Classic SNL Recap - Season 19, Episode 11
Sara Gilbert hosted this episode, and in one of those factoids that I knew at the time but had long since forgotten, this took place after she had left Roseanne in order to pursue a college degree. She referenced that in her monologue, saying that she was hoping none of her professors were watching the show, as she had not told them she was hosting SNL. Instead she had called out sick, pretending to have the flu. In fact, she didn’t tell Roseanne and Tom Arnold that she had left their show either, telling them as well that she was out sick with the flu.
This week featured one of the briefer cold opens in show history. It was a Court TV sketch concerning the Lorena Bobbitt trial. Mike Myers portrayed John Bobbitt in the witness box; after a few questions he was interrupted by Tonya Harding (Melanie Hutsell) clubbing him repeatedly in the crotch with a baton. I’ll refrain from playing the umm, actually game by pointing out that it was not Harding herself who attacked Nancy Kerrigan.
The one sketch that I remember from this episode held up very well; a parody of Blossom, more specifically that show’s infamous propensity for airing Very Special Episodes. In this case Blossom was planning on having sex with her boyfriend for the 4th time! Hutsell was Blossom, Gilbert was Six, and Myers was Joey. “Whoa!” As Blossom’s dad constantly found incriminating objects in her purse, Six would assure him “They’re not condoms. They’re balloons. For a party!” The sketch does have one huge red flag, however. The prosthetic nose that Hutsell uses comes very close to making her look like Mayim Bialik, but it could also be considered offensive to many. You be the judge.
With a young woman hosting this week, there was little surprise that the episode included yet another appearance by the f***ing Gap Girls. Lord, I hated that sketch. More welcome was another edition of Simon. This week his bathtub companion was Gilbert as the daughter of the woman who is now dating Simon’s father. Dating undersells it. The couple are having constant sex, completely neglecting their children.
As I alluded to last time, since the season premiere SNL added new writers Norm MacDonald, Jay Mohr, and Sarah Silverman to the cast as featured players. 2 ou of those 3 had Update desk pieces this week. MacDonald spoke of the Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan incident, but he quickly pivoted to a complaint about there being too much figure skating on television. “Hey Brian Boitano, if you’re such a great skater, why don’t you play hockey?” Silverman reported on the goings on in her family over the past week. At one point she asked an uncomfortable looking Kevin Nealon if he knew what a pap smear is.
The 12:50 sketch had just the right amount of weirdness. It was a talk show hosted by Bryant Gumbel (Tim Meadows) in which the premise that he would ask his guests exactly 20 questions. Much to the annoyance of his guest Gilbert, those questions were largely him asking “why?” over and over again.
This was a surprisingly good episode, even though it had a bit too much Rob Schneider for my taste. Next week I will recap the season 19 finale, hosted by Heather Locklear. There was a pretty significant cast turnover from season 19 to 20, so this would be the final appearance for several people. Apologies to the soon to depart Hutsell, Schneider, Silverman, and Julia Sweeney. They all paled in comparison to Phil Hartman. His loss was a huge one.
Thank You For The Party
In some ways Sly Stone was the great lost star of the 1960’s. Don’t get me wrong, he has a well-deserved position in the pantheon of legendary musicians, but the fact that he was largely out of the spotlight for decades prevented him from receiving even greater accolades. He wasn’t the martyr that many of his peers who died young were. Nor did he have the later in life career that his contemporaries did. No splashy comeback album, no high profile guest appearance on a record by a current artist, no lucrative touring career.
Sly & the Family Stone’s peak, which roughly lasted from 1968-1971, matches that of any 60’s legend. Their sound was a brilliant melange of all sorts of different genres creating an impeccable concoction that sounded like no one else. Some rock, some soul, some funk, some psychedelia. It also helped that the band was both multi-racial and multi-gender. Add their brightly colored stage clothing to the mix, and any film clip you see of the Family Stone performing makes for an aesthetically pleasing experience.
One of the ironies of Sly’s prolonged withdrawal from the public is that he was one of the very earliest musical legends whom I was personally aware of. I am just old enough to have experienced the very end of their golden age; I clearly remember having frequently heard Thank You Fallettinme Be Mice Elf Agin as a child, although I’m also fairly certain that it was not until years later that I identified it as a Sly & the Family Stone song. At the same time he was a prominent enough public figure that I recognized him, I just didn’t yet make the connection to any of his specific music.
My Stone fandom kicked into overdrive when I began to really get into exploring rock history in my early teens. Stone was prominently featured in any book that I read, and the band’s performance at Woodstock was easily the top highlight of the festival’s documentary. Their set was delayed after the downpours played havoc on the schedule; they did not take the stage until the middle of the night. Imagine dozing in your sleeping bag only to be woken up to witness THAT.
Years of heavy drug usage and erratic behavior took its toll and public appearances in the last 40+ years of his life would be sporadic. I remember being excited to see him on Late Night with David Letterman; during the interview he looked to be completely out of it. Beyond that, Sly sightings were rare. He once performed at the Grammys, and he would occasionally be seen as a talking head in a documentary. When Sly & the Family Stone were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, it was in the period before the ceremonies were televised; footage was limited to the 5 minute reports that Kurt Loder would file for MTV News. Stone was not expected to appear. Loder showed a clip of the other members at the podium accepting the award, and then Stone himself unexpectedly emerged on stage. That moment symbolized Sly Stone in a nutshell. Who knows if he will show up, but if he does it’s a special treat.
Sly’s music remains in my personal heavy rotation. Stand! was a landmark album, and There’s a Riot Goin’ On is a perfect musical depiction of the demise of the 60’s dream. His death reminds me that I still haven’t seen the documentary on his life and career that Questlove recently directed. Gotta get on that. Sly Stone was 82.
DC Comics IP - Doom Patrol
Doom Patrol, particularly in its later incarnations was almost certainly the most bats*** crazy ongoing series that DC ever published. Thankfully when they got around to producing a live action adaptation they made sure that it was equally bats*** crazy. If I attempt to accurately describe it I sound like an insane person. Just remember it’s them, not me.
On a side note Doom Patrol is an example of the phenomenon in which certain DC & Marvel properties are strikingly similar to each other. In this case it premiered roughly 6 months before the first issue of X-Men. Doom Patrol featured a team of reluctant superheroes led by a genius in a wheelchair; sounds familiar. I’m not making any accusations, by the way. I’m sure that if you look at things closely you will see just as many DC concepts that on the surface appear to rip off a Marvel one and vice versa.
Debuting at the height of the Silver Age, the Doom Patrol were billed as the world’s unluckiest heroes. The original members were Cliff Steele (Robotman) a race car driver badly injured in a crash whose brain was transplanted into a robotic body, Rita Farr (Elasti-Girl, not to be confused with the similarly named Pixar character) an actress who was exposed to poisonous gases which allowed her to grow to giant size, and Larry Trainor (Negative Man) a test pilot who whilst on a mission was bombarded with radiation that resulted in him being able to release a radioactive force from his body for a minute at a time. He was wrapped in bandages which contained that force. The team was led by Niles Caulder (Chief) a super genius who also provided much of the technology that assisted the team in their battles against villainy.
The original book was an odd amalgam. The subtext was how badly the characters had been psychologically damaged by their unwanted powers, a theme which was highly unusual for DC at the time. It was also fully a part of the Silver Age, with the inherent silliness that came with that. The chief recurring villains were a team known as the Brotherhood Of Evil, consisting of characters such as The Brain, an evil disembodied brain, and Monsieur Mallah, a super intelligent gorilla who spoke with a French accent, and wielded a machine gun complete with bandolier.
After a relatively successful run for a few years (Doom Patrol was the series which originally introduced Beast Boy/Changeling, who years later would be a core member of the Teen Titans) the series came to and end with the team heroically sacrificing their lives to save a small town. More than a decade later the team would be revived. In the new version Cliff’s brain had been preserved and placed into a different robot body, Larry’s radioactive force was now living within a Soviet cosmonaut known as Negative Woman, and among the other new team members was a hero known as Celsius who was claiming to be The Chief’s widow. The new series didn’t take off.
The third attempt was the one which worked, but it took a bit of time. It was not until Grant Morrison took over the writing duties and he fully embraced the weirdness that everything clicked. It was Morrison who introduced characters such as Crazy Jane, a woman with multiple personalities each with a different superpower, Danny the Street, who as his name implies, was an actual sentient street, and Flex Mentallo, a bodybuilding strongman intentionally modeled on the guy in all of those Charles Atlas ad. The villains that Morrison created were just as bonkers.
Morrison’s run on the book is legendary within the comic book industry. He took over just as DC stopped using the old Comic Code Authority seal of approval, so he had free reign to move into more adult storytelling, and it delved fairly seriously and sensitively into topics of gender fluidity years before society began to understand and/or accept concepts of nonbinary sexuality. Even after Morrison left the book continued to steer into the skid. It was after Morrison’s departure that DC moved the series into the Vertigo line, and it was Morrison’s replacement Rachel Pollack who created the most bonkers single-issue villain I can recall. He was named The Codpiece, I will leave the rest to your imagination.
A TV series based on Doom Patrol ran for 4 years on HBO Max, and it kept the tradition of complete insanity alive. It mixed characters from all eras of the comic book: the team in the TV show consisted of Robotman, Elasti-Girl, Negative Man, and Crazy Jane, along with Cyborg for some strange reason. He was never in the Doom Patrol in the comics and he felt like too much of a mainstream character to include here, but whatever. I loved this subversive element in the casting. Brendon Fraser portrayed Cliff and Matt Bomer was Larry. To include a beloved actor just beginning a comeback along with one of the most handsome men in Hollywood and then make their roles essentially voiceovers was a choice. The show never quite reached the heights that the comic did, but it was never dull. And yes, The Codpiece did make an appearance in the series.
I don’t collect comics anymore, but I am aware that DC frequently reboots their universe. That tendency works perfectly for Doom Patrol. If a writer is constantly able to restart from scratch he or she has free rein to take whatever elements from the team’s history and mold it into their own version. And there is a lot to choose from. May this freak flag always fly.
Closing Laughs
That puts a wrap on things for another day. Thanks as always for tuning in. See you all next on Friday.
