What’s My Line? was a quiz show originally broadcast by CBS in the 1950s and 60s, though versions of it have appeared in a variety of forms across countries and decades. It features a cast of regular panelists who attempt to guess the occupation of guests or the identity of celebrity guests using only yes or no questions (and being blindfolded in the case of the celebrity guests).

Meet the broadcast classic and enjoy two instances of the script being flipped.

In this episode, Groucho Marx joins the panel. His wise-cracking, indefatigable wit causes an interruption or breakage in just about every prescribed interaction. (The caveat, as one might expect, is that outright sexism was much more acceptable grounds for humor in 1959. Discounting this chauvinism, there is still something to be considered in Marx's exhibition.)

Humor is a result of someone successfully upsetting the distinction between expectation and surprise. It is one example of a method for toying with social expectations by using affect to soothe the discomfort of norms being disrupted or exposed as baseless. The task of upsetting expected ways of being and acting can never be prescribed. To prescribe it would require a foreknowledge of what lies in wait beyond what is. To over-determine the jazz of life is to rob it of it's very raison d'etre.

Neither the joke nor improvisation can ever be the same twice. The second time it’s said, it must be said with the knowledge it’s been said before. Wit and charm are two words which try to capture the improvisational mastery of those who have maintain the posture of a master who can freshly apply the same affable spirit to every novel moment. Eventually, they can succeed more often than fail.
 

The following is a clip of Salvador Dali as the celebrity guest. His "line" (occupation) is simply, "artist." But the work and performative life of the surrealist defies any such definition. So what more would you expect, when you try to play a game that requires him to be so precisely defined?

We rarely feel strongly about those who act as they should or things that happen as we expect.

We feel strongly about Marx and Dali (as opposed to, say, any other person on that panel—do any of them occupy a place in your cultural memory?). Both succeed at the same thing in two different ways: the script is not given permission to over-determine their roles. Instead, they bring the script (which ideally goes unnoticed in the background) into focus by forcing it to try to deal with things it cannot account for. Most significantly—and where the real work begins—they make what should be upsetting and destabilizing, charming.  

(If you’re feeling saucy, you can watch just about every episode from this run on What’s My Line?’s YouTube channel.)

"Television is like the American toaster, you push the button and the same thing pops up every time."