Sketches are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
COLD OPENING
prospect of drug cutoff makes injured JOB well enough to do SNL
— I like this premise and I like how they’re addressing John’s return from his absence in the last episode.
— The situation of this, with the doctor urging Lorne to put John on the air while Lorne is worried John is not in shape to go on is like the reverse of a well-known real-life situation that would happen backstage a few years later the night of (I think) the Kate Jackson episode from season 4, where John was in terrible health and a doctor informed Lorne that there are odds that John could die if he performs on the show that night, and Lorne reportedly snapped back “I’ll take those odds!” and defiantly put John on the air. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that episode, so I’m morbidly curious to see how much John’s poor health was evident during the show.
— Funny ending.
— John’s the first non-Gilda cast member to say LFNY in the post-Chevy Chase era.
STARS: ***½
OPENING MONTAGE
— Bill Murray finally receives a credit as a cast member.
MONOLOGUE
(no synopsis available)
— Man, she’s speaking a mile a minute. Nice energy, though.
— And that’s it??? It’s over already? Nothing even happened in this! Not even sure if I should rate it.
STARS: N/A
THE MARINES
— Rerun of a fake ad
ME
Barbra Streisand (LAN) sings a medley about how great she is
— Loved the “even if my film sucks” lyric.
— Very nice performance from Laraine.
— Okay, this is starting to go on too long.
— And it’s still going on…
— Overall, this was still pretty good and featured a great job from Laraine, but it really would’ve benefited from being shortened.
STARS: ***
THE LITELLA SISTERS AT HOME
Emily Litella & sister Essie (host) discuss issues of the day
— A change of pace seeing Emily Litella outside of Update. However, I’m still tired of this character.
— This has turned meta with Emily trying to come up with a topic for her next Weekend Update commentary.
— Boy, that “Air F*g / homos” joke would not fly today AT ALL.
— The “Flea Erection” correction was pretty funny.
— Ruth is not doing a very good Emily Litella imitation at all.
— A kinda-funny ending with Emily putting the postcard in the toaster.
STARS: **
TOMORROW
Dino De Laurentiis (JOB) talks about the King Kong remake
— So John really IS confined to a wheelchair? I thought it was just a gag for the cold opening, much like the cold opening from earlier this season when Chevy returned from his hospitalization in a wheelchair, only to immediately get pushed out of it (by John, ironically). It’s gonna be weird seeing John like this in every sketch he’s in tonight.
— The second “A Star is Born” reference tonight.
— The mean comments about Streisand are really funny.
— Like the “Me” sketch earlier tonight, this is another one that’s started to drag on too long.
STARS: ***
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
WEEKEND UPDATE, PART 1
LAN asks Lillian Carter (host) what it’s like to be the new First Mother
— Jane’s opening gag involving her spraying perfume inside the chest of her shirt was interesting.
— Ruth’s story had a funny twist.
— I wonder how Jane made herself burp on cue like that.
CRAZY FRANK
(DAA) identifies truly Crazy Frank as source of Crazy Ernie’s low prices
— Dan’s performance here is even more maniacal than his usual fast-talking pitchmen. He’s killing me in this.
— A funny parody of these types of real-life “Crazy (insert name here)” ads.
— The ridiculously low prices are hilarious.
— IIRC, this would end up being the first in a series of “Crazy (insert name here)” fake ads than Dan would do on the show. I think I also remember Jim Belushi doing one or two of these in the Dick Ebersol era.
STARS: ****½
WEEKEND UPDATE, PART 2
to JAC’s annoyance, Emily Litella hasn’t found anything to report about
— Oh, no. I didn’t realize the earlier Emily Litella sketch was going to lead to an actual Update commentary later in the same episode. Not happy about that, though it IS always interesting the times an SNL sketch starts a premise that continues later in the same night.
— Litella pointing out Jane’s crankiness and asking “Is it that time?” was pretty funny, I admit.
— Emily to Jane: “Bitch.” Oh, yeah, THAT sure hasn’t gotten old yet!!![/end sarcasm]
STARS (FOR BOTH WEEKEND UPDATE HALVES): **½
NIGHT MOVES
by Gary Weis- lady loses patience with absent boyfriend GAM
— What the HELL was up with Garrett’s intro? It was very awkward; he badly stumbled his way through the whole thing. Was that intentional? Also, is this his first appearance of the whole night?
— This is a little better than the usual Gary Weis films, as this music video-esque film is well-edited-together, and the sexiness of this is entertaining me.
STARS: **½
LITTLE OLD LADIES OF THE NIGHT
elderly (host) becomes a hooker
— I like Dan’s intro.
— I think Garrett’s wearing the exact same pimp outfit he wore in the “white horse / white whores” bit from the Dyan Cannon episode.
— During Gilda’s close-up, someone accidentally blocks the screen for a quick second as they’re walking past.
— Bill Murray! I had actually forgotten he’s now part of the cast, as this is his first appearance of the whole damn night.
— Also, I think that was Bill who accidentally blocked the screen in Gilda’s aforementioned close-up. I had heard that Bill was prone to making gaffes in his early episodes.
— I love Dan’s occasional, increasingly-exaggerated exclamations.
— Overall, a weak and uninteresting sketch. Dan was pretty much the sole highlight.
STARS: *½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
BABYSITTER
a girl (GIR) asks her babysitter (host) some questions about sex
— As usual, Gilda’s doing a very convincing job as a little girl.
— Funny line from Ruth about God clumping males’ dirty parts together because they’re always losing things.
— Probably the best performance Ruth has given so far tonight, which still isn’t saying much. Most other female hosts probably could’ve done more with the solid script this sketch has.
STARS: ***½
MR. BILL GOES TO A MAGIC SHOW
by Walter Williams- mangling ensues
— Loved the ending with Mr. Bill being “sent into outer space”.
— Overall, this was the usual greatness from Mr. Bill.
STARS: ****
RICKY JAY
Ricky Jay [real] does a card trick with two audience members
— Two segments in a row tonight dealing with magicians?
— WTF at this guy’s bizarre laughing during his opening card trick.
— Pretty cool trick he did with the female audience member.
— What in the world was with the ending?
STARS: ***
THE LAST DAYS OF HOWARD HUGHES
projector repairman (GAM) observes dying Howard Hughes’ (LAN) compulsions
— Laraine as Howard Hughes??? Well, the opening scrolling disclaimer did describe Hughes as being scrawny and scraggly, so who better in the cast to play him than rail-thin Laraine Newman?
— Well, I can tell THIS is gonna be a weird sketch…
— They’re really going light on Bill Murray tonight, relegating him to only appearing in the post-Update half of the show in forgettable supporting straight roles, which makes no sense to me considering how he impressed with a strong dominant presence in his debut the preceding week.
— Garrett: “This guy is Nixon, ain’t he?”
— Loved Garrett’s delivery of “Aaaaallllll white people are crazyyyyy…”
— I liked the weirdness behind this (I bet O’Donoghue wrote it), but the overall sketch fell flat.
STARS: *½
WORLD OF ADVENTURE
anthropologist’s (host) breast-filled film excites E. Buzz Miller (DAA)
— The debut of E. Buzz Miller!
— What the hell was up with Dan and Ruth talking over each other for a long time? That didn’t seem to be a part of the script to me. Sloppy as hell. I’m guessing Ruth’s the one to blame for that.
— This sketch was way too short. Pretty much nothing happened in it besides Dan commenting during the brief African native dancing clip they showed. I thought what I was watching was just the beginning, but then the sketch ended before it could even take off. I wanted to see so much more from this.
STARS: **
MR. MIKE’S LEAST-LOVED BEDTIME TALES
MOD tells (GIR) a Least-Loved Bedtime Tale- “Willy The Worm”
— Overall, this was okay, but a step down from the last one. This was more like the first two installments of this sketch, where Mr. Mike’s story wasn’t quite as twisted and disturbing as it should be.
STARS: ***
GOODNIGHTS
— Ruth’s comment about “bare-assed” costume changes made me laugh.
— The cast seems pretty warm in their interactions with Ruth, which is kinda surprising me because I remember reading that the cast supposedly didn’t like working with her. But then again, the cast also acted warm to Louise Lasser during her goodnights, so I’ll just assume that they were really good at hiding their true emotions when interacting with an unruly host during the goodnights. It’ll be interesting to see if this also holds true for the goodnights of the Milton Berle and Frank Zappa episodes later this era.
— John gets carried out of his wheelchair and is brought onto the stage. I just now realized that aside from the cold opening, he only appeared in one actual sketch tonight. Guess there’s not many roles you can write a wheelchair into.
_______________________________
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS:
— Much like the Jodie Foster episode from earlier this season, this was another one that I heard has a bit of a bad reputation, but unlike the Foster episode, which I personally found to be surprisingly decent, THIS one lived up to its reputation. Despite a few highlights, this was an overall weak episode, with a lot of wasted potential like the E. Buzz Miller and Howard Hughes sketches, and some good sketches suffering from going on a lot longer than they should have, like the Barbra Streisand and Tom Snyder sketches.
— Ruth Gordon’s energy during her monologue made me want to root for her, but boy, did she end up being a subpar host. I don’t know the story of what went on with her backstage that made the cast supposedly hate working with her, but there were some moments during this episode where I could understand the animosity, especially whatever the hell she was doing in the E. Buzz Miller sketch where she kept stepping all over Aykroyd’s lines while he was trying to end the sketch.
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Ralph Nader):
— a big step down
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW:
Fran Tarkenton
Ruth Gordon was supposedly not happy with the writing, including a proposed sketch written by Franken in which her character dropped dead.
O.J.Simpson can bee seen in the audience.
Recall reading in 1 of the books (Hill/ Weingrad?) that Gordon was so displeased she practically walked offstage and right out of the building after the show ended
Wait, really? Holy crap. I could do a Son of Sam joke, but It’s 1 AM when I’m writing this, and have a meeting tomorrow.
Actually, I believe Franken & Davis wrote the Howard Hughes sketch.
the Crazy Frank sketch was based off of Crazy Eddie’s…which was huge in the tri-state area at that time…as a kid growing up in southern Connecticut…who watched NYC tv all the time…Crazy Eddie commercials were a part of growing up…lol
John Belushi injured his ankle falling off the stage doing a sketch at a live appearance him and Akyroyd did at the University of Rhode Island around this time.
I forget if it was one of those Kenneth Bowser documentaries that aired in the mid-2000s, but I vaguely recall an interview with Laraine where she felt a sense of pride in (reportedly) being the first person to ever sing (let alone say) the word “Sucks” on Network TV.
I think that was in the SNL Backstage documentary (2011?), which I think was mostly made of scraps and unused interviews from the earlier Bowser documentaries.
Just a couple of observations:
1. Yes, that’s OJ Simpson in the audience right before the goodnights.
2. Ricky Jay was an incredible magician, but he seems nervous here and I could clearly see him change out the woman’s card before it “transformed” into a three of clubs. I think it’s also obvious that both audience members are plants. Btw, he is sitting in the background in the dinner of the Little Old Ladies sketch.
3. It was Joe Piscopo who did the Crazy Eddie bit in the early 80s.
4. It may be hard for younger audiences today to understand, but one of the few places to see female nudity was National Geographic magazine and documentaries showing tribal cultures, which is the basis of the E Buzz Miller sketch.
5. During the goodnights, Belushi is wearing a t-shirt that has an iron-on featuring a Bob Dylan cover of Rolling Stone from March 14, 1974. Also, he is wearing what is likely a future Blues Brothers hat.
6. I always loved how Aykroyd and Murray would pair up as police or some other kind of quasi-law enforcement. We see that in two sketches here.
7. Garrett’s appearance in the Night Moves film is rather strange. We only see flashes of him, and the footage looks like it was filmed off a TV screen. The scenes of the woman, however, is much higher quality. I suppose that was the artistic intent, but he never interacts with her. Is he supposed to be watching her? She tears up his photo – Sinead O’Connor style – at the end.
“3. It was Joe Piscopo who did the Crazy Eddie bit in the early 80s.”
He did most of them, but I was correct when I said in my above review that Jim Belushi did one. It’s the Crazy Weinstein sketch from the Flip Wilson episode in season 9.
I remember Jim Belushi doing a variation that went “he isnt selling anything, he’s just crazy”