Paul Casserly rounds up the best TV quotes from March.
What a month! I have no idea where to start. Cricket fever? Farting on The Bachelor NZ? The X Factor implosion and subsequent lynch mobbing of Kills and Moon? Jeremy Clarkson going postal on his producer and getting the boot from Top Gear? Karl burning down The Rovers Return on Coronation Street!
It was the month that zombies walked the earth again, with Kiwi starlet Rose McIvor scoring the lead in the kooky US series iZombie (TVNZ OnDemand) and Winston Peters heading north and eating John Key's brains in the most anticipated by-election of living memory.
TV3's political undertaker Patrick Gower nearly exploded with excitement in the run up and could not resist the history lesson and pun opportunity provided when Winston was speaking in Russell (Kororareka) which was known as "'Gomorrah, the scourge of the Pacific' back in whaling days.
These days we like to save whales but I felt a euphoric wave of schadenfreude ripple across the land as news broke that Jesse Ryder had hooked Cameron 'Whaleoil' Slater with a mighty left at one of those charity fisticuff fests.
As always I have tried to make sense of it all via a list of quotes and quips, with explanations below.
The quotes
1. "What are you doing? Are you getting on or staying off?" 2. "You have to have a sense of humour when you're on death row." 3. "One day I pulled out 54 teeth and I looked out the window and saw a coke van delivering drinks to the hospital." 4. "It's going to be weird kissing 21 girls." 5. "That's a true friend who makes their own envelope." 6. "We got a guy cut into 20 different pieces thrown in a bag and they're expecting us to win this case." 7. "JAV, JAV, JAV ... the hairy javelin has done it for New Zealand." 8. "They've taken over, it's all curries and what not for lunch." 9. "But of course black breasts are educational, they're fine." 10. "You gave every bit of your all and I like you."
The context
1. "What are you doing? Are you getting on or staying off?" ... Said host Goran Paladin on Our First Home as he 'guided' Robyn Schreuder up a ramp with a wheelbarrow, in yet another tedious contest, although what transpired was the show's dramatic highlight thus far. Sadly for Robyn, she fell arse over kettle and face-planted on the gravel. There were screams, tears, endless teases and replays and the inevitable drone shot, but feisty Robyn eventually picked herself up and continued on.
2. "You have to have a sense of humour when you're on death row." ... This was a lawyer of one of the Australian drug smugglers on death row in Bali on Campbell Live. When asked what he hoped for, one of the two doomed men simply said: "I hope not to be executed."
3. "One day I pulled out 54 teeth and I looked out the window and saw a Coke van delivering drinks to the hospital." ... New Zealand dental specialist Dr Rob Beaglehole recounts the moment when he declared a jihad on sugar on Sunday.
4. "It's going to be weird kissing 21 girls" ... Said The Bachelor NZ's younger sister at a family dinner before he set off to select a lady from his reality harem. "I like eating," said one hopeful as a pitch. "I would like to go out with a sniper," said another who actually may have been an ISIS recruiter as she also said: "I want to go to the Middle East, there's no place more dangerous." Other great attempts included, "I think I'm a great catch," and the ever faithful alarm bell, "I had a guy rip the heart out of my chest."
5. "That's a true friend who makes their own envelope." ... From TVNZ's stylish and compelling true crime series I am Innocent. This was said by one of the girls wrongly accused of a violent crime and sent to jail, in reference to one of the true friends who stood by her, a friend with no money who made her own stationery and who wrote her letters while she was locked up. In episode two, a father who was wrongly jailed for molesting his own sons expressed his disbelief when her was charged: "This is not Uganda this is New Zealand, we're in a proper country."
6. "There were moments when you kinda gagged on what you had gotten yourself into. We got a guy cut into 20 different pieces thrown in a bag and they're expecting us to win this case." Michael Ramsey, one of the lawyers for notorious and wealthy 'alleged' killer Robert Durst, focus of Andrew Jarecki's astounding documentary series The Jinx (Soho). Durst had indeed admitted to chopping his neighbour up, putting him in plastic bags and throwing him in Galveston bay, and Ramsey did indeed go on to win the case.
7. "JAV, JAV, JAV ... the hairy javelin has done it for New Zealand."With a piece of commentary up there with Keith Quinn's legendary "Lomu ... oh ...oh" " The Alternative Commentary Collective's Jason Hoyte goes absolutely ballistic when Black Cap Grant Elliot (renamed The Hairy Javelin by the ACC) propelled a ball over the boundary and the Black Caps into the World Cup Final.
8. "They've taken over. It's all curries and what-not for lunch." Australian commentator Mark Waugh in Paul Henry mode at the India vs Australia Cricket World Cup semi-final. Aussie TV morning host and former TVNZ staffer Karl Stefanovic went one better, asking members of the Swami Army: "Who's going to be manning the 7-Elevens today?" Meanwhile our own infomercial queen Suzanne Paul caused Facebook outrage with: "Got the cricket on and by the looks of the stand all the dairies in Sydney must be closed!"
9. "But of course black breasts are educational, they're fine." Former chief censor Bill Hastings gave some great interviews on Prime's classy documentary series on censorship in NZ: The Naughty Bits, the full quote came as he told a story that illustrated the strange views of morals campaigner, the late Patricia Bartlett: "She was explaining to us her view on how women were demeaned by pictures of naked women in magazines, and then said: 'But of course black breasts are educational, they're fine'."
10. "You gave every bit of your all and I like you." Natalia Kills gushed all over Joe Irvine after he sang an impassioned/terrifying version of Bohemian Rhapsody on The X Factor NZ, making what was to come a week later even more perplexing.
