Reaction: Taskmaster, "An Invisible Jump Rope" | Season 19, Episode 2

We’re back for a second week of season 19 of Taskmaster, with contestants Fatiha El-Ghorri, Jason Mantzoukas, Mathew Baynton (whose name I inadvertently misspelled with an extra “T” last week), Rosie Ramsey, and Stevie Martin, dressed impeccably in a Steve Martin T-shirt.

I really like this mix of contestants. El-Ghorri’s deadpan defenses of her half-assedness belies her passion. “Just cos I’m doing it with one leg, it’s still a jump… Rocky, bruv, have you not seen Rocky?” was the best quote of the episode.

Baynton is our bumbling but earnest player; he reminds me a bit of S5’s Mark Watson. (I really hope he gets a task nobody else does, á la Watson’s “send the Taskmaster an anonymous, cheeky text every day for the next five months”). Ramsey isn’t afraid to look the fool, and Martin is a wild card but might also be a genius?

And then there’s harbinger of chaos Jason Mantzoukas. Mantzoukas doesn’t care a lick about winning or losing, but damn if he’s not putting 200% into every task.

This week’s tasks:   

• This week’s prize task is to bring the snootiest item. Mantzoukas’ tact was interesting—he pointed out that “in America, snootiness is not really a thing,” so he went full British stereotype and brought in a… butler. I was a little surprised it only came in third, but the competition was stiff with Martin’s tortoise portrait (in full military regalia, natch) and Baynton’s incomprehensible Oppidans’ cap from Eton College. “So snooty it’s beyond language,” indeed. (For my fellow Americans: Alan Shearer is a British footballer/soccer player who did not, as it turns out, attend Eton College. And I can’t even begin to understand the whole wall game nonsense, but you can read about it here.)

  • I do hope we find out what episode-winner Baynton did with Mr. Jeffries, his butler-for-a-day.

• I really loved this first task: First commentate on yourself achieving a really tricky thing (5 minutes), and then achieve the RTT (15 minutes). Everybody’s RTT was genuinely amusing, and Ramsey didn’t get nearly enough credit for whatever that trick was with fingers and math(s), even if nine times tables aren’t exactly tricky. And look, I’m not going to quibble with the Taskmaster’s scoring—it’s entirely arbitrary, and that’s the point (pun intended)—but Mantzoukas put on the best show, even if he came in last for not completing the RTT. That man really wants to get on the roof of the Taskmaster house. It was the “Jason Mantzoukas is being pulled off the roof by… a bunch of people dressed just like him?” that slayed me. What a piece of shit. 

  

• The first team task! Deliver to Alex 100 marbles on a plate and an eggcup of tepid water. From my notes: “WHEN will people learn to look at the back of the tasks?!” I always think that the teams of two have an advantage, because there’s less quibbling, but Jason! Stevie! You gotta count the marbles, mates. I also loved El-Ghorri poking fun at Baynton’s garb (“Why are you dressed like that, bruv? I’ve got a spare hijab, shall I put it on him?”), and oh my god, Martin’s invisible jump rope. Overall, I’m really excited about these teams; Martin and Mantzoukas have a lot of potential for genius, and El-Ghorri, Baynton, and Ramsey have a lot of potential for… gut-busting laughter. 

  

• The final task was to get the most liquid in the can without leaving the submari-van. I love when there’s a post-task surprise; like, sure, let’s measure the liquid by freezing them into tiny ducks. Even though Martin came in last with just 2.5 ducks, her deeply earnest attempt to get the liquid out of a “breakfast drink” with a… piece of pipe cut in half? was one of the funniest moments of the task. 

• The live tasks always have too many rules; that’s part of the fun. Sometimes it’s perfect chaos (like last week’s), and sometimes it’s just… chaos. This week’s live task involved a convoluted selection of objects, passing said objects to the right or left, and then putting one object inside the other. I admired Mantzoukas’ commitment to opening the safe—well done on noting that the code was written on El-Ghorri’s balloons—even though it was obviously simpler to wrap the safe with the foil.   

Other thoughts:

• Commenter Diego de los Reyes asked last week for my thoughts on the weekly release schedule of this season. I think it’s both smart and unsurprising—in this era of post-Peak TV, we’re seeing it more and more often as part of shows’ marketing and PR strategies. HBO turned White Lotus into appointment television by releasing an episode every Sunday; The Pitt’s runaway success of its first season had, by all accounts, a lot to do with its weekly releases. Especially with Taskmaster’s new proprietary platform, SuperMax+, it’s no wonder that they want to capitalize on weekly releases. Plus, Mantzoukas can potentially introduce a (mostly) untapped audience of American comedy nerds to Taskmaster, so the timing was right.

Elsewhere in the Taskmaster extended universe:

• Last week on the official Taskmaster podcast, hosted by S9 champion Ed Gamble, S17 contestant and Ted Lasso standout Nick Mohammed predicts that Stevie Martin will win this season. It’s still early days, but even with Baynton taking the first two eps, I wouldn’t be surprised if Martin takes the lead. (I have no particular reasoning for this; just vibes.)
• My former A.V. Club colleague William Hughes talked to Jason Mantzoukas about his enthusiastic bid to be this season’s ugly American villain; it’s well worth a read. 

Until next week: What should contestants always remember to do? Check the back of the goddamn task, for starters. Take a good look at their surroundings before jumping into the task. What else?