My first encounter with Monty Python was about as accidental as possible. I'd just got out of the Army, 1971, and was sitting at home watching the 10 PM local news. That finished, and I was about to go to bed, but the ABC channel had a post-news program titled with astonishing blandness "Entertainment Tonight." ABC was just then being killed late night by Johnny Carson on NBC and whatever CBS was running, so they were desperate.
The show came on and I was too lazy to get up and turn off the TV just then; it was before remotes. A talk-show set appeared, with two chairs, a small coffee-table in front, and a lank man in a black suit who leaned slightly forward, and said:
"And now for something completely different." -- minor pause -- "A man with three buttocks."
I recall blinking two or three times, before my brain said, "Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?"
I leaned forward in my chair, and the wondrous chaos ensued. I don't think I've ever laughed so hard in my entire life, or the many earlier ones. We had flying sheep ("Notice they do not so much fly, as plummet."). It was a form of comedy entirely new to American TV; the closest thing to it was probably the best stuff from the Marx Brothers four decades earlier. Absurd, anarchistic, ridiculously intelligent, and you never knew where the next moment would go.
I still watch some of that old stuff from time to time. Nothing on TV today comes close to what Monty Python accomplished in comedy.
caw