March 12, 1977 – Sissy Spacek / Richard Baskin (S2 E15)

Sketches are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars

COLD OPENING
sudden death of director Dave Wilson [real] prompts castmember eulogies
   
— For some reason, I cracked up at Don Pardo’s hesitance when stating “The director of the show, uh… died.”
— Dave Wilson being slumped over the control board the whole time is a pretty funny visual.
— Dan’s doing a great job at making this look genuinely awkward and spontaneous.
— Why does Bill’s face look so old and haggard in this? Is he wearing some kind of special make-up for a later sketch?
— Gilda: “He reminded me of my grandfather.” Dan: “Oh, yeah? What does your grandfather do?” Gilda: “He died.”
— I like the strange animal clips shown during the highlight reel of Dave’s career.
— Boy, this is a long opening. Not complaining, though.
— Interesting ending with Dave being brought back to life by the cast saying LFNY.
STARS: ***½

MONOLOGUE
host gives her Oscar speech & performs baton scene cut from Carrie
 
— This is straightforward so far, with nothing really all that funny yet.
— The sudden baton-twirling ending was fairly fun, if not exactly funny.
STARS: **½

BURGER MASTER
Burger Master makes your sandwich how you want it- no request is too odd
   
— Bill still has the old, haggard make-up on, and I just now realized why: I remember this episode having the famous “Ask President Carter” sketch, where Bill wears old make-up as Walter Cronkite. I guess to save time, they put the make-up on Bill before tonight’s episode started.
— The customers’ crazy requests and the employees happily fulfilling them is pretty funny.
— Strange seeing early-era Jim Downey with such long, blonde hair. Also, I think this is his very first speaking role on the show.
STARS: ***

ASK PRESIDENT CARTER
he has the answers for all callers’ questions
 
— I’ve always loved this sketch ever since I first saw it in an SNL “Presidential Bash” compilation special back when I first started really getting into SNL.
— Bill’s Walter Cronkite impression is making me laugh a lot.
— What’s was with the first caller’s echo-ish voice?
— Dan’s Carter is fantastic acting all cool and collected while expertly answering all of the callers’ questions.
— Funny part with “Dr. Midnight”’s obscene call.
— Classic part with Dan talking down the caller who took acid. I especially like Dan’s suggestion to listen to some Allman Brothers.
— LOL at Nixon over the phone. Is that a pre-taped Aykroyd doing the voice? It sounds like his impression.
STARS: ****½

AMY’S BEDTIME STORY
ex-con nanny (GAM) tells Amy Carter (host) a felonious bedtime story

— Ask President Carter has interestingly transitioned into this related sketch.
— Unless I’m forgetting something, I think this is Garrett’s very first drag role on the show. I’ve always heard that he played a lot of women on SNL.
— I’ve been finding a lot of Garrett’s performances pretty rough these last few episodes, but his delivery in this is kinda making me laugh. I’m fully prepared, though, to quickly get sick of him playing drag roles as I go further down SNL’s timeline.
— Oh my god, Sissy’s sudden attempt at doing streetwise jive talk is HORRENDOUS. It also doesn’t help that I can barely decipher what she’s saying during it.
STARS: **

HOW YOUR CHILDREN GROW
JAC interviews quintlexia sufferer (BIM)
 
— Yet another new Jane Curtin talkshow sketch.
— Oh, wait, I know where this is going. This is the “quintlexia” sketch that has an infamous screw-up I’ve always heard about, where Bill Murray supposedly blows the “only able to speak the same five words” joke by accidentally saying more than five words at one point.
— Geez, Bill looks uncomfortable right from the start of this sketch, and he keeps making heavy breathing sounds while Jane’s talking. What’s up with that?
— Okay, there’s Bill’s infamous gaffe, where he says “That’s true, you’re absolutely right about th–” and then kinda cuts himself off when he realizes his mistake. Honestly, that wasn’t as bad as legend had me expecting. It isn’t throwing the sketch off as much as I though it would, and his flub was so inaudible that a lot of viewers probably didn’t even notice it. Supposedly, Lorne and the writers were PISSED at Bill for his mistake, though. I think I even remember reading that Bill overheard one of the writers referring to him as a “fucking amateur” backstage after the sketch ended.
— This sketch is getting quite funny.
— Love Jane cruelly asking Bill inappropriate questions (e.g. “You sleep in a wedding gown, don’t you?”) just so she can hear him helplessly respond with those famous five words.
— Jane’s sudden “Oh, shut the hell up!” had me laughing out loud.
— Overall, that was definitely better than I was expecting. Still, I kinda wish they waited until later in Bill’s tenure to do this sketch, when he was an established pro and was no longer a nervous new kid in the cast.
STARS: ***½

JOHN BELUSHI’S DREAM
JOB announces that he’s leaving show business to train for the decathlon

— This almost feels like a precursor to John’s classic Little Chocolate Donuts commercial from a year or so later.
— This wasn’t anything special and came off kinda filler-ish.
STARS: **

WEEKEND UPDATE
in a rhyme-filled LAN interview, Muhammad Ali (GAM) unveils movie plans
Emily Litella doesn’t understand the fuss over “endangered feces”
   
— Something blocked the Yankees picture on the news screen for a second.
— Haha, that joke about how the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson needs to finally be put to its death was quite mean-spirited. Little did they know at the time just how bad the Tonight Show could truly get later on with a certain big-chinned successor of Carson’s…
— A nice touch how they followed Garrett’s rhyming Muhammad Ali commentary with an Update joke from Jane that also rhymed.
— Ohh, here comes yet another visit from Emily Litella…
— Okay, I’m ashamed to admit it, but Litella’s “endangered feces” rant is actually kinda making me laugh.
— And now, I just got a surprisingly good laugh from Litella’s intentionally bad joke about how the feces could “really hit the fan”.
— Jane coldly telling Litella that her shtick is “wearing thin” and that “at first, it was cute, then it was tolerable, now it’s annoying” perfectly echoes how I (and I’m sure some viewers at the time) generally feel about this character. Too bad that had to be followed by the usual “bitch” remark from Litella, as if THAT joke hasn’t gotten just as tired as the rest of her shtick.
— No mid-WU break tonight.
STARS: ***

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE

FRANKEN AND DAVIS
ALF & TOD perform a newscast from the evening of World War III
 
— LOL at the unseen audience member who keeps suggesting “Pittsburgh!” everytime Franken and Davis look to the audience for suggestions.
— Franken’s delivery of “575 million…Chinese” made me laugh.
— Overall, nothing special, despite the good premise. This wasn’t horrible, but felt like it could’ve been funnier.
STARS: **½

GIDGET GOES TO SHOCK THERAPY
terminally cute women (host), (GIR), (LAN) suffer from Gidget’s Disease
 
— Gilda portrayal of a little girl seems even cuter than usual to me in this.
— A very funny twist from Jane.
— I like the dark humor of the shock therapy treatment premise, and Jane has had some really funny lines.
STARS: ****

ROMANCE
argument of white trash couple (JOB) & (host) is spurred by impotence
 
— John is funny in this, even though this seems to be a more dramatic sketch.
— Sissy’s voice during her angry rant is kinda brutal on the ears.
— Sissy’s doing better now during her whole story about receiving a sign from God.
— Nice ending.
— Overall, a pretty well-done slice-of-life piece.
STARS: ***½

BATON
by Gary Weis- slow motion footage shows host twirling a baton
 
— Absolutely no idea what to say about this, other than my usual “a typical dull Gary Weis film” and “his films belong on a different show” comments.
STARS: *½

BAD PLAYHOUSE
Leonard Pinth-Garnell (DAA) presents The Millkeeper
   
— SNL’s very first Leonard Pinth-Garnell “Bad (insert type of play here)” sketch.
— The various insane looks on John’s face is cracking me up.
— Overall, hilariously bizarre & pointless. I’m looking forward to future installments of this sketch.
STARS: ***½

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE

OUTTAKES
by Robert Altman- host’s 3 Women & Welcome To L.A. scenes are juxtaposed
 
— This appears to be a montage of random clips from Sissy Spacek movies.
— Yet another short film that I have no idea what to say about.
— Wait, did she just kiss her own panties before hanging them up in that one clip just now? Why?
STARS: *½

GOODNIGHTS
   
— A few differences I noticed in the writing credits tonight: Aykroyd is now listed separately instead of listed as a team with Belushi, and Belushi is now strangely listed as a team with Murray.

_______________________________

IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS:
— An average episode with an average host. A lot of the sketches worked, but not much is standing out to me aside from Ask President Carter and maybe Gidget Goes To Shock Therapy. Sissy Spacek did an okay-if-forgettable job for the most part, despite a few irksome unintelligible moments and I just now realized that I wasn’t crazy about ANY of the segments that were centered entirely around her (the monologue and the two short films).
— Is it true that this ended up becoming an Emmy-winning episode? That doesn’t really make sense to me. There were much more noteworthy episodes this season.
— I felt Jane had a pretty strong night. The niche she’s carved out for herself as a blunt, icy, no-nonsense straightman was put to great use several times tonight: Gidget Goes To Shock Therapy, the end of the “quintlexia” sketch, and the Emily Litella commentary on Update.

HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Steve Martin):
— a slight step down

My full set of screencaps for this episode is here

TOMORROW:
Broderick Crawford