Guy Noir - Noir's Exploits

Noir's Exploits

The first Guy Noir segments aired in 1995 and were heavy on tongue-twisters and other wordplay. In early episodes of the series, Guy and his "friend" Pete (Walter Bobbie) would often get into fights and end up shooting each other. Both died many times. However, Pete appears to have died off for good.

Nowadays, Noir is a down-on-his-luck detective, who ends up taking odd jobs to get by, such as finding missing poodles. Thrown in with these plots tend to be references to current events. For example, in Nov. 2006, while waiting for a case, Noir contents himself by listening to parts of George W. Bush's post-mid-term election speech. Occasionally, political agents use him for hatchet work.

For the portion of A Prairie Home Companion's season that is performed outside of St. Paul, the setting of Noir's case usually involves the city that the program is visiting that week. In the same skit as the George W. Bush reference, Noir is flown to Hawaii to look for a missing Minnesotan. That week, the show was broadcast from Hawaii.

Recurring characters in the skits include: Sugar (Sue Scott), a romantic interest; Jimmy (Tim Russell), a bartender; and Wendell (Tom Keith), the boy who works at the deli around the corner. Wendell's nasally pubescent voice and BLT sandwiches are always there for Noir, though his character is minor.

Noir always seems to run into a beautiful, mysterious woman during the skits, part of the play on film noir movies. Jazzy saxophone music is played as Noir describes the beauty, sometimes to the point of absurdity. For example:

She was tall, blonde, in jeans that looked sprayed on and a T-shirt so tight I could study her bone structure. I could see she wasn't from Duluth. There were no chinstrap marks on her neck, her hair hadn't been deformed by stocking caps, she didn't have that roll of fat around her middle—her midriff was as tight as the cap on a pickle jar.

and

She was tall and long-legged and her blonde hair hung down sort of like what Beethoven had in mind when he wrote the Moonlight Sonata. She wore a knit sweater and jeans so tight it looked as if she'd been poured into them and forgot to say "When". When she moved, she seemed to undulate under her clothes in ways that took a man's mind off the state of the economy.

and

She was tall and dark and so beautiful you wanted to just give her all your money right way and skip the preliminaries.

and

She looked as if she had been poured into her pants and forgot to say 'when'.