Saturday Night Live, Ranked and Reviewed: Season 12

 "What's the word on the street?"

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Having endured one of the most disastrous seasons of its entire run, SNL pulled one of the greatest tricks in its playbook: make the audience forget about last year with some dramatic course-correction. With Jon Lovitz, Nora Dunn, and Dennis Miller being the lucky (if unsurprising) few to evade the chopping block over the summer break, the show decided to match their comedy chops with a cast who would have guaranteed success with the art-form, prioritizing known talent over the botched optimism of Season 11's efforts to harness celebrity or bring alternative talent to center-stage. Goodbye, young Robert Downey Jr. and Anthony Michael Hall—welcome, 38 year-old Groundlings stalwart Phil Hartman! Farewell to Terry Sweeney from the world of cabaret, and Danitra Vance from the world of experimental theater—hello, Dana Carvey, Kevin Nealon, and Victoria Jackson from the stand-up circuit! Jan Hooks from the Atlanta-based sketch show Tush rounds out the cast, securing the spot that she initially lost to Joan Cusack the year before in one of SNL's rare examples of righting a wrong. 

It was a cast poised for success, and fortunately, as history would demonstrate, they found it. But how is their very first season? Come along, dear reader, and let's find out together!

For my reviews of the previous season, Season 11, CLICK HERE!

10/11/86: Sigourney Weaver (S12E01)

How fortunate for SNL to be able to trace Dallas' legendarily awful cliffhanger perfectly from the previous season's finale to this season's premiere. After abandoning the last cast in a blazing inferno, Season 12 begins with Madonna reading a statement concerning the entirety of the previous year: "It was all a dream. A horrible, horrible dream." With only three performers evading the chopping block over the summer (Jon, Nora, and Dennis), Lorne worked hard to vanquish the specter of the previous season's failings, and while much of the writer's room was spared, the rest of the cast was entirely reconstructed, with Lorne wisely seeking out relative unknowns with sketch experience to rebuild SNL from the ground up. Whereas Season 11 couched its intent to rebrand the show with a sense of gaudy excess, Season 12 feels comparatively stripped down—a return to basics, if you will.

It's interesting to note all of the subtle shifts the show has taken between the seasons to retool itself. The extravagant movie theater set that served as last season's mainstage has been swapped for an upscale, mildly dilapidated ballroom, and it feels like it mirrors the subtler shifts in the show's writing. Whereas last season had more of a pop culture slant, the season premiere suggests more erudite leanings for the show; what references we had to Madonna and Sean Penn's marriage in the previous premiere have been replaced by, of all things, a piss-take on Berthold Brecht and German Expressionist theater. The cast, once a scrappy gang of misfits, is now uniformly yuppie and tight-knit, too. There are some natural downsides to the fact that we also have an all-white cast, and we'll be stuck with that lack of diversity for a while, but the sheer strength from them that's already on display is hard to argue with. It's ironic that the new opening montage instates warbling television static as a significant part of this era's aesthetic; this is the first cast of the show comprised of people who were truly fans of SNL in its earliest years, and perhaps were profoundly impacted by it, and now it's their turn to run the show.

It's funny, though, how unassumingly this episode starts, especially for how much of a radical shift the cold open would like to forecast. Like the last stretch of Season 11, Sigourney Weaver is joined by a somewhat incongruous special guest who finds himself shockingly involved in the episode: playwright and long-time collaborator Christopher Durang, who looks sort of like the bastard child of Mikey Day and Jim Breuer and with whom Sigourney has... a very dubious chemistry in spite of their personal history. They set up a runner that'll pay off later with promises of performing their tribute to Brecht, and the material that immediately ensues—a confounding fake ad, and then another Tommy Flanagan sketch, none of which feature any of the season's new cast members—set the episode up to feel like a night of no great change. But then, suddenly and beautifully, "Quiz Masters" appears, debuting Phil Hartman, Dana Carvey, and Jan Hooks, and it feels like SNL surges forward in the sort of vibrant colors that we haven't seen in years.

As I was talking to my friend Carson about the previous season, he made an interesting point about how Season 11 was so frustrating because even when it found successes, there was a very low ceiling for how great the show could really be—so it's funny that one of the first proper sketches from Season 12 is immediately better than anything the SNL accomplished over the previous year. However much the continual genius of Andy Breckman (brought back as a full-time writer!) can't be discounted in the sketch's success, the true strength of the piece is in how perfectly the cast members nail their first impressions. Phil, owing to the decade he spent honing his comedy chops at The Groundlings, is absolutely incredible as the game show's genial smarmy host, milking every line for all of its worth with the effortlessness that we'd see out of a cast member at the height of their powers, and it's literally his first fucking sketch! Whereas he's a perfect anchor, Dana and Jan offer the premise its essential flavor, with Dana's smug, overeager psychic reaping the benefits of his clairvoyance for every trivia question while Jan, debuting her Marge Keister character, is left grasping at the sidelines. ("Marge, are you trying?" "Yes I am trying Bill. I don't think this is fair, he's a psychic.") This isn't a big night for Jan, but it's a nice, inaugural showcase for her ability to inhibit a compelling character and make gold out of whatever position in a sketch she holds, and the sketch's killer ending gives her a chance to show off some nice physical comedy to boot! Basically, in the span of only a little over five minutes, I've been convinced of their greatness, and I can't wait to spend the next several seasons with them.

Working off the momentum of that sketch, Dana continues to lay his stakes as the show's new breakout star across the rest of the premiere, and it feels particularly well-deserved; in these years, it's rare to see a performer who you can tell is so goddamn ebullient that he gets to be on SNL, and he channels that excitement into this episode with all his might. I'd be remiss not to mention, for instance, that he hits the ground running with the debut installment of "Church Chat." The sketch isn't quite as refined as it will ultimately become, but it's an impressive first effort that highlights Dana's ability to find memorable hooks and vocal tics in his characters, and his endless interrogation of every guest—accusing them of worshipping Satan in that classically condescending Church Lady way—is a good starting place for these sketches to continue to grow off of. Perhaps Dana's most lauded contribution to this episode, though, is the debut of his aged rock star character, Derek Stevens, who fulfills his promise to Phil and Sigourney at the record company that he has new material by crudely improvising over his incomplete material with nonsensical lyrics. It's... an alright bit, though I can recognize its significance as a watershed moment for this new era; while I prefer Dana's earlier version of the bit, where the intent is to lampoon self-serious songwriters who can sell anything with their conviction, there's no denying that "Choppin' Broccoli" is a goofy earworm that you'll never unhear. And more than anything else, even if this is the Dana Carvey episode, Phil's continued presence at the sidelines reveals how sublime he is; his legitimately enchanted facial expressions as he listens to Derek's music sell the entire premise.

For however much Dana walks away with things, though, this is a fairly solid premiere for everyone to show what they can do, which I always love to see. While Kevin Nealon is trapped in that nebulous zone known as being a "featured player" in these early years, he hits the ground running in his sole sketch appearance of the night by debuting (this is really a night of debuts!) his Mr. Subliminal routine, and it's the perfect introduction to Kevin's brand of dry celebreality as he effortlessly floats between straightforward dialogue and the blunt, subliminal utterances of his ulterior motives that enable him to get what he wants: "Mets tickets." "Company car." "Hot sex." As with a lot of other sketches in this episode, it feels like a somewhat imperfect and prolonged sketch (the last minute with Victoria felt like an easy cut considering his interaction with Jon was the clear peak), but the originality and confidence of the idea and performances are immaculate. Victoria Jackson, meanwhile, walks away with the least from this episode, though she manages to form a connection with the audience in spite of her limited presence during her Update correspondence, trying to present a home video of her daughter as footage from the then-recent Reykjavik Summit. She'll be an interesting performer to track across the next several years; I know her ditziness becomes something of a trap for her and she tends to stick to her range, but she is funny here, and I can see how her delivery could be successfully interpreted by the writing staff. There's just a strange, lingering lack of clarity to where the joke begins and ends with her, complicated by the hardcore conservative nutcase she'd eventually be known to be, and her mentioning that she's "a mother first, and a Christian second" is certainly... a moment that stings of hindsight.

The older cast, meanwhile, continues to cement their status as capable performers, even if they don't get any particularly big showcases this episode. The Tommy Flanagan sketch up top that both Jon and Nora carry feels like a nod of gratitude from the show that they carried the previous season, though it's a shame that it amounts to more of the same tired routine as usual and actively sets the night off on the wrong foot. Throughout the rest of the episode, though, they mostly lend support to the newbies, a sweet gesture to indoctrinate this next wave of performers into the show. (Jon does, however, also get to be the face of another Breckman masterpiece, "The Amazing Alexander," and even if he's simply a prop for the writing, the still images of him as a hypnotist are a hilarious compliment to the sketch itself.) Dennis Miller, meanwhile—mullet in full bloom—continues to man Weekend Update in the polarizing way that he has since last season. I've been told to be more constructive in my criticisms towards him, so I'll say this now: Dennis, like Nora and Jon, deserves credit for holding the show together. He probably deserves more credit than they do; even if I don't find any enjoyment in his distinct style, he struck a connection with the audience that no anchors before him did, allowing the segment to be defined by personality over cruddy joke-telling. Begrudgingly, I have to thank him for keeping the show afloat and leaving an impact; those reverberations eventually led to things I do like, after all. Still, I can't defend "Crocodile Gandhi."

While the moments where it feels like the cast is "arriving" are the best moments of this premiere, and they give it such an exciting sense of electricity, it's easy to forget that there's still a very odd, rough-around-the-edges episode connecting all of them together. I can see how its strangeness could complicate how the overall quality of the episode is perceived, but I found a charm in it; I love seeing the show working so hard to reinvent itself, and while the most memorable changes are the ones that make positive strides for the era in the long run, the moments of bizarre fascination are an equally-compelling part of this show's character. For instance, in lieu of a musical guest, this episode does a HARD SELL on Buster Poindexter as a friend of the SNL band with multiple performances of his unique brand of throwback, white boy blues. I don't dislike his contributions as much as others do, probably; there's definitely too much of him in this episode (reruns would wisely cut one of his performances out), but he furthers the season's agenda to have a classier feel, and I always like SNL having little specks of its variety show origins in the mix as they become more and more uncommon. Sigourney Weaver as a host is also used rather curiously. I don't think she's the strongest, even if she makes up for it to some extent with her gameness and natural likability; beyond the obligatory Aliens spoof (pretty weak) and her reprising Zuul from Ghostbusters to fun effect in "Church Chat," though, it doesn't feel like SNL has much of an angle on her skillset. At the very least, she does get to fulfill the episode-long Brecht runner by performing a portion of an old off-Broadway act, "Das Lusitania Songspiel," with Christopher Durang. It's auteur weirdness, and it's probably too smart for the room, but I can't help but appreciate it at some weird level, and seeing how much Sigourney comes to life by getting to participate in material that plays to her unique strengths as she rattles off faux-pretentious nonsense with deep conviction ends the episode on a fun note.

Going into this episode, I had a strange sense that it would be this humongous reversal from the iffiness of last season, and honestly... it's not. Season 12 still has a long way to go with finding its new identity. But this is as audacious of a start as you could possibly have in these circumstances, and it's clear that at long last, SNL has all the pieces it needs to go forth with confidence. The cast is brilliant; the writing can be dazzling. Success is on the horizon, and it's simply a matter of time as the show continues to chart its path to stability.

In other words: I loved it. It was much better than Season 11. I'm going to see it again and again. (Penned 1/05/23)

GRADE: B+.

10/18/86: Malcolm-Jamal Warner / Run-DMC (S12E02)

Malcolm-Jamal Warner is a very interesting second host of the season for me. While it feels like Season 12 is slowly revving up to some high-profile hosts who can involve themselves more substantially in their respective episodes, this early run of hosting choices feels like a bit of an eclectic mix. I suppose that's fair enough, and I can see a handful of reasons why someone like Malcolm would be chosen; beyond being able to draw in audiences from The Cosby Show, he's also not the most load-bearing presence, which means that the show can focus more attention on working out the cast and getting them comfortable as SNL's new driving force. Is it disappointing to me how that means, for the second week in a row, the host isn't the object of much consideration in the episode? Kind of. But it's smart of the show to focus more on cultivating a cast than forcing their way into the cultural conversation with high-profile stunts—one of the better lessons that Season 11 was able to impart.

Of course, it's also undeniable that this episode goes to some efforts to attract a unique, blacker audience that SNL hasn't traditionally pursued; beyond Malcolm hosting, this episode also features cameos from Spike Lee and musical guest Run-friggin'-DMC! But whereas I don't want to say that focus was ill-advised, it certainly feels awkward that the show can't do a huge amount to key into the audience those names bring along with its all-white cast. I shuddered to think that the show would do some sort of "White Cosbys" sketch because it's realistically the only move they could've pulled off for the sake of parody, and it turned out that I was half right with the show catering to Malcolm with a sketch where he imagines himself as a son of Bing Crosby on "The Crosby Show." (More on that piece in a bit.) The fact of the matter is that Malcolm ultimately isn't used a huge amount, which is a shame; while he doesn't seem like the most comfortable host (which is fair, he's 17!),  he has a youthful, self-effacing sense of enthusiasm that feels refreshing whenever he's put to task.

Either way, this episode makes for a nice companion piece to the premiere. If that episode was all about Dana, this episode is devoted to Phil and Jan, and while both (especially Phil) had certainly already proven their worth last week, it's exciting to see them continuing to come into their own and steer this week along as they so clearly can. The Donahue sketch is perhaps the first glimmer of their fullest potential. While Phil offered perfect support across the premiere, seeing him get to carry this sketch with his cutting impression of Phil Donahue—perfectly encapsulating the self-satisfied, exploitative nature of his program—is a wonderful showing that he can be as much of a star as everyone else. And while both Victoria and Nora are in the sketch to provide fun support, it's Jan who captures your eye as a guest on the show talking about her abusive relationship; the turn she does after Phil hammers in every single horrible way that her boyfriend's wronged her, going from profusely crying to doting on him with a grin on her face ("Well, you would really have to meet him!") is a wonderful, hilarious bit of acting. The sketch risks being mean-spirited or too dark for its own good, and there are moments where the questionability of its humor surrounding women in abusive relationships becomes overbearing, but it's interesting to note that this sketch was penned by Rosie Schuster, who also co-wrote the notorious "Uncle Roy" sketches in the original era. Just like those sketches, too, I think it's the expert calculation of the performances, courtesy of Phil and Jan, that help interpret everything exactly right and ensure that the provocative quality of the writing raises pertinent questions rather than being tactless or fraught.

One of the best things about Phil and Jan in this episode, though, is how many amazing displays of chemistry there are between them and the older guard throughout this episode. In the span of only two episodes, it feels like the fuzzy line separating their tenures has already been completely erased. Nora, a cast member who spent so much of last season adrift in Pat Stevens sketches or awkward supporting roles, is absolutely magnetic alongside Jan in the debut of their Sweeney Sisters, two sibling lounge singers stringing together an absolutely nonsensical medley based on the slightest bit of connective tissue across each song they sing. It's a big risk for the show to invoke the lounge singer concept after Bill's great success as Nick the Lounge Singer, but Jan and Nora imbue it with something far warmer; while Bill gives Nick his classic sense of smugness despite his low status, the Sweeney Sisters couch their tackiness in something sweet and bubbly. (Their singing is also sincerely beautiful, which helps.) Even better is the classic "Old Hollywood" sketch, casting Phil as the pompous actor Johnny O'Connor whose career, carved around jingoistic war pictures, is greatly jeopardized after WWII. It's not surprising that this was an old Groundlings piece he originally did with Jon, who portrays the studio boss that Johnny pleads with incessantly; their chemistry is outstanding, and you can tell that Jon is elated to finally have a scene partner he can really go toe-to-toe with at the show. The sketch, too, is all-around delightful, with Phil and Jon's vicious back-and-forth feeling almost vaudevillian; the beat where Jon and Phil get absolutely locked-in, with Jon hammering his points in furiously ("I think you're the worst actor I've ever seen, and I get 500 letters a day telling me the same!") while Phil guilelessly pleads for Jon to tell it to him straight ("What's the word on the street?") is one of those moments that deserves to be on every SNL clip compilation for the rest of history.

With those highlights out of the way, the rest of this episode is pretty decent, if not mind-blowing, and there's only one outright bad sketch: "The Crosby Show." I know it has a decent reputation among fans, and it's nice to see Phil getting another leading role that gives him ample room to do the comedic heavy-lifting, but the quality of the premise is excessively dubious; it already smacks of some awkwardness that this is the only way that the ultra-white SNL cast can riff on The Cosby Show as I mentioned earlier (Dana does a Cosby impression, with Cosby awkwardly being represented by a black extra's hand sticking out of a doorframe), but the questionability multiplies tenfold by basing the humor around Phil's Bing Crosby beating and abusing his children. However much the premise writes itself by replacing the classic, positive father figure of Bill Cosby/Cliff Huxtable with a famously disastrous real-life father with a similar name, that doesn't mean it should've been written, with my only laughs coming from a few odd lines and some horribly botched timing with the superimposed Cosby head in the climax. I found more to appreciate about the night's closing chalk factory piece, even if it felt a bit incomplete. It reminded me strongly of the great "Roy's Food Repair" sketch from The New Show, which makes sense given that both were penned by George Meyer; there's a fun, low-key approach to absurdity that I find very appealing, and it's complemented nicely by fierce commitment to the concept. (How they managed to coat that entire set in chalk powder, I have no idea.) Bonus points, too, for finding the episode's most clever use for Malcolm—having him play Dana and Nora's son in a piece where every performer is so caked in chalk that skin color isn't differential is an inspired, quietly progressive bit of casting goofiness.

In the end, it's a bit of a difficult episode to assess. There are some spectacular highlights, though it also doesn't feel like the most coherent episode as a whole, and there are a few points of detraction that cut at the episode more deeply than the flaws that the premiere had. (Like, for as good as "Donahue" was, putting it alongside "The Crosby Show" started the night off with back-to-back sketches about abuse, which was a difficult energy to start with.) Nonetheless, Season 12 remains immensely charming, and you can tell the show is garnering an early, promising sense of confidence. I'm aware that the next two episodes in the season might be a bit rocky, so it'll be interesting to see how this new era soldiers through them, or at least makes the best out of a less-than-ideal situation. (Penned 1/08/23)

GRADE: B.

11/08/86: Rosanna Arquette / Ric Ocasek (S12E02)

The Rosanna Arquette episode is one of the most unique episodes in the show's history, if on a bizarre technicality. With the planned October 25th broadcast being bumped due to the legendary Game 6 of the 1986 World Series running overtime and going into an extra inning, SNL was forced to do an extraordinarily late taping and package the episode up for eventual broadcast two weeks later. It's a strange, unique situation that the show had never been placed in before, and that it hasn't since—how can you cancel a show, after all, when there's a full studio audience waiting for a show? Tragically, those external factors might have been poor circumstances for the episode that finally aired. With the show filming from 1:30 to 3 AM, the cast, crew, and audience were reportedly exhausted, and the episode that finally aired was heavily buttressed by canned laughter and footage from dress that obstructed those complications to the best of their ability.  The final outcome isn't as bad as it could've been, but it's certainly a tumultuous night, and that classic "third week in a row" fatigue that SNL risks falling into feels disappointingly exacerbated.

It doesn't help too much, either, that Rosanna Arquette is a mildly confounding host. She's another reminder that just because someone is a talented dramatic actor doesn't mean that they'll lend themselves to sketch comedy, and the energy she brings feels overeager in a questionable, Laura Parsons sort of way rather than particularly strong. She also rarely melds with the show so much as using it as a chance to reiterate talking points or be sort of vain: in her monologue, she strangely skirts around direct criticism of Ronald Reagan, and in her "Church Chat" appearance, she derails the Church Lady's leading questions to express her fears of corporate monopolies and Big Oil polluting our drinking water. All of those expressions are valid, perhaps even noble, but it feels weirdly direct and earnest for a comedy show, as if the primary goal of her being there was to make herself look good on account of her beliefs. And sure, the show also casts Rosanna as herself in multiple pieces, so perhaps there's not a ton of latitude you can get out of her persona, but that doesn't excuse her bizarre musical number as a wannabe rock star singing about the divine inspiration fueling her dreams—Rosanna's singing voice ("I saw GAWWWWD!") is so rough that you bristle at it, and I'm pretty sure that it wasn't a character choice. Did she just, like, want to sing for a bit?

Fortunately, Rosanna is good in the one piece that really matters tonight: the legendary People's Court sketch, pitting her hairdresser plaintiff against Jon as Mephistopheles in a trial over his deliberate sabotage of her business. Something I totally forgot about until this sketch is that one of the great perks of having a balanced cast full of adept performers for the first time in ages is that we can have amazing ensemble sketches again, and this one lives up to its reputation. For one, it's a great way to recontextualize one of Jon's more unique recurring characters from the previous season, and I hope it's a sign that he'll find more versatile use than the likes of Tommy Flanagan (who we also saw earlier in this episode, doing very much the same thing as always). In large part, though, the rest of the cast deserves credit for placing him into such a perfect ecosystem to thrive in: Phil is cast delightfully as the unflinching Judge Joseph Wapner, quick to shoot down Mephistopheles's squabbling as if it's something he's seen a million times before ("You may hold dominion over the nether regions, but I run this court! Is that clear?"), Kevin submits solid straight work as court case presenter Dough Llewelyn, and Jan continues to build her fledgling reputation as the show's secret weapon, earning some of the hardest laughs from her portrayal of Rosanna's identically-coiffed, 33 year-old mom ("I am her mother. I am a barfly."). And yes, even Rosanna is well-accounted for, and the sketch constructs a solid character for her around the quirks she has as a performer. 

It's smart to place that sketch at the very top of the episode, but it also feels like having the peak that early means there's nowhere else for the show to go. "Church Chat" is slotted right after, which is a good position at least; while this sketch feels like a pretty uninventive rewrite of the first, the audience responds well and Dana is getting more of a grasp on the character beyond the ticks that defined her first appearance. I also quite liked Victoria's appearance as a guest who gets chastised over missing church for the first time in 14 years—quite a stretch for her, I'm sure!—and both Rosanna and Ric Ocasek have some nice moments that put Church Lady in her place, but we've still got a ways to go. It almost feels like the episode didn't plan much beyond that, though, or maybe it got so gassed-out from how late it was that it trudges its way to the finish line without much vigor; after Update, things descend into strange little curiosities, sometimes good and sometimes bad, but pretty mild all the same. 

It's cool, for instance, to see the first of Dana and Kevin's team-ups, knowing what a legendary pair they'd become in the future, though this first joint effort isn't much to write home about. I did enjoy seeing such a very grounded, slice-of-life scene, and their two lazy couch potatoes Sammy and Sammy taking turns expressing on their aspirations only to immediately dismiss them offered a fun sense of rhythm to the sketch—"That's another thing I'm nevah gonna dooo!"—but it's a bit of a tough sell on such an increasingly low-key night, however amusing their characterizations. I also liked Andy Breckman's contribution to the show, "Make Joan Baez Laugh," even if it's a lesser effort from him; Nora's self-important, humorless portrayal of Joan Baez is balanced perfectly by Phil's typically expert performance as the game show host, and Jon's impression of a young, hyperactive Howie Mandel is something that you gotta see, but at the end of the day, it's a lot of build-up to a very stupid punchline. And hell, Dennis Miller continues to elude me a bit, but I found some bizarre humor in his "Miss Connie's Fable Nook" sketch. The whole thing is a self-satisfied inside joke, with Dennis, Kevin, and Dana pitching a deliberately meaningless sketch as seriously as they could only for it to somehow get into the live show... and yet I couldn't help but grin at the visual of them hopping around in their frilly costumes, or the deliberately stilted mock-sincerity of their lesson on patience. Is it actually good, though? Ehhhh.

Further adding to the curio vibes, this episode contains two outsourced short films that comprise a decent chunk of the overall runtime. While we haven't been seeing much of it so far, this season's been making some unique acquisitions of outside material, most of which ended up being cut after dress and stitched into reruns (including a Spike Lee piece last episode, and a film starring Rupert Everett from the premiere); I guess it's unsurprising, then, that an episode whose existence already feels so wobbly would be the one where they survive their way into the live show. The better of the two pieces is Bill Wegman's "Dog Baseball," a welcome improvement over some of his previous contributions to the show that have mostly just involved making his dogs drop things, or wake up. It's still a pretty slight piece, but it feels like a more successful integration of his artistry into the show as he narrates over footage of him playing baseball against a team of dogs (very cute, by the way) in an amusingly deadpan manner: "Dog baseball can be a lot of funs if you like dogs. And I like dogs. I really like dogs." Less successful but equally dog-tastic is the bizarre, five minute-long "Pango, Giant Dog of Tokyo!" piece that ends the night. I want to find a charm to its very low-tech nature, but it's hard to pretend that it isn't just an audio comedy piece set to a montage of still images of action figures, and there's not a lot of mileage you can get out of the stilted, over-complicated dialogue and vague orientalism. Oh, and to add insult to injury, repeat versions replace "Pango" with a segment from Jim Jarmusch's "Coffee and Cigarettes" starring Stephen Wright! How come we couldn't have gotten that?

It's sort of difficult to consider this episode as a whole, because it feels like it's barely holding itself together; perhaps it deserves credit that it was able to be pieced together at all, and that it managed a few highlights regardless. It also deserves some applause that, despite this being only the third episode for much of the cast, everyone rises to the challenge as best they can—I feel as if, watching any of the sketches in isolation, you wouldn't be able to tell that the complete package was made under such difficult circumstances. But sadly, as a whole, this episode simply doesn't come together. Here's hoping the next episode can feel a bit more rejuvenating! Who's hosting? Oh... (Penned 1/12/23)

 GRADE: B-.

11/15/86: Sam Kinison / Lou Reed (S12E04)

Sam Kinison. The sin sergeant. The diabolical disciple of depravity. The paunchy prince of perdition. While I haven't talked about him with all that much detail throughout his previous appearances on the show, I'm sure I've made my opinions of him abundantly clear: I'm no big fan. I can buy, to some extent, that you just had to be there, and I can see how a stand-up whose entire act is built upon being an affront to nature, screaming and whipping the audience around and casting himself as an overall menace, would be revelatory. By the standards of these modern times we now live in, though, he's simply exhausting to watch, and while I don't want to predicate all of my thoughts about him as some effort in "virtue signaling" or whatever term people throw around to protect themselves from criticism, his attitudes towards women and whatever other topics of the day feel unignorably retrograde—if he pushed comedy forward, he also did so by exploiting everything that held the culture back. However much his influence is undeniable (just listen to how Joe Rogan lavishes his praise!), that doesn't mean I have to enjoy him, and this episode finds him on his absolute worst behavior.

Also, in light of recent criticisms of my writing, I feel obliged to apologize now for any mean-spirited, low-hanging comments I make in my review about Sam Kinison. I know it's disrespectful; he certainly never punched down, ever, about anything, especially women or gay people, in his act. And certainly not in this episode.

Sam's attachment to SNL is interesting in general, and while I think he actually slotted into the chaotic, disorderly vibes of the previous season in a fair enough way, it feels outright weird for Sam to be hosting the show by this point. Even though it's been less than a year, the way the flavors of the show have changed are stark—Sam makes no sense at all up against the likes of Phil, Nora, and Jan, and it feels actively perplexing for him to be flanked on every side with performers of their caliber. That lack of any connection between the cast and the host is all the more emphasized by the tug-and-pull spanning this entire episode between the more high-brow nature of the hostless material (one glaring exception aside), and how increasingly mind-numbing Sam's appearances become. There's been a lot of awkwardness over the last three episodes with SNL trying to ingratiate itself with its hosts, though this episode takes the cake: with such a limited performer, all Sam does in all of his sketch appearances is build up to screams, if there's even any building up to do.

I'll give it to him that it works one time, in the parent-teacher conference sketch, casting Sam as a kindergarten teacher who bluntly disparages the stupidity of Kevin and Jan's daughter. It's not an elaborate piece, but it feels like it actually understands how Sam could be used in the context of a sketch, giving him ample room to build up his aggression before exploding as he's contractually obligated to do, and he actually plays the role well up to that point. I'll also go so far as to say that Sam's a decent, charismatic performer when he exercises restraint, and he's able to execute this sketch with the sort of delightfully cruel edge that nobody else in this cast could manage ("She's only four and a half though." "Hey, I know how old Stupid Sarah is."). If Sam were simply a special guest who did some stand-up and played along for this sketch, I think this episode would've been more successful; one fun showcase for Sam is quite frankly enough, and he emerges from it looking pretty good. The issue is that he just... keeps doing that same thing, over and over again, every single time to diminishing returns until the episode is finally over. 

Case in point: the goodwill of that sketch is immediately destroyed by his next appearance in "Love Connection, which would legitimately rank for me among the worst sketches the show has ever done. For one, Sam's performance in this as himself is so awful that he actively devolves into pathetic, screamy self-parody. Whereas those screams that made him famous might have been legitimately feral in his earliest, unjaded years, by this point they have no substance, subtext, or legitimate emotionality—they're a labored affectation, all bark and no bite, and he performs them for the sake of appeasing his audience in the same way that a circus seal honks horns for fish. What really makes this a stinker, though, is the horribly degrading way that it uses the women in the cast, all as objects of Sam's ridicule, and while the sketch vaguely justifies Sam's misogynistic murder/suicide threats on account of a horrible date with Nora, the reason said date was so horrible—that she's a lesbian who raped him to impregnate her wife—is... I mean... just fucking read that. It's truly a race to the bottom to figure out what the worst sketch in the show's history is, and while I can't say there's a definite position, it's hard to think of that many other sketches that are more actively objectionable of the groups they're punching down upon. It's an even bigger crater than the one that meteor left behind in the half-written Krypton sketch that puts this episode out of its mild misery.

I say "mild," though, because however complicated this episode is, it isn't truly a bust. Season 12 still seems very focused on its cast over its host, with a lot of hostless material highlighting their new talent, and while for the most part I wish that we could see the weekly hosts be more actualized, such material in an episode like this is basically a saving grace. And rather uniquely, this episode boasts a lot of firsts for the era! Perhaps most excitingly, we get our first true commercial parody sketch, and our first use of Phil in one of his most famous roles, as the spokesman for a fundamentally bizarre product. In this case, it's the Adobe, "the sassy new Mexican import that's made out of clay!", and it's such a perfect inaugural fake ad that demonstrates the strength of the show's writing—one of my favorite things about these seasons, from what I've seen, is how adept they are at executing silly ideas with expert craftsmanship. (My favorite parts of this one: the easy repair process of molding the dents out, and the tennis players exiting the car with clay stains down their backs.) We also get our first of these seasons' penchant for black-and-white, old Hollywood-style sketches, "The Jungle Room," debuting a trio of semi-recurring characters: Jon's power-hungry, crooning gangster Eddie Spimozo, Kevin as his abused bartender Charlie Loomis, and Phil—his face perpetually cast in the handsomeness of a bygone era—as private detective Chick Hazard. It's not a sketch that strongly spells out its jokes, but it's such undeniable fun seeing everyone inhibit their characters so perfectly and play off of each other; it's a lovely homage with dizzyingly frenetic energy, and Jon's performance of "Fascinating Rhythm" makes for a great, unexpected capper. The dude can belt! Perhaps it's no surprise the performance would play over the credits of his Best Of DVD.

There's also, however, a rather unfortunate first for the cast here: our first horribly offensive yellowface sketch, since this episode, in a quest to find something even worse than what Sam Kinison could offer, also makes the first appearance of Ching Change! Dana, in his love of a good catchphrase, has stumbled upon the absolute banger of "Chicken make lousy housepet!" and decided to craft an entire hoary stereotype sketch around it that would go on to recur seven more times! But maybe he deserves more credit. My friend Eddie mentioned that on Mad TV, Alex Borstein created her memorable character of Mrs. Swan as a tribute to the way her grandmother talked and acted; maybe, in a similar vein, Dana's grandfather was an Asian man from a WWII propaganda poster. I don't know. It's a shame, because I do enjoy Dana a lot as a performer, and there are some decent moments on the page, but everything is couched in such a laborious exercise in distastefulness that I have to wonder why any of this was ever okay, and why it would take until like 2014 before we all unanimously agreed that it wasn't. All I have to say is, Ching Change make lousy recurring sketch!

As with the previous episode, this one is hard to balance out. Sam Kinison is a humongous source of detraction who sours the screen the more that longer he's on it, and some horrifyingly regressive material (Ching Change, Love Connection) drags the season to its lowest point so far, but perhaps it's a testament to Season 12 that the worst it can do at least has a couple of lovely bright spots to take away from it and make the journey a little easier. And if nothing else, this episode offers one of the greatest reprieves in the show's history: after flaming out hard across a full episode, we will never have to see Sam Kinison in 8H again. There is a god, after all! OHHH, OHHHHH!! (Penned 1/15/23)

GRADE: C.

11/22/86: Robin Williams / Paul Simon & Ladysmith Black Mambazo (S12E05)

In this episode's "Hamlet" sketch, Robin Williams is cast as a surrogate version of himself, "Sir Robert of Wiltshire," brought onto Shakespeare's latest project as an actor who improvises his way through the playwright's work as a Robin Williams is known to do, much to Jon-as-Shakespeare's chagrin. On the night of the big performance, there's a moment of disconnect between Shakespeare, glowering at Robin's hyperactive desecration of his tightly-written play, and Paul Simon as a stuffy critic, gleefully cracking up at all of Robin's shenanigans with the rest of the crowd. I think that moment kinda speaks to the disconnect that I feel with Robin Williams in general—if I don't hold him in contempt, I feel like the adoration of his comic stylings others have is almost entirely lost on me at a certain point. He's a fine performer, and he's certainly got energy... but he's arguably energetic to a fault.

While Robin is leagues better than Sam Kinison was last week, I feel like this episode has a lot of the same general issues of the host being unable to compromise their voice for the show's well-being. It's refreshing, to some degree, considering that Robin's hosting gig is the first time we've had a host this season who fulfills the modern idea of what an SNL host is by being a sort of nucleus for its sketch content, but having a host with such a specific mode has its own set of hurdles. For however much this week is happy to play at Robin's level and give him crowd-pleasing vanity pieces that cater to his perpetual state of hyperdrive, it starts to run its course before the show is over as his inability to be anything but larger than life actively hinders the material's success. Things just become... fatigued, and unassisted by his level of commitment.

That's where I think his Season 9 episode was actually a hair better; since Robin wasn't leaned on too heavily, the episode had a healthy counterweight that made his presence feel more enjoyable. To some extent, this episode has a counterweight, too, in the form of adorable lil' Paul Simon! I'm glad that he was able to parlay his musical guest spot into more of a shadow host position; while their energies are wildly at-odds with each other, it's nice having someone as dry and relaxed as Paul to tone things down as needed. That presence helps a lot, and I loved all of the ways he got involved in this episode—the post-monologue sketch where he recognizes increasingly more random people he's encountered over the years (someone who drove him to the airport once, someone who attended one of his concerts), only to be stumped by his old musical partner Art Garfunkel, was a delightfully self-deprecating piece—but there's only so much Paul can do to temper down Robin Williams at the height of his manic energy.

Just because Robin is careening out of control this entire episode doesn't mean that it's entirely bad, though; it's only around the halfway point that things start to struggle. The cold open, as far as political cold opens go, is pretty solid, casting Robin as a doddering President Reagan whose use of an earpiece to be fed answers during a press conference goes haywire when it picks up interference, causing him to indiscriminately spout whatever feed he's picking up. It's as strong a use of Robin's imitation skills in sketch form as there ever was, and while it lacks any satirical bite (wait for next week's episode), it succeeds off of its playfulness and skillful performance. The aforementioned Hamlet sketch also works pretty well, and it's probably the best actualization of Robin's energy all night; these sort of anachronistic pieces are never high art (Don Rickles did some Shakespeare of sorts in his episode, too), but they present an inherently amusing framework for the host to thrive in, and where them being out-of-step with everyone around them is the point rather than a weakness. Jon's straight man work as Shakespeare is perfect, and Phil makes the most out of his role as the play director who's giddily taken by Robin's improvisations, and while there are some annoying moments that perhaps hold a mirror up to Robin's bag of tricks (the "fag bit," mm...), I think it also functions as a metafictional piss-take of his overall style and its limitations. If 'Sir Robert of Wiltshire' has a wide, populist appeal in the sketch and brings the whole house down with his crowd work and ad-libs, he's not a particularly sharpened instrument... and indeed, that rings true across everything else.

I think the most frustrating instance of Robin's energy is in the episode's Master Thespian sketch, "And So, Adieu," casting Robin as a director who gets increasingly frustrated by the Master Thespian's inability to execute his final line. On one hand, it's simply not that great of a sketch; it's an exercise in repeating the same joke of Jon flubbing his line over and over again, and the different ways in which he messes up aren't particularly novel. The success of these sorts of boilerplate sketches then falls upon how the performers enhance it, and while both Jon and Phil are suited well enough to the concept, Robin suffocates the atmosphere completely with his bombastic, blunt force style, leaving little room for his anger to meaningfully escalate. (At one point, he's so loud that the audio is actively clipping, which isn't too pleasant.) Robin similarly doesn't plug in at all to this episode's Sweeney Sisters sketch. While the gist fortunately just involves using him as a bookend, leaving Jan and Nora to do their act as amusingly as ever, Robin has such a broad, borderline-incomprehensible characterization of an old Jewish man that the sketch's attempts at a sweeter, more bittersweet tone as he duets with Paul Simon make the sketch's over-extension feel almost grueling.

For me, the most successful parts of this episode were the parts where Robin simply... wasn't around. And while there's not as many hostless sketches in this episode as usual, they're all strategically-placed across the episode to offer some nice moments of reprieve from Robin's shtick. My pick for best of the night would be Phil's advert for the "New York Word Exchange," offering pointers for how to invest in specific words for maximum profit as if they're stocks. If there were ever a contender for "most Season 12 sketch ever," this one would be up there: it's the most preposterously abstract, cerebral idea you've ever heard, but Phil's affable pitchman sells the concept perfectly, and it's filled to the brim with delightful details that grant the whole thing a surprisingly deep level of realization. (My favorite little joke was, in response to a letter sent in concerning the value of "tommyrot," Phil suggests selling it to a collector. "Try Dick Cavett!") Kevin also gets a few minutes at the end of the episode to do his thing, and as usual, it's a blast. For me, he brings to mind both Rich Hall and Harry Shearer—this piece offers up some well-realized, simplistic prop comedy delivered with a very particular dryness—but Kevin has a uniquely neurotic touch, as his attempts to demonstrate the importance of maps get sidetracked by all of his struggles with their limitations. 

As a whole, though, this episode isn't bad, but I didn't connect with it as much as I would've liked to due to the overwhelming power of Robin's presence. We've yet to see an episode this season that really hits things out of the gate, but I know that this cast and writing staff has the potential; everyone's having a lot of fun, and there's exceptional pieces every single week. It's just a matter of finding the right host to make an episode feel like a complete success. (Penned 1/27/22)

GRADE: B. 

12/06/86: Chevy Chase, Steve Martin, and Martin Short / Randy Newman (S12E06)

Has there ever been a more star-studded event in SNL's history than having Chevy Chase, Steve Martin, and Martin Short—three of the most beloved names in the comedy at the time, and two of the most beloved names in comedy of all time—hosting Saturday Night Live at the same time? It's really hard to say. But with the trio hot off of the Lorne Michaels-produced film The Three Amigos, and with SNL on the quest for validation in its latest era, it feels like a moment of perfect synergy. With that, though, comes immense expectations, and given SNL's recent track record with co-hosts, I was fairly nervous going into the episode that it couldn't possibly live up to its promise. And ultimately, in some ways, it doesn't... but since the final outcome is the strongest episode of the season so far, there's only so much I can really complain about here.

To some extent, part of the thrills of the show is how naturally exciting it is to see all of these people back at SNL, and that thrill can offer a lot of latitude. (See: the recent episode in this current season that was also hosted by Steve and Martin.) But there's also a lot of curious issues with regards to balancing all three of them; while the most successful, conventional co-hosted episodes have relied on the chemistry between the people hosting—and these three certainly have chemistry—they're very rarely put together in scenes so much as alternating as the special guest from sketch to sketch. This ensures that all of them get at least one spotlight moment, but it also feels underwhelmingly disproportionate in some areas. Aside from anchoring an Ed Grimley sketch, Martin Short especially feels wasted in the episode, with all of his other appearances being largely interchangeable roles. On the other hand, it's interesting how Chevy comes across as the most traditional sort of host in the episode, happily getting involved in pieces that place him on a more equal plane with the show's current cast. This is probably the best that Chevy's ever been returning to the show, quite frankly; between his recent, very public trip to rehab and being flanked by two more gifted co-hosts, he comes across here as appreciably humbled and shockingly warm.

Most of all, though, for however much all three of these comedy titans hosting SNL at the same time is an indisputable part of its appeal, even the episode itself is quick to acknowledge that Steve Martin's return to the show, after a five-year absence (barring a brief cameo), is the most significant part of it all. It's the return of the golden child! While it may not have been that evident in 1986, too, Steve would be the most enduring link to the show's original era, and the only legendary host from the first five years to ever make consistent returns. In that sense, I think he's one of SNL's most significant legitimizers, and here in his first hosting gig since Season 5, he's a cause for great celebration. The monologue alone is one of the most ambitious monologues that the show has done since those years, exploding into an extravagant musical number where, after a brief anxiety attack, Steve musters his confidence and parades around the studio with the cast, through the audience bleachers, and into Lorne's office while declaring, "I'm me!" It's ironic that it's perhaps only been forgotten by time because it would eventually be bested by Steve's legendary, similarly-ambitious "Not Gonna Phone It In Tonight" cold open a few years later, but that doesn't make this one any less delightful; it's a perfect play on Steve's self-aggrandizing comic persona as he cheerfully espouses that the mere act of being himself—"the me-est me there ever was!"—is more than enough and leaving Chevy and Martin in the dust, boredly playing checkers on mainstage while waiting for him to get everything out of his system.

Not only is it a fantastic way to kick off a show: it also kicks off what is, for my money, one of the greatest first halves in the show's entire history, a magnificent treasure trove of hit after hit. The block of three sketches after the first commercial break, especially, launches things into a delightful fever pitch, giving all three of the night's hosts their biggest spotlights of the episode. While it's perhaps been forgotten in the annals of time, the couch cushion sketch is both a perfect use of Chevy constructed around the brilliant, simple observation that gosh darn it, the strangest things fall between the couch cushions sometimes! It's a perfect opportunity for Andy Breckman to run wild, as Chevy's desperate search for the channel changer has him pulling out handfuls of pens, a bunch of moldy bananas, his family's long-lost Matisse painting, and the skeleton of their old pet cat ("She's gonna need your love now more than ever, son.") among other things, all while Chevy masterfully understates every new discovery in his signature deadpan. Martin follows up the sketch with the episode's biggest crowdpleaser, reprising Ed Grimley as he gets into a fight for his life with Jon's Mephistopheles. It's certainly not the greatest Grimley sketch there ever was, and a lot of its beats felt like simple reprisals of things we've already seen before for the audience's delight... but watching Martin saunter around is an inherently delightful exercise, and bringing Mephistopheles into the sketch is a clever angle to bring the character into this era of the show—watching him cower in fear as Ed raises his framed picture of Pat Sajak against him ("So sincere! So honest! So filled with decency!") is such a perfect little moment of interplay. And after that, we get Steve's "A Holiday Wish," one of the show's perennial holiday classics! It's a completely flawless monologue that ranks for me as one of the best things that Steve has ever done for the show, and it also feels like an interesting marker for the subtle shift in his persona as we enter the 80s; his loopy overexuberance has been widely usurped by a more precise, buttoned-up faux-pretentiousness, but there are still little moments of relapse—when he revises his wishes to prioritize vanquishing his enemies, who should "DIE like PIGS in HELL"—where that flame of goofballery burns beautifully eternal.

After a decent performance from world-class goober Randy Newman, too, we get one of the most famous, celebrated sketches of this entire era, "President Reagan, Mastermind!" It's a complete reversal of SNL's moronic, incompetent caricature of Reagan from the previous episode; under Phil Hartman's interpretation, Reagan is a heartless tactician, going about his duties as if everyone surrounding him is dead weight that exists to take the fall for his immoral actions. ("Mr. President, you're going so fast, there's still a lot about the Iran-Nicaragua operation I just don't understand." "And you don't need to understand! I'm the president. Only I need to understand. Is that clear?") His doddering geniality is nothing more than a ruse to ingratiate himself to the public; while he puts on a happy face for a little girl who gets to meet him for selling the most Girl Scout cookies, as soon as she leaves and the door to the Oval Office shuts, he screams "BACK TO WORK!" and all of his ineffectual Cabinet members scramble back into the room for the dirty work to recommence. While it does run a bit long in my opinion, its length isn't at the expense of some more fantastic details, like Reagan's lack of legitimate care for his old pal Jimmy Stewart (Dana, debuting an impression that would come to good use two weeks from now) and his international phone call in flawless Arabic. SNL always has an obligation to be responsive to the times in which it exists, and it's rare to see the show be so cuttingly responsive even when its political material is enjoyable; this stands as one of their greatest satirical efforts of all time, made all the more impeccable by Phil's vicious performance. (He's only been at the show for six fucking weeks! What a legend.)

After that, though, the episode starts to lose momentum, and while that string of hits ensures that this is a good outing for the show, none of what remains really moves the needle. That's not to say that everything is all that bad, even if a few things are. While the Dennis and Chevy team-up during this week's Weekend Update seems to have been received poorly by some other people who have written about this episode, I actually found it more charming than usual. The quality of the jokes is bad, and Chevy is generally unassisted by the writing, but I never expect to laugh during Weekend Update all that much anyway; this is a partnership of two of SNL's greatest don't-give-a-fuckers, and their shockingly robust chemistry ensures that they're both fueling each other regardless of the rough material that they have to work through. Chevy also slots in pretty well to this episode's Church Lady sketch, which interestingly breaks format and takes the character out of her usual talk show format. It's a fun approach, bringing her into a more low-key scene where she's interacting with the people in her community, and while it's not the most amazing sketch ever, it's an enjoyable novelty, and Chevy is in good form as the local minister bearing the same sort of superiority complex. (We also get the debut of Church Lady's superior dance, which is a riot.)

In terms of what doesn't work, though, we get the night's biggest disappointment, "The Eggshell Family." The premise isn't the worst, centering on a family where every social interaction between them or anyone else is very apprehensive (like walking on eggshells, get it?) but the issue is that it makes no interesting choices, and its only vaguely redeeming quality is that it's competently performed—which makes Steve and Martin's presence, for as hard as they try, feel like even more of a waste. We also get the season's first Pat Stevens sketch, which I wasn't really dying to see, and it doesn't even have any of the hosts in it, either! Instead, the subject is Filipino politician Corazon Aquino, very awkwardly impersonated by Jan... and she's not nailing this, which makes the routine feel even more halting. (Her attempt at a Filipino accent sounds Spanish by way of Minnesota.) The final sketch of the episode also features an inexplicable cameo from Eric Idle, teaming up with Dana as two British customs officers who assume any object that is concealing something—a fold-up chessboard, a chocolate box with two layers of chocolate—is actually a contraband. It's not bad, per se, and Dana and Eric have the sort of delightful chemistry that makes me wish this wasn't Eric's final appearance on the show, but it's surprising how much a surprise appearance from Eric Idle could be quickly forgotten.

As a whole, it's actually kind of surprising that this episode feels worse by the end than it actually is; I almost wonder if it would be better served by a running order that wasn't as top-heavy, since the back-half feels a bit like an afterthought. Even if it's an imperfect episode, though, its triumphs are completely undeniable, and it's such a pleasure to see all of these familiar faces back in 8H, doing what they do best without simply riding on the coattails of their nostalgia. While Martin sadly won't return to the show again for another decade and Chevy's later appearances don't seem particularly promising, it's so great to have Steve back at the show, and I can't wait to see how he clicks with this new generation of comic talent. (Penned 2/01/23)

GRADE: B+.

12/13/86: Steve Guttenberg / The Pretenders (S12E07)

I think that there are two things true of Season 12. One is that, while the writing is not uniformly better (they're ramping up for sure), having a better cast able to properly execute it makes a huge difference. At the same time, though, even if they make the bouts of frustrating material more palatable, that doesn't suddenly make said material great; if anything, it becomes equally tedious seeing the talents of the cast wasted on questionable or lackluster content. I don't begrudge the season that things have been so up and down, of course. This is the start of a new era, following the tremendous failures of an aborted reboot, and the fact that it's working as well as it has been for the past few months is nothing short of a relief. With that being said, I feel that episodes like this are still very much on the table: despite clear effort, this one doesn't quite work.

I wonder if a part of that has to do with a sense of cruise control. Last episode was an all-hands-on-deck endeavor to accommodate for three beloved SNL figures, and next week's William Shatner-hosted Christmas episode would prove to be catnip for the show's nerdy writing staff to activate. Steve Guttenberg, by comparison... is kinda just an affable host, an up-and-coming actor with adequate comedic chops. The fact that he was previously a special guest in Lorne's ill-fated The New Show further augments the very low-key feel of his presence—he's just a guy in Lorne's rolodex having a moment and filling an episode slot. That vibe holds true through most of the material, where he blends in with the cast just fine but who doesn't necessarily possess the charms to enhance the material he participates in. It's a shame, too, because a lot of the material is... rough to say the least.

Certainly not helping this particular episode is that it starts with a string of particularly frustrating, frequently-fraught content that soured me on proceedings before we even hit the first musical performance. The cold open, spoofing the Iran-Contra affair, has the entire male cast donning Middle Eastern garb, and while it's clever enough to maneuver around the prospects of everyone doing questionable accents, we do get some embarrassing, faux-Arabic chanting from A. Whitney Brown, which is perhaps even worse. (The substance of the cold open itself is pretty much as you'd expect a political cold open from 1986 to be: topical, dry, and not particularly interesting.) We also get a commercial pretape for "McSooshi," a mildly interesting cultural artifact pointing towards sushi's gradual indoctrination into Western vocabulary; in execution, though, there's not much of a joke to it beyond the idea of McDonald's serving sushi, and the oriental riff brings a queasily racist vibe that makes it feel more like cultural gawking than anything else. Most confounding of all, though, is the sketch casting Steve as a pushy gay man attempting to coerce or dupe Jon's blind man into having sex with him. If that premise sounds like a hurdle... yeah, the show isn't really able to turn it around, even if it's a very effortfully-written piece with aspects I cautiously appreciate. I can see the intent, with the sketch veering into preposterously cartoonish territory as Steve finds more farfetched ways to stage his exit before climbing back into Jon's bed (and all of Jon's screams of "Ohh! Ohh!" as he foils Steve's attempts are amusing), but the goofiness of its presentation can never override its very troubling conceit. 

It shouldn't be too surprising that the sketch attracted criticism from both the gay and disabled communities at the time, which I think is worth bringing up; I've had some awkward conversations with my dad about old SNL material that he's been quick to vaguely defend on the grounds that "it was a different time," but the fact that mainstream culture was more willing to tolerate and defend such content is hardly a reflection of it being, at some point, okay. I think that's important to highlight, especially in regards to my contemporary assessments of dated material—just because we have more foresight now doesn't excuse a lack of foresight then. This sketch was a bad idea, despite its clear, more light intentions. Moving on.

There are also two recurring characters this episode, and I think they're interesting to compare. The more obvious crowdpleaser of the two is the return of Derek Stevens, though it's also the less warranted. I think there's actually a decent amount of ingenuity to the main concept of the sketch, with Kevin's marketing manager pitching him the idea that he should literally die to boost his sales, and there's an especially dark edge to Phil criticizing Derek's idea of faking it as "just a little bit dishonest" and actively plotting his death at the very end. The issue is that while it grants the skeleton of the sketch a sort of form that the initial installment lacked, it's at the expense of an equal crescendo: ultimately, Derek just does a half-assed song again, and one that uses literally the exact same melody as the memorable "Choppin' Broccoli" song from the first. (I do like the minor easter egg that his "cold as ice" verse is actually from the original incarnation of Dana's act, at least.) That just makes the sketch feel flat and derivative, because despite some refreshing ideas it fails to spice up the one reason why Derek Stevens is being used. On the other hand, this episode rewards Jan's periodic Maggie Keister character her own sketch, and while it's exceptionally understated, it fares a lot better. You can see how the character benefits from being able to move around different formats, whereas Derek feels confined; the main hook with Maggie is simply her genial, Midwestern charms, so putting her into a slice-of-life sketch with Phil as her equally-sweet but slightly clueless husband makes for a nice bit of world-building. The comedy of the sketch itself is rooted in simple observation, with them struggling to find common ground with their daughter's (Victoria's) new boyfriend, Steve Guttenberg, due to their very outdated awareness of pop culture, but after a run of very dark or questionable content, the sketch's warmth and universality feels even more valuable.

The back-half offers some pieces of intrigue, though nothing too special for the most part. "The Back Page," a black-and-white sketch about a news agency tasked with writing the most inessential stories in the newspaper with the same level of panache as the headliners, is pretty fun if eerily dead-feeling; I like how everyone fills out their roles (Dana and Steve have a fun chemistry as two fledgling, competitive writers, and Phil is great as the cocky head honcho who can punch up their headlines in his sleep) but it feels like it's almost too smart for the room, and the hesitant audience response makes it conjure bad memories, perhaps unfairly, of The New Show. There's also a fairly interesting short film in this episode, Tim Robbins' fictitious biopic of Bob Roberts, a folk musician who functions as a right-wing response to Bob Dylan for the conservative yuppie crowd—no big gut-buster, but a unique piece with a satirical bite that would later be expounded upon in Robbins' feature-length adaption half a decade later. My favorite sketch of the night was the incredibly short casting director sketch, where Kevin's mindless hand gestures while on a phone call are misconstrued by Victoria's auditioning actress as requests for certain physical movements. It's yet another sketch that speaks to Kevin's playful celebreality, discovering the sort of ingeniously simple idea that makes me red with envy as a comedy writer, and Victoria displays some delightful physical comedy chops as she sways, rolls, and obeys all of his accidental commands.

I'll also take this moment to recognize that this is the final episode that Penn & Teller appear on SNL as special guests, and considering how valuable they were to the previous season, it feels like a bittersweet, "ships passing in the night" sort of moment for them to check into the show one last time as it continues its ascent into the second golden age. I never talked about them much throughout my Season 11 coverage; while that's perhaps an oversight, I usually have a hard time figuring out how much to accredit guest performers for the quality of the show considering they exist more outside of it. That's probably also fueled, to some extent, by my disinterest in them. That's not to say they haven't done some very cool tricks in their previous appearances (the upside-down segment they did in the Ron Reagan episode is fantastic), and I'll give them a lot of credit, too, for steering the art of the magic trick into a darker and more cynical place. They were also quick to experiment with using technology in pretty forward-thinking ways as they do here. I've just... never quite cared for the tonality while acknowledging their talent and inventiveness. Case in point: this performance of theirs, once you get over the premise of them basically burning NBC's money by using state-of-the-art technology for an exceedingly simple card trick, you're still left with a card trick. At the very least, it's an appropriate send-off for them to go all out as they do here, and seeing them anchor a sketch with a large swath of the cast, who trot out their best impressions while filling out freak show archetypes makes for a pretty fun parting novelty.

While this episode simply doesn't come together in the end, it's pretty much the exact kind of episode that I like analyzing the most: it's a low-key return to normal after a very high-effort outing for the show, and it's perhaps writerly to a fault. Caked between two celebrated episodes, it's been relegated to the fate of being a valley between two peaks, and while I don't think this one rises much to the occasion, it at least serves as another affirmation that the season—even at its most mundane or tired—has some spark to it. (Penned 2/07/23)

GRADE: C+.

12/20/86: William Shatner / Lone Justice (S12E08)

I'm always cautious, during my watch-through, when it comes to approaching beloved episodes of the show. I don't like playing expectations games at all, because the worst thing you can enter an episode with is any assumption of quality. And yet it's sort of difficult not to when hitting upon an episode which, in the history of SNL, feels so quintessential; as someone who devotes a lot of time to analyzing old SNL, I think reputation and cultural footprint are fair metrics to view the show through, even if that can sometimes lead to an underwhelming viewing experience. I say that because, even if—spoiler alert—the William Shatner episode isn't the flawless Christmas classic that I was anticipating, it's a particularly enjoyable one, and in the context of this season, perhaps even a bit crucial.

I think the source of most of my issues, however unfair it is to the show, is the degree that I already know the episode. Its best moments have been reduced to soundbites in greatest hits compilations, and its greatest twists have been etched into the show's lore. I always approach vintage SNL like an archaeologist: I love making discoveries, being delighted by things I would've never expected, and reassessing material which has been long forgotten except by the most diehard fans. So when I'm presented with an episode whose greatest moments are things I already sort of know, there's immediately less luster. I try not to let that get in the way, obviously, though it can still be an uphill battle. Take this episode's famous monologue, for instance, turning into a recreation of a Star Trek convention where William Shatner inevitably tells the nerds who have come to see him to get a life. The best touches are the ones that were snipped out of the highlight reel: everyone's nerd characterizations are great, and I love the stranger details like Kevin's obsessed fan basically quizzing William not on the show, but on how many Saddlebred horses he has on his horse farm when he already knows the answer. ("Is that including the colt that was born earlier this week?" "That mare had a foal?" "Tuesday.") The big twist of the sketch doesn't land as strongly now, though, because even if it's the OG "Hey nerds, get a life, stop living in your parent's basement!" joke... it's still a pretty low-hanging bit whose impact has been rendered little more than an easy cliché by decades of regurgitation. Even so, points for walking so that The Big Bang Theory could run I suppose, and as a window into vintage nerd culture that was clearly written from the place of dyed-in-the-wool Trekkies in the writer's room, it's a unique novelty.

I was similarly saddled by certain expectations from this episode's other most famous piece, the lost ending to It's A Wonderful Life. What I can say about it upfront is that, on paper, it's brilliant, replacing the affecting final moments of the Christmas classic with a beatdown of Mr. Potter, the evil banker who was responsible for plummeting George Bailey into financial ruin. I love that transgressiveness wholeheartedly, and I love the level of commitment that everyone gives to their performances—Dana's Jimmy Stewart is perfect, obviously, but Phil's raving Uncle Billy is just as fantastic. Unfortunately, it's a sketch where knowing the twist leaves more to be desired in execution rather than being a gift that truly keeps on giving. Maybe it's the maniac side of me, but I hoped to see the Potter beatdown go even harder—when you pull out a dummy, I wanna see it get mercilessly flung around! As it stands, the framing of its big moment feels sort of un-dynamic (it's not really satisfying seeing Dana do wrestler moves on a dummy that's not in the frame, and all the noise of the sketch muffled audience response and took away from the potential energy) when it could've been gleeful anarchy. Still, I can't be too upset with it, and the rest of the episode was able to meet my expectations pretty readily.

Of all of the episode's most famous sketches, "Star Trek V: Restaurant Enterprise" worked for me the most, positing the next movie in the Star Trek film series to be about the Enterprise being purchased by Marriott and turned into a theme restaurant. I'm not overly-familiar with the franchise but it's the sort of parody sketch that doesn't really require it; all of the subversions on the series' formula are plain to see, filtering Star Trek's standard story beats and distinctive brand of sci-fi through the amusing mundanity of operating a dining establishment. Phil's Dr. McCoy alarms Kirk of difficult customers with the sort of urgency that suggests he may never see Kirk again; Kevin's Spock uses his penchant for logic to clarify customers' confusion about the menu; Dana's evil Kahn exacts revenge by simply siccing a health and safety inspector onto the Enterprise, and Kirk triumphs over him with a bribe. The best part of it all, though, is seeing production designer Leo Yoshimura back in the Sulu costume from all the way back in the first season, enduring some delightful meta jokes about how much he's aged out of the role. ("Oh my god, what has happened to you!? Look at you!" "We all get older, Khan.") There was also some joy to be had from the Sweeney Sisters reiteration here, which is apparently something of a classic from its frequent use in Christmas compilations from the era; it's hard for me to really tell them apart in quality, but these are always a lot of fun, and there's an especially good run with Jan and Nora singing "Carol of the Bells" in that classic, Sweeney Sisters style.

The rest of the episode is largely forgotten, though as you could probably assume from my earlier comments, there's no complaints from me there: those obscurities made for some of my favorite discoveries. Even though it's undoubtedly the most low-key sketch of the night, the bathroom sketch with William and Nora might just be my favorite. It feels like slice-of-life material is slowly becoming less of a norm at the show, which is a shame given how gifted the cast would be at translating it. Perhaps it's also telling of that decreasing value for slice-of-life content that this is the only sketch that writer E. Jean Carroll got on the show (and she leaves after this episode too, bizarrely); it clearly pulls from the same sort of astute observations that would define her more prominent, future career as an advice columnist, which makes me wonder what other refreshing material she could've contributed. I'll appreciate that we got it, at least: William performs the hell out of it as a wildly narcissistic husband posing at the bathroom mirror and giggling in delight at his own image ("Look at that butt. That's a tight butt, honey. That's a YOUNG BUTT, and I've got TWO of em!"), and Nora offers a perfect counter as his nonplussed wife who's simply focused on getting ready for the party that they're about to attend. Elsewhere, Kevin contributes another stellar solo piece, recounting twisted Christmas memories from his childhood with an increasingly maniacal glint in his eyes ("Over the river and through the woods... that's the way my grandmother used to drive."), and the night rounds itself out with a darkly humorous pretape where (surprise cameo!) Griffin Dunne is subjected to the merciless incompetence of several people in his life before dying in an electric chair. Happy holidays, 1986! 

In the end, while this episode isn't one of the greatest ever, it's one of Season 12's most decisive wins yet, and as we slide into the winter break, spirits feel high. I'm not sure what to expect of the second half of the season, but in the wake of having to reconcile with lofty, slightly unrealized hopes here, perhaps that's for the best. While this has been a slightly inconsistent season, the cast is in place and the writers are in sync—we'll get somewhere soon. (Penned 2/17/23)

GRADE: B+.

1/24/87: Joe Montana and Walter Payton / Debbie Harry (S12E09)

Athletes and SNL, a combination for the ages! Living in a post-Peyton Manning era, it's interesting to look back on a time where a sports star hadn't really proven a distinct ability to crush an SNL hosting gig without already having any comedic pedigree. It's not that I don't see the appeal; I get the enjoyment of working with someone who can compensate for their lack of acting experience with enthusiasm, and athletes tend to be very unfussy team players within the realm of sketch, a mold of host that SNL frequently benefits from. As hosts, Joe Montana and Walter Payton fall somewhere in the middle of the pack: if they don't frequently inspire the greatest material and have some stumbles, they're game participants who certainly don't embarrass themselves either. This episode can be challenged by their presence, but it's mercifully unchallenging as a whole.

Make no mistake: you won't discover Joe or Walter have any hidden talents, but wisely, the show doesn't really coax them away from their comfort zone too often. Is that an unadventurous thing to do? Perhaps. But it's in SNL's best interest to ensure their hosts look as good as possible, and neither host uses that for ego tripping so much as just trying their best in material designed to hold their hand. This tends to manifest itself in pieces where they appear as themselves, left to do some straight man work opposite of the cast working overtime to be funny around them. Walter is forced to endure a conversation with Tommy Flanagan as he discusses his former pro football career at a bar, while Joe participates in the sort of contractually-obligated light hazing that athlete hosts always get in the NFL Today sketch, where Kevin's Brent Musberger plays footage of a humiliating tackle over and over again. The best of those offerings is this episode's Church Chat, which also feels like the first installment of the recurring sketch to be firing on full cylinders. (If you ever needed proof that it was an official hit, just listen to the healthy dose of applause and gleeful screams Dana gets for all of his telegraphed catchphrases.) While there are some very easy jokes about the homoeroticism intrinsic to football, Joe and Walter are so relaxed here that they make them feel breezy instead of labored, and their little football demonstration at the very end—with Church Lady running into the audience to catch a pass from Joe, and celebrating her victory with a group superiority dance—is a lively crescendo. 

The moments where the hosts are given more to do are where the episode takes greater risks, which sometimes pay off and sometimes don't. I think Walter unfortunately faces the brunt of it with his "Michael Jackson Workout Tape" sketch; he's the lesser host of the two for sure, and giving him a sketch where he's the only driving force while having to do a vague attempt at an impression leaves everything feeling very stilted. Joe similarly struggles in the United Way piece, but he also walks away with this episode's biggest victory, the classic "Sincere Guy Stu" sketch, perhaps one of the most definitive examples of SNL being able to work around the limitations of their most wooden hosts. It's also a strong example of Season 12's more conceptual school of writing, framed around the idea of Phil and Jan's two lovers attempting to be coy with one another while voice-overs uncover their truest intentions ("I could talk to you for days. [Gee, I'd like to jump her bones.]")... only for the kicker to be Joe entering as Phil's roommate, a man with a simple one-track mind who—in a world full of ulterior motives and two-facedness—simply believes all of the genial things that he says ("Oh, I hope I'm not disturbing you. [I hope I'm not disturbing them.]"). It feels like a far more obvious idea for Joe to simply be brash and unreserved, but the choice of him instead being so pure that he foils Phil and Jan's hookup plans because he simply cannot take a hint is far more clever. Kudos to Joe, too; this is such an unsuspecting and straightforward role, and as a very unsuspecting and straightforward person, I hesitate to think too many hosts who could've sold the material as brilliantly as he sells his polite mention that he'll be upstairs masturbating.

The rest of the episode, as is customary for Season 12, is comprised of sketches that aren't particularly host-driven (if featuring the hosts at all), which tends to offer a reliable counterweight. While the short but succinct "Crack Achievers" pretape deserves mention for all of the gleefully dark crackhead antics of the cast (Kevin bites a coffee mug, Jan strangles a small dog, and Dana's gymnast spins around the high bar until he spontaneously combusts), this episode is all about Phil Hartman, who enjoys one of the best episodes of his tenure so far. One of my favorite sketches of the episode was the debut of one of Phil's less-appreciated recurring characters, Mace, offering Phil a fun opportunity to play with a very different, more aggressive, lowly characterization than usual. Kevin's hostage, repeatedly failing to wrestle the gun out of Phil's hands and pitifully conceding after every botched attempt, also offers Phil both a great scene partner and a very entertaining game to the sketch as every scheme to turn the tables fails and drives Phil to an even higher level of insanity. ("This is a GUN, pal. It's got BULLETS in it! BANG BANG!") I also really enjoyed the return of the Jungle Room and his private investigator character, Chick Hazard. In an episode that was frequently steeped in sports-related humor, it's kind of wild that there would be a sketch built firmly on noir pastiche and elaborate world-building, but I love SNL's interest in creating an elaborate running storyline for Eddie Spimozo and friends. This installment also brings about some rather delightful additions, including Dana as Eddie's brother Joey (a good chance for Dana to work "I oughta pound you!" into the third episode in a row, naturally), and Victoria's sketch-stealing musical number as a troubled teen trying to get employed as a singer at the Jungle Room, despite being woefully tone-deaf, puts things delightfully over the top. 

While there will always be some inevitable frustration from outings of the show with weak hosts, this episode ultimately feels like another example of how much this cast is able to carry the show along regardless of what cards have been dealt. The fact that they were at least able to score a few decisive wins for Tony and Walter, and reinforced the episode with some strong material less reliant on their participation, ensures that while this isn't a particularly great night, it's as harmless and occasionally-enjoyable as SNL should generally strive to be. (Penned 2/20/23)

GRADE: B-.

1/31/87: Paul Shaffer / Brue Hornsby & The Range (S12E10)

It's always odd to me that, other than Chevy and Bill being semi-frequent hosts up to this point, none of the other core names from the original cast has ever been brought back to host... and yet Don Novello's was rung up, and now Paul Shaffer. Of course, Paul's return to 8H is tied to his success as the iconic bandleader for Late Night with David Letterman, something he's arguably more recognized for than SNL, but that connective tissue still feels a bit farfetched. (One wonders if he's here as a mild consolation for Dave being unable to commit to the show.) Paul's time at SNL was interesting; while he was always a recognizable, cherished member of the original house band who frequently got roped up in the show's antics, and being brought on as a cast member during the tumultuous Season 5 seemed like a natural progression of his place at the show, he's more charismatic than dynamic. He brings to this episode what he brought to that season of the show: the desperately-needed presence of a recognizable face, even though he was never really predestined to do sketch comedy in the first place.

And that's not a bad thing for a host to be. Plenty of hosts have gotten by on SNL by being fun to watch, regardless of their limitations! Where this episode fails is that it's simply not a very good outing for the season, and Paul is the sort of host who can't do anything to make the material that was written for him better. He was best served when he simply got to be himself and do what he's good at, scoring a real foot-stomper of a monologue with his SNL-ized cover of "Dirty Water"—aplomb with go-go dancers and a wicked G.E. Smith guitar solo—and the sweet, wistful piano ballad that closes out the night. (I'll return to that later on in the review.) Still, perhaps it's telling of all the other things in this episode that the most my face lit up was seeing him jam with G.E. Smith's band in the lead-up to a commercial break.

That's because the more proper sketches that fill at the rest of the episode were, to put it lightly, a disheartening bunch. Our big post-monologue sketch, "What's My Addiction?", is the latest edgy stinker courtesy of Franken and Davis, and tellingly, its existence barred this episode from ever being rerun. (A mercy killing given the episode's quality? Maybe.) Perhaps there's something satirically indicting about the idea of the fictitious game show, with Betty Ford trotting alcoholics out and letting a distinguished panel of substance abuse-suffering celebrity guests take guesses at what their ailments are, but I feel like even that gives the sketch too much credit; it simply wants to play dirty and punch down without finding a legitimately incisive spin to justify its concept. The sketch with Paul underscoring a night of sexual conquest with synthesizer stings works a bit better, and it gives Paul his best chance all episode to charm something into halfway working, but it doesn't really get over either once you're hit by the fact that his musical accompaniment is realistically the piece's only joke. 

The back-half of this episode also suffers a truly devastating one-two-three punch of fraughtness. As much as I love bringing different sketch character together, this episode's Sweeney Sisters sketch is horrendously bogged down by the choice to merge them with Ching Change for Chinese New Year, with Paul in tow doing some wince-worthy yellowface work himself; following that up with a Woody Allen sketch as a chaser is actively nauseating. The Spanish-speaking "Mexican Kidney Association" sketch completes the trifecta of fuck, though its unfortunate placement undercuts that it's one of the night's more interesting pieces—I like these sort of sketches that are fueled by context clues in the writing, though bizarrely, some of its best jokes don't scan without being able to understand all of what's being said. (Phil's pitchman saying treating donating a lung as the same thing as donating a kidney is the best joke, and it's glossed over entirely.) Perhaps it's a bit damning that the best proper sketch in the entire night is an iteration of The Pat Stevens Show, though in all fairness, it is a pretty good installment. Paul's baldness is just the right topic for Pat to superficially obsess over ("Well, it crossed my mind a couple times..." "I know, it's the first thing that crossed mine when I saw you."), and Phil's aggressive Charlton Heston impression lends everything the right sort of energy and escalation to rival the droll pattern these sketches tend to settle into.

The most interesting moment of the night, though, and the only moment that's really worth tuning in for, is Paul's musical number that rounds out the night, recounting the history of Saturday Night Live to the tune of "It Was A Very Good Year." I always find it fascinating to see SNL reflect on itself and its history, especially with as much earnestness as it does here; it's a fascinating time capsule that also says a lot about how the show, even though it's only a bit over a decade in, has always been subtly reconstructing its own past. The failures of Season 11 go unspoken, but some grim piano chords underline the entrance of Jean Doumanian into the show's canon; likewise, the bulk of the Ebersol era is glossed over, though Fernando gets a nod because 1985 was a broken year. Eddie Murphy's lauded as the show's great savior, while Joe Piscopo has already been turned into a laughingstock who "snuck into" Eddie's golden years. Perhaps the most amusing symptom of the times for me is that even though we're at the doorstep of what would go on to become one of SNL's most stable and beloved eras, the only thing Paul can say about it so far is, "That liar guy's a hoot!" We've still got a ways to go, inevitably, as this pretty cruddy episode points towards.

SNL will always have its fair share of morale-crushing episodes—and I, ironically, am writing this review on the heel of that trainwreck Woody Harrelson hosting gig—though I still have to wonder why things didn't work out super well here. This season is usually pretty good at ensuring that a few strong pieces are snuck into even the weakest hosting efforts, and Paul certainly isn't as difficult of a presence as some others we've had so far even if he can't sell a sketch beyond what's on the page; maybe we're still dusting the cobwebs off after the holiday break and breaking everyone back into the show. Either way, I hope this episode's struggles are more of a fluke than a bad omen. (Penned 2/26/23)

GRADE: C-.

2/14/87: Bronson Pinchot / Paul Young (S12E11)

Another week, another tough episode to get a pulse on! In the same way that I tread lightly upon the most lauded episodes of SNL, I approach the most notably disliked ones with some level of caution, and while this isn't exactly a notably bad outing in the grand scheme of SNL's history... it's certainly not well-liked. There's something about this episode that doesn't quite work, and it's difficult to parse what exactly that is. A lot of other people who have written about this episode were quick to point a finger at our host, Bronson Pinchot himself, which I both agree and disagree on in equal strokes. My awareness of Bronson as an actor is almost exclusively limited to his minor but beloved role as the effete, ambiguously-foreign gallery assistant Serge in Beverly Hills Cop, though that role also seemingly serves as a microcosm of his career; he cut his teeth across shows that took advantage of his knack for accents, and he's hosting this episode ostensibly off the success of a primetime sitcom (Perfect Strangers) where he starred as an Eastern Mediterranean shepherd navigating a new life in the US. All of that is to say that, while Bronson has a clear shtick, he's someone with a level of comedic ability that should be incredibly applicable to success on SNL. Unfortunately, the show greets his skills with a certain level of ambivalence that often yields deadening outcomes that seldom feel proportionate to the amount of effort that Bronson is clearly expounding in his performances.

At the same time, though, it's also true that he's a very curious presence. Compared to the affability other hosts have brought to their episodes this season, Bronson feels strangely aloof and enigmatic, and it's difficult to assess what kind of person he is. I think that's caused some people to label him as a wet blanket, but that also forgoes that he's a very committed performer across this episode who weaves through all of his material with a chameleonic sense of efficiency and versatility. I'm left more to wonder, at the end of the day, if the only reason he looks sort of bad here is because SNL sets him up to fail—and the fact that his monologue has such a bizarrely sour and impersonal tone to it instead of letting him show any degree of playfulness or enthusiasm feels rather indicative of those struggles.

He's used most effectively in the only sketch really worth taking away from this episode, "Amerida," a timely spoof of the controversial miniseries Amerika that ponders the ramifications of US society in the event of a Canadian takeover. Regardless of its topicality, it's an evergreen bit of silliness and satire in two pieces, presenting both a scene from the alleged series and an ensuing discussion on Nightline, helmed by the debut of Dana's Ted Koeppel, regarding its plausibility. Truthfully, the first half is the better half—I love Phil's gruff patriot who refuses to accept the death of the American way as readily as his wife and daughter (which is especially entertaining, since Phil's a real-life Canuck)—but the denouement gives it more purpose and breadth, with Koeppel's panel offering some amusing insights while poking holes in the entire miniseries' weak conception. Al Franken's Henry Kissinger is the most entertaining here, denouncing Amerida's execution as "just stupid" at every turn, but Bronson also makes for a very amusing Carl Sagan, and Kevin's Brent Musberger, perpetually hocking CBS, rounds the panel out nicely. Unfortunately, all of the episode's attempts to give Bronson more of a leading role are a real struggle to get through. The return of Serge should be a no-brainer, and pairing him with Nora's Babette character isn't a bad idea, but it stretches both of the characters' shtick far too thin and suffers from a meandering beginning that never pays off; meanwhile, the hardware store sketch has far more structure to it, with Bronson's Italian gigolo failing to seduce Jan's always-welcome Marge Keister, but the sketch as a whole is so goddamn slow that it never justifies its peculiar set-up.

The confused nature of the episode is further confounded by the frequent inclusion of its special guest, supermodel Paulina Porizkova. If Season 12 no longer advertises itself with the same sort of baffling co-hosting gigs that defined the second half of Season 11, it's no less inundated with special guests that fulfill the same purpose: Paulina isn't a co-host by mere technicality, despite being all over this episode, and never to its benefit. I'm not opposed to her presence so much as I'm opposed to SNL's characteristic inability to use an attractive woman as anything more than eye candy for the audience to lust after, a sentiment which is borderline incompatible with humor. Case in point: the show tries to posit the idea of "The Life of Golda Meir" as vaguely heady, but the joke is literally just "Look at how seriously we're pretending to take this, when the joke is that Paulina is pretty but the real Golda Meir was uuuuggly!!", which is both distasteful in concept and cumbersome in execution. The Sports Illustrated sketch is more direct about its leering nature, though it's not particularly interesting either aside from the children actors doing some amusingly broad reaction work to the pictures in their magazines. Perhaps most bizarrely of all, she appears in the very superfluous second installment of "Miss Connie's Fable Nook," which seemingly exists to make the show's continued insistence on more Derek Stevens sketches seem worthy by comparison; it's probably the best that Paulina does all night as a princess who refuses to smile, and there are a few good moments (Kevin's Lebee being "giddy for two years" after getting a smile out of her made me laugh), but there was no need for Dennis to dick around like this again after already proving his point.

Beyond that, there's not much else to this episode; it's very insistent on the special guests doing their things, and it never reaps the benefits of their involvement. Bronson works his butt off, but is never channeled in effective ways, while Paulina's presence was entirely unneeded and made an already-shaky episode worse. If it lacks some of the wilder swings that the last episode had, its relative strength solely rests in its plodding feel. The show's gotta do better than this... (Penned 3/05/23)

GRADE: C.

2/21/87: Willie Nelson (S12E12)

After a handful of episodes with strange vibes, it's nice to feel the show returning, ever so gradually, to a stabler place. While this is an episode with lots of peculiarities, it's one that finds charm in the occasional lack of slickness rather than feeling difficult—and in that sense, it's the sort of episode that reminds me that SNL, despite churning out some solid entries into this season already, is still in a state of metamorphosis. If tonight's episode doesn't have the sort of host who can effectively shepherd the show and bring out its best, too, Willie Nelson brings about a certain warmth and pureness that makes for an especially cozy hour of sketches and cute miscellany. How could I possibly complain about that?

While there have been plenty of eras where episodes have risen and sunk by the virtues of the person hosting that week, it's nice to see that this next iteration of the cast is very much able to hold their own without the need for a strong nucleus. Willie Nelson is a good example of someone who's enjoyable by the power of their sheer likeability, but who isn't necessarily the strongest fit for the show; despite the fact that he's ostensibly promoting his latest movie, Willie's really in the building to offer his musical abilities and overall magnetism rather than to anchor the episode's more comic elements. Subsequently, this episode follows the trends of previous weeks by bringing in a special guest, but trounces the characteristically jarring selections of the past with Danny friggin' DeVito! 

If Danny and Willie feel like an odd coupling in concept, in practice, Danny's involvement lifts the good vibes this episode already had going for it to hitherto-unseen levels of delight, and he's a smart grab to help carry out some of the night's heavy-lifting alongside the cast. He's particularly well-served in the sting operation sketch, portraying a mafia man hoping to record his mob buddy's next scheme for the police... only for Danny's mic to record them celebrating his horrific criminal record in casual conversation instead. It's a simple premise, but Danny is the perfect subject for the piece's escalating absurdity, wincing and ineffectually coughing over his friends' remarks about all the police he's killed and his great success tripling the organization's smack profits, and the final kicker that their latest "operation" is simply to fund an inner-city basketball court is a delightfully cruel way to hammer in that Danny has gained nothing but lost everything. He's also fantastic in this episode's installment of "Church Chat," because even when Danny is just being himself on-camera, he's ebullient. It's not the best iteration of the sketch, but they've already settled into a nice pattern that ensures success; Danny's little superior dance back at Church Lady is a sight to behold, and Willie Nelson coming on as another guest on the show and performing a song with Church Lady makes for a sweet capper. (Dana hasn't even been a cast member for a full season, and he already has a hit character that's allowed him to play football with Joe Montana and Walter Payton, and to perform a duet with Willie Nelson. The dude is really living his best life.)

As for the material more specifically tailored to Willie, it has a certain flavor that feels pretty different than usual—there's a uniquely countrified sensibility and no shortage of material on rednecks and white trash, as if the episode was carefully-tailored with red state America in mind. It's also a smart way to keep Willie involved without ever asking too much of him performance-wise, even if the vast majority of those pieces are the night's lesser offerings. The "Great Moments in White Trash" runner, a series of vignettes bookended by Willie celebrating the accomplishments of spotlighted blue-collar nobodies, is fairly slight for how committed the episode is to using them as a backbone. Likewise, the redneck tanning parlor piece is cute, and it has some appropriately silly moments of visual comedy (I liked Phil's right arm being red because it was hanging out the car: "How come it's your right arm that's red?" "Well I was driving in England!"), but there's not too much more depth to it than its concept would suggest.

The best thing about this episode's choice of themes, though, is that both Jan and Victoria feel particularly activated, and they bring about the night's finest segments. While Jan has been consistently killing it all season, it's great to see her being able to tap into her Southern roots in this episode, recruiting Bonnie and Terry Turner from her pre-SNL days at Tush for the night's best sketch, a slice-of-life piece starring her as a waitress at a truck stop cafe attempting to turn down the advances of her casual hookup (Willie), who comes into the cafe "once a month, as regular as cramps." Jan's absolutely flawless in her role, attempting to resist Willie's bag of tricks by putting her foot down and fiercely proclaiming that she's a modern, 1980s woman now who wants to take greater control of her life. To Willie's credit, too, this is his best work of the night, channeling his signature warmth perfectly into the role and, after a brief struggle, finally getting Jan to succumb to his charms with the help of some Patsy Cline playing on the jukebox. Victoria, meanwhile, continues to be a somewhat complicated performer (and certainly the least versatile of this current cast), but it feels like she's finding her niche more as time goes on. While this episode does feature her first handstand commentary on Weekend Update, an awkwardly jingoistic bit whose comic potential is weighed down by the subtext of Victoria's real-life patriot nutcasery, it also has her best contribution to the show up to this point: the very adorable "Boyfriend Song" duet with Willie. The two of them barely seem rehearsed, giggling and occasionally muttering their way through it, but Victoria and Willie have such an endearing connection throughout it; it feels like a real moment of joy between two people, unhampered by any degree of complexity, and for once it channel's Victoria's sincerity—one of her most defining traits—into something warm and baggage-free.

There's a few other parts of this episode that don't warrant much discussion, like yet another Tommy Flanagan piece whose sole bright spot is that it's the last one of the season until the finale, but as a whole, this episode works! If it's imperfect, it's more endearing than trying in those imperfections. While I yearn to see more fully solid shows from this season, I know that we're still on the ascent; in the meantime, this is the second-best thing. (Penned 3/14/22)

GRADE: B.

2/28/87: Valerie Bertinelli / The Robert Cray Band (S12E13)

What a treat it always is to enter an episode with absolutely zero expectations and to be rewarded for it! I feel as if much of the most beloved and lauded episodes of this season—Robin Williams, William Shatner, and Bill Murray next week to name a few—are episodes whose reputations are tied to some strong attachment to the host, and the nostalgia-laden identity they bring to the show. Perhaps that places me in an unfair position, as they're frequently the episodes I approach with the most skepticism; as someone chiefly interested in making new discoveries, I find I don't always align with others in contending with the status of particularly popular outings of the show. As a critic who covers every single episode SNL, though, good and bad, I take the the path least taken, through episodes that may initially appear inconspicuous only to reveal themselves to be forgotten gems... and that places me in the exciting position of being able to ardently stand up for the reputation of episodes that have no real reputation. Case in point: I'm proud to report that this episode, hosted by someone named Valerie Bertinelli, is pretty goddamn amazing. I'd go so far as to call it, up to this point, the best episode of the season. Hear me out.

I think that SNL bringing on big hosts with big personalities can be a bit of a monkey's paw. While sometimes that can work to stunning effect (see: the likes of Steve Martin, Joan Rivers, and Don Rickles), they can also feel restrictive by creating insurmountable expectations when things are anything less than perfect. Of course, on the contrary, an episode hosted by someone whose qualifications as an SNL host feel dubious can also be a cause for concern, and there are plenty of times where they've failed to meaningfully acquit themselves to the process and dragged their episodes down (see: most of the people who hosted last season, or four out of five athletes). Nonetheless, the latter tends to create my favorite episodes, because I think there's a very particular sweet spot: when presented with a host who fails to inspire, the responsibilities for a night's success falls more squarely upon the cast to prop the entire operation up. This episode is exactly that. While Valerie certainly gives this episode what she can and isn't an explicitly bad host, it feels like having such a non-entity at the wheel gave everyone else at the show cart blanche to run free, pursuing their most passionate ideas without any need to restrict themselves or meaningfully elevate Valerie. Instead, she takes a back-seat and enjoys the fun alongside the rest of us.

Fortunately, too, almost every single thing works! For the sake of knocking the night's big offenders out of the way, though: yes, Ching Change was back. Is he the worst recurring character in the show's history? It's hard to say, because at least every installment up to this point has had something different going on, but it's certainly one of the most fraught attempts at a big character SNL has ever had, and the introduction of Nora as Ching's sister (hold for applause), Loose Change, brings the sketch to a whole new level of pain. While nowhere near as offensive, the episode's cold open also felt a bit disappointing, though that's how cold opens, historically, tend to be on SNL; it just felt underwhelming, in the wake of the brilliant "President Reagan, Mastermind" sketch for the show to default to a toothlessly doddering characterization for Reagan. Perhaps portraying the president as a deceptive, evil genius wasn't a sustainable game plan, but this sketch is basically proof that this season's superior cast is simply more adept at selling weak writing than last season's—Phil has all the "well"s and "mommy"s of Randy's Reagan from Season 11, but his charisma is able to carry it just a little further.

It's across the night's other offerings that Phil truly shines and continues to further the argument, only thirteen episodes in, that he's one of the best to ever do SNL. This episode is Phil's biggest night yet, and there's definitely something of a correlation between his involvement, as well as his strong connection to his fellow castmates, and the episode's overall success. The "Discover" sketch, debuting his Peter Graves impression, stands out as a particularly strong highlight; it's ridiculously simple, with Phil traipsing horrifically through Jon's presentation on elements and the forms of matter, but it's the mixture of arrogance and sheer ineptitude that his characterization exudes which sells everything so perfectly. The cartoonish escalation of it, too—with Phil knocking the world's densest element off a pedestal, sending it crashing multiple stories through the floor, and foiling another of Jon's displays by absentmindedly exposing both him and Jon to lethal amounts of radiation—are stellar, sending Jon's beleaguered straight man character into a frenzy while Phil stares vacantly forward. His later team-up with Jan in the "On Broadway" sketch is just as good, with his actor character Ross Treadway lashing out at Jan's interviewee about the pressure he's under as Yul Brynner's replacement in a production of The King and I. Again, there's not necessarily a lot to the idea, but the sheer, short-fused fury in Phil's characterization, ranting and raving about the legacy he has to contend with is a joy to behold, allowing Phil to unleash his darker streaks to legitimately astonishing effect. Shout-out to Nora's walk-on as his wife at the end of the sketch, too; while Phil's aggressiveness throughout the sketch is great, her emotional defense of her husband against his naysayers—"You all seem to want Yul Brynner? Dig him up."—is a brilliant crescendo.

Another thing I appreciate about this episode is that it really leans into some exciting, more intelligently conceptual fare, which feels like one of this season's strengths. I hesitate to think of any previous year in the show's history where they could've stumbled upon an idea as silly and specific as "Hard News Cafe," imagining a Hard Rock Cafe equivalent dedicated to the worship of great newsmen, let alone execute it at such an absurdly high level: all of the little details are great, from the fact that Geraldo Rivera is permanently banned from the establishment to the diners shouting and flagging down Nora's waitress like journalists trying to signal attention at a press conference. Throw in some fun news anchor impressions from the cast (Dana's reliable Ted Koeppel, Kevin's Sam Donaldson) and a great cameo from Edwin Newman as the restaurant's bouncer and you've got a sketch that manages to triumph over its niche idea with a very universal sense of goofiness. The opera singer doctor sketch that rounds the episode out is similarly bizarre, with Jon's incompetent doctor sulking around, errantly killing his patients while bemoaning the opera career he never pursued; while it might've just been another excuse for Jon to show off his pipes, all of the little details surrounding it are perfect, most of all Valerie's nurse buzzing Jon's intercom a minute after bringing in his next patient to ask if he's dead yet.

Last but certainly not least, while I so rarely know how to acknowledge the show's musical guests in my reviews, a review of this episode wouldn't possibly be complete without mentioning that both The Robert Cray Band and surprise guest Eddie Van Halen (Valerie's husband, conveniently) absolutely rocked. It's actively unfair that Robert Cray would be so undermined, so I'll at least take the moment to point out that their brand of soulful blues rock was quite a delight in a season that, quite frankly, has been lacking particularly invigorating musical performances up to this point. But also: Eddie Van Halen rocking out with G.E. Smith and the SNL house band with an original song he wrote alongside them, "Stompin' 8H"... again, it's actively unfair to poor Robert Cray, but watching Eddie and G.E. exchange guitar solos and smiling at each other with childlike glee made for one of the most intensely fun, epic musical performances in the entire show's history. I don't frequently award points in my episode scores for music, but let's just say that they tilt the dial even more in the episode's favor. (On the topic of Eddie Van Halen, I also quite liked the the "Dinner at the Van Halens" sketch he appeared in alongside Valerie, with Kevin, Dana, and Dennis' roadies scrambling about and treating their intimate dinner party like a concert gig that needs to run at peak efficiency. Fun, energetic stuff!)

While it's always fun seeing a host who can really bring something new to the show, nights like this serve as a reminder that a good host, while capable of significantly elevating SNL, is only half the equation. The joys of the show will always be seeing what the cast can come up with every week, and while Valerie Bertinelli doesn't offer them much assistance, she doesn't have to—if there were any episode this season to demonstrate that the cast and writers can be fully trusted without any extra assistance, it's this one. (Penned 3/25/23)

GRADE: A-.

3/21/87: Bill Murray / Percy Sledge (S12E14)

Despite the fact that alum episodes of SNL are still a rare novelty by this point in the series' run—due to Gilda's hosting stint next season being tragically cancelled, there wouldn't be another one for five years, surprisingly—it's interesting to observe how much the general pattern to them has already taken form. We sort of know what we'll get: the favorites will be reprised, and when the episode is able to triumph over the easy wins of overfamiliar nostalgia content, there might even be some big swings taken indebted to how much the host is willing to put on the line. The success of these sorts of episodes is always a spectrum (the recent Molly Shannon episode fits that brief, though it's a bit unremarkable), but when things really coalesce, you can get a real barn burner. Case in point: while Bill Murray's S12 hosting gig has its fair share of lukewarm sketch reprisals from the show's heyday, it fills out the rest of its runtime with a mixture of low-key delights and absolute insanity, and even when those modes for the show don't always hit, there's something audacious about its whole vibe that feels undeniably alluring.

It's funny to say, because I do greatly enjoy Bill Murray, but so much of the episode's success feels like it comes from how much it deviates from his established bag of tricks. For however much his smug, schmoozy persona persists throughout the night (to the delight of the audience), his greatest moments across the episode as a performer are the ones that feel more disarming. I don't think that's entirely by design, but it's a noticeably accentuating effect; when you have bits like the obligatory, seven minute-long reprisal of Nick the Lounge Singer, or Bill's smug Oscar picks segment operating as tone-setters, all the moments that find a more unexpected tone resonate even harder. I always enjoy the moments where Bill is able to shed his farcical, show-biz phony persona and play more down-to-earth characters, and the scene casting him as a massive loser who blithely interprets a drunken, one-night stand with his long-time, unreciprocated crush (Jan) as the start of their new life together is a particularly outstanding display for those underrated acting abilities. Slice-of-life material is in constant decline as the show forges onwards, but this one is excellent, and it speaks to the fact that just because a sketch is nuanced and carefully lived-in doesn't mean that it can't have massive laughs; Jan is absolutely outstanding in her disgust at Bill, screaming and squirming at all of his advances and tirelessly expressing her discontent with him ("You have none of the qualities that I'm looking for in a man. As a matter of fact, you have no qualities."), and Bill, again, sells his guileless loser character with the sort of precision that only an SNL pro could. 

On the very opposite end of the spectrum, this episode also features an astonishingly dark sketch with Bill taking the role of a monstrously abusive father who belittles and mocks his children (Dana and Victoria) for their inability to be perfect at all of their endeavors. Domestic abuse is a theme that the show can rarely get to work in how much its unpleasantness risks being cheap shock (see "The Crosby Show" from earlier this season), and while this sketch isn't able to fully overcome my reservations, it fights far harder than you'd ever expect to demonstrate that it isn't simply tasteless for tastelessness' sake—and the ending, with Dana finally taking a lethal shot at his old man and being warmly gratified for finally stepping it up ("It wasn't a cardiac hit, but it's a good hit! Damn good hit!") as Bill dies with a smile on his face... it's a delightfully twisted out that gives all of the nastiness of the rest of the sketch its purpose. If it speaks to the astonishingly dark streak that this night of sketch comedy has, that's not even the darkest sketch of the night, either; that honor goes to the piece where Phil plays a doctor who maintains an initially-impressive track record of birthing exclusively girls by mutilating the genitalia of every boy he delivers to turn them into girls, too. There's a concerning nature to Phil's rhetoric in retrospect, as he monologues insidiously about freeing the "little girls trapped in little boys' bodies"; while these sorts of themes weren't particularly pervasive in mainstream 80s culture, that doesn't really stop the sketch from feeling like the final visions of a dying Republican in the 2020s. Nevertheless, there's clearly no ulterior motives to the piece, and approaching it from a perspective of good faith, it's a deliciously shocking bit that Phil sells with maniacal aplomb.

Speaking of Phil being characteristically amazing, he reprises his fantastic Phil Donahue impression from earlier in the season in an even better sketch—and despite Bill's absence, it's probably the best piece in the entire episode. There's always a joy to watching Phil in literally any sketch he does, because regardless of the quality of its writing, you're witnessing a performer who is always in their element, but these sketches up to this point in his tenure capture him at his most captivating. Every choice he makes, every sweeping motion and modulation in his delivery, is absolutely superb; even just the way he starts the sketch abruptly by declaring, direct to camera, "SEX IS GOOD!", got a belly laugh out of me. And as the sketch unfurls into an elaborate ensemble piece about "the new celibacy," working through a panel of guests who have stumbled one way or another upon an abstinent lifestyle, the laughs don't stop. Nora rants in disgust about the disgusting sexual encounter she had which destroyed her life, which Phil reveals was with Joe Piscopo; Victoria politely expresses that she's waiting until marriage, only for Phil to tell the audience that "Until a year ago, she was the trashiest, trampiest little mattress back in her school."; and Jon, hilariously, is a 34 year-old virgin who can't even get prostitutes to deflower him. ("So in your case, celibacy has nothing to do with a fear of sexually-transmitted diseases." "Oh, I would take that chance in a second, belieeeve me!" Also: love that all they had to do to make Jon look right for the role was put him in a turtleneck.) Concluding the sketch with a two-minute long, incoherent monologue as Phil rambles off-stage, and through the hallways of 8H to get a bite to eat, is just about the most perfect way to finish things off; it's a legitimate feat of performance, and Phil expertly maneuvers about it with the sort of effortless grace that makes him seem like a sketch comedy savant.

The rest of the episode is a mix of little curiosities that play out to varying effect, but which grant a nice sense of variety to things even if they don't fully succeed. The Hercules sketch (a trunk piece of Jim Downey on Tom Davis') is one of the night's more unique offerings, undercutting the darkness of the material that surrounds it with amiable goofiness. I love the angle of a live sketch that riffs on shoddy ADR dubbing, with Bill, Dana, and Nora miming along, with slight delay and inconsistency, to other performers' voices; having Downey voice Bill's out-of-shape Hercules with his masterfully flat deadpan ("That boulder is too large. I could lift a smaller one.") is particularly enjoyable in its incongruity. There's also something to the episode's Honker piece, even if I can't really get a pulse on it. As far as Bill's recurring characters go, I want to appreciate how Honker is fed into different concepts instead of as firm of a template as, say, Nick the Lounge Singer, and using him here in a very low-key piece that riffs on the idea of an awkward, disconnected conversation between cab driver (Honker) and passenger isn't bad; it's just such a muted way to end the night that you risk missing the darker narrative to it all. Still, credit for the attempt at something different.  

As a whole, it's a bit disappointing that a lot of the old rehashes hurt the flow of this episode, though I guess they were built into this episode from the very start. If part of the deal with Bill Murray is that we have to accept some smarm, lounge-singing, and Oscar picking in exchange for genital mutilation and patricide, then dammit, I guess I'm just glad that we got there! And for however much Bill is a conduit for much of the night's material, it's telling that its greatest successes are when control is ceded to the show's new voices. Perhaps we don't need alums hosting to legitimize the show after all.

GRADE: B+.

3/28/87: Charlton Heston / Wynton Marsalis (S12E15)

In his monologue, Charlton Heston laments that he's never really gotten to do comedy throughout his treasured career, but if the episode is any indication, that was no great loss. While having such a treasured star from the golden age of Hollywood was, no doubt, a massive get for the show, he ended being another in that long line of SNL hosts over the years who, across their hosting gig, answer the question, "Why didn't this person do live comedy sooner?" That's not to say he's bad, but he's not particularly good, either; he's as good as he has to be for the night to go off without a hitch, but he isn't at the level of being able to get elevate material beyond what's written for him—and that becomes a general hurdle once it becomes clear that this outing for the show won't be up to very much at all.

It's strange how this episode has such a uniform sense of slightness to all of its material, especially in a season which frequently aims for a more intellectual approach to its comedy. It's not that I'm opposed to that simplicity, either. I think there's a lot of fun to be had with more abstract, simplistic premises that simply exist to be silly; the issue becomes when that concept is the throughline of an entire night's worth of material, and that there's no ebb and flow so much as the episode stays firmly in one gear that increasingly tests your ability to invest. Through it all, too, Charlton has one mode: unflinchingly serious. It serves the pieces well in their lack of complexity, but there's a difference between fierce commitment for comedy's sake and being carried by the performers around you to give the scenes their humor. 

Sometimes that things work out in the episode, despite those impediments. My favorite sketch of the night, despite only being about two minutes long, was the bluntly-titled "The President Has Mustard On His Chin," a spoof on political thrillers where the sole conflict is that the president's most trusted advisors are too scared to tell him that there's residual mustard on the side of his face. It's the only sketch of the night that I wish, in spite of its thin nature, could've gone on longer; it nails everything that it's aiming for by taking its juvenile premise so seriously, and Charlton is perfectly cast, playing the President with such a strong, menacing sense of authority while ignorantly smearing food all over his face. I also found some enjoyment in "The Fruitening," a fake horror trailer where a family is ruthlessly antagonized by evil fruit; it's so gleefully dumb that it could very well be an All That sketch, but it reaps the benefits of both Phil and Nora's strengths as actors to take things to the next level. Unfortunately, there's also an equal number of times where the show is failed by its lack of complexity. While there's some concoction of parody and satire to "The New Paper Chase" which is lost to the time fog, the idea of a drama about college students struggling to fight through a class on blackjack only finds the occasional bout of amusement, and it squanders it by going on far, far longer than it should with an unneeded ending tag. (It's at least amusing to see Phil playing a student alongside Dana and Victoria, since he looks more like a college professor than most college professors do.) Prolonging also does a lot to mar this episode's Sweeney Sisters sketch, which commences with a labored, three minute-long setup about Phil tricking Charlton (as himself) into coming to a banquet at the opening of a zoo's new primate house—because Planet of the Apes, ha ha!—that derails things before they can even start. Jan and Nora are at least in fine form, breaking into a very amusing cover of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," if you can muster the goodwill.

Slightness even affects the episode's most notable offering, "The Hustler of Money," an outside film marking the television debut of future (short-lived) cast member and comedy superstar, Ben Stiller. He's a delight in this, mugging up a storm with his Tom Cruise impression, but the film itself is no great shakes; it simply asks the question, "What if The Color of Money were about bowling instead of pool?" I'm sure some of its humor is lost on me for not getting the deeper cultural references, but in a night where every sketch can already be reduced to "x, but with x," I can't reserve that much patience for it. There's only one sketch in the entire episode that aspires for more and aims at a higher concept, the slave drivers piece set in ancient Egypt, but even against a night where so many sketches have one joke, it manages to be the most painfully sluggish; aside from a great, two-line performance from Nora as the pharaoh's wife ("It looks stupid! Put them to death!"), there's no laughs to be found to the premise, and the idea is too long of a walk to a punchline that's so lame that it doesn't really bear repeating.

This episode also, bizarrely, features sketches based around two entirely separate televangelist controversies which is... a choice? The more notable of the two is this week's edition of Church Chat, which is apparently one of the most legendary installments, though I feel like that's only because of its inclusion on multiple Best Of compilation. Bringing Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker onto the program is the sort of no-brainer idea that writes itself, and they're kind of perfect real-world subjects for Church Lady to aggressively chastise, but is a sketch that writes itself necessarily the best thing? There's too much of a zeitgeisty flavor for me to care, and while the sketch illuminates their various controversies, it never does so in a way that feels particularly transcendent; I much prefer the timeless charms of Church Lady's previous two installments with Willie and the football boys. There's also a thing about Oral Roberts for the cold open, and God telling him he's been very bad? Cool.

If there's one person who injects some energy into this episode, it's the musical guest, jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. It's rare to see some classic jazz on the SNL stage, but Marsalis makes a strong case for how much of a mistake that is; his performances of "J Mood" and "Juan (E. Mustaad)" are absolute bliss, packed with amazing solos for every member of his tight-knit quintet—and based on the audience's uproarious applause after each one, he has the whole studio in a trance. Can't blame them one bit. If only the rest of this episode were half as punchy; while this season of SNL certainly isn't bad, this week is another reminder that Season 12, despite its moments of visible strength, is a season of transition, and that the show's new identity is still in the process of being forged.

GRADE: C+.

4/11/87: John Lithgow / Anita Baker (S12E16)

It's no great surprise that, aside from Chevy Chase, John Lithgow is the first host from S11 to make a proper return, nor that he'd go onto become a mildly perennial host for the era. His episode from the previous season is one of the few times that things really connected at the show; even with a discombobulated cast, he was able to shine with his effervescent screen presence and lift everyone else alongside him. Naturally, then, I was excited to see how he would fare working with a far better cast, and participating in SNL on the rise... and yet somehow, S11 did it better, a sentiment I thought I would never say about anything.

I think I've talked about it before, but one of my favorite things to examine with regards to sketch is how a show is structured, how the energy is maintained from one piece to the next and the critical positions for the best pieces of a given show to register and the worst pieces to float along without grinding things to a halt. There have been plenty of episodes with inconsistent material saved by a mastery of that ebb and flow, and there have been about as many episodes that have sunk despite the good material within them. This outing feels like a classic case of an SNL episode which has doomed itself to being a complete non-starter because it can never gain momentum; if anything, it almost hits a pattern of alternating hits and misses, perpetually knocking the wind out of itself every time it threatens to rebound. It's all the more frustrating because John is as game as always, but for all the opportunities that he gets to take advantage of that enthusiasm, the material itself so rarely connects.

At its worst, the episode feels like it actively jinxes itself. After last season's horrible "Cleveland Vice" sketch, it's bold as hell for this season to reattempt the idea with "Laramie Vice," and the gambit doesn't really pay off a huge amount better. The full extent of its value is in the fact that it's a further testament to how strong this new cast is that, by simply being as competent as they are, they can sell shitty material and make it seem halfway decent rather than letting it implode on itself, and true to form, Jan, Phil, and Dana are able to wring some good fun out of it because they're so enthralling to watch. Still, when the hardest laughs come from John and Kevin entering scenes and waving their guns around like jackasses—as legitimately funny as that is—you're not on particularly solid ground. And that's our post-monologue sketch! Similarly, if not as bad, the sequel to Phil's classic "Discover with Peter Graves" sketch also feels ill-advised, at least in the manner that this second iteration has been conceived. While there's no reason that it shouldn't theoretically work as a recurring sketch (which it would go on to be through to next season), Victoria is nowhere near the foil that Jon was in the original and is fully unable to sell the slow-burning exasperation that her role requires. The writing also simply isn't as good, swapping out the variables of the original sketch with lesser jokes, which is rather disappointing for a Phil showcase. (There's also another Pat Stevens sketch to add onto this episode's weird glut of iffy recurrers, and aside from some prime glowering from Phil, nothing about it works.)

Most of the episode's bright spots stem from the one place where this episode seems to have actually taken notes from John's last hosting gig: after discovering their shocking compatibility, the show's smart to capitalize on John and Jon's chemistry, and their multiple two-handers here stand out as the few moments where this episode truly sings. Of all the sketches that get repeated tonight, the return of Master Thespian and John's Baudelaire was the most warmly-received. John is simply so excellent in these that it feels like these sketches almost shouldn't exist without him; watching the two wax theatric ("What is the question du jour?") while playing the dumbest schoolyard pranks on each other as a demonstration of their brilliant acting ability is the sort of simple joy that I can never truly tire of, and the subtler, bittersweet undertones as Baudelaire ponders his retirement ("The grave awaits. I shall live out my days in the old actor's home, gumming the occasional pudding.") add some extra volume. John and Jon also pair up nicely in the night's best original sketch, a silly piece where John's cab driver speeds across the entire United States to get Jon's groom to his wedding on the other side of the country. It's the sort of crude, gleeful absurdity that I love seeing from these years, what with its hectic green-screening and the occasional wide shots of a model car being pelted by rain and snow, and the great, cartoonish details in the writing (John and Jon throwing handfuls of quarters out the window at impending tollbooths, Phil's traffic cop complaining of them melting his speedometer) keeps things moving with a delightful freneticism. 

Outside of those, though? Not too much to cling onto, even if there's nothing outright terrible. John submits a fun performance in "Reverend Dwight Henderson: World's Meanest Methodist Minister," responding with condescension to all the churchgoers who seek his holy advice, but as a sketch whose premise is explained away in its deliberately ridiculous title, there's not much here in terms of surprise; it sets its sights on the basic idea that it has, and it simply does it precisely as you'd expect, allowing the performances to guide things along more than anything else. The black-and-white sketch that finishes off the night, "The Fighter," isn't too remarkable, either,  despite capitalizing further on the John-Jon partnership. It's stylish as these era's sketches so frequently are, but the simple joke that John's boxer is worthy of contempt as everyone punches down on him harder and harder feels too aimless with its meanspirited tone despite its attempts at different angles—it might as well be a modern-day Jonah Hill humiliation sketch. The most truly rousing part of the episode is Anita Baker, who adorably enjoys every second of her screentime while delivering some stellar, soulful performances of "Sweet Love" and "Same Ol Love"; she clearly had more love to give this episode than the writers did.

John's greatest attribute is simply that he can sell anything, but there's only so much use that has when the material can't match his dedication. Finger crossed that his next (and final) gig can be more fulfilling. (Penned 5/29/23)

GRADE: B-.

4/18/87: John Larroquette / Timbuk 3 (S12E17)

I feel as if, to some extent, Season 12 was sold to me as like night and day compared to Season 11, and by this point, it's obvious that's not fully true. It's not that this season doesn't surpass that one in just about every regard; I just think that whole argument belies the fact that it's still figuring itself out. I've probably made that point about twenty times across the last sixteen reviews, but in this case, it's in the service of a broader thesis: the John Larroquette episode is, in my opinion, one of the most representative of where the show, in Season 12, is currently at. There's a very distinct flavor to things—a uniform cleverness, writerly sensibilities, and an approach which is often more conceptual than performer-driven despite the wealth of brilliant talent—and while it isn't always successful, it's easy to admire its ambitions and frequent moments of success. There are certainly better episodes in this season, but this one speaks to both its strengths and occasional difficulties rather adroitly on top of being a rather enjoyable outing of SNL in its own right.

Assisting in the episode's overall sense of success is the fact that John Larroquette is a pretty fantastic host. This hasn't really been the greatest season for first-timers, despite the fact that some less-than-stellar hosts have still done well with what they were handed, so seeing someone relatively unsuspecting brought into the show who instantly clicks with the format is especially electrifying. You can just feel the level of trust that the show has in him, and while sometimes that can cause SNL to coast along (see John Lithgow last week), Larroquette seems to light a fire under the show, inspiring a litany of fun or otherwise daring pieces that he carries along with a level of playfulness and unwavering commitment that makes him feel like an honorary cast member. There's perhaps no better example of that confidence than the "Instant Coffee" sketch, which he helped co-write; it's a dense piece and perhaps difficult to approach, but he and Jan flesh out their haughty, local actors with a truly lived-in sense of pretension, leaping over the risk of cliché as it if never even existed. That it concludes with an excerpt from their newest production, a musical about Jackie and John F. Kennedy ("To date, no one has been able to capture the glory and pathos of that clan, and set it to music.") offers another layer of bizarre specificity, and whereas it's a bit difficult to parse, Jan and John are such a captivating pair that it's sort of a marvel to behold regardless.

That sort of headiness dominates much of the night's material, and while it occasionally doesn't work as well as I'd hope, there's something to respect about all of its endeavors. My favorite sketch of the night is a great example of the sort of brilliant, conceptual stupidity that S12 can be so adept at: John's detective enters the scene of a murder and begins to cautiously bag evidence with his pencil, only for all of the cops in the room to become increasingly invested in testing his ability to bag the trickiest objects they can find in the room. It's the most perfect kind of nonsense, and John executes his role perfectly, selling his intense focus as he carefully balances the likes of an encyclopedia, microwave, and eyelash on his pencil to the utter delight of his onlookers—and although the ending doesn't quite punch as hard as it could for whatever reason, there's such a pure sense of fun to everything else that it's hardly worth complaining about. The heaven scene is similarly simplistic, though deceptively writerly, with the recently-deceased John spending some of his first moments in the afterlife asking Dana's saint a string of questions about his life and the mysteries of the universe. It's a bit too low-key to fully work, and not all of the answers are inherently humorous (I think things de-escalate as the questions become less personal and more broad, with a few exceptions), but I really like what it's trying for, and once again, John manages to find a magnificent level of nuance in his role. The fact that he responds to hearing of all his missed opportunities (that he failed to discover the great riches of a treasure chest buried five inches below him, and that the role he was ideally suited for was to be the President of the United States) with more of an "aw, shucks!" attitude, laughing off his misfortunes rather than feeling any degree of anguish, is a subtle notion that the sketch is all the better off for. (I can only imagine seeing this sketch through the context of current SNL, with Mikey Day screaming into his hands.)

On the other end of the spectrum, energy-wise, is this episode's unhinged Phil showcase, casting him as John's overly-aggressive, scornful mother-in-law. It feels like a sketch that shouldn't work as well as it does, but it's all in the impeccable performances on display. Phil manages to take a hacky drag role and twist it into something so intensely volatile, switching between a doting mother to Jan and an absolute demon to John... and to John's credit, he's also perfect as Phil's foil, whose anger ultimately boils over (after an accidental electrocution) into an insane brawl. In other hands, it would feel too broad for its own good, but everyone is so ferociously dedicated to the madness that it manages to transcend the slightly contrived setup—a good omen for the seasons to come, as the writing begins to loosen from its current, more highbrow interests. We also get the enigma store sketch in this episode, which reaffirms those tones and the occasional uphill battle that accompanies them. There's such an arch specificity to it, with Jan and John's stuffy shop owners scamming celebrity customers with "an exhilarating glimpse of the unknown," when all their mystery grab bags are simply full of corn cob pipes at exorbitant prices; the fact that it also serves as a showcase for some more bizarre impressions (Nora's Jackie Stallon, Dana's... very Dana take on John Travolta) seems to offer further complications on whatever the base idea of the sketch is supposed to be, too. With that being said, it's kind of fascinating to watch? Clearly SNL themselves weren't quite sure what to make of it either, cutting it from all subsequent reruns, though I think there's some value in it as an oddity that, yet again, shows how much John brought to the material. 

Last but not least, although it's not anything that I can really account into the episode's grade, the goodnights feature a very sweet tribute to departing crew member Al Camoin, NBC's long-time cameraman. It's a precious moment, and a reminder of how young television was as a medium in 1987; as the go-to camera operator in 8H, he contributed to 37 years of television, from Your Show of Shows, to the perpetually swiped-at Hullaballoo, to the past 12 years of SNL. Phil recalls the cast huddling around him as they were regaled with stories from his treasured career, Victoria gets in a silly joke that she wished she'd taken the time to say hi to him once, and the night swiftly closes out with one final bit of fancy camerawork from Al as the camera descends through the hallways of 8H and out of the studio entirely. You don't see a lot of moments like that in the modern show, which is a shame—the reverence SNL has for its behind-the-scenes crew in these years is one of those small things that makes SNL feel all the more alive. Coincidental or not, Al chose a pretty solid episode to go out on.

While I'm done playing this "will they, won't they" game of whether or not Season 12 will find its footing and really start firing on all cylinders (could the show ever truly reach that place?), I'm just grateful that it's finding its successes and granting a strong host the sort of night that they deserve. Can't wait to see what's in store for John when he returns in a few seasons! (Penned 6/11/23)

GRADE: B.

5/09/87: Mark Harmon / Suzanne Vega (S12E18)

While it may not be as evident to anyone reading all of these reviews published together, it's been some time since I've approached Season 12, and I wonder how much of that can be attributed to this episode—it's a hard one to approach, let alone come back to and be saddled with the task of dissecting. I mean look, this is SNL. Not every episode is gonna be a winner, and to be an SNL fan is to readily accept that fact. That doesn't make a difficult episode any easier to bear, though, and as is the case here, in the end it just feels dispiriting to see that the elaborate, high-wire act of putting on a live hour of sketch in only a week's time didn't tumble into many fruitful places.

To his credit, kinda, I don't know how much Mark Harmon can be blamed for the episode's quality. He comes across as a blank slate here, but he's at least willing to entertain whatever the show throws at him and does everything they ask him to do well enough; the show's worked with far more difficult talent. I think it's more a matter of the show not having a sense of how to utilize him as anything more than a bland guy who, as the host, is mandated to anchor the night's sketches from time to time. He fares the best in the handful of pieces that directly acknowledge his place within pop culture, most notably as an unlikely sex icon (or at least... unlikely to me) in the sketch imagining of the "People Magazine's Sexiest Man Alive" pageant that awarded him his title. It's not a particularly exciting piece and it suffers from some plodding setup, though it does offer a handful of fun novelties; not only does it serve as a substitute for the show's monologue slot, which I'm always a sucker for, but it offers up some intriguing recurring character cross-overs, with Pat Stevens and Peter Graves serving as joint pageant emcees. The jokes themselves weren't anything too special though, and for a sketch ostensibly framed around Mark, he's left with very little to do in terms of getting laughs aside from looking very clueless and naive while his competitor, Jon's F. Murray Abraham, is unequivocally roasted. The episode comes the closest to understanding Mark's innate charm in the brief ad spoof, remarking upon his cunning ability to sell anything to anyone: "You can thank your lucky stars that I chose to sell beer and not foreign policy or nuclear energy." Even so, it's a disposable piece—so disposable that it would be lopped out of future reairings.

Perhaps the most unique thing about this episode is that Jack Handey returns as a guest writer this week, after his short writing stint during Season 11 and directly before he rejoins for Season 13 for his celebrated reign of writerly weirdness, though his contributions to this episode are sadly lacking. "Attila the Hun: The Early Years" feels the closest to working in that inimitable, Handey way, observing the tumult between young Attila's familial expectations of taking over the Huns versus his desire to foster his creative side and create mobiles, but it's never able to come together; while there's some mild humor in portraying young Attila as a deeply sensitive boy, it's simply unable to carry the premise far, and the sketch quickly gets lost in its own specificity as if being so specific is funny in and of itself. His salmon spawning sketch later in the episode, examining the plight of the mate-seeking salmon during a salmon run, is pretty uninteresting too. I can see it working as a short story perhaps, or even just on the page, but in execution, with the disorienting green screen effects and elaborate fish headgear, it comes across as bizarrely cutesy. Hopefully next season he'll be able to make more of an impact; I'm sure the introduction of other like-minded weirdos like Conan and Bob Odenkirk into the writing staff will help him chart his course more effectively.

Further hurting this episode is the considerable amount of timely material that means absolutely nothing to any modern viewer. Obviously, when I approach old episodes of the show, I try to be patient and acknowledge that, as a satirical and ephemeral show, there won't always be material that I fully understand; I also have the opinion, though, that a truly great piece will be successful regardless of how much context the viewer has, and that it'll be able to succeed as comedy by virtue of its own strengths. This episode has no such pieces, though, and while there may have been some enjoyment to be had during this week in May, 1986, I got absolutely nothing out of the Charlie's Angels spoof covering potential presidential nominees, or the droll Jim Downey courtroom sketch covering the Hart-Rice scandal, or as usual, Dennis Miller's anal scrounging at Weekend Update. (A. Whitney Brown contributes a decent, more general commentary at the very least; poking merciless holes at the American Dream as a concept remains biting satirically.) The nice thing about being able to write these essay reviews is that I can casually omit material when I simply have no interest in covering it rather than feeling pressure to being a completionist, which makes it all the more frustrating when an episode insists upon itself so strongly with the sort of topical content that I delight in snipping out of my coverage. I have no other choice here than to call it out, in this case: it's rough!

But then, the Mark Harmon episode doesn't have to be too timely for its content to falter: we also have yet another Ching Change sketch, and as usual, it brings me legitimate pain! I can see why this would be one of the more well-liked iterations, with Ching's sister Loose getting involved with a Japanese gang member and his posse (complete with silly fight choreography), but adding more performers into the equation to do yellowface is the opposite of a solution to these recurring sketch's underlying problem: that they're hacky, racist dreck. Other segments are less fraught, but I'm no more convinced of their inclusion in the episode: there's a strange pretape where the cast dubs over several children at a party, which is pretty dire aside from the masterstroke of attaching Phil's booming voice to a four year-old boy ("Go min-gleee! Mingleeee!"), and there's a commercial for a bible for cats that even Phil and the presence of some adorable kitties can't salvage. If there's one truly brilliant, saving grace for this episode, it's the 10-to-1, one of my favorite Kevin Nealon pieces of all time. It's a simple idea, but executed perfectly, with Kevin's boardwalk sketch artist drawing his subject Victoria with a level of assuredness that belies his sheer ineptitude. ("The nose is the hardest feature to draw," he states, pausing thoughtfully for a moment before drawing a massive swoop across the page.) It works a bit better with a more unsuspecting guest—see him do it with Conan many decades later, where I first encountered this bit of his—and I can imagine it being far more lively with an audience member in one of his live shows, but it's such a robust blend of writing and performance, and so quintessentially Nealon, that it succeeds regardless. 

Is the fact that the night's best sketch a trunk piece a bit damning? Perhaps, but hey, I'm just happy to get some true enjoyment out of the episode. Otherwise, it's a bizarre mix of conceptual sketches that don't work, and heavily topical sketches that have no chance of working now, united under a host who the show can't quite get a handle on. Hopefully it's the last time that this season falls short. (Penned 7/26/23)

GRADE: C-.

5/16/87: Garry Shandling / Los Lobos (S12E19)

Garry Shandling is a bit of an interesting figure to me. Whereas other comics from around the same time period have pervaded pop culture long enough for me to naturally recognize them as a modern-day twenty-something (like Robin Williams, for instance), Garry has always been sort of distant, someone I've known by name only. In the lead-up to his hosting stint though, I decided to watch some of his work so that I could key a bit more into his idiosyncrasies, especially with the knowledge that his episode is a fairly interesting one that conforms to his unique voice as a comedian, to say the least. It makes sense that it has such a meta slant to it; Garry was one of the first comedians to really bring meta comedy back to the forefront with his deconstructive sitcom, It's Garry Shandling's Show, and just as he broke away from scenes to address the audience and pull apart the narratives he was slotted so famously there, he takes great fun in repeatedly disrupting SNL's flow. It's like a lighter version of the classic Charles Grodin episode from almost a decade before, though certainly not as bold; as an exercise in something different, though, there's still a lot of delight to be had, even if it feels like an episode that should ultimately be more fun than it is.

The greatest successes here, of course, are the moments where this episode keys into Garry's distinctive persona. He's sort of like a better Billy Crystal in his boundless exuberance, though he never has the smugness that makes Billy so hard to stomach. Rather, he's effusively gleeful, even if insincere; he plays directly into audience expectations, immediately disarming them in a way that allows people to rally behind him, though he also treats them kindly, rarely betraying their trust so much as observing their willingness to indulge him. The big post-monologue sketch—which he literally walks into after deciding his monologue's over ("I'm really excited because it's important that my first sketch go well!")—is perhaps the most sustained and delightful effort to bring his style to the show in a deeply meta way, and it works stunningly well: instead of becoming a legitimate part of the scene, he repeatedly plays to the audience, darting his eyes in their direction and basking in their validation of his antics. (My favorite moment of it all is Garry breaking the scene completely to call out Jan's professionalism and get the audience to start a round of applause for her as she looks on in horror—"God, is she great or what? It's just like being in a department store!"—though a close second would have to be him abandoning the scene entirely to do some more stand-up.) And whereas no other sketches in the episode commit to the concept as strongly, I do love the constant callbacks and moments of scene-breaking that frequently close out all the material that follows; it brings about a feeling of spontaneity that SNL, by this point, has increasingly come to deprioritize. It's also nice for the show to have that format-breaking element to it because, as I said before, this feels like it should be a more fun episode than it actually is. As the night rages on, while there are a few sketches that take big swings, a lot of the material tends to waste the innate value that Garry's presence offers. 

The most interesting sketch to dissect of the bunch, and one of the more noble sketch efforts in recent memory, is the support group piece, which sadly fell a bit flat for me. I'll give credit to its interesting structure, with Garry's support group member harping on his issues with his abusive mother so affectingly that the entire group rallies behind him for a proper confrontation; there are also some great characterizations here, and Dana runs away with the entire goddamned thing as an agoraphobic member of the support group, constantly breaking the tension of the scene with detached remarks about his limited comfort zone. (After a revelation of Garry's incestuous tendencies, he simply states, "I love my apartment... I'm never going out again.") Unfortunately, I felt that the darkness and the heaviness of the themes made the sketch very difficult for me to humor at times, and while there is strength to swirling all of these dark tales of parental abuse in the build-up to the climax, it immediately squanders all of that with several hackneyed and convoluted incest jokes. My friend Eddie reminded me of "That Crazy Taboosters," a sketch from a few years before which had a similarly incestuous twist, though it works far better there for me; that piece has such a loopy atmosphere that there's very little to ground it from the start, whereas this piece is far too realistic, asking for our investment only to burn it off with some lame moment of shock. The great strength of Garry is that he's able to weave enough comedy into his performance that he helps curb some of the intensity, what with the way he glides over everything by design, and I do like him pulling back at the end and saying "This is the worst character I've ever played!" as both he and Jan immediately break character, but that doesn't quite do enough to win me back; nevertheless, I tentatively respect its sheer abrasiveness.

There's a similar darkness driving the restaurant sketch, with Dana and Jan's couple getting into truly nasty arguments that are repeatedly truncated by Garry's server appearing and causing them to play off a falsely happy vibe, though it feels more balanced due to the game built into the concept granting everything a sense of rhythm and escalation—with Dana and Jan having to find increasingly more damning ways to reset their hostilities and come across like a happy pair—and the fact that Garry's role allows him to tap into his goofy charm to solid effect, humorously undercutting the scene's severity every time he comes around to restore the calm. ("Hey hey hey, no necking!") His only other appearance in the episode, though, is in "Redneck Airline," where he's left the thankless role of being spit on mercilessly by the tobacco-chewing passengers around him... and that's the one joke, so you better enjoy it! 

The remaining, hostless sketches that fill out the rest of the episode are a mixed bag, as hostless sketches are wont to be. My favorite of that bunch is "The Puppy," a mystery spoof where Dana's jewel thief, known under the alias "The Puppy," possesses unapologetically doglike traits. It's an incredibly simple sketch, but one whose greatest strength is the pitch-perfect casting: Dana has insane, puppy dog energy as is and plays his part with aplomb, and Phil is perfect in the straight role as the inspector who can't quite uncrack Dana's secret identity in spite of the glaring clues. The debut of Babette's "Teeny Cafe," a nightclub so exclusive that it only seats four people ("Three if they're fat!"), is less successful, though a mildly respectable effort. It's not a bad means of expanding upon the Babette character by constructing a world where she can properly demonstrate her bohemian status rather than simply sitting next to Dennis and feigning climax for the umpteenth time, but as a character, she remains pretty uninteresting, and the comedy of the sketch is a bit too obscure to get an easy sense of. Last but not least (if not far from least), there's a curious pretape featuring Tracey Ullman, caricaturing her as a Hollywood mom more invested in her ego-fueled sense of success than the well-being of her newborn daughter. It's somewhat interesting, especially since it's celebrating the creation of her sketch show on an entirely different sketch show, but it's too simplistic to be anything more than a novelty.

It's nice how much of an edge Garry is able to add, and it's sad that he never returned to SNL; having an off-kilter host who lends the show a more distinct flavor than it usually has is, as always, a privilege. Kudos to the show, too, for taking a game, comic host as an opportunity for some experimentation, rather than simply using it as an excuse for an easy week. It's just a shame that this episode isn't quite the success that it should be. (Penned 8/31/23)

GRADE: B.

5/23/87: Dennis Hopper / Roy Orbison (S12E20)

Although Season 12 hasn't been as good as I was hoping, I'd be lying if I said it wasn't nice to see the show in a stable place again after the past few seasons of unsustainable wobbling. Having spent the second half of last year venturing through back-to-back-to-back seasons of the show just doing its best to survive in the moment, I've almost forgotten what it's like to watch SNL be actively thriving, endearing itself to its audience and feeling determined to keep doing what it's trying to do—and for that, they've earned the right to celebrate. This is an interesting finale, and it reminds me of the Olivia Newton-John episode that finished off S7 a little bit. After narrowly surviving the choppy waters of the season that preceded it, enduring weeks of fairly modest hosts, and successfully revitalizing itself, SNL can finally indulge again. This isn't prime time for either Dennis Hopper or Roy Orbison, though they were both experiencing minor career resurgences; more than that, these are two people who colored the youths of everyone involved with the show, and while they may not be the most flashy proponents of the zeitgeist, it's clearly a treat for the cast and crew to commemorate their newfound success. For the first time in years, we can go into the summer break with a sense of assurance—SNL's found a solid bunch, and they're only gonna keep getting better.

With that being said, this finale is pretty much on-par with what I've come to expect for finales: it's a night of low-flying sketch that generally works on some level but never comes close to greatness. It's cozy and undemanding, or arguably overfamiliar, even beyond the litany of recurring characters who send the season off. Dennis also makes for a strange host, just as he's a very strange man. He certainly commits to the antics, but he possesses this indescribable energy that hovers on its own plane of existence. There's not much here in terms of give and take, in the same way that an adept host like Lithgow or Larroquette blurs the line between being a special guest and participating in the ensemble as an equal; Dennis, however humble in his monologue, commands attention, and the cast is more than happy to support him. He just doesn't slide into the sketches super smoothly, aside from the rare occasions where he's given chances to properly unleash his insanity; it's hard to tell if that's the fault of a challenging host, or the unchallenged vibe of the finale, though.

Dennis' best sketch performance—and the one time the episode goes to the places it should be going with him—is undoubtedly in "What's That Smell?", a truly bonkers fake game show hosted by his character from Blue Velvet, Frank Booth, challenging his panel of contestants to inhale his mystery fumes and guess their origins. It's a bit of a creaky piece in places—we've certainly seen enough of Dana's Robin Leach, and Jan's Tammy Faye Bakker feels like a basic rewrite of her last appearance—but Dennis is all-consuming, and it plays to the piece's benefit big time. Even if his dialogue is sand-bagged by network-friendly censorship ("I'll FREAK ANYTHING THAT MOVES!"), he's truly psychopathic, so keyed-in that he might as well not even be doing a comedy sketch at all, and the big crescendo at the end, screaming into a gagged Tammy Faye's face in between aggressive huffs, is one of the most insane minutes of SNL I've seen in a while. Meanwhile, Dennis' other big character reprisal feels more like where the night is playing at: cute, amiable, but ultimately not too great of a success. It's fun to see him play his character from Easy Rider again, and the cast's impressions of other characters in the movie are amusing enough (Phil debuts his perfect Jack Nicholson here), but there's not too much on the bone beyond playfully cheapening one of the more seminal films of the era with Dennis gamely riding along.

The rest of the night's material works with Dennis to varying degrees, but never as well as it could. The slice-of-life sketch with his and Jan's blue-collar auto mechanics taking shots and Phil's smarmy, stranded businessman offers a good opportunity for Dennis to showcase his dramatic chops, but there's nothing too impressive about it as a whole beyond some pretty on-the-nose social satire. "Problem Drinkers From Outer Space" also falls short of its promise quite a bit; alcoholic aliens are a fine enough concept, and Phil is tremendously funny (as always, his great talent is making the most out of even the most lackluster material), but there's nothing dynamic about it as a scene beyond Dennis and Phil's drunk aliens giving a press conference and then leaving, which makes the sketch feel bizarrely truncated. One of the most promising pieces of the night is the job interview sketch, where a panel of job interviewers ask Dennis a series of disturbing questions to ascertain if he's into cannibalism ("Do you like kids?" "Yeah, sure." "Fat ones or lean ones?"), but for whatever reason, it doesn't fully come together either. Perhaps part of it is that it feels like Dennis should be on the other end, using some of his darkness to give the leading questions a more pointed grimness, as he feels wasted as the piece's straight man; maybe it's also that it never meaningfully escalates into anything but a vaguely racist punchline that the audience seems to miss entirely. Either way, it's a bit of a shame for a sketch that momentarily felt like it could be a classic.

The rest of the episode further reinforces the unfussy, "finale" feel with a healthy serving of lukewarm lasts for the season. Church Chat is back, of course, reaffirming its standing power as one of this newfound era's hottest new segments. It's... fine, as these tend to be? The attempt at continuity with Victoria's character is nice, and further contributes to the universe of the sketch in a way that I like, but I'm never a fan of these iterations where Church Lady simply interviews the host as themselves rather than trying to meaningfully inject them into her world. Instead, Dennis simply tells real-life anecdotes, clearly just rattling stories off the top of his head rather than adhering to a tight script, and laughs along with all of Church Lady's catchphrases as if it was a legitimate talk show interview rather than a sketch. (I did enjoy his superior dance with Church Lady, which mostly equated to stiff air-humping.) Tommy Flanagan also makes his final appearance of the season, and his last for quite a while, thrown carelessly at Update to do the same thing he's always done. It all just brings to mind that scathing TV Funhouse segment, "The Life of a Catchphrase," documenting the rise and fall of the Liar as Church Chat gradually usurps its place in people's hearts, leaving Tommy as nothing more than a hacky-feeling remnant of the past. Ah well, Jon—it was good for a bit. The return of the Sweeney Sisters is ultimately the most enjoyable of those recurrers, singing a very cute medley of farewell songs to close out the night, though it's largely business as usual. And lastly, while it's not really recurring in the same sense, this episode does contain Andy Breckman's final sketch as a regular writer on SNL, and I'll greatly miss his regular contributions to the show. This final piece from him is nothing too amazing, with Kevin's political analyst repeatedly derailing a current events roundtable with precarious chair-leaning, but the simplistic, borderline stupid nature of it amused me all the same in that classic, Breckman way.

Do I wish that the season closed in a more bombastic way? Of course, as I always do, but that's not something you should ever count on. More than anything else, I'm just happy to see SNL in a good place again, showing clear signs that it has everything it needs to foster its talent and succeed. If I treat Season 12 less like the immediate start of the show's next golden age, and more like the auspicious beginnings of one, then things are looking pretty damn promising. (Penned 10/12/23)

GRADE: B-.

Cumulative Season Rankings:
1. Valerie Bertinelli / Robert Cray Band (A-)
2. Chevy Chase, Steve Martin, and Martin Short / Randy Newman (B+)
3. Bill Murray / Percy Sledge (B+)
4. William Shatner / Lone Justice (B+)
5. Sigourney Weaver (B+)
6. John Larroquette / Timbuk 3 (B)
7. Garry Shandling / Los Lobos (B)
8. Malcolm-Jamal Warner / Run-DMC (B)
9. Willie Nelson (B)
10. Robin Williams / Paul Simon (B)
11. Joe Montana and Walter Payton / Debbie Harry (B-)
12. John Lithgow / Anita Baker (B-)
13. Dennis Hopper / Roy Orbison (B-)
14. Rosanna Arquette / Ric Ocasek (B-)
15. Steve Guttenberg / The Pretenders (C+)
16. Charlton Heston / Wynton Marsalis (C+)
17. Sam Kinison / Lou Reed (C)
18. Bronson Pinchot / Paul Young (C)
19. Mark Harmon / Timbuk 3 (C)
20. Paul Shaffer / Bruce Hornsby & The Rage (C-)

FAVORITE SKETCHES:
10. "Portrait Artist" (S12E18 / Mark Harmon)
9. "Sincere Guy Stu" (S12E09 /Joe Montana and Walter Payton) 
8. "Collecting Evidence" (S12E16 / John Larroquette)
7. "Truck Stop Cafe" (S12E12 / Willie Nelson)
6. "On Broadway" (S12E13 / Valerie Bertinelli)
5. "Donahue" (S12E14 / Bill Murray)
4. "A Holiday Wish" (S12E06 / Chevy Chase, Steve Martin, and Martin Short)
3. "Reagan: Mastermind" (S12E06 / Chevy Chase, Steve Martin, and Martin Short)
2. "Old Hollywood" (S12E02 / Malcolm-Jamal Warner)
1. "Quiz Masters" (S12E01 / Sigourney Weaver)

Other great sketches: "The Amazing Alexander" and "Mr. Subliminal (S12E01 / Sigourney Weaver); "Donahue" (S12E02 / Malcolm-Jamal Warner); "The People's Court" (S12E03 / Rosanna Arquette); "Jungle Room" (S12E04 / Sam Kinison); "The New York Word Exchange" (S12E05 / Robin Williams); monologue and "Couch Cushions" (S12E06 / Chevy Chase, Steve Martin, and Martin Short); "Casting Director" (S12E07 / Steve Guttenberg); "Look At That!" (S12E08 / William Shatner); "Mace" and "Church Chat" (S12E09 / Joe Montana and Walter Payton); "Amerida" (S12E11 / Bronson Pinchot); "Police Wire" and "The Boyfriend Song" (S12E12 / Willie Nelson); "Hard News Cafe" and "Discover," (S12E13 / Valerie Bertinelli); "One Night Stand" (S12E14 / Bill Murray); "Master Thespian" and "Cross Country" (S12E15 / John Lithgow); "Mother-in-Law" (S12E16 / John Larroquette); "Returning a Sweater" (S12E19 / Garry Shandling); "What's That Smell?" (S12E20 / Dennis Hopper)

FAVORITE MUSICAL PERFORMANCES:
10. Paul Simon (S12E05 / Robin Williams)
9. Run-DMC (S12E02 / Malcolm-Jamal Warner
8. Willie Nelson (S12E12 / Willie Nelson)
7. The Pretenders (S12E7 / Steve Guttenberg)
6. Robert Cray Band (S12E13 / Valerie Bertinelli)
5. Los Lobos (S12E19 / Garry Shandling)
4. Roy Orbison (S12E20 / Dennis Hopper)
3. Anita Baker (S12E16 / John Lithgow)
2. Wynton Marsalis (S12E15 / Charlton Heston)
1. Eddie Van Halen & The SNL Band playing "Stompin' 8H" (S12E13 / Valerie Bertinelli)

WEEKEND UPDATE: I originally conceived of this little addition to my SNL reviews because, at the time that I thought it would be worthwhile, the "Weekend Update" slot was under perpetual instability; now that we're settling into six straight years of Dennis Miller, the value of this section feels far ,more dubious. That's also because, as you may recall from my last season's worth of coverage, I do not like Dennis Miller, and through my deep well of swipes at his entire state of being, I attracted a lot of ire from people who are clearly intoxicated on the hazy memories of their relative youth. It's a bit of irony, really; the only people who would even read these things with a deeper connection to the show absolutely hating the shit out of me trying to connect with them. I'm sure it's another mark against Gen-Z to them or something. But I'm not here to complain about that, really; I guess I just want to clarify that I do understand the significance of Dennis to SNL. I talked about it a bit in my review of the premiere: after years of it being an obligatory feature of SNL, if even that, Dennis made Update cool again. He lended it a unique comic personality; more than simply interpreting whatever cruddy jokes Herb Sargent scribbled out for him to recite, Dennis never let his own feelings towards what he had to read off go unrecognized. He was edgy and smart; he owned countless thesauruses. He didn't care what the audience thought, and that made them love him in a sort of gaslit, abusive relationship sort of way. All of that is crystal-clear to me and I respect it as an important stepping stone in the history of SNL, and the comedy news format in general; we wouldn't have many of the things I love without Dennis making that initial splash.

With that being said, to say that the vast majority of the material he performs doesn't hold up would be an understatement. I feel like the best comedy should be evergreen to some extent. While SNL is an interesting show to examine historically in how it responds to weekly events and mirrors or contends the views of the public, funny is funny. Even if Reagan has been dead for almost two decades now and I have no memories of him as a person, Phil's mastermind impression of him is timelessly hilarious. Dennis, comparatively, is too myopic to connect to unless you lived through what he waxes on about, or otherwise know every single thing about US history circa 1986-87. I consider that to be something of a failure; while it clearly worked week after week, it has become the most impossible portion of every episode to watch. However, I'm open to having my hypothesis proven wrong: if you're a Dennis Miller fan under the age of 36, and you're not an insane rightist nut, please message me!

I would say that Update is at least an improvement on last season, indebted to having a better cast to fill out the segment. While we still haven't quite hit the point where Dennis' Update becomes ground zero for everyone's weirdest character creations, it's become an especially solid place for the persona comics of the cast to shine. Kevin's made decent use of the format with his "Thoughtful Insight" segment, and A. Whitney Brown has continued to deliver pointed commentaries that speak to the times with a greater conciseness and intelligence than the guy who's supposed to be doing that at Update. Perhaps the person who's used the news desk most effectively, though, is Victoria; she's undeniably the weakest performer in the cast, and frequently not the most well-used, but while her correspondent pieces aren't my favorite for the most part, there's no denying that she's one of the first cast members in the show's history to endear herself to SNL audiences by simply being herself, limited range be damned. Hell, I'm writing all of this the night before Pete Davidson—one of the latest cast members to score big (in multiple ways) by simply being himself—will host SNL's 49th season premiere. It's a viable path to victory! I'll probably tire more of her appearances overtime, but with regards to this season, I'd consider them a success.

SEASON AVERAGE: B-.

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SPECIAL THANKS TO MY AMAZING (AND VERY PATIENT) PATRONS: Andrew Dick, William Ham, PC, John Wickham, Jeffrey U, Richard A, Ronald S, Blood Meridian, and Ian Fermaglich!

If you'd like to support my work alongside these distinctly wonderful people, follow me on Patreon! For only $3 a month, you can read my reviews as they're written as well as occasional, Patreon-exclusive coverage of other sketch shows and SNL-adjacent projects, including Lorne Michaels' ill-fated 1984 SNL revival, The New Show! 

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Season 12