Tag: The Smothers Brothers

Posted on

December 3, 1983 – The Smothers Brothers / Big Country (S9 E7)

Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars

COLD OPENING
studio rain delay- Tom Seaver & Ron Luciano [real] hope show will go on

     

— Very creative idea for a cold opening, in which SNL has an in-studio rain delay. This is pretty fun.
— Great use of the home base stage, showing cast members occupying various parts of the stage’s doors and windows.
— Eddie being the only cast member not to appear in this makes it obvious that tonight is yet another episode that he won’t be making any live appearances in.
STARS: ***½


MONOLOGUE
Tom tries to snap a photo of Dick & audience singing “If I Had A Ship”

   

— Tom’s “haul ass” comment was hilarious.
— The whole “candid” picture-snapping bit is solid.
— Love the rapid-fire string of questions Dick is asking a befuddled Tom about his camera.
STARS: ***½


JAZZ RIFFS
— At first glance, this appears to be a re-airing of a sketch the show already did in the season premiere. However, according to something I recall reading years ago, this airing isn’t the same take that was done in the season premiere; it’s an alternate take from the Eddie Murphy “preview show” (which was a special taping where they filmed a whole bunch of Eddie Murphy sketches right before this season began, due to the fact that Eddie won’t be able to appear live in a number of episodes this season). I have no idea why there’s two different versions of this same sketch, nor why they inserted one into THIS episode. Is this replacing a sketch that aired in the original live broadcast? [ADDENDUM: Turns out this replaces TWO things: a sketch called “Know Your Neighbor”, and a Smothers Brothers musical number titled “Fantasy For Auto Horn & Electronic Pulse in D Minor”]


DREAMLAND
(JIB) can’t decipher (MAG)’s obvious sexual fantasy about him

   

— Ehh, not too sure of this premise with Jim’s character arrogantly assuming his female guests’ dreams are a subtle sexual fantasy about him.
— And now, the dream the third female guest (Mary) describes IS a subtle sexual fantasy about Jim’s character, and the big joke is that he’s oblivious to it. Bah, a very predictable and weak punchline.
STARS: *½


CARVEL
Tom Carvel (JOP) discovers franchisee’s (TIK) risque holiday ice cream

     

— Joe’s look and voice is really making me laugh.
— Hilarious bit with the “Jolly Jugs”.
— The other dirty ice cream creations are also funny, especially “Peter the Yule Log” and how the chocolate version of it has much more inches.
STARS: ***½


MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “In a Big Country”


SATURDAY NIGHT NEWS
GAK shows Huckleberry, his 21 year-old Cabbage Patch Kid
Dr. Jack Badofsky lists varieties of influenza
JOP asks new heavyweight champ Larry Holmes [real] if he’s retiring

       

— Brad’s opening joke with him venting about the overexposure of Cabbage Patch Dolls is amusing, and in retrospect, serves as a nice time capsule in regards to the big Cabbage Patch Dolls craze that was going on at this time around 1983.
— I’m getting some pretty good laughs from the commentary with Gary and his now-grown Cabbage Patch Doll. Judging from the voice, I’m assuming that’s Jim inside that costume. His growly voice in this reminds me of future cast member Horatio Sanz, for some reason.
— Another display of Gary’s great pratfall skills, when Jim angrily tosses him over the news desk.
— Brad’s bit about dirty-sounding station initials was just plain random.
— Wow, right off the bat with tonight’s Dr. Jack Badofsky commentary, the audience ALREADY loudly boos and hisses just over his opening “and then, in flew Enza” joke.
— Geez, this is a hostile audience. LOL, they’re booing very easily over quite a lot of Badofsky’s puns tonight.
— Pretty fun audience participation bit right now, with Badofsky having the audience try to guess what the next influenza puns are going to be, just based on his description of them. That’s an interesting change of pace for this character, and is at least calming down all the hostility that tonight’s crowd kept directing to him.
— Joe’s facial reaction to Larry Holmes sternly telling him to be quiet was pretty funny.
— The overall Joe/Larry Holmes commentary was fairly fun.
— I do kinda like the new running gag Brad has been doing lately, where he signs off under the name of a random celebrity (first Elvis Presley, now Betty Grable). Enjoy it while it lasts, because the clock is ticking down on Brad’s anchorman tenure. A change on Saturday Night News is soon coming, folks…
STARS: **½


CRISIS GAME ’83
John Glenn (Tom) & Jesse Jackson (EDM) react to problems

   

— Fun idea for a sketch.
— This is the first time all night we’ve seen either of our two hosts appearing in an actual sketch.
— Good casting of Tom Smothers as John Glenn, as there is a pretty strong resemblance between them.
— Oh, Eddie IS in the building tonight after all. Wonder why he wasn’t in the cold opening with the rest of the cast. And why in the world is the biggest star of this cast making his first appearance so late in the show tonight? [ADDENDUM: Turns out this sketch aired much earlier in the original live broadcast and ended up being the victim of “rerun reshuffling”, a habit that SNL had in the 80s and early 90s where the original sketch order in episodes gets completely rearranged in reruns, which is something that kinda irks me] Was he actually flown in from Hollywood in the middle of this episode or something?
— Eddie’s Jesse Jackson impression isn’t very good. I see what he’s going for, but I feel Joe captured Jesse’s fiery delivery much better when he played him earlier this season in that astronaut cold opening. However, neither Joe nor Eddie have nailed Jesse’s voice.
— I like the random inclusion of Gary as Carl Sagan and Brad as William F. Buckley.
— I got a laugh from the line about a computer nerd who’s “playing with his Wang… Computer”.
— The “prize” that Eddie’s Jesse Jackson was given was really funny.
STARS: ***


CLARK STREET GARAGE BAND
no-talent garage band auditions for record company representative (Dick)

  

— Ha, this band’s god-awful music-playing is cracking me up.
— I like Dick bluntly telling the band how bad they are.
— Some good laughs from the band members’ delusions, and Jim is great in the lead role here.
STARS: ***½


MENTL
a movie starring Barbra Streisand (JOP)

 

— Here we have yet ANOTHER Joe Piscopo impression relying on an insane amount of prosthetics that render him unrecognizable (until you hear his voice). I admit, the initial sight of him as Streisand made me laugh.
— I thought Joe-as-Streisand’s selfish rambling was kinda funny when it started, but this kinda ran out of steam fast, and then it just ended.
STARS: **


THE POINT
Tom tells “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” to illustrate Dick’s unrelated point

— Another funny and brief Smothers Brothers routine.
STARS: ***


AUTOGRAPH
(Tom) has to make repeated trips to get Dick’s autograph for his wife

  

— A fairly interesting idea having Tom play an average joe who’s afraid to interact with Dick, who’s playing himself.
— Eh, not caring too much for how this sketch is turning out so far. Tom’s performance is kinda tickling me, but the material itself isn’t too good.
— Okay, I do like the bit with Tom trying to pose as a waiter.
— What’s with the indoor raining all of a sudden?
— Oh, it’s a follow-up to the “rain delay” bit from the cold opening.
— THAT’S how this sketch ends? Weak. It felt like they couldn’t come up with any other way to end this.
STARS: **


MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Fields of Fire”


GOODNIGHTS

  

— Nice conclusion to rain storyline.
— Interestingly, both SNL episodes that the Smothers Brothers hosted had out-of-the-ordinary goodnights. The goodnights of the Smothers Brothers’ previous episode from a year earlier had them, the musical guest, and the cast taking turns jumping off a “ledge” that had been used for a sketch earlier that night, and tonight’s goodnights take place during an “indoor rainstorm”.

IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS:
— First episode in a while that I wasn’t all that crazy about. Much like the previous episode that the Smothers Brothers hosted, tonight’s episode was hit-and-miss. Tonight might actually be the lesser of the two Smothers Brothers episodes, as their previous one at least had a few strong sketches that I gave a high four-star rating to, whereas tonight’s episode didn’t really contain anything I found particularly strong; nothing got higher than a three-and-a-half star rating from me. At the same time, however, tonight’s episode at least didn’t contain anything I found frustratingly god-awful like the Truck Driving Women and Inside Story sketches from the previous Smothers episode.
— Another kinda “off” thing about tonight’s episode is something about it strangely felt kinda sparse. Maybe that’s due to the fact that a sketch in my rerun copy was apparently removed and replaced with an alternate take of a sketch that already aired (Jazz Riffs).


HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Jerry Lewis):
— a step down


My full set of screencaps for this episode is here


TOMORROW:
Flip Wilson hosts the Christmas episode

Posted on

December 4, 1982 – The Smothers Brothers / Laura Branigan (S8 E8)

Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars

COLD OPENING
Dick criticizes Tom’s Johnny Carson impression during a Tonight Show skit

   

— LOL at Joe’s make-up as Ed McMahon.
— Joe’s doing a good imitation of the trademark McMahon laugh. By the way, this makes YET ANOTHER impression that he and Phil Hartman share.
— Sounds like Tom Smothers is not even trying to imitate Johnny Carson’s voice. Was he only cast in the role because of his strong physical resemblance to Carson?
— Eddie-as-Cosby’s rambling about ankles is very funny.
— Ah, they’ve broken the fourth wall, with Dick Smothers actually calling attention to how bad Tom’s Carson impression is. Nice twist here.
— I got a pretty good laugh from Tom’s Nixon-esque delivery of “Then I didn’t do it!”
STARS: ***


MONOLOGUE
hosts sing “Impossible Dream” & say how it applies to Moses & Joan of Arc

  

— We get a traditional Smothers Brothers song right off the bat here.
— This appears to be a serious song so far.
— I like Tom panickedly blanking when he’s asked what the song means to him. Nice to see this song is now starting to get comedic.
— Tom’s whole Joan of Arc story is really funny.
— Overall, a pretty solid Smothers Brothers act.
STARS: ***½


THANK YOU, RON REAGAN.
— Rerun.
— Hmm, I don’t remember seeing that shot of a man carrying a whole bunch of boxes for a wealthy old lady the first time this commercial aired. Is that shot a new addition to this commercial?


LEDGE
(EDM)’s wife, boss, clergyman jump after trying to talk him off ledge

       

— Eddie’s fast-paced listing-off of racist things his wife (Mary Gross) does to him is really funny. I especially liked the one about how Mary makes love to him while whistling the theme song from “Mandigo”.
— Eddie, when looking down at his wife’s body on the pavement after she jumped off the ledge: “I never seen her in THAT position.”
— Hey, it’s Joe’s musical director character from the Oklahoma sketch in the last episode.
— Haha, the brief “Oh, is this ledge taken?” bit with Tom was hilarious.
— Pretty funny ending with Eddie realizing “I don’t feel that bad no more” after his wife, boss, and clergyman offed themselves before him.
STARS: ***½


IF YOU WERE A HOMOSEXUAL, WHO WOULD YOU FIND ATTRACTIVE?
responses to, “If you were a homosexual, who would you find attractive?”

   

— Uh… wow, what a topic.
— I recognize some of these interviewees as people who were interviewed in a previous man-on-the-street segment from earlier this season. It even looks like they’re wearing the same clothes they wore in that one. I’m guessing all of this season’s man-on-the-street segments were filmed at the same time.
— Is it just me, or does the British guy who was interviewed at the end (last screencap above) kinda resemble 80s-era Martin Short in a balding wig and fake British teeth? Martin actually wears similar-looking fake British teeth in that Beatles Auction cold opening from season 10’s Ringo Starr-hosted episode.
— As usual, some funny answers here, especially the guy who’s only reason for picking Elvis is “because he’s dead”.
STARS: N/A (not a rateable segment)


TRUCK DRIVING WOMEN
(JLD), (MAG), (ROD) star in a musical set in a diner

  

— Ugh, they’re breaking out into song.
— No idea what to think of this sketch so far.
— I want to say it’s nice to see this female cast doing an ensemble sketch, but I don’t like where this particular sketch has been going.
— Okay, now that the sketch is over, I can say I pretty much HATED this. Felt like a leftover sketch from the first half of season 7, back when they annoyingly did corny musical sketches all the time (thank god that habit went out the door with Michael O’Donoghue).
STARS: *


RUBBERS
Dick uses Tom as an example of why it’s important to use contraception

  

— The electronic speaking toy’s increasingly unprofessional responses to Tom are pretty funny.
— Great twist with Dick as a “Rubbers” spokesperson using Tom’s idiot behavior as an example of why families should have only one child.
STARS: ****


HANDSOME MEN WITH BIG NOSES
BRH & GAK trade backhanded compliments

   

— Interesting how Brad and Gary are introduced as playing themselves in this talk show sketch.
— Heh, I’m liking this odd premise.
— Gary’s slowburn when Brad is breaking down his features is pretty funny.
— Good delivery from a now-angry Gary, especially him particularly taking offense to Brad’s criticism of his cleft chin.
— Judging from the polished, smooth pacing of this sketch and the way Brad and Gary are playing off of each other so perfectly, I wonder if this is another sketch they brought with them from their improv days together at the Practical Theatre Company.
STARS: ***


TV
a family’s problems rise to the surface when the television goes out

     

— This is REALLY slow-paced so far. I can’t tell what they’re going for here.
— Hmm, I don’t know about this premise. Maybe the idea of a family being lost on what to do after their TV has broken down is a promising concept and interesting social commentary, but the execution of it hasn’t been doing anything for me so far.
— I had been wondering what was up with Julia’s random… uh, bust size in this, but it ended up being part of the sketch, with Mary eventually calling out Julia for wearing an overly tight sweater and asking her “Who do you think you are, Suzanne Sommers?”
— Nice ad-lib from Julia after Mary flubs her “sweater” line.
— Overall, I didn’t care for most of this at all.
STARS: *½


PUDGE & SOLOMON
recently-unemployed Solomon refuses to accept charity from Pudge

 

— Nice to see these characters now receiving recognition applause from the audience.
— Lots of funny back-and-forths between Eddie and Joe here, even moreso than usual.
— Very touching, sweet ending with Joe helping out a newly-unemployed Eddie by sneaking him money while he’s not looking.
STARS: ****


MAGIC ACT
Tom scoffs at Dick’s magic act, they sing “It Just Doesn’t Matter To Me”

   

— Another nice Smothers Brothers routine. Can’t find anything else to say besides that.
STARS: ***


MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Gloria”


SATURDAY NIGHT NEWS
Ted Kennedy (GAK) announces he won’t run for president in 1984
PBS president Lawrence K. Grossman [real] refutes lack of stuffiness
Officer Merman (ROD) offers crime prevention tips for the holiday season
Havnagootiim Vishnuuerheer (TIK) ponders great unanswered questions

        

— Eh, not too sure about Brad’s jokes so far tonight.
— Interesting seeing Gary as Ted Kennedy, especially after I got so used to reviewing Bill Murray’s frequent impression of him in the original SNL era.
— Does Gary have something in his mouth? It kinda sounds like it, but I can’t tell.
— Gary’s overall Kennedy commentary was okay, especially the various Chappaquiddick references.
— Brad refers to a PBS fake ad that SNL did a few episodes ago, and they replay an excerpt. What’s the point of this?
— Ah, I see, it’s setting up a guest appearance from PBS president Lawrence K. Grossman, here to protest the commercial.
— Ha, looks like Grossman’s bit is going to be the classic “humorous disclaimers show up onscreen below a person while they’re speaking or singing” gag that the original SNL era often did (usually with Buck Henry or Garrett Morris).
— Oh, never mind, this Grossman bit has been going in a completely different direction after the one disclaimer (“No kidding, this really IS the president of PBS”) was shown.
— Here’s Robin Duke trying out a new character.
— Decent performance from Robin, but her commentary itself ended up being nothing special. I did kinda get a laugh, though, from her final tip encouraging us to shoot “a bearded man in boots” when he comes down your chimney this Christmas.
— The bit with Brad doing a Mr. Ed voice was kinda cringeworthy.
— The debut of Tim’s Havnagootime Vishnueerhere (and I’m sure I butchered the spelling) character, which would go on to become one of Tim’s signature bits.
— I really like this format with Tim’s character listing off various random unanswered questions. Fun premise.
— Tim’s overall commentary was solid and had some really funny lines, particularly “(regarding if the light in the refrigerator really turns off when it’s closed) How would we know? We eat the only witnesses” and the line regarding cat skeletons in trees. I’ll definitely take more of this character over Tim’s other Saturday Night News signature character, Dr. Jack Badofsky.
STARS: **


THE INSIDE STORY
(ROD) dislikes the TV movie about her killer boyfriend

— What??? That’s the whole sketch?!?! Uh, did I miss something? What in the WORLD was the point of this whole thing???
— I’m all for the underused Robin Duke getting more airtime, but not in fucking terrible sketches like this.
STARS: *


MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Living a Lie”


GOODNIGHTS
hosts & castmembers jump from ledge set onto mattress

   

— A unique and fun way to do the goodnights, with everybody taking turns jumping off the “ledge” from an earlier sketch.

IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS:
— Very hit-and-miss quality tonight, which balances out to an overall average episode. There were some good highlights, but man, the lowlights weren’t just weak; they were stuff I really hated (Truck Driving Women, The Inside Story, Broken TV). A pretty mixed bag overall, but the highlights were enjoyable enough to make the episode still worth watching.
— The Smothers Brothers had a pretty fun presence as they usually do, though it felt like they barely appeared with the cast. I hope to see them in more sketches alongside this cast in their next hosting stint, which interestingly is an exact year from this episode’s airdate (first Saturday in December).


HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Drew Barrymore):
— a slight step up


My full set of screencaps for this episode is here


TOMORROW:
History is made, as for the first and (so far) only time in SNL’s ongoing 44 years on the air, an episode is hosted by someone who’s still in the cast. SNL superstar Eddie Murphy fills in for scheduled host and “48 Hours” co-star Nick Nolte.