May 20, 1978 – Buck Henry / Sun Ra (S3 E20)

Sketches are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars

DISCLAIMER
The Boy In The Plastic Pants Suit will not be seen tonight

COLD OPENING
since you don’t have Nixon (DAA) to kick around anymore, kick his book

   

— Funny that Dan’s Nixon brings out the “Don’t Buy Books by Crooks” anti-Nixon t-shirt, considering Dan himself wore that same shirt (and proudly pointed to it) during the preceding episode’s goodnights. (screencap below of both moments)

 

— Dan’s Nixon’s desperation for people to buy the book is pretty funny.
— I liked the “Pat’s already on her fourth copy” line.
— Good ending with the book being placekicked.
STARS: ***

MONOLOGUE
scrolling text says host’s career is over, contrary to what he claims

   

— Another scrolling disclaimer during a Buck monologue.
— As usual, this provided good laughs. I especially liked the magazines/telescope part.
STARS: ***½

NERD PROM
before the prom, parents Marshall (host) & Enid (JAC) advise Todd & Lisa

    

— I liked Jane’s comment about Bill’s hormones.
— Buck regarding Bill’s look: “John Ravolta, watch out!”
— Classic part with Bill giving Gilda a can that has rubber snakes pop out of it when she opens it. I’ve often seen that portion of this sketch in the form of a clip in SNL highlight reels.
— Jane’s details about the late Mr. Loopner were really funny.
— Kind of an odd ending.
STARS: ***½

SAMURAI T.V. REPAIRMAN
Mr. Dantley brings his broken set to Futaba

   

— Can already tell from the set that this will be a Samurai sketch.
— Yep, I was right.
— Futaba referring to his mother as “My mama-san” brought me back to the funny “Yo mama-san” bit from the Samurai sketch with Richard Pryor.
— Hate to say it, but you can tell this recurring sketch is running out of steam. A lot of the usual gags here feel tired, predictable, and by-the-numbers.
— The “68/89” mix-up was fairly funny.
— I liked Futaba sticking two swords into the top of the TV screen to fix the picture.
— This sketch as a whole was disappointing for Samurai standards. John also kinda seemed to be going through the motions; I bet he’s grown tired of doing this character. I think the only reason they’re continuing to use Futaba at this point in the show’s run is because it was a tradition to do so whenever Buck hosted. I heard that SNL did only two more Samurai sketches after this, and I’m guessing they’re in the two episodes that Buck hosts next season (which is John’s final season).
STARS: **

SODOM CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
(BIM) offers image-improving ideas to the Sodom chamber of commerce

 

— This is an awfully cheap premise, especially for something this early in the show.
— Didn’t care for the ending with the female cast members singing.
— Overall, aside from a few okay lines, I was bored during this whole sketch.
STARS: *½

WEEKEND UPDATE PREVIEW

WEEKEND UPDATE
LAN narrates amateurish TOS drawings of Son Of Sam trial
BIM tries to call Jackie Onassis to get her reaction to The Greek Tycoon
DAA’s commentary about Betty Ford lists some other alcoholic first ladies
JAC & DAA do a Point-Counterpoint about jogging

       

— Dan’s wearing dark-tinted sunglasses for some reason. I wonder if he’s aware that this is going to end up being his final Update.
— Haha, holy hell at Dan demonstrating the new fanfare and then quickly firing a sudden gunshot into the air. His delivery and timing of that was awesome. He may suck at reading Update jokes, but he was usually always great at doing random side bits like these.
— The return of the childlike “Artist’s Rendering” gag. Meh. This bit stopped being funny long ago back when Chevy was overusing it in season 1.
— Bill “Now get out of here, you knuckleheads” Murray stops by for what would end up being his final review commentary before taking over as new Update co-anchor next season. I wonder if they found a way to have him still continue doing these smarmy review commentaries even when being an anchorman.
— Bill calling out the movie clip for stealing Steve Martin’s “excuse me” catchphrase is amusing to me, because Bill himself used that catchphrase of Steve’s in a Nerds sketch from a few episodes ago.
— Bill: “(over the phone) Does the name Bill Murray mean anything to you? (a beat) John Belushi?” Haha, don’t worry, Bill, your time as a household name is soon coming.
— Dan’s segment detailing the drinking habits of first ladies throughout history was questionable, but I did like his comments about Mary Todd Lincoln.
— Another Point/Counterpoint.
— Dan’s harsh rebuttal to Jane was hilarious as usual, especially his menopause comment.
— And so ends the final Update of the short-lived Dan Aykroyd era. At least he went out with a few good moments tonight. Now bring on the Bill Murray era!
STARS: ***

THE OLYMPIA CAFE
Pete is forced to choose between employee Nico (BIM) & a guard dog

     

— The “lamb in the basement” bit was a fairly funny subtle part.
— I always like how each Olympia Cafe sketch involves multiple storylines going on at the same time. It adds a lot of layers and depth to the sketch, and makes it feel like a sitcom, which is also helped by the realism in everyone’s performances. It’s rare to see a recurring SNL sketch show this kind of detail and commitment to realism.
— Bill’s character abruptly getting fired and shoved out the door actually made me feel genuinely sorry for him.
— The back-and-forth with Bill repeatedly getting fired and then rehired is pretty good.
STARS: ***½

MR. MIKE’S LEAST-LOVED MUSIC
MOD performs “Baby Ghouls”

   

— Ah, a variation of Least Loved Bedtime Tales.
— Interesting visual of a superimposed, bloody Laraine doing sign language during O’Donoghue’s song.
— These lyrics are disturbing and fucked-up as hell, even for Mr. Mike standards.
— Overall, I have absolutely no idea what to make of this. I want to love it, because I’m usually a fan of dark Mr. Mike humor, but I’m not all that sure how I felt about this one.  I think maybe I appreciated the concept of it more than the actual execution.
— Was this O’Donoghue’s swan song? I thought I heard somewhere that tonight is his last episode. However, I had always been under the impression that he left after season 4, not season 3. Can anyone clarify? It does feel like they’ve been phasing him out in the second half of this season, as his presence has not been felt anywhere near as much as it was felt in the first two seasons. If tonight is indeed his last show, he sure will be missed. I feel kinda bad for being so iffy on this final sketch of his.
STARS: ??? (undecided)

MORE INSECTS TO WORRY ABOUT
(host) warns about brain-burrowing mites

— I didn’t know they made this into a recurring sketch.
— WTF was with Buck’s “f**got/maggot” slip-up? Was that intentional or a real flub? If someone made that same slip-up on SNL nowadays, they’d probably get chased out the building by an angry mob with torches and pitchforks.
— Some of the gross details by Buck are kinda funny, but this sketch isn’t working as well as the first installment did.
STARS: **½

STUNT PUPPY
director Brian Whitney has actor Howard abuse a stunt puppy in a scene

   

— Ah, it’s the Stunt Baby sequel.
— For some reason, I loved Jane exclaiming “I can’t, I’d vomit!” as her excuse for not cleaning up the mess the dog made on the floor.
— Wait, the stunt puppy is REAL? How are they going to pull this off?
— Oh, I see what they did; you can tell when they secretly switched the real stunt puppy with a fake one.
— Man, this was disappointing overall. This had an awfully long setup for a short payoff that felt derivative and just didn’t work as well as Buck’s original abuse of Stunt Baby did. Maybe instead of just throwing Stunt Puppy out the window like he did with Stunt Baby, they should’ve had Buck up the ante by pulling out a rifle and SHOOTING the puppy. That was what I had actually been expecting when I first heard there’s a Stunt Puppy sketch.
STARS: **

BAD CONCEPTUAL ART
(GIR) performs excerpt from Pavlov Video Chicken I

  

— Judging from what Dan’s saying in his intro, I’m predicting the role of a woman dancing like a chicken will be played by Laraine, who previously did a chicken impression in that “Little-Known Talents of the Not Ready For Prime-Time Players” sketch from season 2.
— Oh, it’s actually Gilda playing the chicken-dancing lady.
— Boy, that eye in the TV monitor looks just plain creepy. Is that Garrett?
— Wow, this play is insane, but not all that funny.
— Why did this end with Dan miming throwing something invisible into the garbage bin? He usually throws a script into the garbage at the end of these sketches.
— Overall, this was one of the lesser “Bad (insert type of play here)” installments, which makes this yet another disappointing sketch tonight. Man, what’s going on?
STARS: **

THE FRANKEN AND DAVIS SHOW
tragedy befalls the Franken family after TOD outs himself & ALF

     

— Funny twist with Davis revealing he and Franken are “homosexual lovers”.
— The audience & Franken’s “son” acting like Franken’s the worst person ever just for coming out as gay is making me laugh, but REALLY shows this sketch’s age. This premise couldn’t be used on the show nowadays.
— Wow, holy hell at the suicide ending. I love how dark and unexpected that was. I also love how the audience had no idea how to respond to it.
— Interesting “sponsored by” bit at the end.
STARS: ***½

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
— Wonder why they buried the first musical performance so unusually late into the show.
— (*sees how utterly bizarre this performance is*) Oh, THAT’S why they buried this so late into the show…
— The show cut to commercial when this performance was still in progress. I’m sure it’s only because the episode ran long, but it’s funny to imagine that the real reason is because everybody at the show was so weirded-out by the performance that director Dave Wilson just threw his hands in the air and said “Alright, that’s it, I’m cutting this off!”

GOODNIGHTS

 

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IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS:
— An odd season finale. Considering Buck Henry was hosting and considering the impressive streak of great episodes that preceded this, expectations were high for a top-notch season-ender. Instead, the season went out on kind of an underwhelming note. There was a string of disappointing sketches in the second half of the show, post-Olympia Cafe and pre-Franken & Davis. The first half of the show wasn’t consistently strong, either, as it contained a rather lethargic Samurai installment and whatever that Sodom sketch was trying to be. Tonight’s episode still certainly had several highlights here and there, but nothing that I felt was worth giving more than a three-and-a-half star rating to.
— Despite the less-than-satisfying way it ended, season 3 was an overall fantastic year. There was impressively only ONE episode that I flat-out disliked (Madeline Kahn), and that was all the way back at the beginning of the season. There were two episodes that I felt were iffy but contained enough highlights that I wouldn’t classify them as outright bad shows (Hugh Hefner and tonight’s Buck Henry). The remaining episodes of the season all ranged from good to excellent. So many of those episodes were strong, especially the long stretch of episodes from Christopher Lee to Richard Dreyfuss, one of which included an episode that’s universally praised as an all-time legendary classic (Steve Martin/The Blues Brothers). There was also a surprising number of episodes that contained no weak sketches, which is a rarity for SNL. And we got lots of memorable unique gimmicks throughout the season, such as Charles Grodin “missing” dress rehearsal, Atomic Lobsters attacking the studio, and the whole “Anyone Can Host” contest. Overall, I’d say this is easily one of the greatest seasons in SNL history, and it was a blast for me to review.
— We’re officially three seasons down in the ‘One SNL a Day’ project!

HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Richard Dreyfuss):
— a step down

My full set of screencaps for this episode is here

TOMORROW:
Season 4 begins, with hosts The Rolling Stones