zwolanerd

If you missed the return of Whose Line Is It Anyway? you can watch the first two episodes right here (unless you don’t live in the US, at which point you’re out of luck (or maybe not?)).

My overall impression: pretty, pretty good. It’s weird that Drew isn’t there, but I think Aisha will grow into it. Ryan, Colin, and Wayne are still fantastic, and the changing fourth person still has to feel a little left out, especially since they now have guest stars to contend with.  Really, if you’re going to have guest stars, maybe don’t have a fourth improv person?  Seems like too much going on.  I don’t mind the guest stars, except that it means even less interaction with the audience, and I think improv suffers when that happens. But if having guest stars makes the show more marketable and gets me more episodes of Whose Line, then I am completely signed on for having guest stars.

Let’s break down the two episodes that aired this week:

Episode 1

4th cast Member:  Gary Anthony Williams
Guest star: Lauren Cohan (from The Walking Dead)

Games:

• Let’s Make a Date – always a good opener, with some great opportunities for the individual actors to do some great characters. Plus, not even four minutes into the show, Colin kisses Wayne full on the mouth.
• Dubbing (w/ Lauren Cohan) – I was impressed with Lauren’s commitment to the scene. Nice work!
• What’s in the Bag? – A new game using the contents of audience purses> I really, really liked this idea and it worked very well. Brave audience members, though.
• Scenes from a Hat – My all-time favorite WLIIA game, hands down. They could make a DVD that just had all of the Scenes from a Hat games one after another and I would buy it and watch it once a week.
• Living Scenery (w/ Lauren Cohan) – I have no idea how Lauren didn’t punch Colin after this. She’s a trooper.
• Credits: Pointing out who has turned into zombies – The “read the credits as _________” gag isn’t my favorite thing.

Episode 2

4th Person: Heather Anne Campbell
Guest star: Kevin McHale (from Glee)

Games:

• Scenes from a Hat – They could do this every week and I’d be all right with it, I’m telling you.  They could do the whole show as this and I’d be fine with it.
• Song Style (w/ Kevin McHale) – Wayne improvising songs is one of the best things ever, and I was impressed by Kevin’s joining in (though I was not impressed with his hair – is that what the kids are doing these days?)
• Dubbing (w/ Kevin McHale) – It’s weird to me that the second show of the season repeated two games from the first show, but I know one reason why they chose this one: having an audience member act out what an improv person is saying is an easy way to have an audience member onstage without requiring too much from them. As long as the audience member fully commits to acting out what’s being said, you’re basically assured to get laughs. This game and “using the audience member as a prop” or “having the audience member move the actors” are basically the Konami Codes of improv.
• Sideways Scene – For me a little of this goes a long way.  I’d seen it already in Colin and Brad’s show and on Trust Us with Your Life (every. single. episode.) so I’m a little burnt out on it.  Most people seem to really like this, though. I fear this will show up way too often on this new season.
• Helping Hands (w/ Kevin McHale) – On the old show, this was one of a couple that Drew would join in on, doing his best to get Ryan as messed up as possible or eating the worst possible things. Props to Kevin for not only catching some Ryan-spewed popcorn, but also eating it. I mean, that’s super-gross, but props anyway.
• Credits: Glee club preparing for a show, because of course

A good start, though there seemed to be waaaaaaaaaaaay too many commercials. I feel like the old shows had more than five games per episode, but I’ll need to go back and watch some to see if maybe it’s just my memory that’s going.

Tags: recap, WLIIA

Written by: Mark