If you watch closely though, during some scenes, like when Mr. Twain walks around the table explaining the reason for the gathering you can see that he has little pinkie falsies to make his pinkies look longer than they really are.
My answer to your question is that the viewer is supposed to think when she says he has no pinkies that he has only 8 fingers, just as Sam Diamond says, but the movie has to give it a twist - to do the unexpected. When she says he has ten - just no pinkies - the viewer is supposed to scrunch up their face and go "HUH??" just as you did, then assume he must have 4 thumbs or 4 ring fingers or whatever. You're supposed to watch his hands carefully when he's introduced to try to see what fingers he does have, then the joke pays a little extra dividend to the observant viewer.
Nah, it's fair enough in this kind of silly, Pythonesque joke to call a finger in the pinky position that's the length of an index finger not a pinky.
Or you could just go with the previous answer. It's not really supposed to make a lot of sense, just be funny. Some people are bound to have senses of humour that the joke works for, and some not. Some people laugh at Bob Hope, some at Monty Python, and some at Adam Sandler. I frequently find myself watching TV shows that people obviously thought were hilarious at some point in time and I keep asking myself "what the heck is funny about this?"
reply
share
PillowRock
11 years ago
If you watch closely though, during some scenes, like when Mr. Twain walks around the table explaining the reason for the gathering you can see that he has little pinkie falsies to make his pinkies look longer than they really are.
And at the very end, after the multiple "reveals" (one of which was Twain), when she is left alone laughing, Nancy Walker takes off a pair of "pinkie falsies".
reply
share