Whose Watchdown is it Anyway: S10E24, or Remember the Moose.

Season 10 ends at 24 episodes, a current high-total for the CW version. Usually they get to either 20 or 15 and just shrug their shoulders.

Still, this episode caps off a strong, more confident season for the CW version. It took a lull after the first wave of 1st Half shows hit, but the second half was filled with better guest star shows, better guestless shows, and better moments for all four, cementing some classic moments for the new version. We go back to the same taping as E18 and E22, and finally get a guestless show with Heather Anne Campbell. Hopefully she’ll get to do actual improv here.

Scenes from a Hat:

“Bad things to say or do while your partner is giving birth.”
Ryan, with another topical Super Bowl 48 reference: “OMAHA, 24…”
Colin: [takes selfie with the crowned…yeah]
Ryan, who is shaking his head before he does this, does a ‘finger around the rim sound’ one.
Immediately the place goes wild. Colin’s facepalming, Ryan’s immediately ashamed, Wayne goes “YES!”

“Unlikely things for your dentist to say or do”

Ryan: “Mr. Phillips, just relax, I’m gonna give you a bit of suction now”

Heather does a good one where she’s hungover and vomits into Wayne’s mouth

“What people are really thinking when making love”
Heather: “I should really get back to flying the plane.”
YES

Colin mistimes a step-off, and sort of gets…stuck in limbo

It’s amusing as hell

Colin, eventually timing it correctly: “…she’s naked she’s naked she’s naked she’s naked…”

Wayne: “HEHEHEHEHEHEHEHE….STOP, COLIN.”
Colin:

“Unlikely things to hear in a sci-fi movie”
Wayne: “as the first black captain of the enterprise…”
[Captain Sisko would like a word…]
Also, I love Wayne turning a vulcan salute into a black power salute.

Ryan does a similar, Trek-themed one with Colin: “so it’s 25 years, we haven’t found any life…what the fuck are we out here for?”

An okay SFAH. Not a lot of standout moments, just sort of went by.

Whose Line: On a doomed planet, Ryan is preparing to send his son Colin to safety on Earth

I’m so excited to see this game return that I’ll let it slide that they’re reusing a scene description from UK S8 [“BECAUSE OUR PLANET IS DOOMED. DOOMED.”]

Ryan: “I couldn’t fit in the pod…I tried to go before you, but I’m too big…”
Colin: “….wow, that’s so noble, dad…”

Colin: “Whenever someone asks about you, I’ll just say…’hubba hubba, those are enormous!”

Ryan, with a bizarre line that doesn’t get enough response: “I BUILT THAT POD OUT OF SAND…”

Colin: “I’ll be glad to leave this atmosphere where the kids look older than their fathers…”
HA

Ryan: “your mother, god bless her soul, before-”
Colin: “SHE’S DEAD?”

Ryan, as this threw him a little, smiles: “…yes”
Colin: “you could have told me”
Ryan: “I needed some of her parts for the pod.”
Colin has a weird reaction to this, as does the audience

Ryan reads the last thing his wife wanted to tell Colin: “come on baby, let’s tweak-TWERK.”
OOOOH. That’s a nice snafu from Ryan.

And then we have a moment where Ryan and Colin attempt to twerk.
Ryan: “I CAN’T TWERK…MY BUTTOCKS ARE TOO FIRM…”
Colin: “….yeah whatever.”

Ryan: “Love’s not everything you think it is. To me, it means…’who brought the pig?'”
Colin: “WHAT??? THAT’S MY MOTHER YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT!”
Ryan, cracking again: “No, it was before your mother, I don’t wanna talk about it…”

Colin: “Well, I’m hoping I find someone I love down there.”
Ryan: “Hopefully not a pig.”
PFFFFF
Colin: “I’m guessing that won’t be an option…but thanks, dad.”
I love how Colin is just powering this game just with his sarcastic contrast from Ryan, and just how reality based he seems to be.

Colin talks of making passionate love, “and right in the middle, she’ll probably scream out “I think I’m gonna be sick.”
HA

A pretty good WL round. I’ll admit it took a bit for Ryan and Colin to recalibrate to this game, but after a bit the improv logic and back and forths felt classic, and Colin continued to throw Ryan even without meaning to. This isn’t a wall-to-wall classic, but it’s still a good one.

Forward/Rewind: Coach Colin is teaching pro-wrestler Wayne some new moves, Ryan enters as Wayne’s pumped-up rival who challenges him, and Heather is Wayne’s passionate girlfriend who rushes in

Colin, after hearing the commands: “okay wait……..got it.”

Wayne gives his character a silly Russian accent, which works

Colin: “YOU CAN’T BE OVERCONFIDENT, REMEMBER THE MOOSE [does moose impression]
Also, I love Ryan slowly waddling in as Colin says this

And then at the first rewind, Ryan’s smirk as he has to waddle backwards offstage before even making an entrance

Then, after doing his two ‘YOU CAN’T BE OVERCONFIDENT’s again, Colin hears the FORWARD cue, and has this little shrug before going back into them

Ryan, finally making his entrance: “I HEAR THAT SOMEONE’S BEEN TALKING CRAP ABOUT ME.”

At Colin’s “be careful, don’t pull anything”, Wayne does a ‘BOINK’ from down in his crotch area, because…sure.

Heather enters and plants a VERY LONG KISS on Wayne. Of course, we rewind….and we replay that a few times.

Rewinding to the top is a good, solid round because Ryan gets to redo his big, lip-heavy lines again, which is funny, and do some more waddling backwards.

We even go further than the beginning and start with Colin having a smoke outside.

An okay Forward/Rewind. Didn’t do much that impressed me, especially considering the rounds we’ve seen before.

Ryan makes a reference that I was sort of making as his character was on but didn’t think he’d make: “I think I MIGHT HAVE BEEN the bug guy from Men in Black.”
Because yeah…he did sound a lot like Vincent D’Onofrio as Edgar in that movie. Also, WOW, RYAN’S SEEN A POPULAR MOVIE!

Newsflash: Heather and Ryan in the studio, Colin in the field in front of worms, grubs and maggots

Ryan: “well explain to us what’s going on back there, Colin.”
Colin, bringing back the sarcasm from WL: “…yeah, alright.”

Heather: “have you been in a position like this before?”
Colin: “uh, once before, my first marriage…”
HA

Ryan: “How many of them would you say there are?”
Colin: “OVER A MILLION.”
Ryan: ‘really?”
Colin: “uh…five?”

Once a guy starts pulling worms out of his mouth, this turns into another ‘let’s gross out the audience and Ryan and Heather’ playing.

poor Ryan

Once it keeps getting more and more disgusting, Colin starts getting more and more animated. “I will stay here and keep reporting this story no matter how often people vomit.”

An okay Newsflash. Man, this show is just seeming really underwhelming so far.

Greatest Hits: Songs of the Roommate

Colin: “Hi, we’ll be back to our documentary about a convent of sisters who keep seeing UFOs in…Nun-Identified Objects’ in just a second.”
Another great one

Ryan, upwards: “QUIET UP THERE, YOU’RE DRIVING ME CRAZY”
Colin: “Hey, Ryan, why so upset?”
Ryan: “i was just acting, Colin…”
Colin: “Not really.”

I love this look from Ryan. Genuine scorn. And Colin being Colin

Ryan mentions the next song is a belly-dancing song. We cut to Wayne, and he’s shaking his head about having to do that

Hell, right before he goes into the song, Wayne just shakes his head one more time. Then, like with the Hawaiian number last year, goes right into it

Wayne has a very fun ‘Evicted’ number in this style, meaning he can get a lot of mean-spirited lyrics in pretty quickly

Ryan: “I just got a craving for some hugh-mmus.”
PFFFF
A slow-burn audience reaction to this, and a very blank Colin look
Colin: “I just got a craving for some hu-MOR.”

Wayne, doing some pretty strong Adele vocals, does this awesome line:
“It was a sunday afternoon, and I thought we’d have brunch
but then when I walked inside the door he was having something else for lunch.”
He cracks right when he realizes what the rhyme is going towards

Wayne, at the chorus: “OHHHHH I’m leaving”
[turns to Ryan and Colin] “I don’t remember what I was supposed to say”
Ryan and Colin:

Wayne does eventually nail the title of the song [maybe they went back for pickups], and he’s absolutely killing this number, btw

Also, great ending line: “It was weird to see him with a woman, cause we’re both gay.”
HA

A good GH, with great banter and some good stuff from Wayne, but it only felt slightly better than the standard for the CW.

Overall: We end this strong season on a very, very okay note. Only Whose Line impressed me, and even there it took a little. The majority of games tonight just sort of went by without being too memorable or anything higher than ‘alright’. Not anyone’s fault, especially Heather, who killed it whenever this show decided to use her for things [which wasn’t often]. Greatest Hits was at least amusing and impressive, but nowhere near a lot of recent GH playings. Nothing in this show except for WL felt like ‘oh yeah, that’s one of the best playings of this I’ve seen recently’. And that’s too bad.

Show Winner: Colin
Best Performer: Colin was doing some great sarcasm acting that was throwing people throughout. Great night for him.
Worst Performer: Heather was barely in the show.
Best Game: Whose Line had some great improv moments and back and forth.
Worst Game: Newsflash had the least to it.

SEASON 10 SUPERLATIVES!

Best Episode: E6, the Byamba show, with so much insane energy flowing through not only the guest games, featuring a sumo wrestler having the time of his life, but the guestless games, featuring a top-tier SFX and a really damned funny SFAH [“BOING”].
2nd Best Episode: E23, the Wendi McLendon Covey show, responsible for some great, energetic guest games, the best Film Dub of the season, a surprisingly good SFAH ender, some of the best consistent show energy possible, and that damned round of Secret where the producers throw Colin right off the bat.
3rd Best Episode: E19, the one with the waxing lady. As soon as you think this Jeff taping can’t give you anything else, it strikes with one of the most complete, runner-based shows since the tape recorder show. The bookends are insane, but there’s still time for a breezy show with great rounds of Newsflash and Award Show to make up the middle.
Worst Episode: E7, the Nolan Gould show. This is where we’re at, folks- no show was truly bad to me in Season 10. The worst show of the season is just the most okay one. And every game in this show felt more and more okay, as if there was a conscious effort to make this Ryanless taping look as boring as possible. The Nolan game was alright, but…odd. And all the guestless games just lacked the slightest bit of energy or liveness.
Episode Most Worthy of Another Look: E21, Gary guestless, because there is a lot of good stuff in here that I may have overlooked. That Film Dub is goofy enough to make me think I missed some stuff.
Best Taping: The 2nd-Half Jeff taping, simply because every show we got from it was excellent. E12 had the immortal ‘count to five’ runner, E14 had KELP and a great GH, E17 had some more outstanding Jeff energy in PQ and WN, and E19 had that insane waxing runner and the SFAH finish. All memorable shows, all funny as hell. That taping was drained properly is what I’m saying.
Taping I’d Love to See More From: The Greg/Jeff taping, because YOU KNOW there’s gotta be more fun stuff in there that the CW has just refused to air.
Best Regular: Ryan Stiles. A lot of shows where Ryan did the brunt of the improv work, and had the funnier moments, which I’m certainly not complaining about after how Colin mopped the floor with everybody during the ABC version.
Best Fourth Seater: Jeff Davis was in the most shows, won the most shows for me, and came off like a wave of good energy on this season. How could I give it to anyone else?
Fourth Seater I Wish Wasn’t Done After This Season: Nyima Funk. If Dan Patterson didn’t hate women standing up for themselves, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Best Guest Star: Rob Gronkowski, E11. Because my god, that man brought so much fun energy to the table in his.
Worst Guest Star: Michael Weatherly, E5. He was a brick wall to Ryan, and when he did speak, he said very skeevy things. Not a fan.
Guest Star I Wish I’d Seen More of: Darren Criss, E4. If you’re gonna have Darren Criss on your show, put him in more than one game.
Episodes Ranked: See my Twitter, @WLIIAWatchdown

COMING UP NEXT: I’m probably gonna go on another brief hiatus, but after that, Season 11 begins, the actual season distinction begins to get a bit more complicated, our relatively-famous guest star attempts to improvise, and Gary Anthony Williams punches his ticket into the fourth-seaters hall of fame with one single word…or lack thereof.