Sketch Comedy Monday: “Customs”

Happy Presidents’ Day! This day is supposed to celebrate the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln – two presidents for the price of one. To keep with that tradition, I’m posting two sketches for today’s Sketch Comedy Monday.

The first is from Monty Python’s Flying Circus and it’s about a man trying to smuggle foreign materials from another country. The second is from Mr. Show with Bob and David and it’s about a man trying to smuggle foreign materials from another country.

The two sketches are remarkably similar in set-up, execution, and tone. In both sketches, the person smuggling something through customs becomes increasingly desperate and unable to keep up the lie. The customs officer remains calm and just watches as the smuggler continues to make things worse for himself. At the end, a second person tries to get through customs, with very different results.

I saw the Monty Python sketch before the Mr. Show sketch, and the latter immediately reminded me of the former. Watching the two back-to-back, I’m trying to figure out which one I like more.

The Monty Python sketch is the more absurd of the two (as Monty Python sketches tend to be), since the alarm clock goes off in the suitcase right as the smuggler is talking, and then you hear chiming of church bells at the most inopportune time. The customs officer in the Mr. Show never sees the shampoo filled with baggies of drugs and is, in that way, less silly.

On the other hand, I enjoy watching the way David Cross continues to hang himself by fixating on the word “shampoo” and all of its variants, especially since “shampoo” doesn’t have that many variants. Michael Palin has an assortment of absurd lies in his arsenal, while David Cross can’t get off of the word “shampoo” no matter what he tries. “Don’t try to shampoo a shampoo-er! SHAM…POO!”

I want to give the edge to the Monty Python sketch because John Cleese refuses to believe the smuggler’s confession despite the evidence proving his guilt. Throughout the entire sketch, he’s acting like he knows the smuggler is full of crap, so when he says, “I don’t believe you, sir” with that same deadpan expression, I crack up. He’s contemptuous not because the smuggler is lying so badly, but because he thinks the guy is pretending to be a smuggler and can’t pass as one. It’s so silly!

For that alone, I want to prefer the Monty Python sketch. On the other hand, it’s hard to beat a punchline like, “I was in Italy, and then I took a balloon up my ass to Spain…”

So I’ll leave it to you. Which do you prefer?