Reaction: Taskmaster, “It’s got to be obsolete” | Series 19, Episode 6
From “Frick” to “Fuck”: The Little Alex Horne Story
We’re just past the halfway mark of Taskmaster series 19, and I’m already grieving its eventual end. This week, Fatiha El-Ghorri ruins her brand; Jason Mantzoukas makes me cry; Mathew Baynton reveals the depths of his dark side; Rosie Ramsey makes Little Alex Horne drop trou again; Stevie Martin also makes Little Alex Horne drop trou. It’s not a great episode for whatever was left of his dignity.
Little Alex Horne was the real star of this episode. He stripped down three separate times, pretended to be a pedophile spying on a hairy girl, repeatedly dunked his head in a trash can of cold water, learned Moroccan dance, wrote in ink all over his face and body (sloppy handwriting, bruv), and had shoes thrown at his head. Oh, and also endured Mantzoukas taking one hour and 40 minutes and asking two-hundred thirty-eight questions for a single task.
The Prize Task
This week’s prize task was to bring in the thing that is nicest to open. This one would have stumped me, frankly; I thought Ramsey and Martin bringing in jars to open was quite clever. That pop! is indeed satisfying, and I was surprised they landed in the bottom two.
Speaking of pop!, Baynton’s Taskmaster pop-up book — I mean, that is a thing of beauty. He knew it, too; but despite the smug smile, he absolutely deserved the full five points.
El-Ghorri’s neon green bra was clever (three points), but Mantzoukas, man. My dog died three months ago, and I was not prepared for his dog’s ashes and leash to be inside the cardboard carrier. I hope El-Ghorri returned them. (Incidentally, Turkey is a great name for a dog; she was a beagle-pit mix and “the most important animal in [Mantzoukas’] life.” Sob.)
The Other Tasks
The first task this week is to work out what Alex has on the very top of his head. The top of the contestants’ heads could never be more than five feet six inches from the ground, which is how I learned that Stevie Martin is quite tall. Nobody cracked Little Alex Horne’s numbers-based system of responding to yes-or-no questions, and why would they? (“Yes” is a prime number; “no” is a composite number. I had to look up “composite numbers” because it’s been a minute since elementary school.) The way it was edited, I actually thought that Mantzoukas might have figured it out — he started off guessing so much produce that I thought for sure he had gotten a “yes” to “Is it a fruit or vegetable?”
Jason Mantzoukas sits next to a life-sized cardboard cutout of Little Alex Horne. “Is it a lemon?” During the course of his 100-minute task, Mantzoukas asked 238 questions. Number 154: “What if I hopped the fence and went into the golf course and you never saw me again?”
Huzzah, another team task! Task two was to make one of you look like the parent of the others and then capture your relationship with a classic family home-video moment. Most believable family wins. I love video-making tasks; it just always brings out the best of the contestants’ creativity. (Remember Sally Phillips’ video of Little Alex Horne being born? Art.)
And honestly, both teams killed it. Martin (as dad) and Mantzoukas (as the daughter) had great attention to detail, like Martin making sure that “Denise,” the mom with the video recorder, caught their hairy daughter biking without training wheels. Taskmaster Greg Davies argued that having LAH as a white-tank-wearing pervert hiding in the bushes precluded the “classic” family home-video moment, but as we all know, humiliating LAH makes everything funnier.
“Denise! Make sure you’re catching this!” The team of three recorded a lovely Christmas morning scene, with Baynton the apparently single dad to two bearded daughters. El-Ghorri’s scowling silence was perhaps the funniest moment in the episode, and Baynton turning the camera on himself for a big grin did indeed make their entry feel entirely believable.
The bearded sisters on Christmas morning.
The third and final task was to teach the Taskmaster’s assistant a lesson he’ll never forget. Who else leaned forward in gleeful anticipation?
Baynton really went for it, didn’t he? That grin when he said that you remember things that are “a little bit traumatic.” The total commitment to the draconian headmaster. Putting “a little bit” of ice in the water-filled trash can that LAH had to dunk his head in when he got an answer wrong (and sometimes when he got it right).
Ramsey and Martin also went the stern headmistress route, with Ramsey teaching LAH an ultimately confusing lesson about how to wipe, and Martin making him write “A shrimp’s heart is located in its head” 50 times on his own body. (Since the theme of this episode is LAH’s vanishing dignity, I also have to call out Martin’s quip: “Surely you call [your penis] ‘Little Alex Horne’?”)
Was absolutely not expecting El-Ghorri to teach LAH how to dance. Was absolutely not expecting LAH to be as good as he was. Davies: “Fatiha, you’re about to get five points for being nice. That’s going to fuck up your brand.”
Fatiha El-Ghorri teaches Little Alex Horne how to be a Moroccan dancer. Yalla! Hollywood hotshot Jason Mantzoukas taught LAH how to be an absolute dick. Or in his words, “You need to be a little more assertive.” I enjoyed their banter at the beginning of the task, when Mantzoukas asked LAH where he’d gone to university. I had not pegged LAH as a classics major, to be honest.
Even though the before and after in Mantzoukas’ lesson were obviously staged, it was still pretty funny — not least because for 18 and a half seasons, contestants have been hurling insults at LAH for being a prick. Mantzoukas said in the studio that getting LAH to go “from ‘frick’ to ‘fuck’ was a huge transition,” and Davies shot back, “that’s [Horne’s] autobiography title.”
We got an update on the ranking for the series so far. Before the end of this episode, it stood at: Baynton in the lead with 99 points, Ramsey close behind with 90, El-Ghorri with 84, Martin with 82, and Mantzoukas pulling up the rear with 79.
This week’s live task was much less convoluted than usual, but still good fun (and “surprisingly watchable”). Don’t blow the last thing off the table. There were four rounds; for the first, LAH dumped a bunch of feathers on the table. Round two was pictures of Davies; round three was ping pong balls; round four was a box of the little paper umbrellas you’d put in a mai tai.
I hope everybody was as delighted as I was that Fatiha El-Ghorri one her first Taskmaster episode. Martin’s the only one so far who hasn’t won an episode, but there’s still four more to go.
Elsewhere in the Taskmaster Universe
Last month, Davies and LAH foreshadowed this week’s episode, telling the podcast In Creative Company about El-Ghorri’s “fundamentally sweet” side.
Little Alex Horne has a surprising way of preventing blisters:
Baynton made the Taskmaster pop-up book with the help of paper artist Nathan Ward, and if you’re in the UK, you can enter a raffle to win it.
Until next time: What’s your favorite Little Alex Horne humiliation?
According to the timestamp, the Bearded Daughters home video was set during my first Christmas as a wee baby boy.
I fully pegged Horne as a classics major. He's an English comedian with a kind of posh southern accent who makes dumb/silly comedy that is fundamentally obsessed by rules. Classics major.
My wife commented that this live task would be particularly easy to recreate at home as a party game. That makes me want to work up a list of the easiest. Episode 4's Front Ham might also be a contender.
It was obviously hilarious, but I felt like Jason's teaching bit was too staged in a suspension of disbelief kind of way, if that makes sense? Haven't seen many seasons so far, but does this happen a lot?