I love when Mitchell and Webb have a message in their sketches, like with the homeopathy hospital, so funny and they do such a good job of ridiculing their subject.
I used to watch this show religiously but SOMEHOW I must have missed this episode as I have zero memory of this set up! Fantastic stuff from one of the very best double acts this century 😘
I didn't watch the clip because I've seen it many times already, but I genuinely laughed out loud when I saw the title and heard Mitchell say 'laboratoire' in my head. Had to share that for some reason...
@@thegingerpowerranger The ‘you,’ wasn’t directed at YOU, just those who may have missed the ‘135 years’ reference and missed the sarcasm. So ‘you’ don’t need to be just Australian. No need to be spiteful. Yes, I am welcome at parties, FYI. I’ll wait for an apology shall I….?
@@Chafflives you must be either autistic or have English as your second language. Either way I can see you find it very difficult in social scenarios and I can understand how difficult your life must be. I'm sorry for how hard you find it to be kind to other people and I am sorry at how lonely your life must be that you spend it being a troll on the Internet. What a sad use of your limited time.
This, the "Laboratoire Garnier" sketch, is my second favourite by Mitchell and Webb, after the SS "Are we the baddies?" one. And then "Heil Dönitz". They just recently did guest voices in _Rick and Morty_ s6 e9.
I just saw this clip show up in my feed and didn't even need to watch it (again) because reading the title I heard Mitchell say 'laboratoire' and that was enough to crack me up. Genuinely made me laugh out loud just thinking about it. The repeated use of that word is one of the funniest things ever. Nobody can say 'laboratoire' like Mitchell. Another one that belongs on my favourite list are their 'Angel Summoner and BMX Guy' sketches.
All jokes aside, this is quite an astute observation of the effects of capitalism on scientific advances - if there's no money in it for large corporations, then to them its not worth bothering with.
I believe the point of the joke is the exact opposite. Wouldn't a perpetual motion machine make the discoverer (and by extension the Gargier company) fabulously rich? Ditto for the cure for Alzheimer. The sketch makes fun of the capitalist boogeyman narratives. Of course, actual cosmetics company research (if they even have any) is unlikely to disover anything beyond cosmetics but if they somehow managed to come up with such a massive breakthrough, the company would set up a whole new subsidiary or even pivot to the new field completely to make money on that. You can make a lot more money off a cure to Alzheimer's than by developing a slightly shinier shampoo (and competing with another 30 or so almost identical shampoos sold by other companies).
This is the key, I only thought about the Perpetual Motion device but now it all makes sense, M. Garnier is actually in the right here. He's trying to keep his (evidently successful) researchers focused on cosmetics because otherwise they have delusions of grandeur and think they've invented perpetual motion, or cured Alzheimer's, where in fact they can't do enough actual scientific research to hold a microscope the right way round.
Research scientists are seen in a particular way, striving for lofty goals, but some mundane chemistry/biology/physiology/medicine problems effect many people, and are lucrative. Many top researchers DO actually work in these industries, and have well-paying, stable 9 to 5's with no teaching/grant writing obligations (often family focused). I know L'Oreal specifically employs state-of-the-art equipment to understand things like skin damage/repair, the pathway of dermal delivery of drugs, etc.
This is actually a bit true - massive research corporations (more likely Pfizer or GSK than Garnier) work in a particular way which precludes this kind of serendipitous discovery. Their goal-oriented approach is very, very good at seeing results towards that particular goal, it's just likely to discard other interesting discoveries that don't point towards that goal. That's why the Cavendish labs are so important, allowing scientists to be goal-oriented *and* go off on investigative tangents.
I don't recall hearing him say so, but it certainly is the sort of thing he might say. Cox is rather big on doing science for the sake of no other explicit goal than exploration and discovery, isn't he?
Lol and btw can someone PLEASE tell me the name of the song that begins to play at the end - I've always loved it but no one has ever been able to yell me it's name :(
Can I make a general appeal to those asking questions about the sketch, or indeed about any clip on 'RU-vid'. Stop disabling replies to your posts. We can't respond unless you enable replies. Ta.
You do realise the majority of comments on this video are from before RU-vid changed over to the Google+ commenting system? That's why you can't reply to them.
Manly Stump Yes, I realise this. But I've noticed a tendency for some posters, having asked questions in posts with very recent 'time' stamps (not sure of the correct term, sorry) to ask questions having apparently disabled replies.
Her first and only degree. She was denied the honorary one traditionally given to Prime Ministers, to her fury, but of course she wouldn't have studied anything for that anyway.
He said there are good things about both but yes, he is for the more casual science. On the programme, he used the examples of the marine chronometer for goal oriented research, and William Henry Perkin and his discovery of mauveine for the other.
@@jimmyjam6197 That was a reply to a comment I can't really remember that well. Something about discovering things through different methods of research
Agreed. Speaking of phones, some other things companies do these days is no longer making technology to last, so people buy new products more frequently. As well as releasing products more frequently but with minor hardware upgrades instead of major upgrades, then advertising will pretend it's the next best thing. Capitalism makes people and businesses do weird stuff in order to profit. Unfortunately, the most profitable way is more than often not the most beneficial or efficient way for us.
