Well, there's a certain totally inexplicable element to great comedy. It works because it just WORKS, and it's sort of magic and mysterious and that's what is so exciting about it.

But I do think that one thing Python does better than any other comedy group ever is mix high and low comedy. Their scenes are simultaneously esoteric and juvenile. They use elevated vocabulary and allusions to play out concepts that are beyond ridiculous.

For example, the All-England Summarize Proust Competition:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwAOc4g3K-g

Goofy...and yet it relies on at least a basic familiarity with the work of Marcel Proust just to GET the joke. I mean, these guys went to Oxford and Cambridge. Terry Jones is a Chaucer scholar. And yet he's best known for playing a piano naked.

http://urbanfrontiersman.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/terry_jones_portrait.jpg

It's that ability to blend clever, satiric wit with bawdy physical comedy and schtick that really stands out about the best of Pythons work all these years later, to me. My favorite sketch of all time, "Argument Clinic," provides another ideal illustration. The surreal nature of the scene, and the amazing performances of Cleese and Palin, are what draw the immediate laughter, and yet it sticks with you because it is so imaginative. Thoughtful, even. It makes you reconsider the very nature of conversation and argumentation. What IS an argument? Why do we have them? IS it something beyond simple contradiction?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teMlv3ripSM

My favorite Monty Python skit is How to Not Be Seen. It makes fun of those educational films we used to have to watch in school, that were made in the 1950s. They were so serious that they came off as silly. I think that sums up Monty Python humor: It shows us the silliness in everyday things.

It's not easy to sum up something as wide ranging as Monthy Python humor. I am a huge fan of their style, mostly because I really enjoy bizarre humor. I think a lot of the appeal of the TV shows and their movies is the unbelievable creativity and originality. It seems like virtually everybody in humor are influenced by what Monthy Python did.

My favorite Python sketch is The Fish Slapping dance. To me this is a perfect example of their outrageous silliness and utterly bizarre style.

I do not think this is humanly possible. Explaining it, that is. Who would have thought they would spit Pepsi through their nose in the theater when the "Knights Who Say Nee!" were discussing shrubbery? Or the ministry of silly walks? Or Mr. Creosote? Is there a common thread here? In scientific terms, they appeal to the right parahippocampal gyrus - the part of our brain that enables us to understand sarcasm. And now, "The Parrot Sketch" - my all-time favorite!

When you understand how different each member of Monty Python is, and what they bring to the table... only then can you really pick apart the nuances that are the group. Any only then can you even begin to scratch the surface.

Not only did Britain at that time and today have a unique class system, but the members of Monty Python were from different classes, different schools and backgrounds growing up. I personally think that with those different eyes, they were able to bring together some very unique and funny Ideas.

If you're a fan of Monty Python, I highly recommend watching their new documentary "Almost the Truth: The Lawyer's Cut"
http://www.ifc.com/monty-python-almost-truth-lawyers-cut/

Without having a varied background, I don't think they could have pulled off "The Upper Class Twit of the Year".

Well I would explain monty python in 4 words: crude, sexually intolerent, low brow, and yet still amazing. all together Id say that this is the greatest show that has ever been aired and personally its my favorite show hands down. Put that in a juice box and suck on it

The Pythons had a definite idea about what they wanted to do with the series. They were admirers of the work of Peter Cook, Alan Bennett, Jonathan Miller and Dudley Moore on Beyond the Fringe, and had worked on Frost, which was similar in style. They enjoyed Cook and Moore's sketch show Not Only... But Also. One problem the Pythons perceived with these programmes was that though the body of the sketch would be strong, the writers would often struggle to then find a punchline funny enough to end on, and this would detract from the overall sketch quality. They decided that they would simply not bother to "cap" their sketches in the traditional manner, and early episodes of the Flying Circus series make great play of this abandonment of the punchline (one scene has Cleese turn to Idle, as the sketch descends into chaos, and remark that "This is the silliest sketch I've ever been in"—they all resolve not to carry on and simply walk off the set). However, as they began assembling material for the show, the Pythons watched one of their collective heroes, Spike Milligan, recording his new series Q5) (1969). Not only was the programme more irreverent and anarchic than any previous television comedy, Milligan would often "give up" on sketches halfway through and wander off set (often muttering "Did I write this?"). It was clear that their new series would now seem less original, and Jones in particular became determined the Pythons should innovate.

After much debate, Jones remembered an animation Gilliam had created for Do Not Adjust Your Set called Beware of the Elephants, which had intrigued him with its stream-of-consciousness style. Jones felt it would be a good concept to apply to the series: allowing sketches to blend into one another. Palin had been equally fascinated by another of Gilliam's efforts, entitled Christmas Cards, and agreed that it represented "a way of doing things differently". Since Cleese, Chapman and Idle were less concerned with the overall flow of the programme, it was Jones, Palin and Gilliam who became largely responsible for the presentation style of the Flying Circus series, in which disparate sketches are linked to give each episode the appearance of a single stream-of-consciousness (often using a Gilliam animation to move from the closing image of one sketch to the opening scene of another).

Writing started at 9 am and finished at 5 pm. Typically, Cleese and Chapman worked as one pair isolated from the others, as did Jones and Palin, while Idle wrote alone. After a few days, they would join together with Gilliam, critique their scripts, and exchange ideas. Their approach to writing was democratic. If the majority found an idea humorous, it was included in the show. The casting of roles for the sketches was a similarly unselfish process, since each member viewed himself primarily as a 'writer', rather than an actor desperate for screen time. When the themes for sketches were chosen, Gilliam had carte blanche to decide how to bridge them with animations, using a camera, scissors, and airbrush.

While the show was a collaborative process, different factions within Python were responsible for elements of the team's humour. In general, the work of the Oxford-educated members was more visual, and more fanciful conceptually (eg, the arrival of the Spanish Inquisition in a suburban front room), while the Cambridge graduates' sketches tended to be more verbal and more aggressive (for example, Cleese and Chapman's many "confrontation" sketches, where one character intimidates or hurls abuse, or Idle's characters with bizarre verbal quirks, such as The Man Who Speaks In Anagrams). Cleese confirmed that "most of the sketches with heavy abuse were Graham's and mine, anything that started with a slow pan across countryside and impressive music was Mike and Terry's, and anything that got utterly involved with words and disappeared up any personal orifice was Eric's".9 Gilliam's animations, meanwhile, ranged from the whimsical to the savage (the cartoon format allowing him to create some astonishingly violent scenes without fear of censorship).

Several names for the show were considered before Monty Python's Flying Circus was settled upon. Some were Owl Stretching Time, The Toad Elevating Moment, Vaseline Review and Bun, Wackett, Buzzard, Stubble and Boot. Flying Circus stuck when the BBC explained it had printed that name in its schedules and was not prepared to amend it. Many variations on the name in front of this title then came and went. "Gwen Dibley's Flying Circus" was named after a woman Palin had read about in the newspaper, thinking it would be amusing if she were to discover she had her own TV show. "Baron Von Took's Flying Circus" was considered as an affectionate tribute to Barry Took, the man who had brought them together. Arthur Megapode's Flying Circus was suggested, then discarded.

There are differing, somewhat confusing accounts of the origins of the Python name although the members agree that its only "significance" was that they thought it sounded funny. In the 1998 documentary Live At Aspen during the US Comedy Arts Festival, where the troupe was awarded the AFI Star Award by The American Film Institute, the group implied that "Monty" was selected (Eric Idle's idea)as a gently-mocking tribute to Field Marshal Lord Montgomery, a legendary British general of World War II; requiring a "slippery-sounding" surname, they settled on "Python". This was the suggestion of Cleese, who likened the image of the individual that conjured up the idea of the show. On other occasions Idle has claimed that the name "Monty" was that of a popular and rotund fellow who drank in his local pub; people would often walk in and ask the barman, "Has Monty been in yet?", forcing the name to become stuck in his mind. The name Monty Python was envisaged as being the perfect name for a sleazy entertainment agent.10

edit Style of the show
Flying Circus popularised innovative formal techniques, such as the cold open, in which an episode began without the traditional opening titles or announcements.11 An example of this is the "It's" man: Palin in Robinson Crusoe garb, making a tortuous journey across various terrains, before finally approaching the camera to state, "It's...", only to be then cut off by the title sequence and theme music. On several occasions the cold open lasted until mid show, after which the regular opening titles ran. Occasionally the Pythons tricked viewers by rolling the closing credits halfway through the show, usually continuing the joke by fading to the familiar globe logo used for BBC continuity, over which Cleese would parody the clipped tones of a BBC announcer. On one occasion the credits ran directly after the opening titles. They also experimented with ending segments by cutting abruptly to another scene or animation, walking offstage, addressing the camera (breaking the fourth wall), or introducing a totally unrelated event or character. A classic example of this approach was the use of Chapman's "Colonel" character, who walked into several sketches and ordered them to be stopped because things were becoming "far too silly". Another favourite way of ending sketches was to drop a cartoonish "16-ton weight" prop on one of the characters when the sketch seemed to be losing momentum, or a knight in full armour (played by Terry Gilliam) would wander on-set and hit characters over the head with a rubber chicken,12 before cutting to the next scene. Another innovative way of changing scenes was when John Cleese would come in as a radio commentator and say "And now for something completely different".

The Python theme music is The Liberty Bell, a march by John Philip Sousa, which was chosen, among other reasons, because the recording was in the public domain.11

The use of Gilliam's surreal, collage stop motion animations was another innovative intertextual element of the Python style. Many of the images Gilliam used were lifted from famous works of art, and from Victorian illustrations and engravings. The giant foot which crushes the show's title at the end of the opening credits is in fact the foot of Cupid, cut from a reproduction of the Renaissance masterpiece Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time by Bronzino. This foot, and Gilliam's style in general, are visual trademarks of the series.

The Pythons built on and extended the great British tradition of cross-dressing comedy. Rather than dressing a man as a woman purely for comic effect, the (entirely male) Python team would write humorous parts for women, then don frocks and makeup and play the roles themselves. Thus a scene requiring a housewife would feature one of the male Pythons wearing a housecoat and apron, speaking in falsetto. These women were referred to as pepperpots. Generally speaking, female roles were played by a woman (usually Carol Cleveland) when the scene specifically required that the character be sexually attractive (although sometimes they used Idle for this). In some episodes and later in Monty Python's Life of Brian they took the idea one step further by playing women who impersonated men (in the stoning scene).

Many sketches are well-known and widely quoted. "Dead Parrot", "The Lumberjack Song", "Spam", "Nudge Nudge", "The Spanish Inquisition", "Upper Class Twit of the Year", "Cheese Shop" and "The Ministry of Silly Walks" are just a few examples.

edit The end of Flying Circus
Having considered the possibility at the end of the second series, Cleese left the Flying Circus at the end of the third. He later explained that he felt he no longer had anything fresh to offer the show, and claimed that only two Cleese-and-Chapman-penned sketches in the third series ("Dennis Moore" and the "Cheese Shop") were truly original, and that the others were bits and pieces from previous work cobbled together in slightly different contexts.8 He was also finding Chapman, who was at that point in the full throes of alcoholism, difficult to work with. According to an interview with Idle, "It was on an Air Canada flight on the way to Vancouver, when John (Cleese) turned to all of us and said 'I want out.' Why? I don't know. He gets bored more easily than the rest of us. He's a difficult man, not easy to be friendly with. He's so funny because he never wanted to be liked. That gives him a certain fascinating, arrogant freedom".13

The rest of the group carried on for one more "half" series before calling a halt to the programme in 1974. The name Monty Python's Flying Circus appears in the opening animation for series 4, but in the end credits the show is listed as simply "Monty Python". Despite his official departure from the group, Cleese supposedly made a (non-speaking) cameo appearance in the fourth series, but never appeared in the credits as a performer. Several episodes credit him as a co-writer since some sketches were recycled from scenes cut from the Holy Grail script. While the first three series contained 13 episodes each, the fourth ended after six.

In 1975 the series was first broadcast in the United States. Ron Devillier, an executive from PBS television station KERA-TV in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, television market found episodes on a shelf when searching for programming for his station. He watched some, then acquired the entire series to put on the air.needed The series was eventually aired on PBS stations across the country. A couple of sketches ("Bicycle Repairman" and "The Dull Life of a Stockbroker") aired in 1974 on the NBC series ComedyWorld, a summer replacement series for The Dean Martin Show. With the popularity of Python throughout the rest of the 1970s and through most of the 1980s, PBS stations looked at other British comedies, leading to UK shows such as Are You Being Served? gaining a US audience, and leading, over time, to many PBS stations having a "British Comedy Night" which airs many popular UK comedies.