me.

Overall Comments:
Except for the ending of Irish Drinking Song, you probably won't remember much about this episode weeks after you watch it. I doubt it would make anyone's best episode list for the season. You may or may not go searching for it in your tape collection. But I promise you that when you come across it and watch it, you will enjoy it. You'll forget about the outside world for a half-hour or so and revel in the antics. And who knows, maybe the word Yowzah will become a permanent part of your vocabulary by the end of it.

© LKK 07/15/01