Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
COLD OPENING
Liberace (PHH) plays the piano in Heaven- it’s all the censors will allow
— Some laughs from Phil’s Liberace impression.
— And it’s over already. Phil as dead Liberace: “If you think the censors are gonna let us do more than this, you’re crazy!” That’s literally the only dialogue in this.
STARS: ***
MONOLOGUE
host tells a tale about a lost Valentine he hasn’t tried too hard to find
— A lot of SNL reviewers seem to think that Bronson Pinchot saying Don Pardo mispronounced his last name was unscripted. (Bronson explains his last name is pronounced “pin-CHOW”, not “pin-CHO”) Literally every review I’ve read of this episode points out how unlikable Bronson instantly came off for having the nerve to rudely call out Don Pardo on live TV over a simple mistake. I’m personally of the opinion that Bronson correcting Pardo was a scripted joke. Those aforementioned SNL reviewers seem to completely ignore the fact that Bronson immediately followed up his Pardo correction by saying “We have a terrific show for you tonight”, pronouncing “show” in the same manner as how he claimed his last name is pronounced (“pin-CHOW”). It’s a VERY lame joke, but it makes it obvious to me that him correcting Pardo was all in the script. Does anyone reading this know for sure? Also, does anyone here know the true pronunciation of Pinchot? I could swear Pardo’s “pin-cho” pronunciation was correct.
— I like the band accompanying Bronson’s Valentines remembrance with soft piano music.
— An okay comedic turn at the end of Bronson’s story, but there was WAY too long of a build-up for my likes. A long, dead-serious set-up like that needed a funnier punchline than what we got.
STARS: **
AMERIDA
(PHH) can’t stand the changes caused by Canada’s takeover of USA
— I love the concept of this.
— All the little touches with Canadian terms being interjected into the family’s conversation are really funny.
— Phil’s whole “I remember the days when our country didn’t have to… etc.” rant is fantastic. His whole objection to Canada taking over American traditions is even funnier if you’re aware of the irony there: Phil Hartman is Canadian in real life.
STARS: ****½
NIGHTLINE
Henry Kissinger (ALF) & others discuss “Amerida” plausibility
— Very nice way to carry over the Amerida storyline into a separate sketch. Very rare for SNL to do something like this.
— The debut of a funny Ted Koppel impression from Dana.
— Good to see Al Franken back as Henry Kissinger.
— I got a big laugh from Al’s Kissinger concluding that the Amerida concept “was just stupid”.
— Bronson’s getting some good laughs with his Carl Sagan.
— Good random part with the Nightline secret word.
STARS: ****½
SPORTS ILLUSTRATED SWIMSUIT ISSUE
Paulina Poriskova [real]- “boys love Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Issue”
— Funny part with the “Do Not Disturb” sign.
— Good ending with the random cutaway to a hobo claiming “And I need it too!”
STARS: ***
JINGLE
Derek Stevens feels OK about selling out after Ringo Starr (JOL) approves
— At least this seems like this will be going in a different direction from Derek Stevens’ previous two sketches.
— After Phil’s character has entered the recording room, there’s a noticeable loud feedback hum that’s been going on for a fairly long time, at least in the live version I’m watching of this episode. Maybe it was later fixed in reruns.
— The reworked, commercial jingle version of Choppin’ Broccoli sounds okay, but it’s not really funny or anything.
— Overall, not terrible, but not great either. I’m still of the opinion that they never should have made Derek Stevens recurring. I’m aware of at least one more appearance he makes, which I recall being PARTICULARLY bad, in next season’s Justine Bateman episode.
STARS: **½
VALENTINE’S DAY
Serge (host) relays (PHH)’s Valentine’s Day offerings to Babette
— Hmm, another recurring character I’m not too crazy about, though taking Babette out of the Weekend Update setting and giving her her own sketch tonight will hopefully keep this from following the tired formula of her Update commentaries.
— Ha, Bronson reprising his character from Beverly Hills Cop
— Okay, Bronson’s character got some laughs early on in this sketch, but I really don’t like where this sketch has been going since then. The pacing is way too slow and dull, and the conversation between Bronson and Phil is dragging.
— Overall, blah. Didn’t care for most of this sketch at all.
STARS: *½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “War Games”
WEEKEND UPDATE
Jacques Cousteau (DAC) describes the mating ritual of the napkin fish
AWB looks for alternatives to the recently-voted Senate pay hike
DEM promotes safe sex by donning a Weekend Update Body Condom
— During the opening shot of Dennis, what’s with the top of a crew member’s head being seen next to Dennis under the desk? (first screencap above)
— I love how the suggestive sumo wrestling picture had no joke from Dennis. He just showed the picture, let the audience laugh, and then moved on to the next joke, leaving the sumo wrestling bit a completely random non-sequitur.
— Dana’s Jacques Cousteau commentary has a lot of good parts so far, especially the line about napkin fish having six penises.
— Boy, there’s a female audience member with a high-pitched loud giggle that can be heard all throughout tonight’s episode, especially during this Cousteau commentary.
— This overall Cousteau commentary was really funny and just might be one of Dana’s more forgotten Weekend Update gems (or maybe it’s just me who had forgotten it).
— Funny bit with Dennis bringing out a glass of water just so he can do a spit-take in reaction to People Magazine calling Bruce Willis a “renaissance man”.
— Haha, I love how Dennis is commemorating Valentine’s Day by showing a live-action video of an actual beating human heart, which results in squeamish groans from the studio audience.
— A. Whitney’s overall Big Picture commentary tonight was actually really underwhelming. This lacked the large amount of witty comments he usually makes, and the studio audience was DEAD. Not even the aforementioned Loud Giggling Audience Lady could be heard, for once tonight.
— Good ending to tonight’s Update, with Dennis demonstrating the Weekend Update Body Condom.
STARS: ***½
THE LIFE OF GOLDA MEIR
Golda Meir‘s (Paulina Poriskova) good looks were important
— An unintentional laugh from Kevin’s badly-applied eyepatch. You can clearly see his real eye under it.
— Wow, and the sketch is already over. What in the world was the point of this? Just to let us know that Golda Meir was attractive? There wasn’t a single intentional laugh and the overall bit felt pointless and truncated.
STARS: *
SKETCH ARTIST
via impersonation, police artist (KEN) helps (host) identify a mugger
— Love this concept of a police sketch artist using his own face to match someone’s descriptions of a mugger.
— Bronson: “He was white.” Kevin: “Oh, good; that’ll save us some time.”
— A good laugh from Kevin copying his altered face in the copy machine.
— Overall, a strong and very Kevin Nealon-y sketch. You can totally tell he wrote this. My only complaint is that Bronson was kind of a weak straight man. He looked uninterested during his performance, as if he was going through the motions.
STARS: ****
HARDWARE STORE
a hardware store gigolo (host) hopes Marge Keister will go for him
— Boy, there goes Loud Giggling Audience Lady once again tonight, as loud as ever this time.
— The lights-turned-out bit was pretty funny.
— This sketch had a slow first half, but it’s starting to get a little funnier with Bronson’s emotional breakdown about how he’ll never make it as a gigolo in a hardware store.
— Overall, not one of the better Marge Keister sketches, but this improved a little as it went along.
STARS: **½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “The Long Run”
MISS CONNIE’S FABLE NOOK
Koko, Mishu, Lebee try to get princess (Paulina Poriskova) to smile
— Oh, no, the return of… THIS.
— Boy, is EVERY sketch Paulina Porizkova in tonight just going to keep mentioning ad nauseam how beautiful she is? We can clearly see she’s hot, so why must all her sketch appearances be accompanied by characters informing us of her beauty over and over and over?
— Kevin’s ogre-ish grunting provided my only semi-chuckles in the first installment of this sketch, but he’s going too heavy on it in tonight’s installment.
— Finally, I got a slight laugh, this time from Jan’s line about Kevin’s character being “giddy for approximately two years”.
— Overall, I pretty much hated this once again. IIRC, this is thankfully the final installment of this sketch I’ll have to suffer through.
STARS: *½
BUSTER POINDEXTER
Buster Poindexter [real] performs “Heart of Gold”
GOODNIGHTS
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS:
— Boy, was I underwhelmed by this episode. It was even weaker than the forgettable episode that preceded it. Kinda discouraging to see two less-than-stellar episodes back-to-back, considering how well this season had been going. Tonight’s episode had a fairly ho-hum feel, with only the Amerida/Nightline double-header and Sketch Artist standing out as strong. Even some usually-reliable things like A. Whitney Brown’s Big Picture had an off night.
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Paul Shaffer):
— a moderate step down
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW:
Willie Nelson. Unfortunately, I recall this episode being fairly weak too. Hopefully my recollection is wrong, because if not, it looks like we’re in the middle of a mid-season slump.
I recently watched an interview he did and when the interviewer tried to make his last name sound a little more “sexy” as he put it, he playfully was like “It’s Pinch-O”.
It had to have been a bit in the monologue but it just seemed poorly constructed and performed by him.
I always remembered this being a weaker episode but I don’t really remember the Willie Nelson one.
Even despite the weaker episodes, I feel like these episodes were such a relief compared to the last 6 years of the show.
What exactly was the deal with Buster Poindexter? Why was he appearing all the time?
Poindexter was part of the Live Band for a little bit.
This is definitely one of the episodes that would have been *death* in previous seasons–a host that was coming off as disinterested/unlikeable a lot of the time, plus a “special guest” who was basically just playing herself/having her ego stroked. You could have easily persuaded me that this was an Ebersol booked episode. While this still isn’t great, there are still some funny sketches and you just weren’t going to have a bomb episode using this season’s cast.
Pinchot’s usually great but he comes off extremely arrogant in that monologue. Unlike Kellerman I don’t think he did it on purpose; he was always hilarious and was sociable in most interviews and shows he did. I think they just didn’t write it to their ability like they should have. It’s a bummer because honestly he shoulda been a recurring host he was always very fun back then. He’s gold as Sagan in that Amerida reaction bit and he did okay in the skits.. it just seemed the show was off that night. They musta been tired.
Still don’t get why PP was there; she didn’t add anything besides being T&A.
I recall Willie’s show being more intresting; Devito’s there to help out so he makes things fun. WIllie’s not bad either for being just a singer.
When he hosted this show, had he already become famous for being Balky? I can’t remember. Also, as to Connie’s Fable Nook…was the whole thing just a massive inside joke that Dennis Miller didn’t have any recurring characters?
In his monologue, he mentions that Perfect Strangers has recently become a hit.
“Amerida” was a spoof of an ABC miniseries (and aftershow presided over by Ted Koppel) running at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerika_(miniseries)
youtube.com/watch?v=jzE79liGGTg
This must be one of the only times the special guest made the promo over the musical guest. A reminder of how known Paulina was at this time…
I finally watched this in full yesterday and I must say Paulina’s presence in the episode is even heavier than I had expected. She’s not just in multiple sketches, and the promo, but she also has several bumper photos (as many as Bronson, or close) and she introduces Paul Young’s second musical performance. I’m not sure why they didn’t just credit her as co-host and have her do the monologue with Bronson – it wouldn’t have hurt the quality very much…
There’s a very hesitant air that tends to flow through 86-87, as if Lorne was still unsure of the audience reception to his new cast. This episode carries that hesitancy and adds flatness and strange audio problems. Between Paulina, Pinchot, and Poindexter, Jon and Victoria are just about totally shut out – strange for Jon as this episode should have suited him well. As a result you get a hash that probably seemed much livelier on paper, given Bronson’s buoyant sitcom and film roles and Paulina being seen as arguably the biggest female sex symbol in the country around this point.
Still, it’s nice to see more of Marge, and that hyena laugh in the audience helps mask the lack of energy in the sketch.
I saw a comment saying that the Babette sketch reminds them of Mango. I can see why, although there is, thankfully, less ass-slapping and mugging.
So whatever they showed of the Liberace-in-Heaven Cold Open had to rewritten for the following week to then have Dana Carvey do his Robin Leach with Phil. I guess doing a shortened CO was preferable to not showing one at all…
Since it’s been 33 years that I last saw the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue sketch, I now just got an LOL concerning the last four letters of the telephone number printed at the very end…
Although the audience is clearly not into it, Whitney’s Big Picture is good, effective satire re: Congress voting to raise their own salaries.
Pinchot correcting Pardo in the monologue is obviously scripted (as you point out, Pinchot then pronounces “show” as “sh-AUW”) … the problem is Pinchot’s flat delivery. Sure, it’s a lame joke, but he doesn’t sell it AT ALL.
I wanted to like this episode…but that god-awful, ear-piercing, high-pitched squealing laugh from the one particular audience member is SO distracting, and SO awful…it pretty much ruins the entire ep. Especially the gigolo in the hardware show, which is otherwise great character work by Jan as usual. And, call me crazy, but I think this edition of Connie’s Fable Nook is a big improvement over the first 😆 …but, it absolutely makes sense that they never did this sketch again…and good riddance. 😆😆
*gigolo in hardware store SKETCH (not show)…oops*
The whole joke with the Golda Meir sketch is that the real Golda Meir was a very unattractive woman. To an audience familiar with her, the idea of everyone being captivated by her beauty would have been absurd. But I agree, it’s a weak one-joke sketch that was thankfully short.
Also, the Miss Connie’s Fable Nook sketch was revealed by Dennis Miller a few years ago to have been a troll job. On David Spade’s talk show, he said the origin of that sketch was that he bet Dana Carvey and Kevin Nealon that he could write an awful sketch and get it on the air if they all took it seriously. No word on whether Jan Hooks was in on the joke. The sketch actually becomes funnier when you imagine them behind the scenes laughing about having gotten it past Lorne Michaels.