The recent Saturday Night Live F-bomb brought up discussion on Facebook of
one of the most famous moments in the show’s history, when then-castmember
Charles Rocket said the forbidden word on February 21, 1981. It was a move that both almost killed but
likely saved the show (explained below), during the first season without the
original cast. That year (season 6) has
basically been wiped off the face of the Earth, but there were actually some
decent moments. Below, I have provided a
summary (and links) to the zircons hidden among the pebbles. These are mostly okay, but not as bad as you may have been led to believe. And I did not bother linking to the dozens of really terrible sketches.
Note that I don’t mention many of the musical
performances because few of them are online, and they were pretty much all
enjoyable. That’s understandable, by the
way, because producer Jean Doumanian had gotten her job after booking the show’s
musical acts from 1976-80. Unfortunately,
that doesn’t seem to have prepared her to staff up and run a comedy juggernaut.
I’ve included some extra pieces specifically for my Chicago,
Ohio and media-biz friends, even if they’re not particularly funny. And note that some of the pieces on the NBC website are mis-labeled and sometimes load really slowly.
If you just want to get to the truly excellent sketches (at least, the ones that are online), here's shortcuts; it actually kind of flows as a real episode...
James Brown Rapp Payback and medley (audio only)
And now, the in-depth slog; if you want to see all the online sketches from season six, start at this link...
1) Elliott Gould / Kid Creole & the Coconuts (Nov. 15,
1980):
The first show of the "new SNL" was heavy on
trying to connect with the “original” show (cold open), but fell far
short. Even the promo -- with
last-minute host Elliot Gould -- had them mentioning Steve Martin. (A different promo is here). This is a great example of how you squander
talents (Gilbert Gottfried, character actress Denny Dillon), mis-cast them
(Charles Rocket, Joe Piscopo) or just ignore them (Eddie Murphy, who doesn't
appear till episode two). Some
interesting bits are Gilbert and Denny interviewing the host, another faux talk
show titled "At One With" (which would never fly today), and short
films by Randal Kleiser (director of "Grease") and Jonathan
Demme. The rest is weak, but things
hadn't gotten truly awful yet.
2) Malcolm McDowell / Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band
(Nov. 22, 1980): Widely considered a terrible episode, there are some bright
spots...
Gilbert Gottfried as a tobacco executive blaming the lungs
-- not cigarettes -- for cancer, and Charles Rocket on 5th Avenue (one of his
man-on-the-street "Rocket Reports," which were uniformly excellent). In the interesting-but-not-that-funny
department, Malcolm McDowell reprises his "Clockwork Orange"character and Gilbert Gottfried appears on the news to critique the previous week's episode. The news also features
McDowell imitating John Lennon, which he says he felt bad about for years --
since Lennon was murdered weeks later -- until Yoko Ono said they saw the show
and had enjoyed the imitation.
3) Ellen Burstyn / Aretha Franklin, Keith Sykes (December 6,
1980): An interesting episode with only three really decent segments. There’s Burstyn as a lonely old lady on Halloween and another Rocket Report. Plus,
Eddie Murphy makes his debut with a speaking part (he was an extra the previous
week), giving a commentary on the desegregation of Cleveland’s school basketball teams!
Two interesting-but-not-that-funny pieces are an edited
video for the Dr. Demento favorite, “Fish Heads” by Barnes & Barnes
(featuring Bill Paxton; the link is to a different edit), and a commercial for the “Ed McMahon School of Laughing.”
4) Jamie Lee Curtis / James Brown, Ellen Shipley (December
13, 1980): All I can say is, I feel bad for Ellen Shipley. Her big TV debut, and James Brown DESTROYS
Studio 8H – causing the show to go way over at the same time (the final third of
this episode is very oddly paced). For
context, prior to SNL25, Joe Piscopo was interviewed on VH1 and remembered James
Brown actually shaking the building with his performance. During SNL40, they only showed clips of a
half-dozen musical guests: James Brown’s was one of them. Sadly, in the 60-minute reruns, the
performances are edited out due to time!
And this episode was never rerun in its entirety except for once in 2005
during “Classic SNL” on NBC at 1 a.m. (which was not carried on many stations, such
as WKYC in Cleveland). So that means James
Brown’s two performances have only aired twice in the U.S. The audio is available – for now – of “Rapp Payback” and a medley of JB’s hits.
Trivia: James Brown had previously been announced as the musical guest for
the February 23, 1980 episode, but was replaced for unknown reasons by Sam
& Dave. Maybe a conflict with
filming “The Blues Brothers”?
The rest of this episode includes an excerpt of director
Martin Brest’s 1971 film “Hot Dogs for Gauguin” (featuring Danny Devito) and a pretty
good sketch about suicidal poets. For
Northeast Ohio nerds, there’s a sketch titled “News In Akron” (which,
ironically, does not feature Ohio native Denny Dillon). At the close, Jamie Lee Curtis reminds people
of a vigil for John Lennon being held the next day. That begs the question: if the original cast
had still been on the air, how would they have handled Lennon’s murder?
5) David Carradine / Linda Ronstadt and the cast of "Pirates
of Penzance" (December 13, 1980): A surprisingly enjoyable episode with a
surprisingly out-of-it host. There’s
commercials for “Gun City” (Crazy Eddie style) and the home version of “Dallas,”
plus a Mr. Bill film leftover from the previous year. Also decent are the Rocket Report, a sketch
in which Bob Dylan visits Woody Guthrie, and Joe Piscopo trying to replace Don Pardo (which he would actually do a couple times later on, when Pardo was out
sick). Interestingly, there are two
sketches featuring the same shopping mall set: one with valley girls and one
with people mourning Col. Sanders. (How
does the Colonel get a whole sketch, and John Lennon just gets a mention in the
goodnights?!). One short film, involving
NBC executives trying to find a virgin for their new show, mentions Father
Guido Sarducci… and was almost nixed by network censors. Same with a sketch about rich people going to
Harlem to buy drugs.
It all is pretty consistent for this season, but isn’t particularly
great in the pantheon of SNL.
Broadway fans will want to see Bill Irwin as a man who can’t
stop dancing, but the piece is never online because it uses the Peaches &
Herb song “Shake Your Groove Thing.”
They did a sequel to this on the October 23, 1982 show hosted by Howard
Hesseman. In that episode, Hesseman mentions
that he’s the first person to host both the “old” SNL (1975-80) and the “new” (1981-85), further proving that everyone wanted to just pretend season six never happened.
6) Ray Sharkey / Jack Bruce & Friends (January 10,
1981): This episode is mostly notable for the people involved, as opposed to
any great sketches. First, comedian Dom Irrera
(one of my favorites) has a bit part in the cold open. He had tried out for the show the previous
fall and didn’t make the cut. (Also look
for Wendie Malick of “Just Shoot Me” as an extra this season). There’s a short film by Mike Nesmith of The
Monkees. And Cream bassist Jack Bruce is
backed up by David Sancious (of the E Street Band) and Billy Cobham.
Late in the show, as they were running short on time, Eddie
Murphy was asked to go on stage and perform part of his stand up routine, and
it kills! There’s also a cute commercial
for “Stop-A-Nut,” and a good sketch in which Sharkey is trying to interrogate Gilbert Gottfried. During "Weekend Update," Eddie Murphy does some of his impressions for the first time and gets in a nasty dig at Garrett Morris.
Behind-the-scenes, filmmaker Mitchell Kriegman was let go
over the Christmas break. He would go on
to create “Clarissa Explains It All.”
Head writer Mason Williams (previously of the “Smothers Brothers Comedy
Hour”) was also let go, replaced by Jeremy Stevens and Tom Moore (of “Fernwood
2-Night”). Finally, improv legend Del
Close was brought in to work with the cast.
7) Karen Black / Cheap Trick, Stanley Clarke Trio (January
17, 1981): This is actually a little
better than Black’s 1976 episode; new head writers Tom Moore and Jeremy Stevens
seem to be on to something. Several of
the sketches would be funny in any SNL era: Charles Rocket as a game show host
at home, the best Rocket Report, Eddie Murphy fighting with his neighbor over
the loudness of his stereo, and a “60 Minutes” parody that may only be funny to
people in-the-biz (and featuring an actor who looks like Dennis Kucinich, but is playing
Mike Wallace).
Other than that, there’s some decent pieces in which Jimmy Carter
leaves the White House, a museum security guard breaks up with a painting, we
hear the thoughts of a stroke victim, the first appearance of Piscopo as Frank
Sinatra, and Karen Black and “Jersey Guy” Paulie Herman parodying “Five Easy Pieces.”
8) Robert Hays / Joe "King" Carrasco & the
Crowns, 14 Karat Soul (January 24, 1981): The star of “Airplane!” can’t save
this weak episode. The monologue is just
a retread of one Buck Henry did in 1979, and the only decent pieces are the “Save-A-Network”
telethon for NBC, the Rocket Report, and a sports organist playing during a funeral.
9) Sally Kellerman / Jimmy Cliff (February 7, 1981): Again,
more interesting for stuff that has nothing to do with comedy. The Rocket Report is so-so but was filmed at
the parade welcoming home the Iranian hostages.
A slow-moving sketch about a televised courtroom (something that was new
in 1981) morphs into “The Tonight Show,” complete with the real Jim Fowler and another
Dom Irrera spotting. A very flimsy and
irritating sketch, “The Audition,” ends with Gilbert Gottfried doing a good proto-Andrew
“Dice” Clay routine, which Gottfried has also done in his act. And for end-credit-nerds,
the show’s costume house changed its name from Brooks Van Horn to Eaves-Brooks.
There are two actually enjoyable pieces in this episode: a
game show called “Name That Sin,” and Eddie Murphy worrying that the
Emancipation Proclamation is invalid.
10) Deborah Harry / Funky Four + 1 More (February 14, 1981):
More IBNTF (“interesting-but-not-that-funny”) bits for the Valentine’s Day show. The lead singer of Blondie presents the first
known appearance of rap (Funky Four + 1 More) on national television. Later, she appeared in a sketch playing a
woman who is trying to come out to her parents (something pretty groundbreaking
for 1981). And there’s a decent rewrite
of the game-show-host-at-home sketch from the Karen Black show. Other than that, Gilbert Gottfried playing
Big Brother in an Orwellian future is pretty good.
11) Charlene Tilton / Todd Rundgren, Prince (February 21,
1981): This is it, the moment that saved SNL by killing it. All season, critics had savaged the show. Ratings and ad rates dipped, and NBC was contemplating
cancelling SNL. Had Charles Rocket not
dropped an F-bomb during the goodnights, the show would likely have limped
along till the end of the season, then been replaced by SCTV. And we would never have gotten to see “More
Cowbell” or Kristen Wiig or “Wayne’s World” or Fernando or “James Brown
Celebrity Hot Tub” or Tina Fey.
The musical guests this week are far more interesting:
Prince makes his debut with an amazing “Partyup” (another of the few excerpted
pieces on SNL40), and Todd Rundgren’s “Time Heals” is a forgotten gem.
Other than that, the IBNTF bits include three commercials:
one for the Greatest Records of All-Time (basically “Dave’s Record Collection”
from the Letterman show), “A Fiddler Be On the Roof” (prototype for “Buckwheat Sings”), and a parody of the promo for the boring Richard Dreyfuss film “The Competition” (which can be compared to the real commercial).
The Rocket Report is pretty good, and the first-ever “Mister
Robinson’s Neighborhood” is a classic (but not online!).
12) Bill Murray / Delbert McClinton (March 7, 1981): After
Charles Rocket’s F-bomb, NBC decided to shut down the show for re-tooling. Before they got a chance, Bill Murray signed
on to host and took the season six cast out with a bang.
This episode is filled with nostalgia and begins with a “Meatballs”-inspired cold open, plus Murray picking the Oscars (as he used to on “Weekend Update”), and
a Nick the Lounge Singer sketch (Nick Rivers).
At the end of the show, he apologizes to the original cast for hosting,
and then basically snubs the new cast except Eddie Murphy.
In between are three pretty good sketches, which all somehow
feel like things I’ve seen Bill Murray do with the original cast: playing a novelist, a man who can’t remember his friend’s cat’s name, and as a laundromat owner. There’s also a parody of “Altered
States” featuring Bill Murray’s Walter Cronkite impression, the day after
Cronkite retired from anchoring the CBS Evening News.
Just before Comedy Central lost their rights to the hour-long
SNL reruns, they ran a “50 Greatest Episodes of All-Time” marathon on Christmas
Day, 2003. This was the only episode they
ran from season six.
The following week’s show was supposed to be hosted by
Robert Guillaume, with musical guest Ian Dury & the Blockheads, but instead
SNL shut down for a month so new producer Dick Ebersol could (mostly) clean
house. In the interim, he chose the
following four original cast episodes as reruns: Richard Pryor / Gil
Scott-Heron (12/13/75), Steve Martin / The Blues Brothers (04/22/78), Rick
Nelson / Judy Collins (02/17/79), Margot Kidder / The Chieftains (03/17/79). (Guillaume would eventually host on March 19, 1983, but Ian Dury & the Blockheads broke up in early 1982).
13) Chevy Chase / Junior Walker & The All-Stars (April
11, 1981): Some SNL histories say there is no officially credited host for this
episode, but it’s obvious that Chase is filling that role. Apparently, Dick Ebersol was so desperate to
reconnect with the original cast, he allowed Chase – who was shooting a movie
-- to fly in on Saturday, skipping rehearsals.
His rusty delivery during “Weekend Update” would bear that out, but this
show is actually quite good thanks to a number returning SNL veterans (Michael
O’Donoghue, Al Franken, Rosie Shuster, Walter Williams) and new blood from Second
City (Robin Duke, Tom Kazurinsky, Tony Rosato).
There’s even a cameo by Robin Williams and Christopher Reeve! Interestingly, Brian Doyle-Murray – who had
written for the show consistently since season three, and was even a castmember
in season five – had been fired the previous week!
Highlights: Chevy returns and finds Mr. Bill, Eddie Murphy as Bill Cosby, Al Franken wants to “Put SNL to Sleep,” Gail Matthius as Irene
Cara singing “Same,” a commercial for a terrible “school of broadcasting,” and a
thinly veiled parody of my favorite drama, “Hill Street Blues,” titled “The
Self Righteous.”
The following week’s show was supposed to feature Al Franken
& Tom Davis, with musical guest the Grateful Dead. That never happened because a writer’s strike
shut down the entire TV industry. Also
cancelled were shows slated to be hosted by Steve Martin and Dan Aykroyd. Instead, SNL wouldn’t return until October,
by which point any lingering reminders of the dreaded season six had been
purged. Franken & Davis would return as writers/producers/performers on-and-off from 1985-2002. Steve Martin made a memorable cameo on December 11, 1982, but would not host again until December 6, 1986. Dan Aykroyd would make cameos starting in 1988, but not actually host for another 22 years, until May 17, 2003.
