December 15, 1984 – Eddie Murphy / The Honeydrippers (S10 E9)

Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars

COLD OPENING
Alfalfa magnifies a newspaper photo & discovers Buckwheat is still alive

— I liked Mary’s exaggerated double-take when spotting Buckwheat in a crowd photo.
— LOL, a replay of the classic “Buckwheat gets shot” clip, which never fails to crack me up.
— Hmm, a “To be continued…” ending.
STARS: N/A (not sure if I should rate this, since it was just a short, straightforward set-up to a later sketch)

OPENING MONTAGE
— Despite being fired, Jim Belushi is still credited in the opening montage, due to the fact that the continuous side-scrolling style of this season’s montage makes it impossible to edit out any of the cast members. The show would face this same problem a little later this season when a certain other cast member gets fired.

MONOLOGUE
(no synopsis available)

— After getting used to no longer reviewing him since late last season, it’s good to see Eddie back on SNL.
— What a suit he’s wearing. In a later interview, Eddie addressed this monologue and admitted that him wearing this type of overly fancy suit is a sign that you don’t wanna be around him behind the scenes because he’s “not acting right”. Apparently, it’s true, as Billy Crystal would later go on to say that Eddie was a NIGHTMARE to work with that week.
— I’m liking Eddie’s various self-deprecating comments about his recent box-office bomb Best Defense, which he says is “a movie that sucked REAL bad”.
— Great story about how he was convinced to do Best Defense, and how it led into him hosting this episode.
— Funny part with him admitting “not everything in tonight’s show is hysterical”, and how most SNL hosts lie to you by saying it’s gonna be a great show; you usually end up seeing some things that suck. Gotta love Eddie’s bluntness here.
— He throws to a short film starring him, which takes us to our next segment (and what a famous one it is).
STARS: ****

WHITE LIKE ME
by Andy Breckman- undercover as a caucasian, EDM is shocked by white life

— Here’s an all-time classic, well-known piece with Eddie investigating what it’s like to experience America as a white man.
— Hilarious that he’s studying how to be white by watching Dynasty and reading Hallmark cards.
— A freakin’ hilarious initial sight of White Eddie. Very good make-up job on him.
— Love the walk he’s doing.
— I always like Jim Downey’s delivery of “Go ahead, take it”, as well as Eddie hesitantly following those instructions.
— Yet another great part with the whites in the bus breaking out into party mode after the sole black passenger leaves.
— So much great social commentary here.
— I think the guy playing the white boss is the same guy who’s appeared in several Ebersol-era pieces, usually playing doctors (such as the doctor who officially announces Buckwheat’s death in the legendary Buckwheat Gets Shot sketch).
— Great line from White Eddie: “What a silly negro!”
STARS: *****

THE END OF BUCKWHEAT
Buckwheat staged his death to evade a killer, who turns out to be Alfalfa

— The anticipated return of Buckwheat.
— I liked him just pushing Mary’s Alfalfa out the door when having no answer to her asking what his “ailment” is.
— For some reason, just the idea of Buckwheat having a tattoo on his chest that says “mother” amuses me.
— After his fake beard gets removed by Alfalfa, Eddie-as-Buckwheat looks into the camera and exclaims “D’ohhhhhhh!” in a silly high-pitched voice. That absolutely SLAYED me.
— Interesting turn with Alfalfa getting revenge on Buckwheat for a childhood frog-in-the-pants prank. Strong performance from Mary here.
— Looks like we now officially have the REAL death of Buckwheat.
STARS: ***½

MISTER ROBINSON’S NEIGHBORHOOD
the easy way to make a Cabbage Patch Doll

— The night of returning Eddie Murphy favorites continues, as we now get this popular recurring sketch.
— This is probably a well-remembered installment among SNL fans, due to its annual inclusion in SNL’s older Christmas compilation specials from the 90s.
— I love how his idea of a homemade Cabbage Patch Doll is to tear off the head of a regular doll and replace it with a head of lettuce.
— Seeing as how Tim Kazurinsky isn’t on the show anymore, I wonder who that is doing Mr. Landlord’s off-camera voice this time. Gary, maybe?
— Overall, another good Mister Robinson, even if this isn’t one of my absolute favorite installments of this sketch.
STARS: ***½

NEWSMAKERS
Communists’ (MAG) & (JLD) schoolyard chant wastes time

— Were we supposed to see Billy hastily applying his clip-on mic at the beginning?
— I’m liking Mary and Julia randomly going into a very extensive superstitious childish chant after they’ve “jinxed” each other by saying the same thing simultaneously. I especially like the Egyptian dance part of the chant.
— Great reaction afterwards from Billy, with his deadpan “What the hell was that?”
— Funny turn with Mary and Julia STILL launching into another rendition of their chant routine even after simply coughing in unison.
— Feels weird seeing Billy playing a straightman to Mary and Julia. Usually, it’s the other way around.
— This obviously started getting repetitive after a while, but the overall sketch was still good and I’m usually always a fan of the rare times SNL allows Julia Louis-Dreyfus to be funny.
STARS: ***

BLACK HISTORY MINUTE
Shabazz K. Morton (EDM) on George Washington Carver

— I’m already laughing from the beginning, just from Eddie’s silent, head-thrown-back posture when the camera first shows him.
— I love the character name Shabazz K. Morton.
— I almost feel like Eddie might as well be playing his Raheem Abdul Mohammed character here. There’s not much difference in the characterization.
— Funny soul/soil line flub, which gets a laugh from the audience.
— And there’s Eddie’s legendary ad-libbed response to the audience: “So I messed up, SHUT UP!!!” An absolutely classic moment. He also adds a great “Stop clappin’ ‘fore ya’ll make me smile!” afterwards. Eddie always had a penchant for fantastic ad-libs whenever anything went wrong in a sketch.
— Another funny line flub with Eddie’s “This pastes pretty g– tastes pretty good”. When the audience laughs at that, Eddie ad-libs a callback to his earlier ad-lib by angrily saying “Yeah, keep on smilin’!”
— The line about George Washington Carver’s method to compress peanuts into phonograph needles gave me a pretty good laugh.
— Very funny reveal of the names of the two white men who stole George Washington Carver’s peanut butter recipe: Edward “Skippy” Williamson and Frederick “Jif” Armstrong.
— Overall, great sketch, elevated by Eddie’s reliable delivery and terrific ad-libbing skills.
STARS: ****

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Rockin’ at Midnight”

SATURDAY NIGHT NEWS
Paul Harvey (RIH) sneaks ads into The Rest of the Story on Kennedys
British journalist Angela Bradleigh’s (PLS) analysis is unintelligible
EDM discusses the recent glut of celebrity dolls

— Saturday Night News makes its return after not appearing in the last episode.
— Christopher’s actually showing personality at the beginning, with him urging the audience to continue applauding.
— Unfortunately, it’s right back to Dry City for Christopher, with his bland delivery of the news jokes.
— I do like Christopher’s meta joke about Eddie Murphy starring as young Frank Sinatra in a biopic titled “Old Blue Eyes is Black”.
— I always like Rich-as-Paul-Harvey’s various product promotions.
— Christopher’s bit about finding the USA on the world map fell COMPLETELY flat.
— For once, Pamela Stephenson actually gets to do a character!
— Pamela’s British-accented gibberish is pretty funny, especially how she occasionally throws in random comprehensible statements (at one point, inexplicably breaking out into a verse from the 12 Days of Christmas song).
— Very few jokes from Christopher so far tonight. He’s basically just transitioning from one guest commentator to another.
— Eddie’s wearing his old Raheem Abdul Mohammed early 80s Adidas tracksuit.
— Eddie’s various homophobic comments about Ken dolls haven’t aged well.
— Very funny part with Eddie making the Brooke Shields and Mr. T dolls kiss each other, and then imagining that Brooke’s mom is going “(sternly) Brooke, you’re kissing this tremendous negro on television”.
— Loved Eddie pointing out how the gremlin doll has Miles Davis’ facial features.
— Eddie’s whole bit with the Michael Jackson doll is hilarious.
STARS: **½
[ADDENDUM: It turns out that in the original airing of tonight’s episode, Saturday Night News was oddly buried all the way towards the end of the show as the third-to-last segment of the night (they moved it up to an earlier timeslot in the rerun version I’m reviewing), which ties this with the previous season’s Flip Wilson episode as the latest that SNL has ever aired their fake news segment in an episode. With Saturday Night News being completely eliminated from the previous week’s episode and now it airing insanely late in tonight’s episode, it’s become very obvious that Ebersol has absolutely NO confidence left in the segment. Thank god there’s only half a season left of this nonsense before Lorne comes back. Ebersol clearly never had a damn clue what he was doing with SNL’s news segment.]

LISHMAN’S DELI
Gumby reunites with (CHG), Irving Cohen & Lew Goldman at a deli

— Another random Alan Zweibel sighting this season, this time as an employee behind the counter in the background. Was he a frequent guest writer this season or something?
— Good to see Martin’s Irving Cohen, as I wasn’t able to review his debut appearance from the George Carlin episode due to that sketch (“In Thickeness and In Health”) being removed from my version.
— Boy, this sketch doesn’t seem to be going anywhere interesting so far.
— Amusing seeing a young Larry David so prominent in the background throughout this. (you can see him to Rich Hall’s right in the screencap below)

— The return of Gumby.
— Another funny fictional character name tonight, with the moniker Adolf K. Musselman.
— At first glance, Rich in that wig and glasses strongly resembled Joe Piscopo in character.
— Rich’s sarcastic “Oh, I guess that was some OTHER green jew” to Gumby made me laugh.
— Man, this sketch has mostly been going NOWHERE.
— Not sure what made Billy lose his composure and start cracking up (fourth screencap above), but that was pretty funny.
— This overall sketch did not work for me. To paraphrase a comment I remember once reading about this sketch on Reddit: “How do you have comedy greats Eddie Murphy, Martin Short, Billy Crystal, Christopher Guest, Rich Hall, and Larry David all in one sketch, and not a single funny moment be produced?”
STARS: *½

LIFESTYLES OF THE RELATIVES OF THE RICH AND FAMOUS
Denise Lewis (MAS)

— Good to see this back again.
— Unsurprisingly, Martin’s doing a great Jerry Lewis impression as his niece. His scene, however, pales in comparison to his Nelson Hepburn interview from the first installment of this sketch, as Nelson Hepburn was a more fleshed-out and interesting character.
— Love the fact that they’re showing out-of-place footage of an outdoors Robin Leach (Harry Shearer) nodding during an indoors interview.
— Funny visual of Billy as Yul Brenner’s travel agent aunt. Even with the bald head, Billy actually looks convincing as a woman. I remember when I first saw a screencap of him in this sketch long before I actually watched the sketch, I mistook him for Pamela Stephenson.
— Nice ending with Eddie as a James Brown relative musically directing traffic in the street.
STARS: ***

MILESTONES
Bishop Tutu (EDM) accidentally ruins Doug Flutie’s (RIH) Heisman Trophy

— I’ve always had a biased love towards this sketch, as I first saw it in 2000 as a young teenager while watching a Comedy Central airing of Eddie’s “Best Of” special, which was my very first exposure to his SNL tenure. This was one of the first sketches I caught in that special, and I have great memories of being so tickled by so many things in this sketch and being surprised that they got so much humor out of such a simple, thin premise. However, I also remember wondering who the hell the two white guys (Christopher Guest and Rich Hall) were. It’s understandable that I didn’t know Rich Hall yet back then, but it’s probably surprising to some that I didn’t recognize Christopher Guest. Then again, I was probably a little too young back then to be familiar with his movies.
— Funny random pairing of Desmond Tutu and Doug Flutie.
— The back-and-forth whispery arguing between Christopher and Eddie is really cracking me up.
— Love the cutaway to Eddie and a mechanic using some kind of torch to fix the trophy.
— Hilarious visual of the horrible-looking melted trophy after the aforementioned torch procedure.
STARS: ****

CLIMBING THE STAIRS
the fate of a WWII platoon depends on Lawrence’s stair-climbing ability

— Good to see the return of Lawrence.
— Funny explanation from Lawrence that he never learned how to climb the stairs because it never came up in his life.
— Great aggressive delivery from Gary here.
— A big laugh during the stick figure drawing part, where Lawrence asks “Which is me?” and Gary angrily responds “THE ONE WITH THE HEAD, LAWRENCE!”
— This is the first time tonight that I’ve really noticed Jim Belushi’s absence, because he would’ve been perfect for this sketch as one of the angry soldiers playing straightman to Lawrence. I can see Jim playing Billy’s role.
— Some really good physical comedy from Martin here in his bizarre attempts to climb the stairs.
— Pretty funny ending with the phone.
STARS: ***

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Santa Claus is Back in Town”

KILLING TIME
with 30 seconds to kill, EDM describes scheduling mishap & plays piano

— According to Eddie, we missed a dirty joke that he told the audience right before the show came back from commercial break.
— Eddie humorously explains to us that SNL timed the show wrong; tonight’s episode ended up being 30 seconds longer than they scheduled, so they’re forced to do this random “killing time” segment.
— Funny how Eddie quickly rushes to play the piano just seconds before they run out of time and go back to commercial break. Eddie’s always had a knack for making these “killing time” segments entertaining.
STARS: N/A (not a rateable segment)

GOODNIGHTS
EDM announces Willie Day’s [real] retirement

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IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS:
— A pretty strong and memorable episode as expected. A lot of solid stuff throughout the show, and Eddie commanded the stage and provided lots of laughs just like in his cast member days. It was also nice to see his popular characters return for one last time.

HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Ringo Starr):
— a big step up

My full set of screencaps for this episode is here

TOMORROW:
We enter 1985, with host Kathleen Turner