Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
COLD OPENING
host finds out there won’t be any cue cards tonight; Michael Palin cameo
— Like the last episode, this is another one that’s being performed from two different studios on two separate floors, due to Studio 8H being used for mid-term election coverage. I still find it amazing that SNL was able to pull off live shows with that awkward set-up.
— Funny bit with Joe Dicso breaking the news that there will be no cue cards tonight.
— Eddie’s random native bodysuit is funny.
— Michael Palin!
— It’s pretty well-documented that in a panicked move earlier that week, Dick Ebersol brought in Michael Palin as an emergency special guest/stealth backup host after seeing how poorly Michael Keaton performed during that week’s readthrough.
— Keaton’s “We got no cue cards!!!” outburst made me laugh.
— Ha, now they’re being told by Dicso that they won’t be able to use the elevators they need to get from studio-to-studio.
— I’m loving Palin’s complicated Monty Python-esque explanation to Keaton of how to get to Studio 3A.
— Gary appears in the same musketeers outfit he wore in the backstage cold opening from the last episode.
— I like the part with Gary listing off the titles of (fake) sketches that were cut tonight (“Wiener Water”, “Bess Truman in Hell”, and “I Was a G-Spot For the FBI” ).
STARS: ***½
MONOLOGUE
host does stand-up about his childhood trick-or-treat experiences
— We’re already off to a rocky start, as Keaton came off really awkward with that weird opening “Nice to be back hosting again… wait, have I hosted before?” bit.
— I know Keaton got his start as a stand-up comedian, but it’s very hard for me to picture that man in a stand-up comedy club telling jokes into a mic.
— Trick-or-treating isn’t a particularly interesting stand-up comedy topic, and his material is pretty mundane so far.
— Okay, I did like the bit about his trick-or-treating brother requesting a sandwich from people handing out candy.
— This overall stand-up routine was weak, and man, Keaton’s uncomfortable demeanor here definitely helps me see why Ebersol panicked during readthroughs that week.
STARS: *½
THE INTERESTING FOUR
on Halloween night, The Interesting Four is looking for Espresso (MAG)
— I liked Mary’s delivery of “Drink your little Hawaiian Punch, you little snot-nosed brats!”
— It’s too soon to bring back the subpar Interesting Four sketch, and why is it placed as the lead-off sketch tonight? The first time they did this sketch, it was buried near the end of the episode (and rightfully so).
— At least this is a very different setting for them.
— Funny part with Brad as the Human Stapler being heard loudly yelling from the bathroom, then emerging with his hand stuck to his groin.
— Boy, that scene with the second group of kids was awkward as hell.
— I love the “time reversal” part with the performers talking and moving like the scene is being rewound. As I mentioned sometime before (when reviewing a Hercules sketch from a season 3 episode), I always get a kick out of whenever performers have to act out a scene being rewound, fast-forwarded, or played in slow-mo.
— Hmm, they’re doing the exact same backwards scene again.
— Okay, what the hell? Why do they keep repeating the same backwards scene over and over and over?
— Overall, this was a marginal improvement over the first Interesting Four installment, but I still had some issues with this one.
STARS: **½
A SENSE OF FEAR
events in (Michael Palin)’s scary story happen as he reads them
— Palin’s performance is really cracking me up so far.
— The scary story increasingly appearing to be about Palin himself feels like a kinda cliched premise.
— I liked Palin’s screaming and falling out of his chair.
— What was the point of that sponsor bit at the end?
— Overall, this featured a fine Palin performance, but the material itself wasn’t the best.
STARS: **½
THANK YOU, RON REAGAN.
privileged citizens say “Thank You, Ron Reagan” while others suffer
— Pretty biting satire of President Reagan’s economic policies. I’ve always heard that the Ebersol era supposedly often shied away from doing political stuff, but so far, I’ve been seeing quite a lot of unabashed anti-Reagan sentiment in these episodes.
STARS: ***½
SNOOKIE
after a first date, (TIK) gets mixed signals from (JLD) & her teddy bear
— Julia’s wearing the same dress that we’d later see Ana Gasteyer regularly wearing in her and Will Ferrell’s recurring Culps sketches. That same dress is also worn by someone (Nora Dunn, I think) in a 1988 cold opening where Jan Hooks as Oprah Winfrey (yes, you read right) hallucinates her talk show guests having food for heads. Speaking of Jan, I think she herself wears that dress in the famous “Jew or Not a Jew” sketch, but I’m not sure.
— Julia suddenly slapping Tim after asking him to sleep with her was really funny.
— Heh, a teddy bear with earrings.
— A lot of laughs from Julia’s odd way of relaying thoughts through the teddy bear.
— The bear has been referred to as both a “he” and a “she” all throughout this sketch.
— Great touch with Tim dismissively throwing the bear aside when finally getting Julia in bed.
— Overall, a strong sketch that was well-written and performed. Julia did a really good job as this strange character, and Tim was a solid straight man.
STARS: ****
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Steppin’ Out”
BILL SMITH CARES
a behind-the-scenes look at what really goes on in a political campaign
— Wow, Keaton is JUST NOW making his first actual sketch appearance of the night, and it looks like it’s not even a particularly big role. [ADDENDUM: Looking at a list of the original running order of this episode’s sketches, this sketch originally aired even later in the night, meaning Keaton didn’t make ANY sketch appearances in the entire pre-Saturday Night News half of the show. Wow.]
— Eddie and Clint Smith’s performance as “The Love Brothers” is kinda funny, but seems really out of place for the tone of this sketch. It IS nice to see Clint with a lot of lines, though.
— I like Mary as the bitter wife.
— What’s with Eddie and Clint’s singing of THE ENTIRE Jeffersons theme song? At first, I thought it would just be a truncated version of the song, but they ended up performing THE WHOLE THING. Geez.
— Interesting structure to this sketch, having various scenes that go back-and-forth from the campaign headquarters to Joe’s hotel room. That’s making this sketch feel very long, however.
— Heh, Tim’s been getting a lot of “action” in this episode. This is the second sketch of the night that ended with him sleeping in bed with a female cast member (first Julia, now Mary).
— Overall, for a sketch that was so long, this didn’t feature much that was noteworthy, and the overall thing fell kinda flat.
STARS: **
TOPOL THE IDIOT
Topol the Idiot (Michael Palin) wasn’t originally written in English
— The idea of Michael Palin playing an idiot character like this is already making me laugh.
— I almost didn’t recognize Keaton in this. He’s also doing an interesting character voice.
— The bad foreign language translation seems to be the main joke, though I’m not sure that it’s coming off all that well. I did, however, like the “May your house be full of Belgians” line.
— I didn’t get the bit with Palin showing a stained napkin to the camera, though it made me laugh anyway just because Palin is so goddamn funny.
— Overall, some things about this sketch kept tickling me (mainly Palin’s performance), but the thing as a whole didn’t work all that well.
STARS: **½
NUTTY PRESIDENT
Ronald Reagan (JOP) transforms a la The Nutty Professor during a speech
— Heh, WTF at Joe-as-Reagan’s sudden Jerry Lewis-esque loud wacky voice when saying how high unemployment shot up?
— Haha, he seems to be going through a full Jerry Lewis transformation.
— Yep, now the camera has cut back to him in a Lewis-esque wig.
— And there’s the buck teeth.
— An overall pretty funny idea and decent execution from Joe, even if there wasn’t much to this besides a simple transformation.
STARS: ***
SATURDAY NIGHT NEWS
BRH makes endorsements in political races based on celebrity support
an upset MAG lists federal budget cuts she feels should be made
Raheem Abdul Muhammed refuses to believe that Liberace is a homosexual
— Second episode in a row with Saturday Night News making an unusually late appearance. In the last episode, it turns out SNN aired much earlier in the original live broadcast and was only bumped to a late timeslot in the rerun version I was watching, so I’m assuming that’s the same case for tonight’s SNN. Boy, do I hate the odd re-shuffling of the running order in some of these old Comedy Central reruns (back in Comedy Central’s early days when they aired full 90-minute SNLs instead of shortened 60-minute ones).
— Interesting bit with Brad breaking down which celebrities are endorsing which candidates in the mid-term elections, though this seems to be kind of a time-killer that’s going on a little too long.
— Nice to see the return of “Spittin’-Mad Mary Gross”.
— Mary’s heated rapid-fire rant on budget cuts that should be made has some really good lines, especially “We pay, they pee” and (in regards to the Secret Service) “Thanks to you, only two of our last six presidents have been shot”.
— Some good ad-libs from Mary in response to some occasional flubs of hers during her fast-paced rant.
— I’ve been noticing these last few episodes that whenever the camera goes back to Brad after a guest commentary, Brad always says to the camera “More news” in a way that’s supposed to be funny, but it doesn’t work and just seems unnecessary.
— Eddie’s denial over Liberace being a homosexual is pretty funny, especially the incredibly flamboyant Liberace pictures he uses as proof of Liberace’s “masculinity”.
— Wow, that was a short Saturday Night News overall. Probably for the best, though.
STARS: **½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Another World”
PUMPKIN
— A repeat of the gory pumpkin-carving short from last season’s Donald Pleasence-hosted Halloween episode.
GOODNIGHTS
— Keaton mentions that they had to cut tonight’s special guest Andy Kaufman. I think this is what would end up famously leading to the Larry the Lobster-esque “Keep or Dump Andy” vote-in that we’ll see a few episodes from now.
— Whoa, I just realized, where the heck was Robin Duke in tonight’s episode??? She didn’t appear in ANY sketches, and I’m not even seeing her onstage in these goodnights. Was she out sick this week?
— Gary Kroeger was also almost non-existent in tonight’s episode, but at least he was still in the show.
— It looked like Keaton walked off right in the middle of these goodnights. If so, I wonder if it’s because of Ebersol’s infamous treatment of him.
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS:
— Not a very good episode. Despite a few good things, there was kind of a ho-hum, forgettable quality to the night as a whole, and there were too many overlong sketches. This episode also had a very weird feeling to it, which may have been due to the non-Studio 8H aspect, though that didn’t make the Howard Hesseman episode feel too weird (maybe because that episode had enough strong material to mask the weird atmosphere from being performed in two different studios). All I have to say is, thank God they’ll be back in Studio 8H by the next episode.
— The whole situation with Michael Palin being brought in as emergency backup makes me feel kinda bad for Michael Keaton, but Keaton truly didn’t seem too up to the task of handling the show, judging from his awkwardness tonight. I can understand why they barely put him in any sketches. He would later do a much better job in his 1992 and (especially) 2015 hosting stints.
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Howard Hesseman):
— a big step down
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW:
Robert Blake