Title: Deja Vu (or: Show 5)
Original Airdate: 29/9/1970
Guest Starring: Carol Cleveland, Jeanette Wild
And now for something completely different, it's: A man travelling a long way for flying lessons ("Flying Lessons"), an overly polite hijacker trying to hijack the plane of the man from the previous segment, a retrospective on the career of poet Ewan McTeagle, a door-to-door psychiatric milkman, an episode of 'It's the Mind' focusing on the phenomenon of deja vu ("Deja Vu"), and multiple complaints about the segments as well as the other complainers.
Tropes:
- Argument of Contradictions: The "Flying Lessons" sketch ends with one.
- Artistic License – Medicine: Lampshaded after the "Psychiatrist Milkman" sketch, when one character complains about the preceding portrayal of psychiatry.
- Black Comedy Rape: The interview with one of McTeagle's girlfriends (played by Eric Idle) starts with her being attacked by the sound man. It ends with the sound man tackling her again.
- Call-Back:
- Throughout the episode, characters from previous sketches make sporadic appearances in other sketches. The bishop practicing his one line appears throughout, as does the BALPA spokesman, and the secretary in the forest.
- The doctor (well, actually, the gynecologist, but it was his lunch break) who was seen under a Scotsman reappears in the "Milkman Psychiatrist" sketch.
- Complaining About Complaining: The episode gets tied up with people complaining, then someone complains about another person's complaint, and then someone else complains about people complaining about people who complain, and insists that something should be done about it. Cue the 16-ton weight.
- Continuity Snarl: The Pepperpot in the Milkman Psychiatrist sketch played by Terry Jones is first called Mrs Ratbag, but in the film, she is called Mrs Pim.
- Déjà Vu: A sketch involves a show exploring the concept of deja vu. Suddenly the sketch starts over, and by the third time it happens the commentator starts to notice something is wrong.
- Déjà Vu: A sketch involves a show exploring the concept of deja vu. Suddenly the sketch starts over, and by the third time it happens the commentator starts to notice something is wrong.
- Déjà Vu: A sketch involves a show exploring the concept of deja vu. Suddenly the sketch starts over, and by the third time it happens the commentator starts to notice something is wrong.
- Exact Words: A man comes in seeking flying lessons. The instructor immediately tries to instruct him on how to levitate himself.Man: I want to learn to fly an aeroplane!
Instructor: OH! An AEROPLANE!!! - "Groundhog Day" Loop: the presenter on "It's the Mind" goes through this when discussing the phenomenon of Déjà Vu: A sketch involves a show exploring the concept of deja vu. Suddenly the sketch starts over, and by the third time it happens the commentator starts to notice something is wrong.
- Implausible Deniability: The flying instructor hovers over his desk on extremely visible wires. He passes a hoop note over his body to prove there are no wires... going only as far as the shoulders the first time and breaking the hoop for the second pass.
- Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: The plane hijacker, who wants the plane to fly to Luton but finally agrees to debark the plane (in mid-flight) somewhere over Basingstoke and catches a bus to Luton... which is subsequently hijacked and rerouted to Cuba.
- Just Plane Wrong: As the BALPA spokesman points out. Except for the plane door that opens without any decompression or anything. Then there's the whole "landing on hay bales" thing.
- Mistaken for Profound: The Ewan MacTeagle sketch. A poor man writes letters begging for money, which are played up as brilliant poetry.
- Overly Long Gag: The man's trek from the secretary's desk, through the woods, into the cave and Down the Drain, before finally emerging on a city street in front of the relevant building.
- Stuff Blowing Up: The forest animals, for no reason whatsoever.
