Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
DISCLAIMER
newsreel shows why World Series caused SNL to be taped; Ron Darling cameo
— Interesting way to open the show, explaining in a newsreel footage-esque piece how for the first time in SNL’s 11-year history, a live episode was pre-empted and had to be taped for a later week.
— Random observation: Ron Darling strongly resembles Andy Kaufman.
— Funny how comically serious Ron Darling’s speech about finding out SNL was pre-empted is.
— Overall, I loved how they presented this whole thing, and Don Pardo’s dialogue was well-written.
— I really have to wonder how hardcore SNL fans back then, especially ones who aren’t baseball fans, reacted on that fateful night of October 25th when finding out that a live episode they were probably eagerly awaiting (especially in a new-and-improved season of SNL like this) wasn’t going to air after all. I’m trying to imagine what it would be like if that happened nowadays (even though I’m currently on a hiatus from watching new SNL episodes).
— Also, here’s something else I’ve always wondered: if this episode was originally scheduled to air on October 25th but got pre-empted, why did they wait TWO weeks to air it on November 8th? Why not air it on November 1st, the week after it was originally scheduled? Was a non-SNL program already planned to air in SNL’s timeslot on November 1st?
STARS: N/A (not a rateable segment)
COLD OPENING
Tommy Flanagan poses as LOM, sells host on a “neck with producer” sketch
— The whole “Neck with the Producer” thing is pretty funny.
— Here comes yet another Tommy Flanagan appearance. But not to worry, because IIRC, after tonight’s episode, SNL goes really light on him for the rest of the season, and he barely (if ever) appears in any of the subsequent seasons of Jon Lovitz’s SNL tenure.
— I like Flanagan’s ridiculous claims to Rosanna about how the “Neck with the Producer” script contains a hidden message about the homeless.
— Uh-oh. During Flanagan’s long consecutive string of lies, I can tell they’re adding in canned laughter. It’s the dreaded return of season 11’s infamous practice of sweetening audience reactions in reruns. I understand why they had to use that practice back THEN, considering season 11’s dire quality, but why use it NOW, during an actual good season? Me thinks Lorne is taking a few too many liberties with the fact that he had several weeks to tweak this pre-empted episode before it aired.
— I got a pretty good laugh from Lorne’s reaction to the “Neck with the Producer” script.
— Overall, one of the better Tommy Flanagan sketches in a while.
STARS: ***½
MONOLOGUE
(no synopsis available)
— Rosanna immediately starts this monologue by excitedly asking the audience “How about those Mets?!?”, which reminds me of how Malcolm-Jamal Warner similarly started the last monologue by asking “How about those Red Sox?” Unlike that, however, Rosanna’s Mets mention would later still be left intact in reruns.
— A fairly promising idea, with Rosanna thinly veiling her criticisms of President Reagan to appease the equal time rule.
— Wow, it’s over already? This was a VERY short monologue; too short, in fact. This felt like it had good potential to go further.
STARS: **
THE PEOPLE’S COURT
a white trash hairdresser (host) sues Mephistopheles
— I love this premise and it’s a great way to use Jon’s Mephistopheles. This is the most well-known Mephistopheles sketch, and probably the absolute best.
— Very funny reveal of Jan’s character being Rosanna’s mother, when both characters look almost the exact same age.
— Love the various split-screen parts of this.
— Memorable ending with Mephistopheles’ message into the camera, ordering us to worship him.
— Overall, a fantastic sketch that’s well-deserved of its high status.
STARS: *****
CHURCH CHAT
Church Lady scolds Jenny Baker (VIJ), host, musical guest
— Good to see this back.
— More signs that tonight’s pre-empted episode was heavily tweaked before airing: I can tell this sketch is a mixture of live and dress rehearsal, because the Halloween decorations on Church Lady’s desk keep disappearing and reappearing in different shots. (compare her desk in the two screencaps below)
— I didn’t know Rosanna Arquette had a reputation for being so political, which now explains the monologue she did earlier tonight.
— Ric Ocasek seems pretty out of it here, though maybe that’s just acting.
— Love Church Lady’s reaction to the raunchy clip played from a The Cars music video.
— Church Lady has some really hilarious comments to Ocasek.
— Interesting part with Rosanna’s angry rant to Church Lady, ending with her calling Church Lady a bitch, which appears to humble her for a moment.
— At the end, they transition from this sketch to the next segment by using the same “page turning” screen effect that they used at the end of Malcolm-Jamal Warner’s monologue.
— Overall, a bit of a step up from the debut of this sketch back in the season premiere, but this still isn’t quite at the level these sketches would later be, and they still need to cut back on the overabundance of “Could it beeeeee…. SATAN?!?”s.
STARS: ***½
HELMSLEY SPOOK HOUSE
Leona Helmsley (NOD) shows off her high-class den of horrors
— The debut of Nora’s Leona Helmsley impression, which has always been one of my favorite Nora Dunn roles.
— An okay piece overall, though this didn’t really seem to be trying to be all that funny. It felt like the realistic haunted house features could’ve had more laughs.
STARS: **½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Emotion in Motion”
PORK
pole-vaulter (KEN) plans on dining on pork- his body can take it
— Funny reveal of pork being athlete Kevin’s training food of choice, and the announcer’s tagline to eat pork while you’re still healthy.
STARS: ***
WEEKEND UPDATE
AWB discusses how censorship is futile & hypocritical
— Loved Dennis screaming “AAAAH!” as a save when he screws up his U.S./Russia joke, and then reveals to the audience “I am a human being too”.
— A. Whitney’s overall Big Picture commentary tonight was one of his better ones in a while. Some of the noteworthy funny comments were about degrading eye shadow, anti-crack commercials, and how HBO is currently re-running C.H.U.D. for the 47th time.
— Overall, this has got to be the least amount of things I’ve ever had to say about a Weekend Update in all the episodes I’ve covered so far, but that’s not to say this was a poor Update or anything. I still got my usual laughs.
STARS: ***
TWO SAMMIES
Sammies (KEN) & (DAC) watch TV, drink beer, doubt self-improvement odds
— I really like Kevin and Dana’s characterization and chemistry here.
— Haha, Kevin’s line about having to “cop a squirt” got a really good audience reaction.
— “Ahh, that’s ANOTHER thing I’m never gonna do, right?!?”
— Interesting camera angle from the top of the stairs when Phil and Nora are leaving. (third screencap above)
— Fun turn that Phil’s character ended up taking at the end.
— Pretty good sketch overall. You can tell they were setting these two characters up to become recurring. However, here’s the strange thing: these characters only ended up coming back once, and it was TWO YEARS LATER. Geez, by that point, most SNL fans at the time probably completely forgot about these characters’ first appearance.
STARS: ***
DOG BASEBALL
by William Wegman- canines’ owners watch their pets play
— The return of William Wegman. Back in the original SNL era, he did some short films with his dog Man Ray. I also recall him doing one in the Ebersol era.
— Instead of being with Man Ray this time, Wegman is shown with a whole bunch of dogs.
— Wegman’s amusingly-monotone voice-over and descriptions of each dog are making me laugh.
— Overall, I have mixed feelings about this film as a whole. On one hand, some of it bordered on being a little boring, but on the other hand, I like how this had an almost Jack Handey-esque feel, with the bizarre atmosphere, comically-mundane presentation, and monotone voice-over.
STARS: **½
MAKE JOAN BAEZ LAUGH
Howie Mandel’s (JOL) glove-on-head does it
— Interesting concept for a gameshow sketch.
— Phil’s gameshow host is named Big Bill Franklin, which is also the name of the gameshow host he played in the Quiz Masters sketch from the season premiere.
— Nora’s portrayal of a humorless Joan Baez is really good.
— I liked the “whatever” face Phil gave to the camera as an aside after one particular dour statement Nora’s Baez made.
— Jon’s portrayal of Howie Mandel is hilarious. His constant “What? What? What?”s are confusing to me, though. I’ve never known Mandel to constantly say “What?”, but it must be an accurate part of the impression because I recall future cast member Mike Myers later doing the same thing when playing Mandel in a locker room sketch from the Wayne Gretzky episode in season 14.
— Good conclusion with Nora’s Baez doing a laughing spit-take when seeing Jon’s Mandel do the “surgical glove on the head” trick.
STARS: ***½
PORK
enjoy pork after a workout- it’s when your heart can withstand it
— A decent continuation of the earlier pork commercial, and a funny ending visual of a cooked pig.
STARS: ***
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Keep on Laughin'”
MISS CONNIE’S FABLE NOOK
clowns Koko (DEM) & Mishu (DAC) teach giant Lebee (KEN) about patience
— Here’s a fleshed-out version of the Koko character that Dennis gave us a sample of in the season premiere’s Weekend Update.
— I wonder if the “Mishu, you’re standing in the stream” part was a real blooper or just part of the script.
— Kevin’s orge-ish grunting as the giant is KINDA amusing me, but I’m just desperate for a laugh at this point of the sketch.
— Boy, Dennis looks like he’s about to start busting out laughing any second.
— Wow, overall, I have absolutely no idea what to make of this sketch. All I know is I didn’t laugh. This sketch felt really out of place on SNL, and seemed like one big inside joke on Dennis.
STARS: *½
I SAW GOD
(host) sings “I Saw God”- He supports her decision to become a star
— Geez, where has Rosanna been? This is the first time we’ve seen her in a sketch since the first half of the episode.
— The audience seems to kinda like the “I Saw God” song so far, but it’s not working for me. I do kinda find the chorus melody catchy, though. Rosanna’s singing voice, on the other hand – yeesh.
— Overall, another strange, random sketch tonight that left me more puzzled than amused. Maybe this was attempting a more charming, softer piece, but if so, it missed its mark for me.
STARS: **
PANGO, GIANT DOG OF TOKYO!
Japanese miniatures are terrorized
— Wow, I thought the preceding two sketches were weird, but I can already tell that THIS is gonna take the cake.
— The overly-detailed dialogue during the science lab scene is making me laugh.
— The subsequent scenes has some pretty funny dialogue as well so far.
— Overall, yep, as I expected, a very bizarre film. There were some amusing lines throughout most of it, but the film went on too long and started kinda dragging towards the end.
— This film would later be cut from all reruns and be replaced with a different film titled “Coffee and Cigarettes”, starring Roberto Benigni and Steven Wright. Strange, by the way, how tonight’s episode would receive modifications in reruns, considering the original airing wasn’t even live. You’d figure they’d ALREADY have made all the necessary modifications to the episode before it even first aired.
STARS: **½
GOODNIGHTS
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS:
— The episode felt underwhelming compared to how this season had been going, and kinda had the typical burned-out feel that a lot of “third consecutive week” episodes have. There was actually some good stuff in the first half of this episode, however, particularly The People’s Court. It was the back half of the show where the quality seemed to gradually die off very badly. There were lots of strange things towards the end of the show that just didn’t work and confused me over what they were going for.
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Malcolm-Jamal Warner):
— a fairly big step down
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW:
Sam Kinison, fresh off his controversial stand-up performance in the Malcolm-Jamal Warner episode
The People’s Court sketch is so good. There’s just a lot of small jokes I always crack up over–Wapner telling the Devil to hurry up and walk over and show him the checks; Wapner getting mad at the Devil interrupting him. I saw that sketch a lot of times on a SNL Halloween episode and for the longest time I didn’t know who was playing the plaintiff.
A. Whitney Brown confirmed on Twitter that the show was put together from dress and live because by 1:30 am, the cast, crew and audience was exhausted and it really came across during the taping (hence the canned laughter).
I always thought the pacing of this one really seems off; I’d love to know what was in the 1:30 show and in what order. It actually feels like they added the short film to the air show because they ran short of usable material.
Yeah what a bizarre show. The whole delay just killed everything and you can tell something’s off. Having a goof of a host like Arquette didn’t help much either she didn’t add much of anything. Well her Cyndli Lauper was okay (Stephenson did it miles better,) and she was passable in the court skit but a lame duck host for sure. Also didn’t help that her monologue was one of the all time cringiest, as goofy as SJP’s was in 1994. I’m honestly surprised she got asked back after she backed out the year before. Found an article from the start of that season and she was one of the first 5 hosts mentioned before the Madonna show aired, she left and I believe Lithgow took her spot, no big loss at all.
You can see that they weren’t expecting the game to go overdue so for them to have to endure it was fun. This would never happen now Lorne’s so tight he has preps for every possible thing that can happen. The XFL delay with JLO is the best I know closest it’s ever happened again and Lorne whined to NBC about it so I don’t see it happening again.
NBC aired “The Jay Leno Show,” described as infamously bad in The War for Late Night, on Nov. 1, 1986. Amusingly enough, one of Jay’s guests was … Doug Lewellyn. The others were Letterman, Vanna White, Lu Leonard and The Hooters.
Koko the Clown was a total throwaway sketch for Dennis Dana and Kevin; they took the self-jab Dennis did on Update the first show and cheekily put together a sketch. Threw it on the read-thru table, blah-blah-blah, “holy-sh&t-it-made-the-cut!”. (I believe Dennis and Kevin brought it up on Dennis’ radio show/podcast about a decade ago. I love sketches with that back-story; I believe Gilly was the same way…)
I enjoyed the Jay Leno special that next week. Very SNL-Late Night-Lampoon humor to it (wish I could find a copy). AND they showed an SNL promo explaining what happened before that ended my week-long confusion…
The Leno show in its entirety was online at one point- was a very weird show- recall there was some odd reason it was filmed in Philadelphia aside from its proximity to NY & Atlantic City- was about as unfunny as most of Leno’s non-monologue “Tonight Show” comedy pieces
To tell the truth, I remember enjoying “The Jay Leno Show” that night especially the part where Letterman was “murdered”! (He never got a word in edgewise after shaking hands with Jay!) But it’s been 34 years since then so I don’t know about now…
Funny you should mention Leno ’86; we just did an episode about it for our Podcast…
https://telehell.libsyn.com/episode-47-the-jay-leno-show-1986-special
When Carvey guested on Dennis Miller’s podcast recently, Dennis revealed that he was the one who came up with the “Miss Connie’s Fable Nook” sketch – he wanted to see if the weirdest sketch he could conceive of would make the show, and was amazed when Lorne selected it.
Dennis has Carvey and Lovitz on his podcast (PodcastOne’s “Dennis Miller Option) quite frequently – there is always a lot of great old-school SNL talk on these episodes.
For anyone else late to the party, below are all of the SNL-themed episodes I could find from Dennis’ short-lived podcast, that ended in 2020. Multiple web sites have access to the same bank of episodes, which I pulled these titles from. However, the available library of “season 1” episodes seems incomplete everywhere, for some reason.
S1 E3: Dana Carvey
S1 E65: Paul Shaffer
S2 E15: Dana Carvey talks Jussie Smollett, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Paul McCartney, Greco-Roman Wrestling and more!
S2 E24: Cleaning out the Voicemail Box : SNL, Julian Assange, Ernie Bornine and more!
S2 E30: Kevin Nealon Discusses SNL, Bad Apartments, Hiking and More!
S2 E48: It’s Julia Sweeney!
S2 E58: Jon Lovitz talks…ACTING!
S2 E68: Jim Breuer Discusses Opening for Metallica, Dave Chappelle, SNL firing Shane Gillis and more!
S2 E85: Dana Carvey talks Biden, Bernie, Obama, “The Crown” and more!
S2 E89: Christmas Eve with Martin Short
S2 E114: Dana Carvey On Social Distancing, Trump, Arnold and more!
S2 E119: Original SNL Writer Alan Zweibel talks comedy, meats and more!
S2 E126: Jon Lovitz on Quarantine Dating, Feeding America, SNL and more!
S2 E150: Alan Zweibel Returns with More “SNL” Stories, PLUS- Live Phone Calls
S2 E157: Dana Carvey on SNL, Regis, Robin Williams and Much More
S2 E181: Alan Zweibel on Norm Crosby & Colin Quinn on Norm MacDonald, Bombing At Robert DeNiro’s 60th Birthday Party And More!
S2 E189: Out of Options : Our Final Episode (with Dana Carvey)
Nowadays NBC doesn’t schedule a live episode after a big game…also I guess there was a theme of Dogs and Baseball.
Hi there, if you have the footage of Pango Giant Dog of Tokyo in its entirety could you please post the complete clip on youtube? The short film was cut from re-airings of the show, and hasn’t been seen since!! It is not found on the SNL archive pages, it was replaced by a short film by Jim Jarmusch. But Pango was one of my favorites, it has since been lost to the VHS tape magnetosphere… You would be doing so many people who miss this lost gem an awesome solid…. Thanks, Rich
Cool article on the folks behind Pango:
https://arktimes.com/entertainment/ae-feature/2016/08/10/see-the-main-thing
Looks like they still do a live version of it, too
It was uploaded last May! The audio is sorta poor but it’s forgivable enough.
Here’s a cool article on the folks behind Pango: https://arktimes.com/entertainment/ae-feature/2016/08/10/see-the-main-thing
Looks like they still do a version of it in their live show.
Reminds me of what happened with this year’s Election Day episode. Whose bright idea was it to not push the Notre Dame game to another channel on one of SNL’s biggest nights of the season?
William, that overtime got over 10 million viewers though. I think we have to remember that, while not for nerds like us, the first and fourth place college football teams playing each other is a pretty big deal to a lot of people (bigger than an Chappelle hosted SNL even)
At least this episode contains one classic sketch while the rest is just ok. Feels like this season hasn’t gone full swing yet. Peoples Court goes on my ‘best of the season’ list. This church chat was pretty good but not one of the best. Arquette is likeable but I didn’t care for that ‘I saw god’ song.
Dennis Miller was on David Spade’s show talking about the ‘coco’ sketch saying he came up with it just to see if it would get on the air. He told Dana and Kevin he bet it would get on air if they act like it’s high brow and lean into at read through. It surprisingly was selected and Miller was like ‘ can you believe this actually got on?’
A few days before Elon Musk hosted, Debra Messing tweeted her disappointment at never being asked to host while Elon was. Rosanna replied (I can’t find her tweet now), saying she hadn’t even been asked to the 40th anniversary, and speculating on why that was.
Promo for the episode:
I don’t recall the music in the “People’s Court” sketch being used in the actual show with Judge Wapner. But I did come across the same music in this early 1982 promo for “Cagney & Lacey”… which was on a different network, and also never used this piece of music. So I have to think it’s production music, but can’t place it:
https://youtu.be/3XoKMl3MCw8
Bah, only 1.5/5 for Koko The Clown and 2.5/5 for Dog Baseball? I’d give those 3/5 and 4/5 respectively. Both sketches are charming to watch. Dennis’ dancing is strangely addictive and Dog Baseball has that super-wholesome Bob Ross feel to it.
DENNIS CANT ACT! STOP MAKING DENNIS ACT!
Also my version of this episode is again weird. I got a B&W clip of Roberto Benini and Steven Wright sitting in a cafe.
“I Saw God” was a song written by Robert I. (Rubinsky) to the music of Marc Shaiman taken from their rock-n-roll musical “Dementos” which played off-(off-)Broadway in NYC around October 1983.
This is another episode I just watched in full for the first time. I didn’t start watching regularly until the 1988 season, so these first two years of the Carvey/Hartman era I’ve only picked up in bits and pieces online. The big sketch from this one that I’ve seen before is the People’s Court with Satan. I think it’s absolutely hilarious. It seems like an early sign showing the great things this era was capable of. The concept itself is gold, just a great idea that almost couldn’t go wrong. Jon’s Satan is a hilarious take, as a jaded demon who has to begrudgingly submit himself to the rules of Earth when he visits here while still viewing us with contempt. His over-the-top mugging to the camera as he’s leaving the courtroom really works. Jan’s sniping at her daughter in the courtroom is really important as human comedy to keep the sketch down-to-earth and relatable, something modern SNL and comedy in general has forgotten how to do these days. The audience really reacts to some of Phil’s subtle impressions of Judge Wapner’s mannerisms. I didn’t watch the People’s Court enough to remember what Wapner was like. This sketch really does what a parody needs to do, carefully copies the format of the original material with great accuracy. The whole thing is just a masterpiece of comedy.
The show definitely starts out interesting with the references to the airing being delayed by the World Series. This helps make the show feel topical, which is always a good thing for SNL. I really liked the “casting couch” sketch with Lovitz, Lorne and Rosanna. Just another reminder that it was absolutely common knowledge throughout the country that this kind of harassment and abuse went on in Hollywood for decades, even though the community acted “shocked, shocked” when Harvey Weinstein’s behavior was exposed. Rosanna’s innocence is funny here, Jon’s character is a perfect fit for this concept, and Lorne liking the script for the fake sketch at the end is a great button on it. This was the best use of Rosanna all night. Trying to lampoon her political activism in the monologue and Church Chat sketches just didn’t work. It really didn’t go far enough to turn it into something funny. Her “I saw God” musical number was a low point for the episode. She doesn’t sing well, and the song didn’t have much of a point to it, or hardly any jokes in it. I thought it was going to be a Cyndi Lauper parody of some sort, but that didn’t come to fruition. It feels like something Rosanna might’ve dreamed up herself that she wanted to do, but which didn’t fit well with what people expect from SNL.
Chuch Chat was a very “basic” episode of Church Chat, with the Church Lady nailing the classic catchphrases and pushing the “Satan” button hard. It makes sense that this early version would not be digging deeper than that. It probably seemed better if you were watching the series in order and those recurring bits were not already well-known to you. Dana’s portrayal of the character already seems incredibly well-formed here.
The Leona Helmsley bit was well-produced, but, even at the time, I didn’t really know much about Helmsley. I remember she was involved in a tax evasion scandal, or something like that. I’m not sure if that had already happened by this time or not. So this character loses something as Helmsley has become a more forgotten figure to history. The pork ads seem in the spirit of Belushi’s classic “little chocolate donut” ads. They’re mildly amusing.
Definitely liked the Joan Rivers joke in Weekend Update. I’m actually more aware now of the conflict between Johnny and Joan than I would’ve been at the time. I don’t recall knowing that Joan Rivers had her own show back then, or that she guest-hosted for Johnny. Miller was solid here, with good spontaneous reaction to the audience. I really liked A. Whitney Brown’s commentary on censorship. It was really illuminating to see him say that censorship of Playboy at the time was coming from certain forces on both the right and the left, because I have made the exact same observation today when it comes to criticism of sexuality in the media. Sadly, I don’t think we see many people on the left today oppose censorship as strongly as Brown did here. You have to be a “moderate” left-winger like Bill Maher to say that kind of thing today.
I heard about the “Sammys” before, but never saw this sketch. This isn’t one of Dana’s more convincing portrayals. Nealon seems more believable as a “Sammy.” This sketch actually seems like a precursor to Wayne’s World, with two media-obsessed buddies hanging out in the basement, while “normal” people visit them from upstairs. Kind of a cute ending with Phil’s straight man joining the losers. Amusing, but I can see why the Sammys didn’t take off as big as Wayne and Garth. The depth isn’t there with them. They’re both the same character, and, at least in this sketch, they’re basically a one-joke act.
The Joan Baez sketch was one of the better ones tonight. I’m not sure if Joan Baez was part of the media conversation at that time, or if she was being used as a throwback reference to years ago. A Howie Mandel impression actually remains topical today, oddly enough. Phil as a smarmy game show host is just a natural fit for him, and he had the perfect ’80s game show host hair here. It just seemed a little jarring how fast Baez was made to laugh after it was built up so big that she had been undefeated for years. This sketch was all set-up with little punchline.
I have no idea what that dog baseball film was. I watched Ben Stiller in an interview saying he was surprised they let his “Color of Money” parody air on the show later this season, because it featured no SNL cast members in it. But he shouldn’t have been surprised if he had known they had aired this months earlier. Cute idea, but it didn’t come together. This seems like something Letterman could’ve done better as a Stupid Pet Tricks offshoot.
Jan’s sketch that, I guess, was parodying “Faerie Tale Theatre” was another odd one that went nowhere. Not sure if the joke was that her fairy tale didn’t have a real ending or what. This sketch has an even worse problem with an inability to find the punchline. It is funny to see the “cool” Dennis Miller having to act completely out of character in a silly clown costume though. The audience definitely interpreted the “standing in the stream” moment as an ad-libbed event, but, like the OP, I’m not sure if it was or not.
It appears my copy of the show is from a Comedy Central airing. It’s missing the Pango sketch. It’s replaced with a “Coffee and Cigarettes” film by Jim Jarmusch. Jarmusch apparently later did a feature film by this same title made up of vignettes, including this one. It’s another bit with a weird feel, and no big laughs, but does have good performances by future fellow Oscar-winners Steven Wright and Roberto Benigni. I did go and watch the Pongo video on YouTube that people posted. Not sure if that was meant to be in the spirit of Thunderbirds or something like that. For me, it paled to the old Mr. Bill sketches, which were a much funnier use of toys and dolls in a sketch. The Pongo sketch didn’t go over-the-top enough, and didn’t get nearly enough good shots with the dog to sell the premise of him being a giant Godzilla-like monster.
I wasn’t too impressed with either of Ric Ocasek’s songs. This seems like the age old problem of the singer wanting to do their new songs instead of their classic hits.
The episode definitely had some good stuff in it, but it was very top-heavy, with not much making an impact after Weekend Update.
As others mentioned, this didn’t air on November 1st, 1986 because an “NBC Special Presentation,” “The Jay Leno Show” aired in SNL’s timeslot that night instead. It’s currently on YouTube as “The Jay Leno Show – 1986 NBC TV Special.” Ironically, David Letterman had a brief cameo in that show, to serve a subplot where Letterman is shot and killed, and the crime is investigated. A freeze frame moment shows that Jay Leno is the one who shot him. It now feels like a dark harbinger of their future feud in the late night wars.