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
Bill Murray was wearing a new jacket in the Burger King sketch and was really upset that it got splattered.
Marilyn Miller wrote the impotence sketch.
I agree that Murray’s flub is not particularly noticeable, but he performs very badly in the sketch regardless. The sketch has a Monty Python-esque vibe, but the person speaking the five words should have attempted to change his inflections, ranging from personable and invested at the beginning to hapless and sad at the end, while Murray (not that I blame him after messing up) just seems trying to remember how to say the line. I do agree that the sketch is one of the more underrated Jane Curtin performances.
I think the rerun version of How Your Children Grow sketch mutes the “about that” part so I remember really enjoying it the whole time not noticing any discomfort on Murray’s part. I believe the end of the Franken & Davis sketch is where Don Pardo got his later closing line, “Until then this is Don Pardo saying this is Don Pardo saying good night!”
You know that Bill Murray 5 words sketch reminds me of Whose Line’s first playing of Three-Headed-Broadway star where 3 performers had to make up a song one word at a time, and Drew just randomly sang “And take me on a…” before realizing his mistake. Also the One word in Password Plus/Super Password, and the Whose Line game Number of Words.
If it means anything I didn’t notice Bill flubbed his line the first time I watched the sketch because it happened early enough that the central joke wasn’t established yet.
The only way that Gary Weis film is watchable is if you’re tripping on acid. Otherwise quite a memorable and hilarious episode!
To those too young to have known this: The “Burger Master” sketch is a parody of the Burger King commercials of the early ’70s in which the slogan was “Have it your way”!
Yes, this was the episode SNL submitted and won the best writing Emmy for that season – I would have submitted the first Buck Henry episode, the Lily Tomlin episode, or one of the Eric Idle episodes before this one.
They submitted it because (according to Marilyn Suzanne Miller) it was the show that used a sketch from each writer. Aykroyd, Franken, Davis, and Downey wrote the Carter sketch; Marilyn wrote the “manly powers” sketch; Tom Schiller wrote the opening and Bad Playhouse. Rosie Shuster wrote Gidget’s disease sketch; O’Donoghue wrote Burger Master; Anne Beatts wrote Quintlexia; and Sargent and Zweibel did Weekend Update. Also, because the Emmy season ended in April in the seventies (no May sweeps) the Eliot Gould episode was also nominated.
Spotted in audience during one of the Audience Caption Funnies is actor John Considine (you name a TV show from 60s-80’s, he guested on it!) who co-starred with Spacek (and mg Baskin) in Welcome to LA (lower right corner in pic)
https://imgur.com/3A5WkGu
Though dress rehearsals were never recorded to videotape til s11 1985, some audio recordings of dress sketches were released. Here’s a dress sketch from the Spacek program in audio form (as found in the SNL s2 DVD boxset). It would’ve been the second installment of the Farbers (John & Gilda) if chosen for air and includes Danny Billy and Sissy. Really effective use of “fourth wall” golden-years-style (and Billy didn’t flub so…)
https://archive.org/details/farbers-new-kid-sissy-spacek-dress-rehearsal
Here’s a color publicity still of the dress sketch (courtesy of Corbis):
https://imgur.com/tXMMUuQ
Here’s a newspaper ad for The Best of Saturday Night Live (when it was repackaged in one hour compilations for NBC primetime air). My guess is the stenciled caricature of Danny and Billy in the collage is from the same dress sketch (Danny showing Billy his “wings”)
https://imgur.com/tBbrmR4
This is an image included in the montage of Steve Martin’s host countdown shown in the monologue when he co-hosted with Martin Short in s48 December 2022.
https://imgur.com/a/mTwJWer
It looks like a publicity image of dress sketch from an s2 episode hosted by Martin, guessing his 2nd turn (the ep previous to this one) and this sketch was a first-draft variation of what was to become this week’s Bad Playhouse (Steve as host holding “The Millkeeper” book, Dan in what would be John’s role, Laraine in her same role)
I believe this is the first episode I saw upon original airing as a child. I remember the Bad Playhouse sketch and finding it so weird and disturbing (conceptually, it would have been a little over my head at that age! The idea of bizarre theater being cheered on for its awfulness by the host struck me as quite perverse). It’s still hilarious. I really like Sissy Spacek, but her voice is like nails on a chalkboard in several sketches. I actually wonder if she was losing her voice (seems to really start cracking during the Gigdet sketch). Also, she’s obviously a talented baton twirler, but after opening with it (the breakaway dress didn’t quite work), did we need a Gary Weis film showing her in slo mo? Other thoughts….I got a kick out of Franken & Davis taking audience suggestions, improv style, huddling to conference, and returning only to announce that they were unable come up with anything! During Burger Master, Murray appears to be wearing the same Yankees cap worn by Belushi in the previous week “pulling the plug” sketch. It looks like a homemade hat (i.e., it’s Dodger blue, and has a “NY” felt logo roughly attached to it). They couldn’t find a decent looking Yankees cap in New York city in 1977? Regarding Richard Baskin, he did music for Altman films and appeared in Welcome to LA with Spacek. Interestingly, his father founded Baskin-Robbins Ice Cream (his mother was the sister of Robbins), and his sister Edie Baskin did all the photography for SNL (opening, bumpers, etc.). I find his music to be perfectly competent but also some of the blandest stuff ever to appear on the show. The Carter sketch is a classic, but lord almighty, I’m reminded at how impressed so many were with Carter, who had just begun his tenure (he is SO smart!). I’ll let the historians hash out how well his presidency turned out. At this point, however, there is a giddy optimism about his abilities.
(*just found this video, March 5 1977 , 2pm-4pm)