Blackadder joke I've never understood

[Cuellar]

In Blackadder III, the one with the actors in it, one of the actors tells George not to do something while speaking "lest you mew it like a frightened tree"

Frightened tree? Is that a reference to something? What does it mean?

[Famous Mortimer]

Just a description of how he looks when he's doing it, possibly?

[Cuellar]

But 'mew it' like a 'frightened tree'

It's the sound he's making that's tree-like.

What?

[Noodle Lizard]

This (and the recent Father Ted thread) is fascinating to me - I always felt like I knew exactly what he meant by that, but I never gave it much thought. I suppose I picture a small tree blowing a storm, and the sound you associate with that. Petrified trees? I dunno. Could also be something to do with actors holding branches pretending to be trees in Shakespeare plays (Macbeth, especially).

I dunno, though. It just makes sense. Those characters do a bunch of similes - like describing Blackadder's presence as being "as irritating as a potted cactus in a monkey's pajamas". Wouldn't want to overthink that too much.

[ImmaculateClump]

But 'mew it' like a 'frightened tree'

Pussy willow?

[JesusAndYourBush]

Arms in the air (like tree branches) perhaps?

[Autopsy Turvey]

Surely it's just a florid poetic reference to the squeaking of branches in a strong wind?

[phantom_power]

I always thought it was just a shit analogy by actors who think they are florid but usually have their words written by someone else

[dozybugcarrot]

I always thought it was just a shit analogy by actors who think they are florid but usually have their words written by someone else

I thought this too. Pretentious actors with no ability to write a simile.

[Autopsy Turvey]

I'd say it works as a simile, because tree branches bending and rubbing together in a strong wind can sound alarmingly like the squeaking of frightened animals, but that may be coincidence.

[idunnosomename]

I would've thought it was linked to "shaking like a leaf". The mew is irrelevant.

[Autopsy Turvey]

'Shaking like a leaf' would imply a high degree of nervousness and the sound of rustling, neither of which work in this context. 'Mew' is a high-pitched crying noise, and bare branches in a strong wind make a high-pitched crying noise, so comparing the Prince's feeble oration to a mew from a frightened tree is a perfectly plausible, if absurdly florid, simile.

[Jittlebags]

Shaking like a shitting dog would be the modern version.

[ImmaculateClump]

"Like a sheep shiting razor blades" I've always liked.

[Jockice]

There is no precious substance called green.

[phantom_power]

'Shaking like a leaf' would imply a high degree of nervousness and the sound of rustling, neither of which work in this context. 'Mew' is a high-pitched crying noise, and bare branches in a strong wind make a high-pitched crying noise, so comparing the Prince's feeble oration to a mew from a frightened tree is a perfectly plausible, if absurdly florid, simile.

Thanks god I don't live near you with trees that sound like that. It is bad enough hearing foxes shagging and it sounding like crying babies but crying trees?

[Autopsy Turvey]

You have to be surrounded by mature bare deciduous bastards, the canopy densely packed with boughs - a scary enough place to be in a strong wind - with big gnarly old branches rubbing against each other. First time I heard it I thought it was little kids screaming, as I got closer it sounded more animal, it was absolutely chilling/thrilling.

[Johnny Yesno]

You have to be surrounded by mature bare deciduous bastards, the canopy densely packed with boughs - a scary enough place to be in a strong wind - with big gnarly old branches rubbing against each other. First time I heard it I thought it was little kids screaming, as I got closer it sounded more animal, it was absolutely chilling/thrilling.

That's all very well but it was you that was frightened not the tree.

[evilcommiedictator]

Mixed telephone lines in Going Forth
"A cab for a Mr. Redgrave picking up from 14 Arnost Grove Ring top Bell"

Couldn't figure out for the life of me for 20 years why the audience goes off at that (probably because there's no gaps in the previous jokes), but at least I saw Rowan doing a table read of the script and also stumbled over the line too

[Autopsy Turvey]

That's all very well but it was you that was frightened not the tree.

The tree sounded more frightened than me though, and you could say an ancient tree in a strong wind fears for its limbs, if you were as fanciful as Mossop and Keanrick!

[phantom_power]

Mixed telephone lines in Going Forth
"A cab for a Mr. Redgrave picking up from 14 Arnost Grove Ring top Bell"

Ha! Until just now I always thought Ring Top Bell was some sort of place in London, or fake place name anyway. It never occurred to me it was a command

[SpiderChrist]

frightened - petrified - petrified forest - frightened tree

and I still don't get that Young Ones "I'm not a fridge" line

[jobotic]

For some reason I keep reading this as "Best Blackadder joke I've never understood".

Maybe I should start a "Best jokes you don't get" thread.

[The Crumb]

Because his acting is wooden

[Autopsy Turvey]

frightened - petrified - petrified forest - frightened tree

Petrified trees don't make any sort of sound surely, or is that the point? Whereas the fearful mewing sound made by the bare branches of old trees would have been much more widely experienced and understood in the 18th century of course. I just wonder if there's any precedent for the line in contemporary drama or poetry. It's a perfectly evocative simile without being an obvious silly gag a la "monkey's pyjamas".

and I still don't get that Young Ones "I'm not a fridge" line

I think Neil's rejoinder - "Weird, eh?" - is the key. The Young Ones is setting out its stall as a surreal and iconoclastic show that will annoy and befuddle squares, so starting the first episode with a mystifying non-sequitur is just the sort of crazy, imaginative thing that happens in this house.

From the annotated TYO scripts https://genius.com/3342322:

The point of this line is that it doesn't actually make any sense. As explained by Ben Elton in Laughing at the 80s:

"First gag – nobody got it, but it was fabulous. And I remember [Rik] saying to me in the pub 'he's the sort of bloke who wants to insult people but gets it totally wrong.'"

[Thosworth]

"First gag – nobody got it, but it was fabulous. And I remember [Rik] saying to me in the pub 'he's the sort of bloke who wants to insult people but gets it totally wrong.'"

They had the same problem in Back to the Future when Biff says "Why don't you make like a tree and get out of here", which presumably baffled so many viewers that in the second movie they had old Biff point out to Young Biff that he should be saying leave/leaf.

[idunnosomename]

surely that's just a good fourth-wall leaning gag from the sequel that revisits the first film but also serves to show how old Biff hates his younger self for being so stupid to let him end up in the way he did and doesn't totally trust him not to fuck up the almanac?

(there's also "screen door on a battleship")

[Tony Tony Tony]

(there's also "screen door on a battleship")

Biff Tannen: That's about as funny as a screen door on a battleship.
Marty McFly: [under his breath] It's screen door on a submarine, you dork.

about as useful as a screen-door on a submarine
Utterly useless
A waste of oxygen
Completely worthless
A waste of space
Devoid of any purposeful function on this earth
Something about as useful as a screen door on a submarine

From Urban dictionary

All the info is out there, seek and ye shall find.

Mind you I prefer the UK version, "about as useful as a chocolate teapot".

[ImmaculateClump]

"You're as much use as a glass eye" I used to get from my dad when he'd rope me into watching him fuck some DIY up.
Always confused me, If I had an eye missing, I'd be thankful to have a glass one to stop people staring and keep the breeze and flies out.
Maybe he'd shortened it from "as much use as a glass eye to a blind man" or something, I don't know.

[Cold Meat Platter]

"You're as much use as a glass eye" I used to get from my dad when he'd rope me into watching him fuck some DIY up.
Always confused me, If I had an eye missing, I'd be thankful to have a glass one to stop people staring and keep the breeze and flies out.
Maybe he'd shortened it from "as much use as a glass eye to a blind man" or something, I don't know.

I've heard someone say that something particularly moving would 'bring a tear to a glass eye' but not that.