TTH 2/18/26

Classic SNL Recap - Season 27, Episode 10

I miscalculated last week when I said that Jack Black hosted the midseason episode in season 27. It was actually Josh Hartnett. That’s quite a comedown. I always thought of Hartnett as a bland, uninteresting actor. As it turned out, he was a bland, uninteresting SNL host as well. This episode ran during his heartthrob phase, and there were loads of audible screams from the studio audience. That was all he contributed to the show. There was one pretty dumb parody of a made for Lifetime movie in which he played Ana Gasteyer’s stepson, and he portrayed JC Chasez in a sketch in which *NSYNC appeared in Star Wars: Attack Of the Clones. It was a little humorous to see Jimmy Fallon as Justin Timberlake with the knowledge that they would go on to team up so frequently, but that was about it.

This week’s episode did contain an Update desk piece which I fondly remember. The episode aired in January 2002, during the opening weeks of the Afghanistan war. You may remember that news correspondents had to rely on satellite phone to provide their live reports, and that would come with a time lag. There was always a noticeable pause between the anchor’s question and the reporter’s answer. This week we were introduced to the comedy team of Henley & Stiles (Horatio Sanz and Chris Kattan) who were supposed to have entertained the troops, but Henley had missed his flight. As a treat, Update set up a sat phone so that they could still perform their most famous bit, but that time lag ruined the timing of the bit. It was very well done.

Update also included Tracy Morgan as Maya Angelou, reading from her line of greeting cards. The joke was that she would recite a depressing poem about death, only to reveal that it was a Happy Birthday card for a 5 year old. Death also surrounded the cold open. In this one Darrell Hammond’s Bill Clinton was giving the eulogy at the funeral for his dog Buddy. Interspersed with actual footage from a state funeral, Clinton used his time at the pulpit to throw shade at his political rivals and at his wife. Keeping things presidential, Saturday TV Funhouse featured the recurring X-Presidents cartoon - the running jokes about the supposed robust sex life of George & Barbara Bush never failed to get a laugh - and this one also included a guest appearance from Ace & Gary, the Ambiguously Gay Duo.

This didn’t take long; halfway through her first season and Amy Poehler was already promoted from featured player to main cast. This sketch was mildly amusing. She and Seth Meyers (look how young he was) were flight attendants trying to calm down a flight full of passengers who had been stuck on a runway for hours. Hartnett’s performance as the pilot was intentionally meant to be lame, but I think this gives an idea of how little he brought to the table this week.

Next week will bring us to the finale of season 27. Winona Ryder was the host, and it was also the week that an SNL legend took his farewell lap.

One Of the Greatest That There Ever Was

As an exercise, try to quickly put together a list of your 20 favorite movies. There is a very good chance that Robert Duvall was in at least one of them, and it’s likely there will be more than one Duvall movie on your list. From his debut feature role in 1962 to his final IMDB credit in 2022, he put together a staggering résumé. Although he was not always the top billed actor, he was always a crucial component. Could you imagine anyone else as Col. Kilgore?

Duvall’s greatness was apparent in his very first film, in which he played Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird. He was spoken of throughout the movie, but not actually seen until the very end. He had no dialogue, but in just a few minutes of screen time his facial expressions and physicality embodied what the character was all about. His imposing presence made it plausible that he was the sort of mythic figure whom local children would learn to fear. Yet in his eyes one could see his innocence, as well as his natural instinct to protect Scout and Jem. Boo is one of the iconic characters in American literature. I had read the novel years before I had seen the movie. I can’t recall exactly how I had pictured Boo in my head as I was reading, but now it is impossible to envision him as anything other than Robert Duvall.

He would spend much of the 1960’s guest starring in television roles; it was in the new decade where he truly shined. He was Frank Burns. He was Tom Hagen. He was Col. Kilgore. He was an incredibly versatile actor, but in that peak period he had a particular affinity for portraying exceptionally amoral characters. Think of Network. Or The Conversation. Or The Great Santini. He even played Joseph Stalin in a made for HBO movie. He didn’t maintain the same winning percentage in subsequent years, but who could? There is still lots to recommend post 1980, including his Oscar winning role in Tender Mercies, and The Apostle, a movie in which he both directed and starred. In that one, there was a specific actor who caught my eye for the first time and made me think “this guy is really good.” That young actor was Walton Goggins. Nice find, Mr. Duvall.

The 1970’s were a true golden age for American movies, and it is impossible to fully tell the story of that era without prominently featuring Robert Duvall. He was easily one of the greatest actors in my lifetime, and he was the sort of talent who could make anything watchable even if the quality of a project wasn’t exactly up to his standards. Duvall was 95 when he died this week. What a legend.

Today’s Olympic Thoughts

The final event in alpine skiing takes place this morning, so by the time you read this Mikaela Shiffrin will have either triumphed in her best event, the slalom, or she will leave empty handed for her second consecutive Olympics. It is the brutal reality of the Games that if an athlete falls short of expectations, potential redemption will not come for another 4 years.

At least Shiffrin has won in previous Olympics; the same cannot be said for Ilia Malinin. I try to closely follow several Olympic sports in the off years, but figure skating is not one of them. I was vaguely aware of Malinin, but it wasn’t until the ramp up to these Games that I fully understood just how great he has been. Which makes his meltdown all the more perplexing; he had been unbeatable until now.

I attempted to find parallels and I came up with two. Michael Johnson came into the 1992 Olympics just as dominant as Malinin has been, but an ill-timed bout of food poisoning weakened him enough that he didn’t even make it out of the 200m semifinals. His best was yet to come, however. He pulled off the 200/400 double in 1996, setting a world record in the 200. He followed that up with another 400 gold in 2000. Malinin is young enough that he should have future opportunities, and he can look to Johnson for inspiration.

At the opposite end of the Olympic redemption scale was the plight of legendary Ukrainian pole vaulter Sergey Bubka. He was far and away the world’s greatest in that event for 15 years, yet he only won a solitary Olympic gold in 1988. He missed out in 1984 due to the Soviet boycott, and inexplicably failed to clear a height in 1992 before missing 1996 due to injury. At least he can say he is an Olympic gold medalist, but his body of work suggests that he should have had more. Plus, that one gold was while he was competing for the Soviet Union. He did not win a medal while competing under the flag of an independent Ukraine.

This week on the sliding track a pair of veterans finally won long awaited gold. Elana Meyers Taylor had won 5 total medals in previous Olympics, but none of them gold. In her career she has won 2 World Championship golds and 3 World Cup titles, so she has had a long history of international victories with one missing piece. Until now. On Monday she came back in the final heat to win gold in the monobob. With that victory made history in several ways. She is now the oldest woman to win an individual gold in the Winter Olympics, and only the second Black woman to win individual winter gold for the United States. Erin Jackson in speed skating is the other. She has also tied Bonnie Blair for the most total medals for an American winter Olympian. She would break the record if she medals in 2-woman bob; that competition takes place Friday and Saturday.

Austrian skeleton racer Janine Flock has had Dan Jansen levels of Olympic frustration. She has won 3 World Cup titles, but no Olympic medals of any type, best exemplified by her result in 2018. She fell to 4th place after a disastrous final heat. No such trouble this year; she had the fastest time in 3 of the 4 heats to finally win an Olympic medal, this one gold.

In addition to the women’s slalom, today’s biggest highlight should be the quarterfinal matches in men’s hockey. Slovakia faces Germany, Canada plays Czechia, Finland takes the ice against Switzerland, and the day wraps up with the United States taking on Sweden. That is a prelude to tomorrow’s gold medal match in women’s hockey between, you guessed it, the US & Canada.

Round robin play in the curling tournaments are close to wrapping up. The US women have not yet formally clinched, but they appear to be in great shape for a spot in the semifinal round. The US men by contrast are in a deep hole. Even if they win their final game against Great Britain today, they will need help to make it into medal play. Another event which will have taken place by the time you read this today are the team sprint events for both genders in cross country skiing. It could very well be Klæbo time once again; the great Norwegian skier will be racing for his 5th gold in 5 events.

Thursday should be an eventful day. Among the finals are the 1500m in men’s speed skating, with Jordan Stolz hoping to skate to his 3rd gold. The new sport of ski mountaineering makes its Olympics debut. Consider me intrigued; it entails climbing up a mountain on skis and then ascending. Just thinking about it makes my calves burn. It’s exhausting enough to see cross country skiers struggle on the uphill portions of the course. But to actually make their way up a steep peak? Yikes. The day culminates with what is generally the marquee event of the Winter Olympics, the free program in women’s figure skating.

50 Years Ago - What’s Happening!!

If you have been reading me regularly, you know by now that I have limited patience for TV comedies that are overly reliant on catchphrases. There are the occasional exceptions to those guidelines. What’s Happening!! was one such example. Even though this show also contained another one of my pet peeves - characters constantly insulting each other rather than talking to each other like normal people - I still have a lot of affection for it. Perhaps that’s because I never watched it again in syndication so I have no idea how well or how poorly it has aged. It made me laugh during its original airing; I am comfortable with maintaining that memory.

What’s Happening was based (very) loosely on the film Cooley High. Whereas the movie was a gritty drama about African-American high school kids in Chicago, What’s Happening was decidedly not that. Instead, it was a light hearted, sometimes broad, comedy about a trio of young men living in Watts. Despite the tone of the show, it did sometimes delve into social issues, it was just that it was done in a lighthearted way.

The three leads were Raj, Dwayne, & Rerun. Rerun was the breakout character, a severely overweight man who was also a skilled and athletic dancer. Raj was the lead, serious and mischievous at the same time, and Dwayne was naive and sometimes a bit slow on the uptake. The rest of the regular cast consisted of Mabel, Raj’s stern single other, Dee, Raj’s sarcastic little sister, and Shirley, the wisecracking waitress at the soda shop where the guys would hang out after school. Let us not forget Big Earl and Little Earl, who were introduced in the final season. Big Earl was a white police detective who was a neighbor of Raj and Rerun after they moved into their own apartment. Little Earl was his son, who must have been around 10 years old at the time and had a deep crush on Dee.

For a show which only lasted for 3 seasons, it made a lasting impression. There were several episodes which I still remember clearly to this day. There was the one in which Dwayne won the football betting pool each week. He finally revealed his system, which involved a mathematical formula he came up with which determined the point spread. The flaw was that he chose the winner based on which team’s helmet he liked better, which came back to bite him when he placed a big bet on the Buccaneers over the Raiders.

Then there was the Very Special Episode in which the Doobie Brothers performed at the high school. As a reporter for the school paper, Raj set up an interview with the band. “I be Roger Thomas, which Doobie you be?” In the interview, which Dwayne and Rerun sat in on, the band mentioned that the biggest issue in the music industry was illegal bootlegging. At the same time, Rerun had been tricked into illicitly recording the concert. He was led to believe that he was asked to do so as a personal favor for the Doobies.At the show, Rerun was so caught up in the music that as he danced the tape recorder fell out of his coat pocket. All turned out well in the end. The Doobies and the 3 friends helped set up a sting operation to nab the crooks.

If there is one word I could use to describe this show it would be “likable.” These were good people, and that helped mask any flaws one could find. Was it a great show? No. Was it an enjoyable way to spend a half hour each week? Absolutely. Sometimes there’s no need to ask much more than that.

Closing Laughs

That will be enough for now. Thanks for being here, and a have a great day. See you on Friday.