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And so, following the tumultuous and critically-maligned Season 6, we enter the Ebersol era! It's a period that I've been looking forward to quite a bit, considering how hyped up it's been by a lot of other SNL diehards, and the fact that a so much of it seems to have been erased from the show's sense of lore makes it all the more intriguing. We've also got a promising new class of cast members, some of whom we met on the last episode of last season: Robin Duke, Tim Kazurinsky, Tony Rosato are joined by Second City alum Mary Gross and musical theater performer Christine Ebersole, while (relative) veterans Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo helm the pack. Will they be able to bring credibility and life back to the ailing sketch program? I guess I'll have to find out for myself!
For my reviews of the previous season, Season 6, CLICK HERE! Now, without further ado: Season 7!
10/03/81: (no host) / Rod Stewart (S7 E01)
Right out the gate, Season 7 has won me over. After a quick, nasty little jab at NBC, we launch straight into a new opening montage, the likes of which we've never seen on SNL before. Instead of the cheery, colorful depictions of New York nightlife, we're greeted with seedy, black-and-white images showing the perils of the urban jungle, with barking dogs and brandished knives—"the most dangerous city in America," booms Mel Brandt, the season's new announcer. It's like a shock to the system, fueled in no small part by the return of everyone's favorite, least-favorite misanthrope, Michael O'Donoghue. While we'll be seeing more of his dark influence as the season rolls along (well, up until he departs at the halfway point), it's a bold foray into this new era, one with the wily charms of Season 6 but a newfound assuredness. SNL, once again, has an identity.
Joe is similarly severed from the pack for the most part, but the rest of the episode examines this new cast as a monolith, and despite the ultimately slim amount of material they get to perform, they make a strong case for their longevity. The night's centerpiece is a sprawling, two-parter Marilyn Suzanne Miller piece, and one of her best, casting Robin Duke as a woman struggling to dispel her clueless but blithely-committed one-night stand, Tim Kazurinsky. There's something to be said about these two: Robin is given a particularly difficult, dramatic role, especially once she hears the news that her father has died, while Tim is tasked with making an incredibly annoying character both watchable and hilarious. Both succeed and play off of each other perfectly, and they immediately establish themselves as some of this season's brightest new commodities. ("An old flame?" he asks Robin, after her incredibly distressing phone call... so many fantastic bits of dialogue here!) The rest of the cast gets a bit less to do, though they round out the second part with some fun character work; Tony Rosato in particular kills it as an uncle who wants to steal the shoes off of her dead dad's feet.
The rest of the night moves along pretty briskly, and nothing quite bottoms out. "The Clams" is the biggest blast of Mr. Mike this episode has to offer, a fine piece of character assassination on Brian De Palma; the nuns sketch between Mary and Robin, while deeply-incongruous, largely gets over on their rapport and some fun turns. Things become more confused in the last 20 minutes where the only cast member to pop up is Christine Ebersole, doing a non-comedic plea for home movies; the rest of that time is ceded by the second Rod Stewart performance (yawn?) and a bunch of guest spots. The Andy Warhol and Yoko Ono videos threaten to drain the spirit out of the building, though they're fascinating relics of their time. Andy Warhol is disconcerting and weird while discussing how he thinks the show is terrible, and Yoko debuts a music video honoring her late husband—artsy, and sometimes affecting weirdness, but an ultimate reminder of SNL's counterculture status. The best of this strange mish-mash is guest juggler Michael Davis, though, and he might just be my favorite part of the entire night. The deadpan remarks littering his act killed me, and his ability to create tension before effortless juggling three scary, sharp things turns something as dorky as juggling into a display of nonchalant badassery.
Put all of that together and you have a bit of a rollercoaster, but one that manages to hit so many of the right spots. It's satisfying to feel like SNL is teeming with life again, both in the cast and the audience, and I greatly look forward to all the craziness that Season 7 has in store! (Penned 1/19/22)
10/10/81: Susan Saint James / The Kinks (S7 E02)
With this second episode, I think I'm starting to get a better grasp on the distinct challenges, but also delights, of this season. If the premiere was deliberately a full-cylindered affront, the Susan Saint James episode feels more like the establishment of a prototype: here's how we weave our host in, how we utilize our cast, and how we structure our shows. The result is a mixed effort where the good and the bad threaten to neutralize each other, but at the end of the day, we have a model to work with. Later episodes will be both better and worse, but it's not a bad effort.
If anything, it's an effort that, in true Ebersol fashion from what I've heard, is greatly front-loaded with delights, even if what goes up must eventually come down. On the plus side, we get one of Eddie's most memorable pieces, the debut of his Buckwheat impression in "Buh-Weet Sings," hocking a record of his bowdlerized song interpretations. It's a stupidly thin bit, but every single thing works in its favor, and all Eddie really has to do to sell the bit is grin at the camera. We also get the first sketch to really be imbued with Mr. Mike's fingerprints, "Bizarro World," where O'Donoghue's floating head details an alternate reality where everything is the direct opposite. Its unnerving energy keeps things intriguing (everyone has strange face-masks and pitch-shifted voices), but it goes for a nice sucker punch when it reveals itself to be a long walk just to snicker at the concept of a president who, despite being the theoretical opposite of Reagan, is just as incompetent.
Additionally, there's a handful of fun, more character-driven pieces to help ground the night, and I'm finding that's where this season is shining. Perhaps my favorite sketch of the night, from a writing standpoint, was the piece shared between Tim and Mary, casting them as erudite former lovers whose encounter hits a snag when Mary meets his brash, skanky fiancée (played impeccably, to my shock, by Robin). It's a simple piece, but one that makes perfect use out of Tim's nerdiness and Mary's ability to pack her meek demeanor with delightful bite. ("She can take me places I've never been before!" "Yeah, well I hope they have penicillin there...") The later sketch shared between Tony and Susan Saint James is a bit lesser, but still solid; it's the best showcase Susan gets all night, and a sweet piece overall buoyed by their chemistry.
Unfortunately, the running order of the show hurts things quite a bit for me, even when I can look at how many great pieces came out of it. The hard-hitters line the front, while the back-half feels like a mild dead zone that can't maintain a sense of energy. Our new Weekend Update variant, SNL Newsbreak, is tragically no better than Update has ever been, and despite having better performers in Mary and Brian-Doyle Murray, the lethargic joke-writing drains the energy right out of the studio... and that has a near-detrimental effect on Christine Ebersole's wonderful "Single Women" musical number which follows right after. I almost feel bad; a serious, poignant musical number is not the sort of thing that you want when you're just desperate for a laugh, and that made it an uphill battle for me, but it's ultimately worth it and a wonderful showcase of her abilities. The rest of the material is less defensible; the sketches are thinner (even if "Cheap Laffs" is winklingly so), and the two short films—a long, rambling Warhol piece and a maudlin, jokeless dirge about Anwar Sadat's recent assassination to end the night—only serve to fuel the spiral.
It's unfortunate that the Susan Saint James episode becomes more of a challenge as it dies down, but hey, we'll always have that first half. If nothing else, I can say that the positive developments continue to fuel the Ebersol era's redemption arc in pretty gratifying ways, and I look forward to seeing what things will look like at their fullest potential. (Penned 1/20/22)
GRADE: B.
10/17/81: George Kennedy / Miles Davis (S7 E03)
Sometimes, it can be difficult for me to know what to give an SNL episode credit for. The George Kennedy episode is nothing if not serviceable, with a keyed-in host and a broad selection of ideas at its disposal, and I can see how it would cohere for others... but it doesn't fully cohere for me. I think a lot of that rests in the fact that, aside from a few easy winners, this is an episode that relies on your appreciation of the performances to triumph the ideas, which risk being unable to escape the timely vacuum of their creation, though perhaps that's just my young age showing—La Cage Aux Folles and the status of Marilyn Monroe in the 1980s both leave me mostly empty-handed despite the magnetism they try to offer.
That makes this episode very difficult for me to talk about overall, though I can at least highlight the pieces that landed for me. Unsurprisingly, Season 7 is quick to capitalize on the success of one of last season's few stand-out pieces, "Mister Robinson's Neighborhood," by making it recurring, and fortunately, it's the sort of piece that works within that format. They can be samey at a certain point, and this one doesn't have as much snap or innovation as the original (the puppet show feels a bit halting), but it's always a welcome sight—few things are better for a good laugh than Eddie breaking his genial demeanor and yelling a harsh, intimidating "WHO IS IT?!" through the door. He similarly smashes his way through the debut of Velvet Jones, even if this is one of the most basic characters in his oeuvre; still, getting Eddie to talk stilted about the joys of being a ho is a simple pleasure.
On the idea front, things are a bit up and down. "Spray-On Laetril" is the latest deeply dark idea from Mr. Mike, featuring cheerily-delivered lines like "I smoke about six packs a day, and frankly, my lungs look like moldy spinach!", and it works all the better for it. The fact that it's short and succinct, too, puts it above quite a few other unfortunate pieces tonight—"Jake the Hired Hand" feels like an improvisational exercise put to paper with too many ideas, while the short film of a dog licking its lips for almost two minutes feels like even more of an endurance test. Perhaps the greatest misfortune for me, though, is that the sluggish pacing of the back-half marred the Marilyn Suzanne Miller piece that rounds the night off; it's the most thoughtful sketch by a long shot, with great performances from both George Kennedy and Christine as a janitor and secretary discussing their views on life, but it's too difficult for me to be sold on such a long, deliberately meandering and non-comedic piece in a night where I was burned-out on the listlessness.
The episode, in the end, felt best summarized by Miles Davis' performance. Just as the jazz legend wandered in circles as the cameras struggled to get a shot of anything besides his back, I was left trying to observe a night that, despite my best efforts, I just couldn't get a focus on. (Penned 1/21/22)
GRADE: B-.
10/31/81: Donald Pleasance / Fear (S7 E04)
It's a bit sad to think about what a Michael O'Donoghue-helmed Halloween episode would look like, if it were allowed to exist in full force. In an alternate universe, this would be his magnum opus, a garishly grim display of his most twisted ideas: the Reagans cannibalizing Jane Fonda, a man siphoning blood from a hooker, and "The Good Excuse," wherein a Nazi whispers the justification for the Third Reich to his captors... and is let go, scot-free. Alas, these visions of dark grandeur simply weren't meant to be, leaving the episode to scramble and fill its runtime with some hastily-assembled filler bits and a strange cameo from the returning John Belushi, verblessly stepping out of a bathroom stall and looking around for ten seconds.
With that being said, it's remarkable that even a watered-down Mr. Mike episode is impressively, memorably dark, and undoubtedly the most SNL has ever committed to Halloween. It's the sort of episode that starts with the sight of Tim Kazurinsky hacking away at his own leg as blood spurts out and ends with a knife through Tony Rosato's head. Sometimes the material is explicitly silly, such as Eddie and Joe being cast as the two torturous, dueling halves of Jerry Lewis, and other times it's more directly perverse, as in Christine Ebersole's delightful country ditty about killing her husband, sponging up the blood dripping from his corpse while woefully singing: "I'm so miserable without him, it's like having him around."
I feel like this episode is also the most that the variety show aspect of Season 7 has really worked. It's something I've struggled with across the past few episodes; while I get the point of procuring such varied content, sometimes plainly comedic and other times dramatic, I have a particularly hard time getting into the rhythm with that kind of variance and knowing what sort of expectations I should bear from segment to segment. Perhaps it's the fact that this episode has such a unifying goal that, even with the scope of its material, it feels truly equal to the sum of its parts. Beyond the live sketches, there are also two delightfully macabre pretapes—one, an exercise in gory pumpkin seppuku, the other an ad for a glue trap tunnel that ensnares joggers as they fight for their lives in the sticky ooze—and even guest performer Michael Davis is able to tap into the spirit of things with a particularly fun appearance playing with razorblade-laced apples.
In a way, I feel like that sense of a shared goal also enabled one of the most daring pieces to land for me, "The Vic Salukin Show," casting Tony Rosato as the impatient host of a call-in radio show daring anonymous callers to scare him. What starts as an exercise in shitting on bad prank attempts morphs into legitimately disturbing territory: as the camera zooms in on the phone, Donald Pleasance coos voyeuristically on the other end of the line about the intimate details of Vic's family and home life before threatening to drive a meat cleaver into his brain and split his skull. After a moment of silence, Donald laughs to himself—he got one over his old pal Vic!—but as the camera pans out, we get the disturbing visual of Vic's dead, cleavered body all the same. It's the closest that the episode is able to coalesce with O'Donoghue's original vision of the episode, and it's all the more admirable for it.
What this episode will forever be most remembered for, though, is its musical guest, the punk rock band Fear, terrorizing the SNL studio with a mosh pit that gets so feisty that Dick Ebersol ordered that they cut the video feed prematurely. Fear is Fear, for better or worse, but you gotta love the sense of literal danger they bring to the show (those poor audience members sitting inches from the moshers), a reminder of the fact that Saturday Night Live is, and will forever be, a live program where anything could go wrong. Because of them, the episode was never rerun on NBC, both a shame and a bit of history that just serves to make this one feel all the more interesting. Seek this one out, if you dare. (Penned 1/21/22)
GRADE: B+.
11/07/81: Lauren Hutton / Rick James (S7 E05)
I feel like there's some recalibration I have to do in terms of how I watch SNL. As I was working through Season 6, I found that it was a lot easier to consider every episode individually; they all had their own vibes and headspaces, different strengths and weaknesses, even if that ultimately tended to amount to a lesser SNL episode. Now that Ebersol is eyeing for more stability within the show, though, it feels increasingly hard to write about every episode on a case-by-case basis. It also doesn't help a ton that the hosts this season haven't been especially prominent, which can make things feel interchangeable; rather than just being about how the host affects the flow of the show, it's about how they fold into the direction that the show has decided to take on a given week. I don't blame them a ton, though, considering that a lot of the choices this season feel rather uninspiring. Case in point: Lauren Hutton.
To her credit, though, I feel like she actually leaves a surprisingly decent impact. It's always a crap-shoot when SNL brings on a female host seemingly just to make points of how hot they are—a lineage extending from Raquel Welch in its very first season to as recently as Jennifer Lopez in Season 45—but there's a sense that the show is more willing to actually involve Lauren and allow her to use her voice throughout the process rather than simply objectify her. It's true that her being a model is never lost in the writing, but it feels like she gets opportunities to flaunt that and be in on the joke rather than be leered at. She channels her sultriness into two pretty funny little fake commercials—the "Whisper" ad for bubble bath fluid with the strength to clean even the grodiest of dishes, and the latest Cheap Laffs installment about abrasive toilet paper for manly men—and her little appearance as herself at the end of the "Reach Out" sketch, with Mary and Christine playing ditsy and disconnected versions of Brooke Shields and Cheryl Tiegs, scores some of the biggest laughs as she rails against the reductive stereotypes that the sketch enforces.
That sketch is one of the night's high points, even if it's an exercise in pretty nasty character assassination; it's just funny to have Cheryl Tiegs respond to an audience member talking about having to work at a sweatshop with machinery that killed her co-workers with a simple, vapid "I know how you feel." There's a similar and more successful dirtiness in the inaugural "Hail to the Chief" sketch, which is most certainly the most damning anti-Reagan material SNL has pulled off yet. The first-person perspective offers an incredibly unique feel to the piece, and the characterization of Reagan as a guileless yes man who thinks that his presidency is another acting role is superb. ("I think my character is getting awfully sympathetic... why would the president try to take money away from young people and poor people and kids?" he asks Ed Meese, played to perfection by Tony Rosato.)
The rest of the episode is the usual Season 7 mishmash, but it feels pretty palatable throughout and never runs out of moments of intrigue. Eddie gets to redo his signature Bill Cosby impression to greater effect than his debut, Tom Schiller debuts his latest film about a struggling French artist who screams unintelligibly at abandoned cathedrals, and special guest William Burroughs reads some clever excerpts from his latest book. (It's a bit surprising, and ultimately very nice, to hear his material so warmly received by the audience.) Throw in some badass, cocaine-fueled Rick James performances and you've got an episode that works as well as you could hope. (Penned 2/20/22)
GRADE: B.
11/14/81: Bernadette Peters / The Go-Gos, Billy Joel (S7 E06)
It's been interesting to monitor Michael O'Donoghue's influence over SNL's writing across the season. I was under the impression that the show would have a truly nasty edge to it, that he would drive SNL towards the path of nihilism; I believe it's been described as akin to a "viking funeral," an understanding that the glory days are dead and gone. But to be honest, aside from some very obvious instances of his voice splattered about ("The Clams," "Bizarro World," "Spray-On Laetril"), I've found Season 7 to be fairly mellow, daring in a way that feels less cynical than eager for reinvention. The closest O'Donoghue ever got to sculpting an episode in his likeness was the kneecapped Donald Pleasance episode... until now.
This Bernadette Peters episode is, quite flagrantly, the closest SNL has gotten to his vision of the show yet. If there's a single word I could use to describe the episode: depraved. While Pleasance may have a greater notoriety for being dark, it's a distinct sort of "Halloween scary," more morbid and grotesque than anything else. The Peters episode feels like a celebration of moral decay, a deliberate subversion on the hokey concept of a variety show that aims to denigrate at every possible step.
Take the wonderful "Hidden Photo" sketch, for instance, imagining a Candid Camera-esque program centered upon torturing those who happen to get ensnared in their pranks. It's an exercise in gleeful cruelty as Piscopo tricks diner patrons into putting scalding hot forks in their mouths ("She's expecting a bite of cool, creamy cheesecake. What she's gonna get is a mouthful of seared flesh!") and tells young children that their parents are sending them to an orphanage ("Give me the crown. I'm giving it to another little girl whose parents love her and wanna keep her!"). It's less an indictment on the show that they're riffing on and more an excuse to be beautifully, apathetically heinous. Elsewhere, we get lighter bits that are no less subversive: the next installment of "I Married A Monkey" is even better than the first (Tim's ad-libbing is put to great use with the two chimps, one of whom sprints around the set doing flips on the bed and knocking things off the wall), and another sketch derails into some pretty gutsy innuendo when the stage lights go out, attracting the ire of the NBC censor.
Bernadette Peters is sadly stuck along the sidelines for most of the episode, though all of her contributions are splendid. She's a perfect fit for the show, radiating sultry charm and perpetual gameness, and it's most brilliantly demonstrated in her Marilyn Suzanne-Miller-penned musical sketch, "Making Love Alone." It feels astonishingly risqué, even empowering; it's always exciting to see comedy with such a feminist slant in these early years of SNL, and Bernadette's commitment to the song as she details the wonders of masturbation feels less like a shot at the cheap seats than a declaration of her sexuality. (Of course, if you'd rather have the former, she also does a number as Betty Boop about venereal diseases at the top of the show... it's all about options.) Although a more difficult piece overall, I also appreciated what the "42nd Street" sketch was going for, juxtaposing Bernadette's young, naive starlet from a bygone era with the grimy underground of '80s New York. It's a good ensemble piece that thrives on the specificity of everyone's performances, and that also means it's an excellent demonstration of the strength of this whole cast. (There's also Brian Doyle-Murray in drag, which you just gotta see.)
Even if this episode isn't always agreeable, it's an episode that feels like a feat with its mere existence. I mean, this is the episode with goddamn "Nick the Knock" in it, a piece where, after Mary's fairy character recites some florid prose, Piscopo eats her spine as green blood spews all over his face. It doesn't just defy explanation; it's a fucking nightmare, and one that will never leave you. I cannot, in good conscience, have anything but sincere respect for SNL being this provocative, and even if this episode isn't to your taste, there's no denying that it triumphantly fulfills its vision. Personally, I'm happy that it does. (Penned 1/26/22)
GRADE: A-.
12/05/81: Tim Curry / Meat Loaf (S7 E07)
Sometimes an episode just doesn't connect with me, even if I'd wish it did. Such is the case for this Tim Curry hosting stint, an episode where everyone is clearly working at their highest level but almost none of it manages to translate over to me. Of course, SNL does not exist to cater to a single person who was born fifteen years after the night of (hi!), and I acknowledge that, but insofar as you, dear reader, have come over here to listen to me rant upon my soapbox... I will make my impassioned plea of defense.
It's not that I dislike Tim Curry; even with my lack of familiarity with his work, he came across as truly magnetic, a consummate professional and someone who, for the first time, Season 7 actually cares to accommodate for. There's not a moment where Curry's abilities are wasted, and that's so easy to appreciate for once compared to the sort of decentralization I've come to expect as of late. With that being said, while he was tasked with confidently carrying material, it wasn't always good. Perhaps most exhaustingly of all is "Mick!", a fake variety show hosted by Tim-as-Mick Jagger, sauntering about while introducing an onslaught of random guests. The issue is that it just doesn't work; it's reliant on very specific context and recognition rather than standalone joke-writing (see: the random appearance of Frank "YYYYYESSSS?" Nelson), and the fact that I was disinterested from the start made its extensive, 13-minute runtime feel absolutely torturous.
This is also where the episode's sequencing comes into play as a massive problem, because not only is "Mick!" the first sketch of the night, but it's followed almost immediately after by an equally-pained, ten minute-long sketch with even less substance. It's also not anything new; it's a follow-up to Tony and Tim's Italian family sketch from the Season 6 premiere with an even more extended length that they seemingly just opted not to fill. I've found Tony to be an exceptionally underrated cast member who's come through with something truly wonderful every week, but seeing him return to this old well of shtick was draining. The fact that SNL then decides to follow up these padded segments with an SNL Newsbreak is almost a joke in and of itself even if, admittedly, this is probably the best Newsbreak of the season. (Mary and Brian-Doyle spend several minutes up top criticizing their weakness as news anchors and it's is a joyously meta acknowledgement of their mediocrity, if not a solution.) I'll acknowledge that this was yet another episode slashed up by last-minute cuts and rewrites—the original centerpiece was O'Donoghue's doomed, 37-page "Silverman's Bunker," his mythical pièce de résistance casting Fred Silverman as a Hitler-adjacent figure in the final days of his disastrous run at NBC—but just because the padding has context doesn't make it enjoyable.
The remaining pieces of the night are at least short, and there's one winner buried in there: Curry's delightfully-crude and show-stealing Zucchini song, his best usage all night. (There's even audience interaction!) However, "Tim and Meat's Rocky Horror Shop" feels too ramshackle and underrehearsed to succeed as much beyond fan service, and the closing Reagan sketch is, y'know, another of those blathering political pieces that wasn't interesting then and certainly isn't interesting now. If you can get into most of these individual sketches across this episode, then you'll have a great time; if you don't, you'll just be stuck sitting through it with your eyes glazed over. It should be easy to guess what camp I unfortunately found myself in. (Penned 1/27/22)
GRADE: C.
12/12/81: Bill Murray / The Spinners (S7 E08)
Michael O'Donoghue's final episode as a head writer before he was fired by Dick Ebersol is appropriately dreary, if notably in ways that even O'Donoghue couldn't have manufactured. An NBC breaking news bulletin interrupts the last thirty minutes of the show with a startling new development: Russia has invaded Poland, and martial law has been declared. It's the death of foreign democracy in the middle of a Christmas episode, and the fact that it's followed immediately by a sketch where Bill announces that World War III is right around the corner is even more startling—you can hear the lump in his throat. After braving a few more sketches and some Christmas acapella, the goodnights conclude with Bill informing the audience of the news ("It's no joke, Jim. It's real sad.") as many of the cast members behind him openly weep. And yes, fortunately, World War III never happened, but it's no less terrifying to see the fear on everybody's faces; it feels like an episode on the verge of an alternate, dystopian timeline. If nothing else, it's a reminder that the universe has always been scary, and it always will be. To me, it's one of the most haunting moments of live television I've ever seen.
It also makes all of the darkness of this episode feel that much more disconcerting. The post-monologue sketch is about Libyan terrorists attempting to plant a bomb in the White House, followed by a sketch in which Tom Snyder has become so demented and detached from reality that he enacts his cancelled Tomorrow show upon random people who walk into his hotel bedroom. We also get O'Donoghue's swan song, "At Home with the Psychos," casting Bill as the incestuous patriarch of a family with a skinhead wife, blind ballerina daughter, and dynamite-wrapped son. It's less funny than a nightmare enacted on-stage, which for O'Donoghue is probably the perfect middle finger to end things on. Even without the breaking news, this is an episode that just isn't in the holiday spirit (musical guests notwithstanding); the news merely serves to take the somber vibes and make them even more depressing.
So what's good here? Well, I'd say the only really successful piece was the scathing musical number berating Reagan's trickle down economics, with Joe and Christine cheerfully singing to Honker about how it's better for their money to reach him through their splurging than giving him any. Elsewhere, we get some return appearances from both Father Guido Sarducci and Michael Davis, which are easy to appreciate even if neither delivers their best work... and that's sort of it. Bill Murray deserves better than this, even if some of those bad vibes were far out of his control. There's just nothing quite like a Christmas episode of SNL leaving you with more existential dread than laughter. (Penned 1/28/22)
GRADE: C+.
1/23/82: Robert Conrad / The Allman Brothers Band (S7 E09)
The Robert Conrad episode finds SNL in a bit of an awkward spot. After the preceding month's Christmas episode, Dick Ebersol decided he'd had it with Michael O'Donoghue (for reasons which I don't think require great explanation) and removed him from the show. To a lot of fans of these years, this is the point where Season 7 starts to decline, no doubt because of how meticulously O'Donoghue maintained the show's identity, and it's perhaps a good explanation for the weakness of this episode... though to be honest, it doesn't yet feel like the ghost of Mr. Mike has left the building. With that being said, it's also far from a force of good.
That's because, for all of the material in this episode that I legitimately got some enjoyment out of, it's marred by particularly poor taste. Pieces like the clunky Roosevelt sketch which paints Tim's FDR as a sly conman parallel to Nixon, or the Elizabeth Taylor dunk-fest, feel far too nasty and exploitative for their own good, especially since it's the only joke that either piece has. (That's also not even mentioning that the former includes the first instance of yellowface from Eddie, which is very unwelcome.) Elsewhere, we get another "A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney" segment that feels like an excuse to get uncensored breasts on live television—a similar trick to one O'Donoghue pulls in his Mondo Video—and worst of all, "Babies in Make-up," a pretape dressing babies up in lingerie and S&M gear, feels legitimately pedophilic. (I'm sure even mentioning that has put me on a fucking list.)
So yeah, we have all of that shit that has to be weighed against the rest of the episode, which is unfortunate considering I don't think a lot of it was all that bad. Perhaps the most fun part of this episode is how heavy it goes on Velvet Jones, sticking him into different contexts (first as the defendant in a court trial, later as the operator of an 1800's brothel in the "Wild Wild Wild West" sketch) before appearing in a silly meta bit where he declares, alongside Joe's Jersey Guy (!!), that he is formally retiring out of overexposure. I also honestly didn't hate that aforementioned "Wild Wild Wild West" sketch despite its intense runtime; it's far from a slick scene but there's enough weird character beats that I can appreciate, and which keeps it moving along compared to some of the other sketches this season of a similar length. With that being said, the best piece of the night was also the most unexpected: Christine Ebersole gets a great showcase, pretending to be her sister as she gives a deeply awkward performance of a Liza Minelli song ("Without her, I would be no one."). By the time she gets to shrill viola-playing, it borders on anti-comedy.
The over/under on this episode is very difficult for me to assess, but ultimately, the shitty material feels too detrimental and leaves little room for my opinion of it to grow. Here's hoping that the good of this episode can guide Season 7 to a better place, and that the bad can rot in obscurity. (Penned 1/28/22)
GRADE: C.
1/30/82: John Madden / Jennifer Holliday (S7 E10)
In light of John Madden's recent passing, I was very interested in seeing his episode. There's always something I enjoy about unconventional hosts in general, something the Ebersol years seems highly adept at, though bringing Madden on-board does actually make some sense: he's an energetic, charismatic guy who thrives on live television. It's a shame, then, that his episode ends up being similar to how this season goes, with Madden only trotted out in small doses and rarely having a chance to really interact with the cast.
Perhaps the excellent cold open set up some expectations that the night wasn't intent to sustain, but hey, it's a great cold open, with Madden doing post-game interviews in the defeated Bengals' locker room; for as little as I know about football, it's an exercise in delightfully perverse darkness that finds the players denouncing their religion, being assassinated for claiming it was rigged by the mafia, and hanging themselves. (Tim walks on as the coach of the Bengals, asks who the player is who's hung himself, and emphatically shouts "GOOD!" when Madden tells him who it is.) Outside of that, though, Madden merely pops up in a handful of solo pieces that are slight but cute ("Poetry Corner," or a pretape about the journey to SNL), and makes a one-line appearance in the "Betty Beer" fake ad calling Christine a bitch. If it's any indication from the hilarious story he tells about a football player WHAP-ing a $50 bill into a bathroom toilet, he deserved far more of a shot.
The rest of the night is a series of ups and downs that mostly equates to what I'd expect from any episode. A handful of pieces exist to vex me for trying to watch forty year-old SNL (the Johnny Carson and Lou Grant bits); we also get another overlong sketch, as every Season 7 episode is privy to have, in the form of the mafia names piece, though there's at least a slight bit more fun to be had here than usual. The "Uncle Tom Show" sketch fares a bit better, anchored reliably by Joe's Tom Snyder impression with solid assists from Tony's bitter Captain Kangaroo and Eddie's infallible Buckwheat. The night ends rather perfectly, though, with the debut of Pudge and Solomon, two characters I've been looking forward to seeing for quite a while. It's a fantastic display of Eddie and Joe's chemistry and their ability to deeply inhibit characters, two old men bantering by the piano at a bar. A great slice-of-life sketch mines humor from truth, and watching the two of them exchange jokes and barbs is truly infectious—something that makes the melancholy turn the sketch takes at the end all the more impactful.
One final note: this episode also features some amazing performances from Jennifer Holliday, singing her heart out like it's the last night of her life with some spellbinding songs from her Broadway musical, Dreamgirls. I very rarely count musical performances towards an episode's overall quality, but goddamn, I don't wanna imagine this episode without her. (Penned 2/252/22)
GRADE: B-.
2/06/82: James Coburn / Lindsay Buckingham (S7 E11)
It's strangely refreshing to reach a Season 7 episode that, even if not particularly close to approaching greatness, is incredibly consistent. I've come to understand each episode this season as a complicated amalgamation of ups and downs which are ultimately put at odds with each other in the hopes that the good material is able to carry things. Unfortunately, that also means that even when an episode has some stellar pieces, the sluggish portions make it feel impossible to really celebrate. That's where I can appreciate an episode like Coburn's, which feels like the sort of middle-ground outing that I'd like to hope this era will eventually be able to more regularly offer.
In a lot of ways, it reminded me of Jill Clayburgh's amicable episode from Season 3: there's nothing too daring, and it leans heavily on surefire recurring bits, but it works all the same whether or not there's much innovation. At the same time, it's hard to be angry with, for instance, yet another "Mister Robinson's Neighborhood," especially one that comes up with some nifty formula changes. Rather than being another outing in Mister Robinson's apartment, it's a lesson told in the form of a confrontation with his crotchety landlord culminating in one of his pyromaniac friends setting the building on fire. (Kudos to the intimidating, verbless extra playing his friend who refuses to key into Robinson's childlike presentation style: "I guess he didn't graduate, boys and girls!") The return of the first-person Reagan sketch is also pretty enjoyable, if not quite as incisive as the first, and it continues to be a great showcase for Tony. On the flip-side, though, "I Married A Monkey" doesn't quite work in its third installment; these sketches feel almost proto-Debbie Downer in the sense that their success banks on whether or not they threaten to collapse, and while Tim gets some great ad-libs in, there's just not enough silly antics to fulfill those expectations.
The best sketch in this episode, though, is "Those Crazy Taboosters," projecting cheery sitcom energy over a family that's deeply entrenched in incestuous relationships and other dark acts of transgression. It's no big surprise that it was penned by Rosie Schuster, a writer from the first five years who also co-wrote "Uncle Roy"; it balances its sense of perversion with an impressive nimbleness that keeps it from dragging and lets every increasingly dark reveal, delivered from the Taboosters with cheesy grins, land wonderfully. The rest of the night, for the most part, has its laughs even when the material isn't all the way there: Brian-Doyle Murray's ad for Christianized pop hits is worth a good chuckle from the lazy altered lyrics, and "Crazy Mary, Gay Jim" manages to circumvent some of the hackiness of its premise (Mary pointing out gay-signaling mannerisms within the show's host) through the power of Mary's superb, matter-of-fact delivery.
As a tangent, it's also worth mentioning the most confounding segment from this episode, and one that I have a difficult time really assessing: Christine's non-comedic song, dedicated to the other women of the cast as an indictment of the misogynistic material that they have to put up with. It's sincere in a way that feels disarming, and you can tell it comes from a place of legitimate grief, but it feels icky to consider that it made it onto the show as a mere consolation prize for those struggles, a way for SNL as a broader institution to be cutesy and self-aware about being caught in its own bullshit with no real intent to solve the problem. It's not hard to see how Christine, in spite of her incredibly strong work, would only be on the show for a season; whether she was fired or she left on her own accord feels equally damning.
But as a whole, this is a pretty fun outing for the show. I hope future episodes can resemble its strengths, and optimistically surpass them.
GRADE: B.
2/20/82: Bruce Dern / Luther Vandross (S7 E12)
Bruce Dern is the sort of figure that I'm always game to see hosting SNL. I love weird, character actor sort of guys who, while not being the most predisposed to comedy, dedicate themselves to the whims of the world of sketch comedy and channel their intensity into the material they're provided. That's exactly what Bruce does here, too; whether or not his material is all that strong (and it unfortunately, generally isn't), no failures here are due to any shortcomings on his part. Perhaps the most polite way I can ultimately phrase my take on this episode is that it makes me look forward to the next time he hosts in Season 8. Here, though, he's simply the best part of another characteristically uneven show.
There's no shortage of things that are pleasant, at least, even if very little manages to hit great territory. We get the unexpected return of "The Bizarro World," for instance, with Bruce's disembodied narrator head replacing Michael O'Donoghue's, and while it doesn't reach the scathing heights of the first, it's a pretty fun bit of satire all the same. Jokes at the expense of NBC feel rather labored coming from SNL at this point, but the formula of these sketches is able to reinvigorate the joke while allowing it to drop some wonderfully mean digs. ("We need show about Black people? Quick! Call Jewish writers!") The vaudeville songwriter sketch with Tim, Joe, and Christine was also fairly pleasant, if a bit skimpy on obvious jokes; it's just nice to see a sketch that takes advantage of all of the performer's abilities and aims for something rather distinct. My favorite piece of the night, though, was Robin's 10-to-1, casting her as a Mediterranean punk singer unraveling her personal grievances through her performance at a restaurant. I'm just a very simple person who loves to watch that woman go off.
This was also an episode that feels like it properly implemented its host, which is always a rather pleasant surprise. (I'm so used to not even knowing how to write about the hosts in my reviews!) While none of his pieces really soar, they at least give the episode a distinct character that keeps it from merging with the rest. My favorite from him would be "The Mild One," casting Bruce as a biker type who prefers to respond to aggression at his creed with utter passivity; it's a premise that risks being flat, but Bruce is so damn good in the role as he drops proverbs and subtly destroys everyone's egos that it manages to work. I also somewhat liked the ski trip sketch, which was another nice display of Mary's charm and performance chops opposite Bruce even if the pacing was a bit too drawn-out. Lastly, the helicopter sketch gave him the most room to cut loose and bring some of his trademark intensity to the show, but it sadly isn't up to all that much. I'll appreciate the opportunity.
Sufficed to say, this isn't a very good or inspiring episode, but it's okay. It's pretty much just what I've come to expect. Tune in for the stellar Luther Vandross performances if nothing else. (Penned 2/5/22)
GRADE: B-.
2/27/82: Elizabeth Ashley / Hall & Oates (S7 E13)
Sometimes, a really good sketch can just make an episode. All of the struggles before or after it cease to be as important because goddammit, we got somewhere. That's what happens in the Elizabeth Ashley episode, courtesy of the phenomenal "Girls to Women" sketch. It's a piece so perfectly-executed that's a shame that it revels in the obscurity of an overlooked era; I'd argue it's actually Marilyn Suzanne Miller's finest work, and one of the most inventive and perfectly-written pieces of sketch comedy I've ever seen. (Funny that she would pen two of her best pieces with this cast.) It starts off as a simple slice-of-life scene set in the '60s, with Elizabeth and the cast playing girls at a house party, but at the halfway point of the runtime, the sketch repeats itself, word-for-word, with all of the characters aged up. It's then that the sketch reveals the complexities and brilliance of its writing, the ways that innocuous turns of phrase from the teenaged scenario take on an entirely different meaning in the adult one. Moments like Christine's saying to tell Mrs. Connor about how Dennis Connor has been feeling Elizabeth up (implied to be his mother in the earlier scene, but his wife in the second), or Robin's exclamation of "Well, guess who finally got their period!" exude an awe-inspiring brilliance in the dramatic or comedic value that they pack. That every further rewatch only serves to make the brilliance of every individual moment all the more clear... it's like a gift that keeps on giving. What a perfect piece.
With that being said, I don't want to discredit the rest of this episode simply because "Girls to Women" is so fucking strong—while nothing else is up to that level, they're pretty routinely enjoyable. Yes, we do get an awful prolonged Update, but hey, it includes the debut of Tim's Dr. Jack Badofksy, rifling through endless puns about herpes! And sure, we also get that eight minute-long sketch where Joe plays a rock star-adjacent version of the pope, but hey... it ends at some point, so let's forget about that one! On the plus side, we get two pretty fun Eddie pieces: "Big Damn Plastic Bubble," casting him wonderfully as a pitchman ranting about how stupid it would be to buy a big damn plastic bubble to protect your house in a commercial for big damn plastic bubbles, and the sketch where he sings "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General" while holding his agent at gunpoint. (There's a lot to take in with that sketch, but the joy of seeing Eddie doing that is a simple joy.) There's also the pretty fun, female-led "Speaking As A Woman" sketch, a roundtable discussion with star actresses divulging about their kiss-and-tell novels. Such pop culture-driven pieces often struggle against the time fog, but there's a fun sharpness here that reminds me of "Reach Out" from the Lauren Hutton episode; the performances from the cast (especially Robin) are so good that they make the above-average material really excel.
Even if "Girls to Women" is largely responsible for the decent marks I'm giving this episode, I feel like it's worth noting that it's still, by and large, a fun affair. It would be difficult to expect anything less of a Season 7 episode than a few stinkers to weigh it down, but having such a phenomenal piece and some other more low-key delights makes for mighty fine leverage. (Penned 3/02/21)
GRADE: B.
3/20/82: Robert Urich / Mink DeVille, Buh-Weet And Da Dupreems (S7 E14)
It was Mary Gross who coined a series of irrelevant and unexciting host choices during the Ebersol years as "the four Bobs"—Robert Conrad, Robert Urich, Robert Culp, and Robert Blake—and given their negative reputation and the frustrations I had with Conrad earlier this season, I was very nervous about how this Urich episode would turn out. Those fears didn't dissipate, either, as the episode quickly drew parallels between our host and Burt Reynolds, who helmed one of the most dismal episodes from the original era. Perhaps it was in the spirit of that skepticism, though, that I emerged from this one largely unscathed; it's no great episode, but it's easy on the eyes.
Now, I'm also aware that the most commonly-distributed episode copy for Urich is one that suffers from rather horrid pacing issues, which I think is something to put into consideration as well. That's one of the most difficult things about the Ebersol years, I've discovered; the sequencing of sketches is a perpetual issue that can, in equal parts, accentuate the weaknesses of an episode or mask them. I can see how bumping up the worst sketch of the episode, the "Low Class Italian Theater" piece which finds Tony and co. massacring Shakespeare with some pungent stereotype work, would sour the viewing without any goodwill to help get it down, for instance. The removal of the most significant moment of this episode, as well—Brian-Doyle Murray's affecting tribute to the recently-deceased John Belushi—is also a rather unfortunate altercation. But seeing everything lined up as it was supposed to be gives things a bit more momentum, even if the sum of the episode's parts is the same either way.
A lot of my enjoyment of the episode came in the form of some rather good performances from the cast, if not always the sketches themselves. Joe Piscopo scores a particularly fun Paul Harvey impression, for instance, and while the writing of the piece itself is inconsistent, it finds a nice groove towards the end as Joe's halting delivery repeatedly cuts his script off at inopportune times; on a similar note, Tim gets to do a rather fun Dr. Strangelove impression that keeps the sluggish, latest installment of "Hail to the Chief" moving along. It's true that these solid performances also smack of missing potential, which is perhaps this episode's greatest issue—there was definitely something fun to the koala pregnancy sketch with Robin and Tony that gets tragically lost in the six-minute runtime—but at least those glimmers exist. There's also a pretty well-paced first half to the episode; even if some stuff is fairly slight, like Buckwheat's "Dupreems" act or the "School of Obedience" sketch that finds Eddie beating the shit out of Robin and Tim's grandparent characters, there's fun to be had. (Eddie ripping Tim's dentures out and throwing them out the window in the latter sketch was definitely my favorite part of the episode.)
Robert Urich is a forgettable host, though he at least gets a fun moment with his Burt Reynolds impression in the "Focus on Film" sketch. The most valuable thing in this episode is the aforementioned tribute to Belushi delivered by Brian-Doyle Murray. It's not some sort of grand gesture, and SNL isn't pulling out all the stops to get a flashy cameo or anything; it's just an intimate moment on-stage with one of Belushi's closest friends. It's the first tragic death in SNL's history, but far from the last, and it's a bittersweet moment to look back on that hits as hard now as it did then.
Everything else in this episode veers on the inessential, but it's far from the worst this season can get. (Penned 2/11/21)
GRADE: C+.
3/27/82: Blythe Danner / Rickie Lee Jones (S7 E15)
I feel as if, given the inconsistency of most Season 7 episodes, it's difficult for me to confidently say when an episode is particularly strong. There have been so few to maintain my attention all the way through; to watch Season 7 is to sign up for a season where every episode alternates between surges of energy and frustrating lulls. What makes an episode, ultimately, is the sense of momentum—how much goodwill can an episode build up, and how much can that counteract the inevitable rough patches? This episode, I think, is a great example of one that's able to weather that vicious cycle and come out on top.
Much of that is in the strength of the first half of the episode, delivering back-to-back delights without an overreliance on the recurring characters I've come to expect filling the top of an episode. It's true that we get the return of Tyrone Green, Eddie's gifted prison poet, but there's also something to be said about how wonderful his return is here. Whereas so many of recurring SNL sketches are loose, assembly line rewrites (see, even in this season, Velvet Jones and Mister Robinson's Neighborhood), this sketch is intent to cast out a different scenario entirely: Eddie is trying to rob a reclusive poet (Mary) at gunpoint, but when she recognizes him as a fan, the two read "Cill My Landlord" aloud together and form an unexpected, adorable bond. That's the only recurring piece we get tonight, and it's so original that it's nothing less than a complete joy. Even stronger than that piece is "The New Celibacy," casting Tim and Robin as a couple who mutually agree to abstain from sex... but when they realize that started out of a miscommunication, their sudden burst of horniness derails the dinner party they're throwing. It's a perfect piece for them—two of my favorite cast members this season—and they channel every last ounce of their manic energy into speed-running their dinner and sultrily eating their meals while maintaining intense eye contact.
Even if the rest of the episode can't reach those dizzying, early heights, there are some other delights that keep it marching confidently to the finish line. The latest appearance from Michael Davis was, of course, as wonderful as usual, and he's become my favorite guest performer across the past season; we also get a monologue for once, and a really fun one, with Mary forcing Blythe Danner to do impressions and slowly breaking her down for thinking SNL would be anything less than an ordeal. Perhaps the most high-profile part of this episode is the debut of Eddie's Gumby impression, though it was merely okay for me—we haven't yet found the definitive voice of the character, nor the right format (he appears here on the still-questionably named "Uncle Tom Show" opposite Joe's Tom Snyder), but there's a novelty to seeing the character in its infancy, playing to a largely untickled audience.
Season 7 continues to be an odd season, often more unique and fleetingly compelling than funny, but hey, it's just nice to have an episode that's entertaining all the way through. I don't expect that from the show anymore, but I absolutely appreciate it. (Penned 2/16/22)
GRADE: B+.
4/10/82: Daniel J. Travanti / John Cougar (S7 E16)
Daniel J. Travanti's episode of SNL is an unremarkable episode with a remarkable gimmick: will SNL viewers call a hotline to save a lobster's life, or let him be boiled and eaten? It's a wild experiment at the dawn of the consideration that television could be an interactive medium, and on a live show like SNL, the notion of leaving something like this in the hands of viewers back home is so bold that it's hard not to appreciate. Whether or not it's all that funny is debatable—I got some good laughs from Eddie's deliberately slow reading of the "Kill Larry" hotline number, and I liked the updates and little segments throughout the episode on how the votes are tallying—but how often is Season 7 all that funny anyway?
If the rest of this episode serves as any indication, things can be a bumpy ride. Kicking the night off with the debut of the Whiners is nothing if not a bad omen; hearing Joe and Robin just make the most annoying, whiney voices they can muster, propelled by the singular character trait of being insufferable, is... a choice. (I do not look forward to their nine subsequent appearances.) We also get an SNL Newsbreak that goes down like a lead balloon over fourteen sluggish minutes, and while I don't like to talk about the frequently-agonizing Weekend Updates of these years, it's impossible not to talk about them as a detractor when they encompass almost one third of the entire show. (Brian-Doyle Murray runs through a list of photographs of the Reagans waving for two minutes.) Going from that into a ten minute-long parody of Hill Street Blues, and one that offers no laughs to anyone without familiarity with the show, is even more fatigue-inducing. It's fortunate, then, that the back-half has some silly and light pieces that bring some of the energy back, even if they're not huge winners: Eddie as the tooth fairy works effortlessly, if not with a lot of inspiration, and the Reagan sketch was biting but brief.
Aside from Larry the Lobster, we get one solid sketch out of the episode: "The Merman Zone," with Tony as a celebrity impersonator casting agent falling into a mania over how everyone can do an Ethel Merman impression. It's a fun exercise in metaness, with Tony breaking away from the set and wandering through the studio like a junkie, bargaining with the SNL cameramen and crew for just a little Merman ("There's no such thing as a little Merman," Travanti says). It's not brilliant writing or anything, literally culminating with a Twilight Zone fake-out, but like the Larry the Lobster runner there's a gleefulness to it that makes it feel novel in a season that could always afford to loosen up. If only the rest of the episode was able to permeate that energy more. (Penned 2/16/22)
GRADE: C+.
4/17/82: Johnny Cash / Elton John (S7 E17)
It's always exciting to see a legend host SNL, though it's also also an occasion that I'm unsure of how to prepare myself for. It's not that there's a huge risk that the episode will be bad, unless your name rhymes with Dilton Derle, but it's hard to know to what degree SNL will resemble SNL. The best episodes of this breed are the ones that merge the reverence they have for their host with the format of the show—a category I see Desi Arnaz's joyous episode as the best example of, or Betty White more recently—but there's always a fear that an episode won't live up to the expectations placed at their feet. Fortunately, while Johnny Cash's episode doesn't end up being a shining example of this special category of episodes, it's certainly not an exception to the rule: it's indubitably charming.
A lot of that simply comes from the fact that Johnny is having an absolute joy of a time being there, and he's game for whatever they've got to throw at him. Sometimes that means he has to monologue about his love of traveling by train, or sitting unaffected as Robin shakes dandruff onto his black suit; even when a piece is simple, it works because Johnny is there and he's down to clown. The best of these pieces is also one of the most enjoyably silly things we've gotten all season, with him singing a rousing, interminable rendition of "99,999 Bottles of Beer on the Wall" to Eddie's death row prisoner, who dances along gleefully as the warden, priest, and another prisoner beg for sweet release.
Sadly, when Johnny exits the formula, his episode begins to resemble Season 7 as usual, which isn't the best thing. Nothing is particularly difficult, but it's hard to get excited about the Andy Rooney Honeymooners spoof, the 15-minute long SNL Newsbreak, or the latest "Hail to the Chief" installment (though that one fares better than others). The sole highlight of these Cash-less sections are Eddie's commentary, responding to a racist letter he received after last week's "Larry the Lobster" stunt by eating the guy on television, and the latest appearance from Jack Badosky, however much he isn't at the height of his power just yet. Still: "Wham-Bam-Thank-You-Ma'amputation." Fortunately, too, everything that works in this episode really works, and the musical performances from Johnny and Elton John (who performs an incredibly affecting tribute to John Lennon) help to further sweeten the deal. In a season that I've come to accept as inconsistent, there's something nice about seeing everyone having a wonderful time. (Penned 3/04/22)
GRADE: B.
4/24/82: Robert Culp / The Charlie Daniels Band (S7 E18)
If there was something that I could at least say about Season 7 prior to this episode, it's that for as difficult as some episodes could be, they never truly bottomed out. Even the most unenjoyable episodes had something to them that clicked, however counterbalanced by the bad: for as padded as I found Tim Curry's episode to be, he's a magnetic host who gets to perform the wonderful "Zucchini Song," and for as much distasteful material as Robert Conrad had, there was also some fun with Velvet Jones and Christine Ebersole. Unfortunately, that streak has come to an end—the Robert Culp episode is absolutely abysmal, the likes of which would make even the lowest depths of Season 6 shudder.
It's hard to say what specifically went wrong, aside from almost everything. There's no shortage of interesting premises here, but none of them cohere into something greater while greatly overstaying their welcome. I want to like, for instance, the sketch casting Mary and Tim as an egg and sperm conversing awkwardly after a one-night stand, but it feels so thinly-written and uninvolved that very little pops. A similar issue emerges in the "party girl" sketch, casting Robin as a woman who is decidedly not a prostitute so much as one who tries to give her clients some wholesome fun; Robin gives it her all as she always does, and the idea is cute, but it runs painfully wrong without strong writing to back it up.
Both of these pale in comparison, though, to the U.S.S. Cunningham sketch, a tour de force in the art of absolute awfulness. There's something great in the idea of a sunken battleship that has kept its life support operational for 19 years at the bottom of the sea, but I can't even confidently say if it "explores" that idea. It instead becomes an ungodly amalgamation of desperate nonsense that lasts for ten minutes with no assistance from the perpetually-nervous Robert Culp, who looks like he's ready to burst out of his skin. (I can't blame him here, though, considering they make him cross-dress and eat oatmeal with his hands, for no discernable reason on either account.) It is, undoubtedly, one of the worst sketches I have ever seen.
The sole saving grace of this episode is Eddie, and the most interesting thing about the Culp episode is how much it tangibly feels like a turning point for his tenure; someone shouts his name when he first walks on-screen, and the audience wakes up every time he takes the stage. As much as I disagree with some of the popular narratives of these seasons that Eddie was the saving grace of the show (this is a great cast all around), there's no denying the strength of his charisma and how it can will a moment, no matter how thin, into working. He also scores the episode's sole highlight, if a particularly bright one, with his goofy but committed James Brown-as-Annie bit, blasting through Annie showtunes with the fiery gusto of the Godfather of Soul. (You can tell how much of the act is based off of Brown's legendary performance last season, skulking around with a cape and all!) Unfortunately, it hardly amounts to a respite—this episode, as a whole, is dogshit. (Penned 2/17/22)
GRADE: D.
5/15/82: Danny Devito / Sparks (S7 E19)
I love Danny Devito, but even saying that is stupid and redundant: everyone loves Danny Devito. He's one of those rare figures who has withstood the test of time flawlessly, forever a welcome member of the zeitgeist. He just make things better, and dammit, if he doesn't do the same here: even if nothing truly succeeds on its own strengths, Danny's presence makes everything feel that much more alive. In a season packed with blank-slate hosts who seldom have the right energy, his liveliness is all the more felt.
I mean, what better testament is there to the strength of Danny as a host than the fact that he made the barely-awaited return of the Whiners not just passable, but legitimately amusing? Alongside Mary Gross as a put-upon stewardess, Danny funnels the sort of exasperated energy into the sketch that these pieces need, a gleeful counterbalance to the bullshit that Joe and Robin dribble out of their mouths. (There's no moment more satisfying than Danny, at wit's end, destroying the box of china that they made him put under his seat in a fit of rage.) The "Executive Stress Test" sketch is similarly on the verge of not really working, centered around Danny's life imploding around him on the verge of his big promotion, but Danny is the exact right sort of person to center it: he alternates between anxious and patient perfectly, and allows the scene to arrive at a graceful conclusion, if not one as satisfying as it could've been writing-wise.
I can only hope to see him become more prominent in his later hosting gigs—these Season 7 episodes never give their hosts nearly enough to do. (He sadly disappears in the second half, while at least scoring a charming appearance in another charming Pudge and Solomon sketch.) Fortunately, though, there are enough points of intrigue that the episode doesn't die the sort of slow and painful death that many other Ebersol episodes are privy towards. Tony gets an excellent spotlight with the "Table Talk" piece, demonstrating that the best way to look like you know your wine is to berate and insult the server. I feel like he was billed, somewhat incorrectly, as a Belushi stand-in, and while that never comes into fruition, those flashes of Vic Salukin energy as he scolds the waiter and then cackles behind his back offer a similarly electrifying spark. We also have the final appearance of Andy Kaufman, conducting a sit-down interview with Brian-Doyle Murray about the end of his wrestling career and showing a clip of him being absolutely pummeled by a professional wrestler. Like the rest of his wrestling act, it's not super funny, but it's an appreciably fascinating display nonetheless—the dude gets absolutely pummeled. All of that amounts to a pretty solid episode, and about all I could ever really ask for from the show right now.
One last note: Sparks! Those dudes fuckin' rock. Russel Mael doing his hyperactive rock star act and Ron Mael being a mustachioed, floppily-dancing weirdo, performing a song about Mickey Mouse? Sign me up. I haven't commented on it too much, but this has been a really good season for musical guests, and I'll always be on-board with SNL getting a group on this brazenly goofy. Less Randy Newman and more deadpan monologues about the rise of the mouse population is all I'll say. (Penned 2/20/22)
GRADE: B.
5/22/82: Olivia Newton-John (S7 E20)
The trek across Season 7 has been as exciting as it has been tumultuous, so perhaps it's no surprise that the season finale finds us in a place that feels very much like business as usual. In lieu of diving into this rather standard outing for the show, though, I'd rather take the moment to discuss Season 7 in general: I liked it, if not as much as I was hoping. It's undeniable that this season was a step in the right direction, away from both the insecurities of Season 6 and the smug complacency of the end of the original era, though in all fairness, the only real necessity to rise above those two traits is confidence. O'Donoghue spent his half of the season finding that in nihilism, and Ebersol found it in creating a formula: find some recurring bits, place them up top to give every episode a boost, and let the fates decide how the rest of an episode winds down. At the same time, though, Ebersol was welcoming of experimentation, week after week, and he never shied away from the counterculture energy that put SNL on the map. In other words, Season 7, while clearly flawed, presents a promising blueprint for the rest of the Ebersol era.
With that being said, in the moment, the Olivia Newton-John episode is rather prototypical, and aside from a few highlights, it vanishes about as quickly as it plays out. Olivia is barely a part of proceedings, even by this season's standards; for the most part, she serves as an emcee and musical guest, makes appearances as herself in the cold open and Newsbreak, and reprises her character from Grease in a short sketch deep in the back-half. For the most part, this episode just feels like an effort to amble to the finish line, which I suppose is earned—we've gone through a lot this season and it's nice to see everyone just bringing what they've got and enjoying themselves, and that spirit helped make some of the more thin pieces in the episode (the abbreviation-heavy businessman sketch, or Tony's sports organ advertisement) more palatable. We also get another "I Married A Monkey" segment, though those seem to have unfortunately run their course; aside from the surprise of the premise revealing itself, there's nothing new.
But let's focus on what really works. The Sinatra/Stevie Wonder duet between Joe and Eddie is a deserving classic and one of the finest displays of the pair's chemistry, as the two sing a comedically blunt take on Stevie and Paul McCartney's iconic "Ebony and Ivory" with altered lyrics like "I am black and you are white / You're blind as a bat and I have sight." (I suppose it's more in the delivery than the writing, but watching these two belt it out with their phenomenal impressions is such a joy.) Meanwhile, Michael Davis scores yet again with another splendid performance and one of my new favorites, with him juggling ping-pong balls and hard-boiled eggs with his mouth—the combination of his astounding ability and the infallible deadpan he laces every single word has made him my favorite special guest, maybe second to Andy Kaufman. Lastly, while not as good as the other two, I appreciated the slice-of-life sketch about Mary and Robin's dorky high schoolers interacting with the cast of Grease; I don't know much about the movie, but it's a premise that allows for some great character work from the two.
Overall, as I said, it's another Season 7 episode. I can't wait to see how Ebersol's era keeps refining itself. (Penned 2/26/22)
GRADE: B-.
Cumulative Season Rankings:
1. (no host) / Rod Stewart (A)
2. Bernadette
Peters / The Go-Gos, Billy Joel (A-)
3. Blythe Danner /
Rickie Lee Jones (B+)
4. Donald Pleasance / Fear (B+)
5. Susan Saint James / The Kinks (B)
6. Elizabeth Ashley
/ Daryl Hall & John Oates (B)
7. Johnny Cash / Elton John
(B)
8. Danny DeVito / Sparks (B)
9. James
Coburn / Lindsay Buckingham & The Cholos (B)
10. Lauren
Hutton / Rick James (B)
11. John Madden / Jennifer Holliday
(B-)
12. George Kennedy / Miles Davis (B-)
13. Olivia Newton-John (B-)
14. Bruce Dern / Luther
Vandross (B-)
15. Daniel J. Travanti / John Cougar (C+)
16. Bill Murray / The Spinners (C+)
17. Robert Urich /
Mink De Ville, Buhweet and the Dupreems (C+)
18. Tim Curry /
Meat Loaf (C)
19. Robert Conrad / The Allman Brothers Band
(C)
20. Robert Culp / The Charlie Daniels Band (D)
FAVORITE SKETCHES:
10. "I Married A Monkey" (S7E06 /
Bernadette Peters)
9. "Pudge and Solomon" (S7E10 / John
Madden)
8. "Hidden Photo" (S7E06 / Bernadette Peters)
7. "James Brown is Annie" (S7E18 / Robert Culp)
6. "Prose
and Cons" (S7E01 / hostless)
5. "The Little Richard Simmons
Show" (S7E01 / hostless)
4. "Making Love Alone" (S7E06 /
Bernadette Peters)
3. "The New Celibacy" (S7E15 / Blythe
Danner)
2. "Strangers in the Night / Strangers at the Funeral
Home" (S7E01 / hostless)
1. "Girls to Women" (S7E13 /
Elizabeth Ashley)
Other great sketches: "Buh-weet Sings" and "She's A Pig" (S7E02 / Susan Saint James); "Spray-On Laetril" (S7E03 / George Kennedy); "Jogger Motel" (S7E04 / Donald Pleasance); "Hail to the Chief" (S7E05 / Lauren Hutton); "The Zucchini Song (S7E07 / Tim Curry); "Losers Locker Room" (S7E10 / John Madden); "Those Crazy Taboosters" (S7E11 / James Coburn); "Poets" (S7E15 / Blythe Danner); "Larry the Lobster" and "The Merman Zone" (S7E16 / Daniel J. Travanti); "Last Request" (S7E17 / Johnny Cash); "Table Talk" (S7E19 / Danny DeVito); "Ebony and Ivory" (S7E20 / Olivia Newton-John).
Honorable mention: Michael Davis. I don't feel right putting any of his segments on my list of favorite sketches, but almost every segment of his was an amazing highlight in their respective shows. It's a shame that he wouldn't remain a frequent guest.
FAVORITE MUSICAL PERFORMANCES:
10. The Charlie Daniels Band (S7E18 / Robert Culp)
9. The Spinners (S7E09 / Bill Murray)
8. Johnny Cash (S7E17 / Johnny Cash)
7. Fear (S7E04 / Donald Pleasance)
6. Elton John (S7E17 / Johnny Cash)
5. Rickie Lee Jones (S7E15 / Blythe Danner)
4. Rick James (S7E05 / Lauren Hutton)
3. Luther Vandross (S7E12 / Bruce Dern)
2. Sparks (S7E19 / Danny DeVito)
1. Jennifer Holliday
(S7E10 / John Madden)
WEEKEND UPDATE: While I haven't traditionally commented on Weekend Update across every season I've watched... I do feel some obligation to speak on them a bit, since I rarely single them out in my reviews. They're a key part of the show, but so often, they're also a slog to sit through at worst, and fleetingly interesting at best. They definitely hold up the least when you're watching SNL as I am, back-to-back, becoming more of an obligation to sit through than a source of potential promise. That's also led me to developing some rather odd takes about Update, such as my appreciation for Dan Aykroyd's tenure and my boredom with the Jane/Bill pair-up. (Jane, for what it's worth, is definitely my favorite anchor so far.)
Brian Doyle-Murray is a clear step up from Charles, simply because he possesses more charisma in this position. There's a warmth to his voice, though the quality of the writing is about as good as his predecessor—no surprise considering he wrote the vast majority of Rocket and Matthius' Updates. His affinity for long lists also feels like obvious padding, and is a consistent pain in the ass to endure considering that Newsbreak already feels like a deeply padded segment, sometimes extending to the 15-minute mark in the second half of the season. That's literally a fourth of the entire show, and it unfortunately weighs down episode quality significantly. It's a bit troubling that Brian was best whenever he was hoisted by his own petard; the poorly-timed, way-too-long list from the Madden episode, and the visible heartbreak he experienced as the falling letters gag got less and less response every week were bizarrely hilarious to me. Lastly, on the note of his co-anchors, Mary and later Christine: eh. I loved them both this season, but this wasn't the best use of their abilities; Mary, at least, had a bit more of a voice that Newsbreak could play with.
But a positive note! This is the first era of the show where I'm starting to really enjoy some of the correspondent segments, which were hit-or-miss across both the original era (with its oversaturation of the same characters) and Doumanian's brief reign. Eddie Murphy's always packing heat, and Tim's appearances as Jack Badofsky have been pretty fun too, so here's hoping Update can remain a good showcase for these sorts of pieces.
SEASON GRADE AVERAGE: B-.
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