Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
COLD OPENING
studio rain delay- Tom Seaver & Ron Luciano [real] hope show will go on
— Very creative idea for a cold opening, in which SNL has an in-studio rain delay. This is pretty fun.
— Great use of the home base stage, showing cast members occupying various parts of the stage’s doors and windows.
— Eddie being the only cast member not to appear in this makes it obvious that tonight is yet another episode that he won’t be making any live appearances in.
STARS: ***½
MONOLOGUE
Tom tries to snap a photo of Dick & audience singing “If I Had A Ship”
— Tom’s “haul ass” comment was hilarious.
— The whole “candid” picture-snapping bit is solid.
— Love the rapid-fire string of questions Dick is asking a befuddled Tom about his camera.
STARS: ***½
JAZZ RIFFS
— At first glance, this appears to be a re-airing of a sketch the show already did in the season premiere. However, according to something I recall reading years ago, this airing isn’t the same take that was done in the season premiere; it’s an alternate take from the Eddie Murphy “preview show” (which was a special taping where they filmed a whole bunch of Eddie Murphy sketches right before this season began, due to the fact that Eddie won’t be able to appear live in a number of episodes this season). I have no idea why there’s two different versions of this same sketch, nor why they inserted one into THIS episode. Is this replacing a sketch that aired in the original live broadcast? [ADDENDUM: Turns out this replaces TWO things: a sketch called “Know Your Neighbor”, and a Smothers Brothers musical number titled “Fantasy For Auto Horn & Electronic Pulse in D Minor”]
DREAMLAND
(JIB) can’t decipher (MAG)’s obvious sexual fantasy about him
— Ehh, not too sure of this premise with Jim’s character arrogantly assuming his female guests’ dreams are a subtle sexual fantasy about him.
— And now, the dream the third female guest (Mary) describes IS a subtle sexual fantasy about Jim’s character, and the big joke is that he’s oblivious to it. Bah, a very predictable and weak punchline.
STARS: *½
CARVEL
Tom Carvel (JOP) discovers franchisee’s (TIK) risque holiday ice cream
— Joe’s look and voice is really making me laugh.
— Hilarious bit with the “Jolly Jugs”.
— The other dirty ice cream creations are also funny, especially “Peter the Yule Log” and how the chocolate version of it has much more inches.
STARS: ***½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “In a Big Country”
SATURDAY NIGHT NEWS
GAK shows Huckleberry, his 21 year-old Cabbage Patch Kid
Dr. Jack Badofsky lists varieties of influenza
JOP asks new heavyweight champ Larry Holmes [real] if he’s retiring
— Brad’s opening joke with him venting about the overexposure of Cabbage Patch Dolls is amusing, and in retrospect, serves as a nice time capsule in regards to the big Cabbage Patch Dolls craze that was going on at this time around 1983.
— I’m getting some pretty good laughs from the commentary with Gary and his now-grown Cabbage Patch Doll. Judging from the voice, I’m assuming that’s Jim inside that costume. His growly voice in this reminds me of future cast member Horatio Sanz, for some reason.
— Another display of Gary’s great pratfall skills, when Jim angrily tosses him over the news desk.
— Brad’s bit about dirty-sounding station initials was just plain random.
— Wow, right off the bat with tonight’s Dr. Jack Badofsky commentary, the audience ALREADY loudly boos and hisses just over his opening “and then, in flew Enza” joke.
— Geez, this is a hostile audience. LOL, they’re booing very easily over quite a lot of Badofsky’s puns tonight.
— Pretty fun audience participation bit right now, with Badofsky having the audience try to guess what the next influenza puns are going to be, just based on his description of them. That’s an interesting change of pace for this character, and is at least calming down all the hostility that tonight’s crowd kept directing to him.
— Joe’s facial reaction to Larry Holmes sternly telling him to be quiet was pretty funny.
— The overall Joe/Larry Holmes commentary was fairly fun.
— I do kinda like the new running gag Brad has been doing lately, where he signs off under the name of a random celebrity (first Elvis Presley, now Betty Grable). Enjoy it while it lasts, because the clock is ticking down on Brad’s anchorman tenure. A change on Saturday Night News is soon coming, folks…
STARS: **½
CRISIS GAME ’83
John Glenn (Tom) & Jesse Jackson (EDM) react to problems
— Fun idea for a sketch.
— This is the first time all night we’ve seen either of our two hosts appearing in an actual sketch.
— Good casting of Tom Smothers as John Glenn, as there is a pretty strong resemblance between them.
— Oh, Eddie IS in the building tonight after all. Wonder why he wasn’t in the cold opening with the rest of the cast. And why in the world is the biggest star of this cast making his first appearance so late in the show tonight? [ADDENDUM: Turns out this sketch aired much earlier in the original live broadcast and ended up being the victim of “rerun reshuffling”, a habit that SNL had in the 80s and early 90s where the original sketch order in episodes gets completely rearranged in reruns, which is something that kinda irks me] Was he actually flown in from Hollywood in the middle of this episode or something?
— Eddie’s Jesse Jackson impression isn’t very good. I see what he’s going for, but I feel Joe captured Jesse’s fiery delivery much better when he played him earlier this season in that astronaut cold opening. However, neither Joe nor Eddie have nailed Jesse’s voice.
— I like the random inclusion of Gary as Carl Sagan and Brad as William F. Buckley.
— I got a laugh from the line about a computer nerd who’s “playing with his Wang… Computer”.
— The “prize” that Eddie’s Jesse Jackson was given was really funny.
STARS: ***
CLARK STREET GARAGE BAND
no-talent garage band auditions for record company representative (Dick)
— Ha, this band’s god-awful music-playing is cracking me up.
— I like Dick bluntly telling the band how bad they are.
— Some good laughs from the band members’ delusions, and Jim is great in the lead role here.
STARS: ***½
MENTL
a movie starring Barbra Streisand (JOP)
— Here we have yet ANOTHER Joe Piscopo impression relying on an insane amount of prosthetics that render him unrecognizable (until you hear his voice). I admit, the initial sight of him as Streisand made me laugh.
— I thought Joe-as-Streisand’s selfish rambling was kinda funny when it started, but this kinda ran out of steam fast, and then it just ended.
STARS: **
THE POINT
Tom tells “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” to illustrate Dick’s unrelated point
— Another funny and brief Smothers Brothers routine.
STARS: ***
AUTOGRAPH
(Tom) has to make repeated trips to get Dick’s autograph for his wife
— A fairly interesting idea having Tom play an average joe who’s afraid to interact with Dick, who’s playing himself.
— Eh, not caring too much for how this sketch is turning out so far. Tom’s performance is kinda tickling me, but the material itself isn’t too good.
— Okay, I do like the bit with Tom trying to pose as a waiter.
— What’s with the indoor raining all of a sudden?
— Oh, it’s a follow-up to the “rain delay” bit from the cold opening.
— THAT’S how this sketch ends? Weak. It felt like they couldn’t come up with any other way to end this.
STARS: **
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Fields of Fire”
GOODNIGHTS
— Nice conclusion to rain storyline.
— Interestingly, both SNL episodes that the Smothers Brothers hosted had out-of-the-ordinary goodnights. The goodnights of the Smothers Brothers’ previous episode from a year earlier had them, the musical guest, and the cast taking turns jumping off a “ledge” that had been used for a sketch earlier that night, and tonight’s goodnights take place during an “indoor rainstorm”.
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS:
— First episode in a while that I wasn’t all that crazy about. Much like the previous episode that the Smothers Brothers hosted, tonight’s episode was hit-and-miss. Tonight might actually be the lesser of the two Smothers Brothers episodes, as their previous one at least had a few strong sketches that I gave a high four-star rating to, whereas tonight’s episode didn’t really contain anything I found particularly strong; nothing got higher than a three-and-a-half star rating from me. At the same time, however, tonight’s episode at least didn’t contain anything I found frustratingly god-awful like the Truck Driving Women and Inside Story sketches from the previous Smothers episode.
— Another kinda “off” thing about tonight’s episode is something about it strangely felt kinda sparse. Maybe that’s due to the fact that a sketch in my rerun copy was apparently removed and replaced with an alternate take of a sketch that already aired (Jazz Riffs).
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Jerry Lewis):
— a step down
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW:
Flip Wilson hosts the Christmas episode
Carvel with all those risque cake names is the highlight of this ep! Those names with “Schwetty Balls” worthy!
Meant to write “were” instead of “with” between “names” and “Schwetty”.
R.I.P. Tom
Choosing which one to watch, my 40-years-ago rewatching since 2016 has fallen behind, giving me a few November-December ’83 SNLs to choose from, it was an easy decision to do this one. RIP Tommy Smothers, indeed.
Loved the rain delay idea. Very clever.
In the Perfect Coincidence Dept., the last couple cakes in the Carvel sketch, wrapped up like presents, do somewhat predict the much later “Dick in a Box” bit, which is kind-of what they were.
That Carl Sagan impression was really good! I’ve always liked Gary Kroeger and it’s sad that they never figured out how to use him to his potential.