Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
COLD OPENING
Cabrini Green takes a Christmas gift to a rapper wrapper (DAW)
— Damon’s rapping started out okay, but this bit has quickly gone downhill, especially once Danitra joined in on the rapping.
— Why is Danitra dressed as her Cabrini Green character? Nothing about Danitra’s role in this sketch is specific to that character; she might as well be dressed as a generic unnamed character.
— Okay, I did get a laugh from Damon’s jokingly-awkward “…yeah…” ad-lib after he messed up a verse.
— Overall, a weak way to start tonight’s show, even if the rapping in this wasn’t QUITE as cringeworthy as I had remembered it being.
STARS: **
MONOLOGUE
host & Father Guido Sarducci do “I Got You Babe” as Popes Lois & Maurice
— A continuation of Father Guido Sarducci/Maurice’s People’s Catholic Church commentary from Weekend Update.
— This monologue hasn’t been working for me, especially now that they’ve broken out into a rendition of “I Got You Babe”. Meh.
STARS: **
CRITIC
— Rerun
A DOZEN EGGS
island residents (RAQ) & (host) discuss the latter’s price in eggs
— Nice opening overhead camera angle.
— The opening egg/bacon conversation between Randy and Jon has some laughs.
— Boy, this sketch sure has looooong stock-footage transition shots between scenes.
— Overall, despite some okay lines, I didn’t care much for this sketch. Perhaps this would’ve come off better in the 10-to-1 slot, but certainly not as the lead-off sketch of the night. This doesn’t bode well for the rest of tonight’s episode (and we’ve already been off to a bad start with the cold opening, monologue, and this sketch).
STARS: **½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
Dream Academy performs “Life In A Northern Town”
TIME MACHINE TRIVIA GAME
(AMH)’s time-travel excursions affect his parents’ Trivial Pursuit game
— What’s with Jon’s gray hair dye?
— Anthony Michael Hall makes his first live appearance in weeks.
— Pretty good premise, with some funny altered trivia question answers after Anthony’s constant history-changing.
— After Anthony picked up the phone, the camera seemed like it didn’t know who to follow, first following a walking-away Randy before immediately awkwardly panning over to Anthony talking on the phone.
— Overall, a pretty good sketch, even if the execution felt a little sloppy, not to mention a typically weak performance from Anthony. (Thankfully, tonight’s the last episode we’ll be seeing Anthony for quite a while, as he misses the next two months of episodes)
STARS: ***½
HILDY
the Deavers’ maid (TES) rewards herself for saving Christmas
— This sketch has the same living room set that was just seen in the Time Machine sketch that preceded this. I’m aware, however, that the sketches didn’t originally air in this order; the order has been shuffled around in the rerun version I’m watching. In the original live airing, the Time Machine sketch was the final sketch of the night.
— Yet another drag role for Terry. This particular one seems to be a parody of the 50s/60s sitcom Hazel.
— I liked Joan’s line to Hildy just now: “Without you, I’d have to get my life together and be a real mother.”
— Is that a real blooper with Terry having an extended amount of trouble finding Robert’s gift under the tree?
— I got a laugh from Jon slapping Robert on the head after Robert says “Yeah, we knew you’d like it” to Hildy.
— This audience is liking this sketch a lot more than I am.
— The ending was actually okay, but most of the rest of the sketch didn’t work for me (I feel like I’m saying that a lot in this review).
— It kinda feels like this was set up to become a recurring sketch, but thankfully, it ended up never returning.
STARS: **
WEEKEND UPDATE
poorly-obscured mob informant (DON) doesn’t have interesting information
— Tonight’s Update opens with the theme music from Bonanza.
— Always weird seeing Don Novello in a non-Father Guido Sarducci role.
— Some laughs from the censor bar that the camera is superimposing over Don’s eyes, and how it’s doing a bad job of following him whenever he moves his head.
— Man, this Novello commentary going on WAY too long, and the censor bar gag has completely lost its novelty.
— Okay, Novello’s Ted Koppel comment made me laugh.
— Overall, kind of an unnoteworthy Update for Dennis Miller standards, though he still got in a few of his usual random one-liners that made me laugh.
STARS: **½
A ROY ORBISON CHRISTMAS
NBC broadcasts the six unaired minutes of A Roy Orbison (RAQ) Christmas
— Nice use of the SNL Band.
— Randy’s doing a good impression of Roy Orbison’s singing voice.
— The sound mixing is pretty bad during the “Santa’s Little Surfer Girl” number, as you can hear the backup singing from the SNL Band much more than you can hear the actual main vocalists.
— The overall “Santa’s Little Surfer Girl” number was okay, but nothing funny even happened in it.
— Danitra’s Leslie Uggams reading a letter from a mental patient is really funny, especially as the letter eventually begins a descent into nonsensical madness. Also, a funny touch with Danitra turning the crazed letter in a slow, circular motion as she’s reading off of it.
— Good casting of Anthony as Edd “Kookie” Byrnes, as Anthony does have a pretty strong resemblance to him.
— Overall, this could’ve been a lot funnier. Most parts of this felt too much like a real holiday special. Danitra provided most of my only real laughs.
STARS: **
PENN AND TELLER
Penn & Teller [real] take turns being The Incredible Electric Boy
— Funny explanation from Penn about how Teller became the Incredible Electric Boy, and how lonely his life has been since then.
— Nice fire-eating stunt from Penn.
— Interesting turn with Penn calling out Teller for overplaying the bit and “ruining” the trick.
— Overall, this was fine, but I didn’t find this quite as enjoyable as Penn and Teller’s usual SNL stuff.
STARS: ***
THE BIG TREE
a disaster movie about a huge, unsafe Christmas decoration
— The long cast intro at the beginning of the sketch feels unnecessary and is ALREADY getting this sketch off to a bad start.
— Being familiar with Nora’s five-year SNL tenure, it feels kinda strange in hindsight seeing her playing a flaky high-pitched drunk in this sketch. Very different from the type of roles Nora usually played on SNL.
— Jon has wore gray hair dye in just about every sketch he was in tonight. Reminds me of how Dan Aykroyd would sometimes do that in some episodes from the original era.
— This feels like the very first non-Update appearance Dennis Miller has ever made.
— Boy, I am NOT enjoying this sketch so far.
— This sketch illustrates the problems of having such a young cast this season. I find it hard to buy Robert Downey in the high-profile role of a construction company owner when he looks like he’s still in high school.
— The repeated throwing-drinks-in-faces bit is just plain dumb and has come off under-rehearsed.
— Jesus Christ at Anthony’s VERY obvious cue-card reading after whipping off his sunglasses during his argument with Robert. There’s even an awkward brief pause while we have to wait for Anthony to actually find his line on the cue card. This is almost unintentionally hilarious in how bad it was. In the “Live from New York” book, Anthony recalls a friend of his once humorously compiling a tape of Anthony’s most blatant cue card-staring moments from his SNL tenure. I’m guessing a clip of this sketch was DEFINITELY included.
— Now we get a sudden random gunshot ending, which is our “cliffhanger”. Bah. I only chuckled at that part because of someone’s (Joan, I think) loud scream after the gunshot goes off.
STARS: *½
MUSICAL GUEST INTRO
— Before segueing into an introduction to the musical guest’s performance, we’re comically told that due to audience disinterest, there will be no “part two” of the Big Tree sketch. All I have to say is: thank god.
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
The Cult performs “She Sells Sanctuary”
GOODNIGHTS
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS:
— Oof. A very rough episode. Pretty much as bad as I remembered it being from my past viewings. Very little in this episode was worthwhile, and even the better stuff wasn’t particularly great. It says something when even Penn and Teller and Dennis Miller’s Weekend Update weren’t as strong as they’ve usually been.
— After having just gone through three strong consecutive episodes, this episode was a hard crash back into the reality of the troubled season 11. This is the most negative review I’ve given in a long time; probably since season 6.
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Tom Hanks):
— a huge step down
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW:
We enter 1986, with host Harry Dean Stanton
I feel like that Christmas wrapping sketch gets a bad rap (ha ha). It’s not great, but in many other periods of its history, SNL would have made it so that the Gifted Wrapper talks to like three other people, not just Vance. I think its biggest error is going for apparent earnestness–if it had just been like the Wrapper trying to rap flirt with Vance, but her shooting him down or accepting him, that might have been fine. I think the dilemma is they felt (correctly, perhaps, based on the audience reception) that the sketch provided some energy for an opening, but the premise is really more of a later-in-the-show-filler thing.
Also, Teri Garr is obviously a very funny lady, but I am not sure if her monologues in all of her hosting gigs illustrate the difference between a funny performer and a comedienne, or if just that she decided her usual persona wouldn’t translate into SNL.
The Gifted Wrapper might have been better if Wayans hadn’t flubbed the line. Also, with the price of eggs these days, being said to have been bought for the price of a dozen eggs doesn’t seem too bad.
0 for 3 in good Teri Garr episodes.
Yeah. It’s really amazing that Teri hosted 3 times…and none of them are good episodes.
And all three had entirety different casts! The only other guest host who appeared with completely different casts that I remember was Kathleen Turner during her two stints…
Teri’s 1983 episode was the best of the three in my opinion.
I noticed Anthony was credited as “Michael Hall” in the Big Tree sketch. Was that a name he was using at the time?
Anthony Michael Hall was born as Michael Anthony Hall. He switched his first and middle names because there already was a “Michael Hall” in the Screen Actors Guild.
Yeah this episode gets worse and worse every time I retry it; this is imo when the season fell of the rails. Almost everything they tried from the intro on failed miserably as both Hildy and the Christmas tree-Towering Inferno parody bombed hard. Hildy was trying to give Sweeney a recurring character in drag.. it bombed. Then that one Christmas Tree skit was trying hard to mock the disaster films of the 70’s and it had no clue what it was doing. I seen a picture either from the ending of that show or during dress showing Lorne trying to talk to Teri and looking frustrated.. can’t say I blame him. Teri’s a nice lady but she was never a quality host; no idea how she got the chance to do it three times.
Sadly this show knocked the season off it’s consitency path it was on and while there are good shows here and there it never recovers.
Only real thing that went right here were the musical performances. The Cult fit well with a live setting but Dream Academy gives one of SNL’s most beautiful performances here.. it’s so awesome. Didn’t get Lorne’s thinking though in booking both of them.. shoulda saved Dream Academy for this show and The Cult for Reagan’s show.
Why the hell did SNL hire Anthony Michael Hall and then let him miss most of the first half of the season? I’m not too familiar with the behind the scenes history of this period of the show, and that seems like something Lorne would have never stood for.
I think the experience with AMH in Season 11 made Lorne start forbidding future cast members to miss shows to take outside film/tv/stand-up work. Lovitz actually wanted to return for Season 16, but he would have had to miss 1-2 shows to finish filming a movie. Lorne said no, and Lovitz left the show before he was ready to.
AMH’s real name is Michael Anthony Hall – he reversed his first and middle names for his stage name as there were multiple “Michael Hall’s” in SAG
But Lorne let Mike Myers miss episodes in season 18 to film Axe Murderer.
I never thought the season 5 Teri Garr show was too bad. But maybe I’m biased because it was one of the three 1980 shows included on the old SNL annual Time-Life VHS series. I used to love getting those tapes.
A lot of reason for Hall was picked more for his star and name value at that point than his talent. You have to think the season started a month or two after Weird Science came out, he was HUGE and one of the top actors of that year. It was smart business to put him on the show as along with Quaid they were both solid names to bring in ratings. Hall sadly had no sketch talent, Quaid did but he didn’t. It was Lorne’s attempt to copy Ebersol but it bombed.
His movie Out of Bounds was a major disapointment and the start of his decline. He shoulda stayed away from that and SNL.
Lovitz was trying to do “Mom and Dad save the World,” which itself was a major bomb. The fact he left SNL to do that movie is freaking hilarious.. only Lovitz lol.
“Mom and Dad Save the World” ironically had Lovitz star with Teri Garr! Small world.
Lorne also seemed to copy Ebersol when it came to hiring younger talent. Unlike Lorne for 1985-86, Ebersol was smarter by using and hiring those with actual comedy background (stand-up and/or improv). Eddie Murphy (though one of the very few holdovers from the doomed 1980-81 season) and the Practical Theatre Company troupe from Chicago (Brad Hall, Gary Kroeger, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus) are great examples. Weren’t the Season 8-9 cast all very young together on SNL?
Simply put, some of the hires for Season 11 were bad fits for the show, and a lot of times, it showed. Joan, Robert, and Anthony should all have never been hired in the first place, while Damon and Danitra were great, but extremely wasted.
AMH also probably hurt his career by turning down the last three John Hughes’ “classic era” teen films (“Pretty in Pink”, “Ferris Bueller”, and “Some Kind of Wonderful”) due to fears of typecasting – by the time he resurfaced in Tim Burton’s “Edward Scissorhands” a few years later, he had already entered “where are they now” territory
The closest equivalent to Teri Garr these days is someone like Judy Greer – who is always working in/promoting some tv or film project, but never any that are deemed “high-profile” enough to host SNL. Too bad, because there are a number of performers in that niche that would be great hosts (I can’t believe that Alison Brie has never hosted, for example!)
As per this Interview with The New Yorker; “Time Machine Trivia Game” was written by John Swartzwelder…
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/john-swartzwelder-sage-of-the-simpsons
The Big Tree is something I can easily see doing much better in the next few seasons–one obvious tweak is that the cast would have done impressions of real actors who would do some sort of TV disaster movie (i.e. Phil as Heston, etc.), but that was a cast who had better impressionists and more depth.
If you have these young performers, why not just lean into that? I’m guessing that’s the writers’ fault, though.