So here’s a superjoke:

Howard and Vince – alter egos of comedy duo The Mighty Boosh – work at a zoo. They like it well enough, which is why they panic when they learn their jobs might be in danger: owner Dixon Bainbridge wants to sell the place and tear it down. They don’t know what they do, ‘til they get an idea: Tommy, Bainbridge’s brother, still has a stake in the place. Can they find Tommy and get him to stop the sale?

Every episode of the Mighty Boosh has a silly set-up. A ludicrous crisis starts an amazing adventure in “time and space” – distant lands, way-out planets, the depths of monkey hell. Monsters include a walking wad of bubble gum, and a cockney devil with a giant candy taped to his eye. It’s a surreal show, a right-brained show. You wouldn’t expect it to make sense.

But let’s roll with the story. (I’m talking here about “Jungle,” from season one. But note: season two is the best.) Howard, dressed in twee, dweeby forest attire, and Vince, posh in a blue mod suit, track Tommy down to the Jungle Room, which sounds like a little corner of the zoo but is in fact a vast, endless rain forest where they instantly get lost. Vince scores a magic whistle that lets him call for help – but when he gives it a try, he plays the wrong tune and summons a locksmith. Who needs a locksmith in a jungle?



Actually, if you’ve ever played an adventure game, you’ll know the minute Vince meets the locksmith that at some point, he’s going to hit a lock. As the show goes on, little facts and asides start to come in handy. Vince looks silly going into the forest in a suit – but later, when a pack of wolves grab his discarded fashion magazine and are inspired to go mod, they bow to Vince as their king. Instead of ripping the guys to bits, they give them a lift on their scooters. Every problem has a valid solution.

That includes the central conflict: how can they save the zoo? They find Tommy. But he’s not what they expect. Where Howard had talked him up as a kind of hero and the wise man of zookeepers, we now see that he’s ridiculous, short and stocky, and prone to spouting mystical nonsense – “We all die. But do we really die?” He’s been living off nothing but psychedelic cheese, and now his head has become a giant crumbly block of it. And when it turns out he’s too weak to escape with Howard and Vince, he gives them a plan B – and it starts with handing Howard, his one-time prodigy, a cheese grater and asking him to shave down his head. Again, roll with me here.

I can’t stand when people refer to the Boosh as “stoner humour.” Blame that in the States for the show’s placement on Adult Swim, a kind of late night cartoon/anime block that caters to conked-out college kids. That stuff’s fine, but the Boosh are up to something different. Much of each show makes no sense. But when you string the scenes together, it makes perfect sense. Elements of fantasy fit into a logical system. The right brain and the left brain bash and rub against each other.

Which brings us to the superjoke. In an interview with Time Out, the Boosh define the superjoke as “a joke that ties in story, character and plot”. We needed Vince because he can charm his way through every tight spot. Howard, who’s rather pitiable, nevertheless knew he had to find his even more-pitiable hero to save the day – and showed the courage to kill him along the way. In the last scene, they deliver a plate of cheese – Tommy’s psychedelic head cheese – to Dixon Bainbridge, seconds before he signs the deal to close the zoo, and he takes a bite and starts spouting the same rubbish as Tommy: “I will sign. But will I really sign? This is ludicrous. But is it really ludicrous?” Crisis averted!

Here’s how this ties to gaming. First off, somebody should make an adventure game of The Mighty Boosh – it’s a no-brainer. Second, the trick they pull off is akin to what gamemakers achieve. This year’s Blueberry Garden pulls off a superjoke (and watch out, this is a spoiler): just as you're getting used to being an arthritic birdman in a strange little garden, you discover that somebody left a giant faucet running. If you don't turn it off, the garden will drown. The problem is bizarre, but once you discover it, you tackle it rationally, and within the limits of your avatar. The scenario makes no sense, but it lives in a system that does. And the tension between the system and the surreal creates the thrill.

At the very end of “Jungle,” Bainbridge is still spouting nonsense when Bob Fossil warns him, “It’s the end of the show.” The Boosh casually ignore the fourth wall whenever they feel like it, and they also make fun of their rickety props and specious plot twists. Games work the same way. They never hide all the rules, and they happily break the fourth wall (for example, to explain the controls). And yet, that’s the point: because games are systems, we get to treat them that way, and push and probe what they can handle. We look behind the scenes and study the trick, and doing it isn’t radical or ironic or metatextual: the trick is the thing. Hiding it would let the right brain take credit for everything the left brain set up. And watching it pay off is finally what makes you laugh.