Classic SNL Recap - Season 13, Episode 1
After SNL’s return to glory in season 12, season 13 picked up right where the previous one had left off. The only casting change was Kevin Nealon’s promotion from featured player to full-fledged cast member, complete with the introduction of what was possibly his most popular recurring character. Steve Martin returned once again to host the festivities, and even the musical guest (Sting) joined in on the comedic fun. The episode also included a cameo from a Presidential candidate.
In fact, Sting was in my choice for the best sketch of the week, which oddly enough is not included in the Peacock stream but is on SNL’s YouTube channel. In this one, Martin stars as James Bond on holiday, who is shall we say thrifty when his expenses cannot be charged to the British government. At the casino, he orders a Corona - shaken, not stirred. Sting appears as the villain of the piece - named Goldsting. “Mr. Bond, the pretzels are no longer complimentary.”
The cold open was set at a White House dinner, with Phil Hartman as Reagan hosting a group which included Jon Lovitz as Robert Bork. Also among the guests were Dana Carvey as George Bush; it was an embryonic version of his Bush impression. It soon became clear that the sketch was a parody of the baseball bat sequence from The Untouchables, with Reagan pounding Bork’s skull in response to his poor showing in his Supreme Court confirmation hearing.
This episode from September 1987 aired during one of the high points of Martin’s brilliant career. In his monologue he mentioned that Roxanne had been in theaters the previous summer, and he also brought up his newest movie that would be released in a couple of months - Planes, Trains & Automobiles. Not a bad year for the guy.
The other top notch sketch of the week was a game show parody called Common Knowledge. Here, Nora Dunn as Jeane Kirkpatrick competed against Nealon’s returning champ in a quiz show. The twist is that the answers were determined by a poll of high school students. Hence, according to the show, the capital of New York is New York City and Ernest Hemingway was the author of The Grapes Of Wrath.
In Weekend Update Dennis Miller pointed out that the 1988 Presidential Election will be the final one in the Al Franken Decade, so who better to cover it than Franken himself? Franken’s election coverage was a recurring bit during the season and it started off with an interview with Democratic candidate and Arizona Governor Bruce Babbitt, who did in fact appear as himself and showed decent comedic timing in his bit. The joke was that he was caught in a scandal; the scandal being that he habitually tried to use the express line in the supermarket with more than 10 items. Among his defenses were that the cashier counted the Kellogg’s Variety Pack as 6 items when it should have only been 1.
Finally, in the last sketch of the evening America was introduced to Hans & Franz who just wanted to pump you up. This was one of the more enduring recurring bits of the era, and most of the elements were in place from the get go. This edition was one of the rare instances in which they actually worked out instead of simply flexing muscles and accusing their audience of being weaklings. True, the “workout” only consisted of Hans doing light curls with a dumbbell, but it was a workout nonetheless. We would see a lot of the duo, who if you remember were cousins of Arnold Schwarzenegger, in the years to come.
There was a Writers Guild strike a few months later, so this turned out to be a short season of only 13 episodes. This means that the midseason episode that I will tackle next week aired earlier in the year than normal. Angie Dickinson was the host. We’ll discuss it next week. Perhaps by then I can figure out what Dickinson was promoting in 1987 that would have placed her on the SNL stage.
History Has Been Made!
On June 26 the Red Sox/Blue Jays game was interrupted by rain with Toronto catcher Danny Jansen batting in the second inning. The rain did not let up, and the game was eventually suspended, to be completed the next time Toronto was scheduled to visit Boston, which was this week. Nothing unusual about this; make up games happen frequently over the course of a season. Except for this. Toronto traded Jansen to Boston at the trade deadline, and eagle-eyed internet detectives quickly realized that Jansen could conceivably play for two different teams in the same game.
In the days leading up to Monday’s completion of the suspended game Sox manager Alex Cora confirmed that he would indeed insert Jansen into the game. It was no stunt either. Reese McGuire was Boston’s catcher at the point of the game’s suspension, but he has since been DFA’d, so a replacement catcher was necessary. As a result, Joel Youngblood no longer holds the distinction of participating in the wackiest result following an in-season trade. The specific circumstances of the game were the cherry on top. Remember, Jansen was hitting when the rains came. So, he was behind the plate to complete an at bat that he had started as a hitter. Insert your favorite Spider-Man or Leo DiCaprio meme. The only thing that prevented perfection is that because Jansen only took one pitch in the pre-rainout portion of the game, pinch hitter Daulton Varsho received official credit for the at bat. Had Jansen been both hitter and defensive player in the same at bat, it would have likely opened up a vortex which would completely dismantle all known concepts of space and time. Reality as we know it dodged a bullet there.
The Little League World Series
I’ve long had mixed feelings about the Little League World Series. When I was a kid its annual appearance on Wide World Of Sports was the surest sign that summer was almost done. In addition, it was probably a product of youthful naïveté, but it felt like the purest sporting event there is. Like just about everything else, the bigger it got, the shadier it got. Plus, as wonderful of an experience as it is for the kids playing, there’s also something about it that doesn’t quite feel right.
This is what I mean when I say that. The LLWS has all the classic thrill of victory and agony of defeat elements. As wonderful as it is to see the victors experience such unbridled joy there is also the flip side. It’s a heartbreaking feeling to come out on the losing end of such an important game; does it feel right to place 12 year old children brought to tears on national TV? Take this weekend’s championship game as an example. The game ended in extra innings when the Taiwanese pitcher made a wild throw to first, allowing the winning run to score for the team from Florida. That’s a devastating enough situation for a child; doing so in front of an audience of millions is infinitely worse.
Plus, adults have a knack for ruining everything. The team from The Bronx that used overaged players several years ago will always live in infamy. And promotions for this year’s edition included betting odds. Read that again. Gambling on a sporting event involving children. That’s sick.
I don’t want to be too much of a killjoy. At its best the LLWS is the giddiest sporting event there is. This year’s final was also a throwback, as a team from Taiwan was the international representative in the game. In those Wide World Of Sports years, the Taiwanese little league program was an international sporting dynasty. From 1969-1991 Taiwan made it into the final game 17 times in that 23 year span. 15 of those 17 won the title, often in blowout fashion. One of sport’s enduring mysteries is what happened to these players as they matured into adulthood. You would think that at least some of these kids would have developed into great players but that wasn’t the case. Taiwan has not had a corresponding level of success in either Olympic or World Championship level baseball, and there has only been a total of 17 natives of Taiwan that have played major league baseball in the United States.
Some Final Olympic Thoughts
Remember the days when Juan Antonio Samaranch was president of the IOC, and during his remarks at the closing ceremony he would always congratulate the host nation by proclaiming that they had staged the greatest Olympic Games in history? That’s why it stood out when in Atlanta he merely said that the Atlanta organizers had put together an “outstanding” games, no superlatives added. (The IOC was turned off by the crass commercialism seen in Atlanta. That’s hilarious coming from the IOC of all organizations.)
There has been a world filled with Samaranchs in the aftermath of Paris, as there has been a strong consensus that this has been the best Olympic Games in recent memory. I feel the same way myself, and there are several reasons why. An obvious one is recency bias; we’re still coming down from the sugar rush of experiencing these Games, and the multitude of spectacular performances is prominent in our minds. The venues played a big part as well; the backdrops of the beautiful sites of Paris added so much to our enjoyment of the events. Finally, this point cannot be repeated enough. COVID-era Olympics didn’t cut it; you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s not there. A crucial factor was missing without uproarious crowds or family members present on site to share in the moment.
I have been a passionate fan of the Olympics going all the way back to 1976. I am so happy that Paris 2024 was the triumphant event that it was. Beginning next week I’ll begin a feature that I hope will be fun & not too self indulgent. I’m going to go through and review each sport in the Olympic program. How TV friendly is it? How much do I personally enjoy watching it? How closely do I pay attention to it in the years between Olympic cycles? Before that on Friday I’ll look back on a past rival to the Olympics that came and went. Remember the Goodwill Games?
The Oscar Mulligan - 1991
Best Picture: The Silence Of the Lambs
Other Nominees: Beauty and the Beast, Bugsy, JFK, The Prince Of Tides
No need to overthink this one; Silence of the Lambs deserved to win and it did. Before getting to that, I should acknowledging the other nominees. I really enjoyed Bugsy; it was a terrific portrait of Bugsy Siegel. I can’t vouch for its accuracy, but it painted a picture of a man who could be both tremendously charming and dangerous at the drop of a hat. It also holds a place in Hollywood lore; it’s where Warren Beatty - a notorious Lothario - met Annette Bening. They’re still married all these years later. In its time JFK was a pop culture landmark and a huge technical achievement. It hasn’t aged particularly well; the movie threw virtually every Kennedy conspiracy against the wall; I’m pretty sure that I was identified as a co-conspirator & I wasn’t even born in 1963.
This is something that I might discuss more in depth some other time, but in general I am not much of a fan of live action musicals. I do enjoy animated musicals, however. Since the atmosphere is already removed from reality it doesn’t feel as jarring to have characters spontaneously break out into song & dance. Beauty & the Beast proved that The Little Mermaid was no fluke and that classic Disney animation was back. B & B just might be my favorite Disney movie of this era; either that or The Lion King. The ballroom dance scene was pure magic.
It’s not as much of a talking point now that there are 10 Best Picture nominees, but when there were 5 people sure noticed whenever the Best Picture & Best Director nominees did not match up. It really came to a head this year when Barbra Streisand did not receive a nomination for directing The Prince Of Tides. This coming a year after Penny Marshall was similarly overlooked for directing Awakenings reminded everyone that as of this date Lina Wertmueller was still the only woman to have ever received a Best Director nomination. In some ways the ceremony was a Streisand love fest. Host Billy Crystal made the requisite “did it direct itself?” joke and I remember at least one presenter making a snarky comment about the omission followed by a camera cut to Streisand blowing kisses towards the stage. Left unsaid was how the two “interloping” Best Director nominees must have felt. Those were Jon Singleton for Boyz N The Hood and Ridley Scott for Thelma & Louise, which I have to say were both better movies than Prince Of Tides and both have left behind more long lasting cultural footprints.
As for Silence Of the Lambs, it checks virtually every box needed to make it the deserving winner. It was a great, rewatchable movie and a popular one, with iconic characters and quotes & scenes that remain omnipresent to this day. No one can think of fava beans or the thought of having an old friend for dinner without immediately flashing to this movie. Never mind what people think when they see lotion in a basket. True, the transphobia connected to Buffalo Bill has aged poorly, but director Jonathan Demme had long expressed regret over the portrayal of that character, so at least there was acknowledgment of that problematic aspect.
Hannibal Lecter is an all-time great movie villain; Anthony Hopkins won the Best Actor prize even though the character had a relatively small amount of screen time. I would still say it’s accurate to call him a lead character; even when he was unseen everyone else in the movie was concerned with his whereabouts at all times. Hopkins was brilliant; he played it with the right level of creepiness (that voice was perfect,) but when it came time to unleash his full horror it was amazing. I admit that I jumped when I realized it was actually Lecter in the ambulance wearing the face of one of his victims as he made his escape.
Jodie Foster was just as great as as Clarice Starling. She used her relative youth and relative lack of height to good use; she was clearly someone who could be easily underestimated. Remember that scene where she was riding the elevator with her FBI superiors, all of whom seemed to tower over her? You could tell that she used that to her stealthy advantage; Clarice was a perfect example of a character who is tougher than she seems.
Two final notes. Demme was one of the top graduates of the Roger Corman Finishing School, and he paid the favor back by not only giving Corman a cameo role in the movie but he also cast several actors who were part of Corman’s standard repertory players. I also learned years later that at the time of the filming Ted Levine - who portrayed Buffalo Bill - and Brooke Smith - who portrayed his captive - were a couple. I sure hope that neither of them were so Method that they remained in character throughout the shoot. That would have been twisted.
Closing Laughs
Say good night Gracie, we have reached the end for this day. Have a great day everyone, and see you on Friday.
