Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
COLD OPENING
Paul performs “You Can Call Me Al”
— We start off with a straightforward musical performance.
— Feels weird seeing an SNL episode beginning in this manner, but it’s not the first time Paul opened the show with a musical performance. The first time he did it was a special case, though, as that episode in general consisted almost entirely of musical performances.
— Interestingly, we get a slight variation of the usual “Live from New York…” tagline, with Paul announcing “We are live from New York on a Saturday Night.”
MONOLOGUE
Catherine’s Dynasty rivals Alexis (TES) & Dominique (DAV) have a catfight
— In hindsight, it’s good that Catherine’s going into a lot of detail about what she does on the show Dynasty, as I’m sure there’s a lot of modern-day viewers who have no idea who Catherine Oxenberg is.
— Terry’s Joan Collins portrayal is pretty funny.
— I got a laugh from Terry’s Aunt Jemima insult towards Danitra’s character.
— Not caring for most of the Terry/Danitra physical fight, though it was kind of a nice touch with them crashing through breakaway glass on one of the doors on the home base stage.
STARS: **½
GERALDO RIVERA OPENS THE TOMB OF THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER
Geraldo Rivera’s next stunt
— A funny parody of how Geraldo Rivera’s then-recent televised opening of Al Capone’s vault infamously turned out to be a bust.
STARS: ***
PRISON
prisoners (Paul) & (JOL) try to escape despite being shackled to a wall
— I got a big laugh from Paul’s asinine idea of Jon melting down the iron bars with heat from his eyeballs.
— Haha, I love the repeated visual of Paul straining to attack Randy while being held back by the chains.
— Some more really funny asinine escape plans from Paul and Jon.
— An overall solid sketch.
STARS: ****
THE LATE SHOW WITH JOAN RIVERS
Roger Vadim’s ex-wives fight back
— Until now, I had forgotten that I heard about Joan Rivers having a short-lived late night talk show in this era, competing against Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show.
— Two drag roles for Terry in one night. At least this appears to be a better vehicle for his Joan Rivers impression than the way it was bafflingly shoehorned into that Cleveland Vice sketch earlier this season.
— The only thing Randy’s Ed McMahon impression seems to consist of here is increasingly-exaggerated “ho ho ho” laughter, which made me laugh early on but is running out of steam fast.
— Is that a bespectacled Don Pardo who has randomly walked into the scene at the very end, during the sketch-ending audience applause? (screencap below) What was THAT all about?
— Didn’t care too much for this sketch overall.
STARS: **
THE LIMITS OF THE IMAGINATION
Paul’s hell is Muzak versions of his music
— They surprisingly haven’t done this sketch in a quite a while, after overusing it in a consecutive string of episodes around the midpoint of the season.
— A lot of the Floating Head’s demonstrations are falling flat in tonight’s installment, but I laughed at the demonstration with him putting a cigarette out with his tongue.
— Joan flubs her line, mistakenly addressing young Paul Simon as “Seymour” before mentioning an Uncle Seymour who’s upstairs.
— I kinda like Robert’s badly-rhymed Uncle Seymour song.
— Good to see the return of Jon’s Mephistopheles character.
— Funny “So am I” response from Mephistopheles when young Simon and Garfunkel reveal to him they’re Jewish.
— In hindsight, it’s interesting seeing Paul Simon playing himself in a scene taking place in a then-much later year that has now long since come and gone (2010).
— I love the gradual reveal that Paul’s hell is staying eternally stuck in an elevator while being tortured by musak versions of his songs.
— Overall, I found this sketch more interesting than flat-out funny, but it was entertaining either way.
STARS: ***½
DIRK LANDERS
former CIA operative (RDJ) is offed by stranger (Catherine)
— Fairly amusing cheap opening credits.
— Very funny how after such a lengthy opening credits sequence setting up the premise of the show, the episode itself turns out to be a very quick scene that immediately ends as soon as the main character is all-too-easily shot dead.
STARS: ***½
WEEKEND UPDATE
Mouse Trap board game helps DEM explain what happened at Chernobyl
AWB chides the Soviet Union’s policies on Chernobyl & Afghanistan
for Mother’s Day, DEM reads an excerpt from Oedipus Rex
— Funny in retrospect hearing the then-new network FOX being mentioned as “Rupert Murdoch’s fledgling fourth network.”
— I love Dennis using the Mouse Trap board game to demonstrate the then-recent Chernobyl disaster.
— Dennis delivers a random “Back to you, Dennis” “Thank you, Dennis”. Why are we reusing old Brad Hall bits all of a sudden?
— I like how it’s become a recurring thing for Dennis to do random one-liners about Nell Carter’s weight.
— Surprised to see an A. Whitney Brown commentary tonight, as he wasn’t credited in tonight’s opening montage for some reason.
— Tonight’s overall Big Picture commentary wasn’t one of my favorites from A. Whitney, but this featured some funny comments about radioactive gas and Soviets.
— Good bit with Dennis’ Mother’s Day present to his mom being him reading a disturbing excerpt from an Oedipus story.
— Nice part with Dennis announcing that SNL (despite its many troubles and cancellation worries this season) was renewed this week for a 12th season. This gets a good amount of audience applause. Also, this reminds me that I remember hearing season 12 was originally only picked up for 13 episodes, because a wary NBC wanted to wait and see if the retooled version of SNL that season was a success before giving it the usual full 20-episode order. So I guess we can say that if season 12 hadn’t turned out to be such a hit, SNL would’ve officially been canceled somewhere around February 1987, which is around the time the 13th episode of that season aired.
— Yay, we went through this entire Update with no appearance from the Weekend Update Dancers!
STARS: ***
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
Paul & musical guest sing “Homeless”
BEVERLY HILLS
producer Tommy Flanagan swaps falsehoods with an “actress” (Catherine)
— After having a break from him in the last episode, Tommy Flanagan goes back to being overused.
— I did like Flanagan’s Taiwan/Out Of Africa bit just now.
— Overall, this was pretty standard Flanagan stuff that’s been suffering diminishing returns lately, but I did like the nice chemistry between Jon and Catherine.
STARS: **½
BRIM DECAFFEINATED
drowsy waitress (NOD) recommends Brim Decaffienated to sleepy (RAQ)
— Is this offering ANYTHING other than frequent yawning from Nora and Randy?
— (a few minutes later…) I guess not. Overall, this was a waste.
STARS: *
PENN AND TELLER
Penn & Teller [real] execute strait jacket escape during Casey At The Bat
— Surprised to see Penn and Teller appearing for the second episode in a row, but I’m not complaining about seeing more of these guys, especially considering the lack of quality this season.
— Ha, great reveal of a spiked platform that’s now under an upside-down dangling Teller.
— Quite funny seeing Teller’s unsuccessful frantic attempts to free himself while Penn is reading.
— Hilarious part with Penn comically speeding up his reading as Teller is finally starting to untie himself.
— LOL, that overall trick was great. An improvement over Penn and Teller’s appearance in the last episode.
STARS: ****
A MOTHER’S DAY MESSAGE
half-audible (JOC) stresses “moral values”
— What… the… hell??? Is the joke here supposed to be Joan occasionally silently mouthing random parts of her sentences? How is that even remotely funny?
— Overall, YIKES. The audience’s silence said it all. How did something like this make it on the air?
STARS: *
TROJANS
— Rerun
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
Paul performs “Graceland”
GOODNIGHTS
— This is coming off kinda awkward. Why aren’t Paul or Catherine saying the usual goodnights speech? They’re just standing there smiling silently as the audience applauds.
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS:
— A pretty forgettable episode. There were some things I liked in the first half, though most of them weren’t anything particularly great. Then the show got REALLY rough in the second half where, aside from a solid Penn & Teller segment, we got a mega-overused recurring character (Tommy Flanagan) and horribly-written sketches where the only “joke” (if it can even be called that) was people repeatedly yawning or silently mouthing random parts of their sentences.
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Tony Danza):
— a step down
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW:
Jimmy Breslin
Overall, who did the better job? Catherine? Paul? Equal?
Considering Joan mentions Marshall Fields in the Mother’s Day sketch, I get the impression it was based on something that aired on TV in Chicago. She seems to be playing the woman as repressed and stiff.
I’d say Paul did the better job, but it helps that he was given good material. Catherine was fine, but wasn’t given anything great to work with.
They would repeat that “Mouse Trap” Update gag later in Season 14…only this time, the results are more Blooper-worthy
The FOX network would not premiere until October 9, 1986. Even then it was late night only (Joan Rivers’ failed talk show premiered that night.) They added primetime shows April 5, 1987, the night Married with Children debuted. I do not think FOX had a seven day schedule until 1995 or 96. It was just interesting hearing Dennis talk about this brand new tv channel set to debut in the fall.
I think the live show had a lot of problems with it. During the intro they ran late because the audience wouldn’t shut up after Paul said something and it put them behind quite a bit. They replaced it with the dress version on the copy I got; it flows solid but it just doesn’t feel like a warm intro to me. I know the song was huge but Lorne shoulda put it in the usual musical guest spot.
Oxenburg is what you’d call a stunt pick. Dynasty was huge then and anyone from the show woulda brought ratings. It’s similar to why Charlene Tilton hosted on the F bomb show and why the girl from Mad Men who was awful hosted, they were hot and they thought they’d bring ratings. It really shoulda been Paul hosting by himself though..
BTW best I could find this looks to be the first live tv performance of You Could Call Me Al as it wasn’t released single wise until September. SNL had a lot of musical highs that year.. they also had Mister Mister when they had a #1 hit and Simple Minds when they were hot among others.
Also, Catherine is so far the only figure of royalty to host SNL, as the daughter of Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia.
I believe Don Pardo’s appearance in the Rivers sketch is supposed to be a parody of Freddie DeCordova’s appearances on Carson’s show. The EP would inevitably enter the shot during the credits to shake hands with the panel.
This episode is only interesting for the Paul Simon appearance. I think it reflects on Michaels’s feeling of the show hitting rock bottom that he would let his best friend—whose career was in the dumper as well—perform three songs from an album that was months away from release. A cold open performance to boot.
Last paragraph makes lots of sense!
Two days after this episode, NBC aired their 60th Anniversary Special. It included a 3-minute clip reel from SNL, which is at 18:55 in this video:
The only other time a “Dynasty” star hosted “SNL” was when Pamela Sue Martin appeared the previous season (though I believe she left the show by then…)
Heather Locklear also hosted but it was during her “Melrose Place” years.
I think the Simon & Garfunkle / Mephistopheles sketch was the first SNL bit I ever saw, when VH1 did an entire week or so dedicated to the 25th anniversary back when I was eight.
@Ryan Fletcher
I think I recall that. It was part of the VH1’s SNL 25 Years of Music, a five-part series which was later released on DVD. Al Franken (pre-Senator) hosted the 1985-1990 installment. One thing I do recall (and I say that because unfortunately the segment was not included in the DVD version) was Franken introduced “The Limits of the Imagination”-with-Simon sketch by saying something to the effect of ‘ in 1986, we had for cast members Anthony Michael Hall and Robert Downey Jr, and, well, they weren’t very good….’
About “The Late Show with Joan Rivers” sketch: The show didn’t premiere until the following fall when he was the first program on the Fox network. This sketch came after it was already announced and Johnny Carson was so caught by surprise that he never talked to Ms. Rivers again. Not even after her husband commited suicide after its cancellation more than a year later. I mainly remember Randy Quaid’s “Ho, ho, ho” constantly playing when doing his Ed McMahon which I agree seemed overkill near the end…
I meant to write “it” between “when” and “was”.
Watching the news and current events from 1986 is so weird, knowing what we do now. Like Dennis picking on Arnold for having no real achievements. Or Russia and Afghanistan. Also this episode was bland, and again Jon Lovitz was the standout.
The SNL segment in the NBC 60th is strangely put together… it doesn’t quite flow chronologically, and the castmembers are each captioned when we first see them. But so are the hosts. So a novice might think Joan Rivers Richard Pryor were castmembers (maybe that’s on purpose?). At least Steve Martin and Buck Henry are kind of “part of” the show.
Also, the editors left out Jane Curtin, who was on a huge hit show at the time (“Kate & Allie”); maybe they deleted her since it was on another network?
Tim Kazurinsky, then in the popular Police Academy films, is also absent.
Paul Shaffer is left out, too — if you’re going to “include” Terry Sweeney, or one and done hosts, by captioning them, shouldn’t you include a featured player who was on a white hot show at the time? (Shaf does appear elsewhere in the special).
I wouldn’t expect Laurie Metcalf or Harry Shearer to be included in 1986, of course, but how about Lovitz, who was the only breakout in the current cast? Or Jim Belushi? Or Gilbert Gottfried, who was a rising standup by this point?
Eddie Murphy and Billy Crystal just get a small clip each, and Bill Murray’s clip is from the Coneheads on Family Feud— so it mostly concentrates on Beldar. Weird.
I can’t help but see the name in the Dirk Landers sketch, and notice it’s similarity to Mark Wahlberg’s characters Dirk Diggler and Brock Landers from Boogie Nights. I wonder if Paul Thomas Anderson was watching that night…