Title: Sex and Violence
Original Airdate: 12/10/1969
Guest starring: Carol Cleveland
It's: Sheep trying to act like birds, how to make a sheep fly (in French), a man with three buttocks, a man with two noses, singing mice, a husband cuckolded by his marriage guidance counsellor ("Marriage Guidance Counsellor"), early footage of Queen Victoria ("The Wacky Queen"), a coal miner confronting his playwright father, a Monsignor and a humanist debating the existence of God via wrestling, and the secret world of people who pretend to be mice.
Tropes:
- As Long as It Sounds Foreign: The French scientists in "The French Lecture on Sheep-Aircraft" sketch intersperse real French with French-sounding mumbling and lots of sheep noises.
- Bait-and-Switch: The rare Stock Footage of Queen Victoria and William Gladstone is introduced as seriously as possible, even finding old sound cylinders that synced up with the film read by poet laureate Alfred Lord Tennyson. But it turns out to be a Slapstick Comedy with "The Wacky Queen".
- Black Comedy Animal Cruelty: The singing mice are made to squeak by hitting them with wooden mallets. This is Played for Laughs, though it's not considered funny In-Universe as the act is interrupted very quickly.
- Didn't We Use This Joke Already?: The performers go through the "Man With Three Buttocks" sketch all the way through - and then a presenter (Idle) says, "And now for something completely different: a man with three buttocks." (A repeat of how the sketch was announced the first time.) John Cleese and Terry Jones go through it again until Cleese stops and asks:Interviewer (Cleese): I'm sorry, didn't we just do this?Man (Jones): Well, yeah.Interviewer: Well, why didn't you say so?Man: Thought this was the continental version.
- They go back to Eric Idle's presenter saying, "And now for something completely the same: a man with three buttocks," and gets a phone call pointing out that they did that already. The gag is repeated in a different sketch later in the episode.
- Drop the Cow: First appearance of the Knight with a Chicken, who hits Arthur Pewtey on the head at the end of the Marriage Counsellor sketch.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Eric Idle is the one who says, "And now for something completely different", instead of John Cleese. Although, Michael Palin says it at one point as well.
- Everything Is an Instrument: The mouse organ, a set of mice trained to squeak at a selected pitch, arranged in a set of boxes from E# to G, that can squeak "the Bells of St. Mary's". They are played by striking them with mallets; not small felt-covered mallets like those used for xylophones and such, large wooden meat tenderizers. The organist is dragged away with off-stage screams of "Oh my God! Stop him!"
- Garden-Hose Squirt Surprise: In "The Wacky Queen", Queen Victoria hands Gladstone a hose, then turns off the water. When Gladstone looks inside of the hose to check what's wrong, she turns it on again, spraying him in the face.
- "Gender-Normative Parent" Plot: Inverted in one sketch
; instead of a coal mining father with black lung disapproving of his son going into theater, it's a playwright father with writer's cramp disapproving of his son working in the coal mines.Father: There's nowt wrong wi' gala luncheons, lad! AND DON'T YOU FORGET IT!.Son: One day you'll realize there's more to life than culture! There's smoke and dirt and good honest work!Father: Get out! Get out, you labourer! - Kitchen Sink Drama: The tie-in book Monty Python's Flying Circus: Complete and Annotated...All The Bits acknowledges the "Our Ken" sketch as a parody of that genre.
- Lovely Assistant: Janet (Carol Cleveland) to the Amazing Kargol (Graham Chapman), who mixes stage magic with psychiatry.
- Oop North: In "Our Ken", Graham Chapman and Terry Jones play a seemingly typical working-class Northern couple whose RP-accented son Ken (Eric Idle) has returned to visit them, only to face his father's disapproval for his career path. However, the father turns out to be a successful London playwright (who has sudden attacks of writer's cramp), while Ken has defied him to work in the coal mines in Yorkshire.
- Pie in the Face: Queen Victoria hits Gladstone in the face with a pie.
- Therapy Backfire: In the "Marriage Counselor" sketch, a man brings his wife to a marriage counselor; the counselor then seduces her right in front of him.
- Took a Level in Badass: Subverted in the "Marriage Counselor" sketch. Mild-mannered Arthur Pewtey finds his wife stolen from under his nose by the counselor. A cowboy gives Pewtey a level-up in badass — "you gotta turn, and you gotta fight, and you gotta hold your head up high" — which lasts for as long as it takes the marriage guidance counsellor to tell Pewtey to go away. So much for pathos.
