January 22, 1983 – Lily Tomlin / Purvis Hawkins (S8 E10)

Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars

COLD OPENING
castmembers copy EDM’s characters to become successful, host disapproves

     

— I like the way the show is playing up how much Eddie has recently become a big star from the release of “48 Hours” and his SNL hosting gig.
— Funny bit with Eddie’s “walkman” just being two guys singing into his ears.
— I’m liking the impressions Eddie’s castmates are doing of his characters, with Mary as Gumby and Tim as a surprisingly spot-on Velvet Jones.
— We see Eddie’s now-trademark “heh heh heh!” laugh in response to Tim’s Velvet Jones.
— Ha, now we’re getting Gary in intentionally-poorly-applied blackface as Buckwheat.
— Nice twist at the end, with Lily doing her own personalized variant of Eddie’s “Live from New York, it’s the Eddie Murphy Show” from the last episode.
STARS: ***½

MONOLOGUE
host recites a cheer designed to help you forget your worries

 

— I’m really enjoying this, and the format with her saying a random string of one-liners regarding the things she worries about is reminding me a lot of her monologue from season 1. As I mentioned in my review of that monologue, random strings of one-liners is one of my favorite forms of stand-up comedy (Steven Wright and Zach Galifianakis are my prime examples of some of the comedians who are the masters of that form of stand-up).
— Now she’s chanting a cheer while snapping her fingers as the audience claps along. Tonight’s monologue really IS using the same format as her season 1 monologue. Cool.
— Very solid monologue overall.
STARS: ****

JUDITH GOES SHOPPING
housewife Judith Beasley shows how to get free food while shopping

     

— The return of a Laugh-In character that Lily brought to SNL before, in the season 2 episode she hosted.
— I like how she’s taste-testing everything in sight, especially the part with her taking just a wing off of a rotating rotisserie chicken.
— Well-done film.
STARS: ***½

ERNESTINE’S HOUSE CALL
Ma Bell employee Ernestine reclaims a family of former customers

   

— Another famous Laugh-In character of Lily’s.
— LOL at the family’s corny strawberry phone.
— I like the part with Ernestine blackmailing the family by revealing their secretive phone calls.
— An overall solid sketch and great usage of the Ernestine character.
STARS: ***½

SPEAKING AS A WOMAN
words from Dustin Hoffman (GAK) & Joan Rivers (JOP)

 

— Joe is hilarious as Joan Rivers.
— Pretty funny how Joe-as-Rivers keeps cutting off Gary’s Tootsie by turning everything Gary says into a string of self-deprecating stand-up jokes.
— I like how quick and fast-paced the overall sketch was. Tonight’s episode in general has been moving along swiftly, which I really like.
STARS: ***

NATURAL RESOURCES
Judith Beasley warns of the imminent plastic shortage

— A follow-up to the Judith Beasley sketch ALREADY?
— Some pretty funny examples listed of how much plastic is used everyday.
STARS: ***

EDITH ANN & FRIENDS
little girls Edith Ann & Darlene (JLD) tell stories from a rocking chair

   

— Yet another Laugh-In character that Lily brought to SNL before. In my aforementioned review of Lily’s first episode, while reviewing the “Edith Ann Skates” short film, I asked if Edith Ann is the same character Lily would later play opposite Julia Louis-Dreyfus in a sketch from 1983 (which is the sketch I’m reviewing right now), and in the comments section of that review, I remember someone replied that Edith Ann was actually a Laugh-In character of Lily’s, which I hadn’t known before. I’m only familiar with some of her Laugh-In characters.
— What’s with Julia’s randomly dark skin? It’s almost making her look black for some reason.
— Loved Julia’s line about mixing marshmallows with spit and making sauce.
— Lily’s penis-showing advice was hilarious.
— Pairing Julia with Lily’s Edith Ann character turned out to be a wise choice, as Julia is giving a strong performance that works perfectly alongside of Lily’s character.
— Julia’s south accent in this, coupled with the darker skin, is now starting to make me wonder if she IS supposed to be doing a black character. It makes no sense in this sketch, though. Why randomly make her character black???
— Strong sketch overall, and makes me want to check out some of the Edith Ann sketches that appeared on Laugh-In.
STARS: ****

PUDGE & SOLOMON
(host) buys drinks for Pudge & Solomon after soiling the latter’s suit

  

— Nice inclusion of Lily into this established recurring sketch.
— I like Lily’s choice of singing Froggy Went A-Courtin’ “because it’s in a negro spiritual vein”.
— Another good Pudge & Solomon sketch, though not exactly my favorite installment of this.
STARS: ***

TESS IN THE BALCONY
bag lady Tess (host) sits in the SNL audience & expounds her theories

  

— Fun premise with Lily in the audience. Bill Murray did a cold opening like this with his Honker character, back in season 4.
— I like seeing the studio audience getting a kick out of this.
— Lily is hilarious here, especially her improvised riffs on some of the individual audience members sitting next to her.
— Weird seeing the role of an NBC page being played by Robin. This is usually the type of role SNL gets extras or writers to play.
STARS: ***½

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest sings about caring & brotherhood

 

— I remember the first time I saw this episode years ago, it seriously took me halfway through this musical performance to realize that this black, male R&B singer was just Lily in drag. Watching this again now, I can’t believe I was fooled the first time. It seems so obvious right from the start that that’s Lily. Maybe I wasn’t paying much attention the first time (I usually tend to tune out musical guests).
— Lily’s performance is really good as this character.
— I’m sure there’s something I’m forgetting from one of the earlier seasons, but I *think* this is the first time in SNL history where the musical guest of an episode was just the host as a character.

SATURDAY NIGHT NEWS
Andy Kaufman [real] thanks those who voted to keep him on SNL
JOP announces a contest- predict when Billy Martin will get axed
Havnagootiim Vishnuuerheer lists possible questions to ask God

      

— A callback to Andy Kaufman’s SNL banning from earlier this season.
— We get a pre-taped message from Andy thanking various people, including the viewers who voted for SNL to keep him. No jokes here, it seems. It IS nice, though, that the show has allowed him to give a goodbye message.
— Heh, Brad follows up Andy’s message by calling it “pretty sad” and saying that Andy now owes NBC money for using airtime.
— Joe announces an SNL contest for viewers to predict when the recently-rehired Billy Martin will next be axed by George Steinbrenner. Winner of the contest gets World Series tickets. At first, I thought this was a gag, but now I’m thinking this is a legit contest. After all, SNL did have a tendency to do stuff like this in these older seasons (e.g. the “Find the Popes in the Pizza” contest).
— Funny punchline from Brad to the Muppet movie banning joke.
— A mention of SNL producer Dick Ebersol and wife Susan Saint James having a baby over the Christmas break.
— I think Tim has appeared as a guest commentator in every single Saturday Night News since at least the Robert Blake episode all the way back in November. I wonder if he’s broken a record with that.
— Good to see the return of Tim’s Havnagootiim Vishnuuerheer.
— As usual, several funny one-liners from Tim’s character, this time on the topic of the questions he would ask God. I especially liked one of his questions being “Is he really gonna save the queen?”
— What the HELL was that very loud “winding down” type of sound heard just now, after Tim asked “Does he enjoy being the almighty?” That sound actually startled me.
— After the aforementioned “winding down” sound, Tim humorously ad-libs “I guess we have our answer, don’t we?” I’m still wondering what that sound was, though.
STARS: ***

FANTASY
organist Bobbi Jeanine (host) lives her dream by playing on NBC

      

— Mary in light blackface as Leslie Uggams. Hmm, are you noticing a theme in tonight’s episode? Seems to be an unusually large amount of white performers playing black roles. Heh, what’s up with that? Also, this is only the first of SEVERAL black roles that Mary would play during her SNL tenure. I seem to recall her later playing Lena Horne in a sketch (she was actually kind of a dead-ringer for her in it, from what I remember), and I think she also plays a black role in a Stevie Wonder biography sketch when Stevie himself hosts later this season. I guess casting Mary as a black woman is supposed to be funny in itself because she’s probably one of the whitest of all the white cast members in SNL history.
— Pretty funny scene with a one-armed Tim inside “Fantasy Fountain” trying to catch money with only one arm, eventually resorting to putting the money he catches into his mouth.
— Is that the same mysterious Woody Allen impersonator from the “Everybody Does Merman” sketch in last season’s Daniel J. Travanti episode?
— Wow, this feels like the first thing Eddie has appeared in since the cold opening, though he may have appeared in something in between that I’m forgetting. [ADDENDUM: I indeed forgot something he was in: Pudge & Solomon] I wonder why the sudden extreme underusage of him after his big hosting stint in the last episode… actually, now that I think of it, maybe that’s the reason for his extremely scaled-back airtime tonight. Maybe Ebersol felt bad for the rest of the cast after Eddie literally turned the last episode into “The Eddie Murphy Show”.
— The overall segment with Eddie felt like a waste of him. Maybe I’m just not used to seeing him in such an uncomedic, nothing role, especially in a sketch where practically everyone else in the cast is getting something funny to do.
— Overall, not sure what to think of this sketch as a whole. It was all over the place and pretty hit-and-miss.
STARS: **½

THE IRISH RADIO HOUR
Siobhan Cahill (MAG) runs an Irish radio variety show

   

— I can’t help but find it funny how the name of Mary’s character, Siobhan Cahill, happens to be an unintentional combination of the names of two future short-lived featured players from season 17: Siobhan Fallon and Beth Cahill.
— Tim’s farewell message was pretty funny.
— An overall fairly forgettable sketch, but I guess not too bad for something this late in the show.
STARS: **½

COFFEES OF THE WORLD
ROD for Coffees of the World- Cafe Parmigiana, Greek Egg Lemon, others

 

— For anyone keeping count, this is the third sketch of the season where Julia has worn Ana Gasteyer’s future Bobbi Mohan-Culp dress.
— The concept of this isn’t very funny, and the sketch is leaving me pretty bored.
STARS: *½

THE WEB
— Rerun

GOODNIGHTS

 

— Ah, Joe announces that the “predict when Billy Martin will be axed” contest is indeed legit. I wonder if anything ends up becoming of that contest, because unlike the famous SNL contests of the 70s, I had never heard of this one before, which makes me wonder if it ends up not receiving enough participation for SNL to announce a winner.

---

IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS:
— A kinda strange-feeling episode, as a lot of it (particularly the first half) felt more like a Lily Tomlin prime-time special than an episode of SNL. They REALLY let her take over the show with her characters, but it’s hard to complain when those characters gave me some good laughs tonight.
— The first half of the show flowed very nicely, with a smooth, fast pace and lots of solid sketches. Unfortunately, the quality died down in the second half of the show, as none of the material that followed Saturday Night News was noteworthy at all.

HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Eddie Murphy):
— a slight step up

My full set of screencaps for this episode is here

TOMORROW:
Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas