Monkeys vomiting Wittgenstein.
A fantastical, and tonally misleading, homage to Taskmaster.
Good evening and welcome to Taskmaster, a show dedicated to preserving the endangered art of passing judgment. Five clever-seeming people have found themselves confined to a dark basement where they are submitted to tests of skill, feats of strength, and the crossing of thresholds of personal trust. Then they lay psychically if not literally prostrate before me, the Taskmaster, in hopes that my exacting standards of personal excellence, my uncompromising notions of beauty, and my decades of unresolved anger management issues will validate their paltry efforts and meager talents. Theoretically, it’s supposed to be very entertaining, but where that fails, English-language wordplay taken to its maddening extremes is there as the safety net.
Prize task: What is the most adequate visual approximation of yearning?
Good evening and welcome to Taskmaster. Thanks to the wonders of the internet it is likely that I am greeting the entire world. That is, if you’re watching the show in its intended form, its ridiculousness in full bloom and not taken out of context where it looks like something found only on a Tor browser and bought with cryptocurrency.
Prize task: What is the item you’d most likely be holding right before you go missing?
Good evening and welcome to Taskmaster, easily the most absurd show centered on the precision of language. It’s The 120 Days of Sodom authored by Edward Lear. It’s the Constitution of the United States drafted by a convention of birthday clowns. It’s a room full of monkeys vomiting Wittgenstein. Or it’s as if you’ve accepted the terms and conditions without reading a single word of them. Five contestants will compete for a prize, a golden replica of my head. Though the fun for everyone else is finding out who among them actually read the contracts and liability waivers and who could not be fucked and entrusted their comprehension to their handlers.
Prize task: What is the most passive-aggressive heirloom to bequeath to your least-favorite heir?
Good evening and welcome to Taskmaster. It’s easy to be cynical and look at this show as a petty, ridiculous spectacle fit only for the most emotionally stunted kidults. But to me it’s a dream come true. It’s the culmination of a dream I’ve been chasing since I was 10 years old. Back then I didn’t make friends very easily, so to compensate I holed up in my treehouse with my stuffed animals and I’d subject them to ordeals of increasing cruelty that usually left them partially burned, somewhat dismembered, and hanging upside down from my window. 30 years on I haven’t gotten any better at making friends, but now the stuffed animals have blood, bones, a sense of personal dignity, and consciousness, and they’ve used that consciousness to sign away the security of at least two of the first three things. What? I didn’t say the cynics were wrong.
Prize task: What is the most comforting possession when all hope is lost?
Good evening and welcome to Taskmaster. I’m the Taskmaster. And I know from where you’re sitting I exude a toxic, imperious level of privilege. There is nothing on this earth I wish was more correct than that assumption. For alas, it is not so. Reality is deceptive, like that annoyingly happy neighbor who borrows your power saw and “falls” headfirst onto the running blade. It is not merit or cunning that brought me here, but fate. By the sinews of the cosmos I am guided to do nothing else. I could be bagging your groceries and passing judgment on your every action. I could be making love and holding my partner’s capacity to please at a five-point scale. In every situation I am doomed to hold people who are just trying their best to ruthless account. Born a few years earlier and in a country that’s 95% consonants I’d be poisoning myself in the middle of my trial at the Hague. But like Mom always says, do the best with what you have. So here we are.
Prize task: What is the most antisocial thing you can show in public?
Good evening and welcome to Taskmaster. Friedrich Nietzsche famously said that there are no facts, only interpretations. Well here’s a fact: Nietzsche would have sucked at Taskmaster. That’s because I’m guided by the wisdom of another, far more unpleasant German who said “He who is sovereign decides upon the exception.” And who also clearly decides upon the content and duration of these introductory remarks. Incidentally, my sovereignty doesn’t extend to what makes it to air, which probably won’t be this and it probably won’t be for time.
Prize task: What is the most poignant thing you’ve stolen from a friend’s house to put on a stranger’s grave?
Good evening and welcome to Taskmaster, the show where it sure looks like five highly respected performers and comedians have been gravely misled by their agents or maliciously misled by our producers into nosediving their careers for the nation’s amusement. Of course the reality is more complicated than that. On episode one, everyone thinks they’re fully aware of what they’ve signed up for. More than that, they have it in their minds that they can get the upper hand, have a little fun, and maybe cover some outstanding debts in the process. By episode three it hasn’t quite worked out that way. They stoop to groveling for my approval, but with a wink, like Restoration courtiers. By episode seven, though, that wink has gone, their world has constricted to the confines of this set, and they’re entirely psychologically dependent upon it. They’re hearts are in my icy grip, and I can break them just by giving out random numbers like candy corn on Halloween. Taskmaster is the only place on earth that is not a prison, a totalitarian state, or a Sarah Kane play where gaslighting and emotional abuse are not only acceptable but integral to its functionality. Which means that we can’t be held responsible for what happens when any of them hear “Your time starts now” in their daily lives.
Prize task: What is the most colorful thing that will brighten up the mood of a human sacrifice?
Good evening and welcome to Taskmaster. In my capacity as the Taskmaster, I am often asked, “What is this show actually about?” (Emphasis theirs.) And if I’m in the right mood I will answer thus: think of this show like you would a pimple. On the surface it’s not really about anything. Five people are beset with a series of activities, which I evaluate and award with points. Get enough points, get all the prizes. In spite of the fact that the activities are asinine, the points are arbitrary, and the prizes are usually junk. But get under the red, bulging surface and into the soup of oil and bacteria, you’ll find the show is about everything. It’s about the love you’ve let get away, the approval that evades you, the dreams of glory deferred, and the reality of settling for a life of toil and mediocrity. More importantly it’s a show where I am allowed to bully people for poor reading comprehension.
Prize task: What is the most worthless thing you can pass off as priceless to get revenge on an enemy?