Sketches are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
COLD OPENING
host sings “Help Me Make It Through The Night” as CHC woos musical guest
— Opening with a musical performance? I guess this is like the Paul Simon episode earlier this season.
— Oh, never mind, looks like there’s gonna be comedic cutaways with Chevy throughout this song.
— Who’s the woman with Chevy? The musical guest?
— I appreciate the idea, but I wasn’t crazy about this opening overall.
STARS: **
MONOLOGUE
(no synopsis available)
— Boy, is his timing and delivery terrible in this. I heard that he supposedly got drunk right before airtime, and I’m not having a hard time believing that right now.
— “See why they didn’t let me do the monologue?” Haha, at least he’s aware of how badly he’s doing.
— And it’s over ALREADY? Probably a good thing…
STARS: N/A, because this wasn’t an actual monologue; it was basically just an introduction to the following sketch
I WAS NOT A SUCKER FOR SATURDAY NIGHT
new employee Sherry recalls male SNL writers’ advances toward her
— Very interesting meta premise.
— The comment about Alan Zweibel was very funny.
— The Michael O’Donoghue comment just now was even better.
— Overall, this was very strong and Laraine gave an excellent performance.
STARS: ****½
SAMURAI GENERAL PRACTITIONER
Futaba gives host an examination
— I liked the bit with Futaba clipping off a tiny piece of Kris’ beard to lower his weight.
— I don’t get the joke with Futaba sliding a gloved finger up and down the height ruler. That got a big reaction from the audience.
— Whoa at the uncensored picture of a topless woman that Futaba’s looking at. (second screencap above, though the topless pic is hard to see in it; here’s a bigger screencap) Between that and the woman nipple pic shown a few Weekend Updates ago, I’m assuming NBC was more lenient about female nudity back in the 70s. I’m surprised. They certainly wouldn’t let modern-day SNL get away with showing that.
— What was with Kris blatantly moving during the fake freeze-frame ending?
— Overall, a lesser Samurai sketch, but still had its moments.
STARS: **½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
— Hey, it’s Gilda and Laraine hula-hooping!
GREAT WHITE ATHLETES
Jesse Owens (GAM) sells medallions of the endangered Great White Athlete
— Loved the line about great white athletes being a dying breed.
— Overall, short but funny.
STARS: ***½
FORD DELEGATE
Gerald Ford (CHC) hears uncommitted delegate’s (host) pork barrel request
— Ha, it’s Pardo’s voice on the intercom as Ford’s secretary.
— The ‘tulip in the drink’ gag was hilarious.
— Kris’ delivery is noticeably starting to become slurred.
— Great performance from Chevy, making his Ford come off even more bungling than usual.
STARS: ***½
POLICE STATE
officers (DAA) & (CHC) shoot first, ask questions later
— I can already tell from the intro that I’m gonna like this. It helps that I have a strong love for old 70s cop shows.
— John appears to be wearing the same fancy Hollywood clothes he wore in the preceding episode’s cold opening, minus the jacket.
— Haha, holy hell at John suddenly getting shot a whole bunch of times by the cops.
— I’m loving the transition shots showing toy model cars & buses crashing into each other.
— I also like how Chevy and Dan keep continuing their “what do you want to eat tonight?” conversations at the most random times.
— This is all hilarious so far.
— The fake freeze-frame ending credits is cracking me up.
— Overall, I loved this. A very funny parody of 70s cop shows.
— Was the (recurring?) “X-Police” sketch SNL would later do in this era in a similar vein to this sketch, or am I remembering incorrectly?
STARS: ****
WEEKEND UPDATE, PART 1
Viking I’s soil scoop narrowly misses finding evidence of life on Mars
— I like how Chevy’s opening phone conversation gag tonight is making fun of Pardo.
— Ha, and now Pardo just had a funny retort after Chevy did his usual “I’m Chevy Chase, and you’re not” line (“Nobody wants to be, Chubby!”).
— “Still to come”? Aww, man, I see they’re unfortunately going back to dividing Update into two separate parts with a fake ad in between. I thought they stopped doing that in the last episode.
TALK COUNTRY
host’s book helps you overcome education with dialect
— Once again, Kris’ delivery is just plain rough.
— I did like the joke of him including “children” as one of the words his book teaches you to drop the ‘g’ at the end of.
STARS: **½
WEEKEND UPDATE, PART 2
LAN reports on Viking I mission from Nassau instead of NASA
— Laraine’s NASA/Nassau mix-up is a simple but funny joke.
— I liked Laraine’s “Will I have to pay for this?” line at the end.
— Loved the Spiro T. Agnew joke.
— Our newest variation of the running “News for (insert group here)” gag is Chevy just saying “For those of you who may be growing tired of Weekend Update, I will not repeat tonight’s top story”.
STARS (FOR BOTH WEEKEND UPDATE HALVES): ***
BOBBY MCGEE
Bobbi McGee (GIR) of host’s song is now the wife of Larry Farber (JOB)
— The debut of Bobbi Farber. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of the Farber sketches before, but I’ve heard about the characters quite a lot over the years.
— What was with Kris busting out laughing during Gilda’s talk?
— I like John’s walk-on as the husband.
— John’s un-hip suburban dancing during Kris’ song is pretty funny.
— Gilda is so good in this.
STARS: ***½
BLIND DATE
(JAC) is apprehensive about a blind date with her gynecologist (host)
— Jane’s having some really funny lines during her phone conversation.
— Now Kris’ bad delivery has gotten to the point where he’s taking long pauses between some of the dialogue. Just now, after a particularly long stretch of silence, Jane actually had to prompt him to go ahead with his next line.
— Overall… man, I wanted to like this, as it had the type of slice-of-life conversational humor that this era was so good at pulling off, but something about this one seemed lacking. I blame Kris’ performance.
STARS: **½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
CARTER-YOUNG
suckup Andrew Young (GAM) sings the praises of Jimmy Carter (DAA) in vain
— Is this gonna be yet ANOTHER solo Garrett Morris commercial? He’s been doing these a lot lately.
— I’m liking Garrett’s energy here, but where is this going?
— Ah, there’s Dan’s Jimmy Carter.
— And ah, there’s the gray hair that was missing from Dan’s Carter debut in the preceding episode.
— I like Garrett’s slowburn as he’s realizing that he isn’t going to be put in Carter’s presidential cabinet.
— The way Garrett’s overly wrapped up in the blanket, you can tell he’s trying to hide the suit he still has on from the dream.
— Wasn’t crazy about how this ended.
— Overall, this sketch feels like it could’ve been better.
STARS: **
WAITING FOR PARDO
Vladimir (host) & Estragon (CHC) ponder enigmatic DOP
— I love the premise. SNL seemed to have so much fun with Pardo in these early seasons.
— Ehh, this isn’t turning out as funny as I was expecting.
— Okay, I was getting tired of the “Pardo keeps announcing gameshow-esque promo ads” joke, but now it’s starting to become kinda funny because of the ridiculous repetition.
— I know it’s intentional, but all the silence between Chevy and Kris is becoming WAY too dry & drawn-out.
— What did Kris mumble to Chevy at the very end? It didn’t seem to be part of the script.
— Another odd thing about the end: what appeared to be an audience caption showed up when the camera was still just on Kris and Chevy’s silhouettes.
— Overall, I’m not sure how I feel about this sketch as a whole. I think I feel the concept was excellent, but it kinda died in the execution, despite some funny parts. It also probably doesn’t help that I’m not familiar with “Waiting for Godot”.
STARS: **
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
GOODNIGHTS
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IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS:
— Hmm, I’m kinda iffy. I feel like I didn’t care much for this episode, but thinking back on my review, I gave out a couple of pretty good ratings, nothing received the dreaded one-star rating, and there were two sketches I loved (Police State and I Was Not A Sucker For Saturday Night). That all adds up to an average episode. I think Kris Kristofferson’s rough performances just left a bad taste in my mouth, which is probably dampening my enthusiasm over the episode. I mean, as a host, Kristofferson wasn’t Louise Lasser bad, but still – oof. This episode also seemed to suffer from that famous “post-Weekend Update drop-off”, which has plagued quite a number of episodes in the second half of this season.
— Considering this was the season finale and considering the disastrous episode that preceded this, I had been hoping this would be a strong episode with a strong host, so maybe that’s why I feel a bit let down.
— Speaking of season finale, was this even intended to be the last episode of the season? There were no mentions of it at all during the show, no “see you next season”, nothing. The only aspect of this episode that made it seem like a finale is when some of the cast members took pictures of the rest of the group onstage during the goodnights.
— Well, folks, we’re officially one season down in my ‘One SNL a Day’ project! 40-something seasons to go.
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Louise Lasser):
— a step up
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW:
Season 2 begins, with host Lily Tomlin