Talk:Sam Peckinpah's "Salad Days"

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This article was nominated for deletion on 24 March 2008. The result of the discussion was keep.

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lol, is there any way of conveying how hilarious it is that the ones who remain unaffected by the situation just keep on laughing and talking in a group? also, cleese has an almost critical look on his face when he's staring down at his stumps... riana 09:26, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Removed totally POV section from article. If anyone wants to NPOV and replace it feel free. Lee M 03:07, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

==Significance==

Sam Peckinpah's Salad Days would seem edgy and somewhat confrontational in a modern comedy series, even after the pantomime gore of The Young Ones and Bottom, so it remains genuinely surprising to see it included in a show dating from 1972! As the gross, exaggerated, blood-spouting violence escalates, the studio audience seems torn between laughter and groans of disgust, and the machine-gunning of Idle is met with a rather embarrassed silence. Yet, as with all Python's best work, the beauty is in the detail - during Idle's preamble, superimposed captions appear saying "GET ON WITH IT", as if a behind-the-scenes lunatic is eager to see the gory madness in store, Palin responds to his severe head trauma with a stoic "oh, crikey!", Cleese utters a salty "dammit!" as he surveys his gushing stumps, and the "TEE HEE" caption that appears when Idle is gunned down is a typically Pythonesque touch. (Compare it with the phoney warning in an earlier episode, during which a continuity announcer becomes overheated whilst describing a scene they're not allowed to show.) The inclusion of a patronizing phoney apology ("it was disgusting and bad and thoroughly disobedient") followed by a flippant denial serves both to underline what sensible viewers already knew (it's only a bit of fun) and to defuse the tempers of disgruntled viewers who are preparing to fire off a letter of complaint to the BBC.

FM - It seems to me that the team were also parodying the fact that controversial film director Ken Russell's next project after The Devils was Sandy Wilson's The Boyfriend. Both Salad Days and The Boyfriend were huge hits in the 1950s reflecting happier times in the drab post-WWII decade. Linked by radio show Round The Horne's utilisation of the first names of the writers Julian and Sandy for two camp characters played by Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddick. It seems the Pythons may have taken on board Ken's sea change to speculate that Sam Peckinpah, who had been in England for Straw Dogs, may have decided to film the other cheery musical.