Felt a bit like a straw man argument. "You thought that every MPFC sketch was perfect! Well, they're not! So there!"

And the idea that anything that followed ought to have been recognizably similar is also a bit off the mark.

I mean, I suppose having a giant paper foot stomp on things was a great way for a kid to always love something, but it really was groundbreaking absurdist humor. Things like the Ministry of Silly Walks brilliantly stretch the concept of physical comedy to its zenith. You don't need the pratfall -- just the prat.

And of course you've got stuff like Hitchhiker's, which is both wholly non-derivative in so many ways of anything which preceded it, but could probably not have been done without Python.

They were followed, but not widely imitated.

What does this mean, apart from "No true Python-influenced comedy..."?

Well, on one hand, it seems to me that he does have a point. On the other hand, it seems to be a British thing to expect everyone to fail and see failure even where there is none. I remember some other commentator saying that Monty Python have failed because "everyone is quoting them".

Impact and influence are slightly different things

But not so slight that he couldn't milk an entire column out of it. This is twaddle.