Sketches are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
COLD OPENING
during St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, valet (CHC) is riddled with bullets
— John Belushi has the ability to already get a good laugh from the audience by just simply walking into a scene with a fake mustache and accent.
— For some reason, I’m getting amusement out of watching Garrett’s background acting as the waiter.
— Chevy upped the ante with his usual falls, doing two consecutive big falls this time.
STARS: ***½
MONOLOGUE
host sings “My Funny Valentine” while girlfriend runs off with a stranger
— He’s holding a microphone already. Will he be doing stand-up?
— Oh, he’s going to sing, which, as I might have said before, is something I usually dread in monologues. But this IS Valentine’s Day, after all…
— Haha, great comedic twist with Peter’s sweetheart getting involved with the guy sitting next to her. I had been wondering why that guy was staring at her funny when Peter first introduced her to us.
STARS: ***½
THE CORRIDA
Ricardo Montalban (DAA) talks about the Corrida automobile’s faux luxury
— This is already making me laugh from the start.
— Overall, a decent commercial, helped by Dan’s very funny performance.
STARS: ***
SAMURAI DIVORCE COURT
Futaba & wife (JAC) split their assets
— “Futaba vs. Futaba”? Ah, I see this is going to be a Samurai sketch. Who’s gonna be the other Futaba?
— Samurai’s wife? Well, this is gonna be different.
— Jane is really selling the fake Japanese gibberish.
— The Godzilla fake-out/desk-chop part was pretty funny.
— Wow, they didn’t even attempt to make that little girl look Japanese.
— I liked the fake freeze-frame ending.
STARS: ***
THE SHAPIRO SISTERS
The Shapiro Sisters [real] lip-sync & dance to “This Will Be”
— Uhhhhhh… cute, I guess?
STARS: N/A
ACID TRIP
stoners Jason (DAA) & Sunset (LAN) present slide show for neighbor (host)
— I’m liking how 70s this is.
— Laraine’s hippie character is pretty funny, though the voice sounds quite similar to her Sherry voice.
— We’re supposed to believe that’s Dan’s foot in that picture they’re showing right now, but if you know your Aykroyd trivia, you’d know that can’t be his foot because he has webbed toes in real life.
— Loved Dan just saying “That’s mine” when the hairy nipple picture showed up in his and Laraine’s slideshow.
STARS: ***
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
WEEKEND UPDATE, PART 1
famous art makes up artist’s rendering of Patty Hearst trial testimony
GAM reports Olympic news from deserted Innsbruck
LAN reports from outside a snuff director’s room at the Blaine Hotel
— Showing professional paintings as “artist’s renderings” of the Patricia Hearst trial is a pretty funny variation on the gag of showing childlike Tom Schiller drawings.
— Hilarious Dorothy Hamill/Gerald Ford joke.
— What the heck was with the delayed start to Garrett’s commentary? That didn’t seem intentional. What went wrong there?
— And is there supposed to be scenery behind Garrett that we’re not seeing? We’re just seeing a plain blue screen behind him, even though we’re supposed to believe he’s “at the Olympics”.
— This Garrett bit is just a tired variation of Laraine’s Times Square commentary from earlier this season.
— I have to say, though, Garrett’s lament over having to cover “white sports” was kinda funny, even though it’s a cliched joke nowadays.
— I got an unintended laugh from Chevy’s mention of “CIA director George Bush”.
— Laraine’s Blaine Hotel bit didn’t work for me this time; it fell flat. The ones she did earlier this season were better.
K-PUT PRICE-IS-RITE STAMP GUN
— (sigh) Yet another rerun. Man, when was the last time a NEW fake ad was aired during an Update this season? And why does this season’s Updates even need to break in the middle for a fake ad anyway? I guess it’s to make this seem more like an authentic news broadcast from that time, but honestly, I’ve gotten tired of this format. I definitely prefer when Update is just one continuous un-broken segment. I’m guessing they don’t start doing that regularly until sometime after Jane takes over the Update desk the next season.
WEEKEND UPDATE, PART 2
Emily Litella thinks that “canker” research is a waste of money
— For the 50th time, please stop using the “guests of SNL stay at the Blaine Hotel” promo. It was only funny the first time.
— Oh, man, and speaking of tired rehashing, now we get Emily Litella AGAIN. This now makes, what, the third or fourth episode in a row she’s appeared in? I know she’s a well-remembered character nowadays, but come on, she was not flexible enough to be used EVERY WEEK.
— While there are many aspects of 70s SNL that I feel make modern-day SNL pale badly in comparison, there’s at least ONE thing I prefer about modern-day SNL: they at least know how to space out recurring characters’ appearances. We thankfully don’t have instances of the same recurring character appearing on Update week-after-week nowadays, unlike how 70s SNL had no qualms about using Emily Litella or Garrett’s “News for the Hard of Hearing” bit for long stretches of consecutive episodes. If they did that with any existing modern-day Update character from, say, Kate McKinnon, Kenan Thompson, Cecily Strong, or Heidi Gardner, that would probably drive online SNL fans crazy.
— Please don’t tell me this baby sandpiper story Chevy’s telling is going to be the same one from the premiere.
— (sigh) I was right, it was the same story, right down to the exact same punchline.
— Overall, this Update was a huge letdown. The actual news jokes portion with Chevy was fine, but in regards the rest, there was WAAAAY too much lazy recycling for my likes. Easily the weakest Update of the season so far.
STARS (FOR BOTH WEEKEND UPDATE HALVES): **
ALL-PRO WRESTLING
Bees (JOB) & (host) vs. WASPs (CHC) & (GIR)
— It’s been a while since we’ve last seen the Bees.
— This is pretty fun to watch, as we don’t usually see anything this physical in a live sketch.
— Dan is great as the fast-talking announcer.
— LOL at the random “drop the cow” ending. This is the second episode in a row that happened. Was this SNL’s new go-to ending?
STARS: ***½
REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST
disguised Richard Nixon (DAA) philosophizes
— Haha, it’s Nixon!
— It’s hilarious hearing Dan do the gruff Nixon voice inside that ridiculous mask.
— Another great performance from Dan. I’m glad we’re seeing so much of him in tonight’s episode, considering how underutilized he seemed to be the last few episodes.
— Him doing the ‘ohm’ meditation thing gave me a big laugh just now.
STARS: ***½
PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE
by Gary Weis- kids & Rubin Carter (GAM) recite Pledge Of Allegiance
— Is this gonna be another Gary Weis film? He’s been having a bad track record the past few episodes.
— It’s over already??? Uh… I’m definitely gonna need some clarification of what this was about, because I didn’t understand this AT ALL. Was this short making some kind of social or political statement? And who was Garrett playing at the end?
STARS: N/A
DUELLING BRANDOS
Duelling Brandos (host) & (JOB) trade Marlon’s famous movie lines
— They misspelled “Dueling” with two ‘L’s on the title card.
— Ah, yes, this is one of two sketches I was looking forward to seeing from this episode, after having only seen this in the form of a clip when Peter made a cameo in Ray Romano’s 1999 SNL monologue.
— I’m loving this, with Peter and John taking turns reciting increasingly-brief Brando movie quotes.
— Excellent ending with Peter and John yelling Brando’s rant from “On The Waterfront” in unison.
STARS: ****
JANITOR IN A FRIDGE
(JAC) convinces husband (host) that orgy participants are new products
— And here’s the second of two sketches I was looking forward to seeing, after reading a write-up about this just a few days ago.
— Jane is great acting like an overly-chipper commercial spokeswoman with that forced big smile. Between these last two episodes, Jane’s been getting a lot of nice showcases lately.
— Funny subtle bit with Garrett slowly walking away with Jane behind Peter’s back.
— Nice ending with Laraine.
STARS: ***½
A HOME MOVIE
by Howard Grunwald- a single shot of a house
— The audience is already chuckling and nothing’s even happened in the film yet, except for an exterior shot of a house.
— Oh, I get it. Haha, this is the entire “home movie”: a shot of a home. I love this type of humor.
STARS: ****
VALENTINE’S DAY CARD
GAM gives GIR a raunchy valentine
— Interesting pairing of Gilda and Garrett.
— Garrett’s increasingly-raunchy poem is pretty funny.
STARS: ***
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
HOMEWARD BOUND (GARY WEIS FILM)
— An encore presentation.
GOODNIGHTS
at closing, host points out handcuffed Patty Hearst lookalike in audience
_______________________________
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS:
— A pretty good, fairly-consistent episode. There wasn’t much to complain about, and it was a nice rebound after the underwhelming Dick Cavett episode.
— Peter Boyle did fine throughout the show, though it felt like he was given too many straight roles.
— Thankfully, no Muppets tonight, for the second episode in a row. You’d almost think that SNL finally dropped them from their show permanently, but I recall hearing that their final SNL appearance was the first episode of season 2. So it looks like I still have more Muppet sketches to put up with until then.
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Dick Cavett):
— a step up
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW:
Desi Arnaz
Here’s who Garrett was playing in the “Pledge Allegiance” film:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubin_Carter
They got this from Monty Python. When they couldn’t figure out an ending to a bit, they dropped the cow.
I had never really realized that Jane has a stretch where she gets a number of high-profile leads in sketches, particularly in sketches that allow her to play a different sort of character than usual (this one, the Cavett one, and the Perkins one stand out to me). I always thought of season one as kind of a dead season for her (and yes, for long stretches, it is). I wonder if she had never gotten Update if she might have gotten to keep playing these different types of roles (or if she would have gotten sick of her lack of airtime and left). I feel like, with a couple of exceptions (Coneheads, Nerds), she got kind of stuck in basically the interviewer/straight woman role during most of her tenure.
I think the Shapiro sisters were related to Ken Shapiro, the director who put Chevy Chase in The Groove Tube and years later, in Modern Problems which wasn’t as good an experience for Chase as I heard he might have suffered some accidents on that movie.
I read in Wikipedia that during Peter Boyle’s monologue about the poem to his then girl friend that the man in the audience with the hat was Steven Spielberg. It definitely looks like him, but its hard to tell with him wearing the hat.
That was, in fact, Dan’s foot. The webbing is between his second and third toes.
Samurai divorce court is absolutely brilliant,as they speak Japanese.
they frighten him with their swords.And when she broke the desk ,its nice payoff to Monty Ptyhon classic sketch mr.Gumby at doctor.