Wednesday Already?
Classic SNL Recap - Season 13, Episode 7
Quick note on season 13: there was a Writers Guild strike in 1988 which shut down the industry for months. As a result, SNL only aired 13 episodes this season. The midseason episode usually ran in late January or early August. This time midseason fell in late December. Nowadays SNL tends to go Christmas heavy in all 3 December shows; in season 13 the Christmas show came the week after the one we’re discussing today. There was little holiday related stuff to be seen; only one sketch & no decorations on the main stage - no tinsel, let alone a tree.
Angie Dickinson hosted. There is nothing on her IMDB page that would lead one to believe that she would have been the perfect host in December 1987. I’m only half joking when I suggest that she was a celebrity crush of one of the show’s producers and that’s what placed her on a list of potential hosts. They obviously were not shown on the Peacock stream but there were 2 musical guests this week. One was Buster Poindexter; he appeared most weeks in the previous season but this time his slot was part of the promo run for the first album that David Johansen released under the Buster persona. The other was David Gilmour, strangely billed as David Gilmour from Pink Floyd. Did they really need to clarify who he was? In addition, he didn’t even have a solo album to promote. This was a few months after the first Floyd album without Roger Waters had come out.
Back to Angie Dickinson. I have zero memories of her having hosted the show, so I thought that this was perhaps an episode that I had missed. But there were 2 sketches that I do have clear recollections of. One was a game show sketch called Wedgie Fever. As the title implies, each contestant was attached to a harness. Every correct answer would come with a cash prize; every incorrect answer would result in a turn of a crank which would, well, produce an atomic wedgie. Contestant Jon Lovitz intentionally gave wrong answers as it was becoming clear that he was masochistically enjoying it. The other one was a one joke sketch, but it told that joke and then stepped out of the way. In Update, after Dennis Miller read a story about Stephen King’s latest bestseller, he interviewed Lovitz as King, frenetically typing out his next novel during the interview.
The cold open was a clever one. At the time of this show’s airing, Reagan and Gorbachev had just completed a summit. The sketch showed Gorbachev’s remarks, with Kevin Nealon serving as the interpreter for the live feed. He didn’t even have rudimentary skills in Russian, so he was winging it. Badly.
That summit also inspired another sketch, one that is somewhat timely in light of Phil Donahue’s recent death. The two First Ladies were guests on the Donahue show, and the premise was focused on how Rasia Gorbachev impressed American audiences. Everyone was gushing over Nora Dunn’s Gorbachev at the expense of Jan Hooks’ Nancy Reagan.
IMHO the best sketch of the week was the closing one. Dickinson portrayed a flight attendant, offering sleeping passengers additional pillows or blankets only to then quietly ask each if they knew how to land a jumbo jet. Dickinson underplayed the role perfectly.
Next week season 13 comes to a premature close with an unexpectedly early finale. Judge Reinhold was the host.
Reviewing Olympic Sports
Artistic Gymnastics - Confession time. Gymnastics is one of the marquee sports in the Olympics, but I usually have little interest in it. Even before the monstrous stories about Larry Nasser had come out, I always had an uneasy feeling about the sport. I never read Little Girls In Pretty Boxes or watched the documentary, but I am aware of the tales of young girls pushing themselves so hard that they did not begun to menstruate until they reached their twenties. Add that to the thoughts of how harshly the Karolyis must have been screaming at these girls outside of the TV camera eye, and the whole vibe just makes me feel uncomfortable.
Having said that, I did make it a point to watch a lot of gymnastics this year. As someone who appreciates greatness, it would have been silly to pass up an opportunity to watch Simone Biles one final time. It’s also noteworthy that not only is Biles 27, but only one of the 5 women on the US team in Paris is still a teenager. It’s possible this was a one time fluke, but maybe this is a change in the culture and we are seeing an era of more mature competitors.
One final note is that gymnastics presents a surprisingly difficult challenge for TV coverage. Routines are simultaneously taking place on multiple apparatuses; NBC is usually forced to concentrate on whichever Americans are competing at any time. It makes it tough to follow. That’s why I prefer the individual apparatus finals that conclude the competition. Only one person at a time is competing, so it’s simple to follow.
Artistic Swimming - Or as it was known until fairly recently, synchronized swimming. It has been the subject of much mockery going back to its introduction to the Olympics in 1984. Fun fact about the classic SNL sketch; men are technically eligible to compete, although none have done so yet in the Olympics. But there is still hope for Harry Shearer and Martin Short.
This is one of the easiest sports for me to ignore. It usually takes place towards the end of the Games, and at that point there are so many sports reaching their own climaxes that there’s no time for me to check in on that one. All joking aside about the sport and ignoring the Stepford Wives type frozen smiles that the swimmers show, it is one of most extraordinarily difficult sports that there is. Think of how much time is spent underwater while doing these elaborate routines. That is some impressive lung capacity.
The Playoff Field Is Set
The field of 16 drivers who will compete for this year’s NASCAR cup title has been solidified following Sunday’s Southern 500 in Darlington. I’ll make my bold playoff predictions on Friday, but for now a quick thought or two on what turned out to be a dramatic regular season finale.
The big thing is that my main pre-race thought was way off base. I was certain that the race would NOT produce a first time winner. Of course, the final green light run turned out to be a duel between Chase Briscoe and Kyle Busch, neither of whom had won a race yet this season, neither of whom would have made the playoffs without this win. Briscoe ultimately prevailed, stealing a bid away from Chris Buescher who could only helplessly watch his playoff chances slip away. This was a big blow for Busch as well; it is the first time he has missed the playoffs since 2012. Non-playoff drivers do still compete in the upcoming races so he has 10 opportunities to extend his impressive record. Busch holds the record for most consecutive seasons with at least one victory, which currently stands at 19. I’ve always found Busch to be terribly obnoxious; he’s one of the handful of athletes whom I always root against. Gotta give him credit, though. He’s damn good and he came oh so close to coming through when the stakes were highest last weekend.
The Streaming Orphans - Police Squad!
I’m getting ready to bring this particular segment to a close, but I intentionally saved 3 great shows to wrap it up, beginning with Police Squad! Unlike many other streaming orphans (although repeat after me, all 6 episodes are on YouTube) this one established a deep cultural footprint, having served as the inspiration for a wildly popular film trilogy. Despite the fact that it was a ratings disaster in its initial run in 1982, it was one of the flat out funniest shows ever made.
Created by the Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker team, it repeated the formula that worked so well for them on Airplane! The jokes flew by fast and furious. No pun was too obvious, but there were also some outstanding examples of clever wordplay. If a joke failed to land, so what. Ten new jokes would come in the next couple of minutes. That helped make it a great rewatch. Even on the 4th or 5th viewing you could find jokes you easily missed. Most crucial was the presence of Leslie Nielsen as Frank Drebin. Few actors had as spectacular of a second act as he did. He could have his moments of exaggerated facial gestures, but he understood the importance of acting as if he wasn’t in a comedy. The deadpan delivery sold the jokes. In fact, it’s almost impossible to watch any of his earlier roles when he was largely a serious actor. When you see him deliver a line you almost want to call him Shirley.
The 6 episodes that aired all followed a standard template; each one featured a series of required elements. In no particular order: the special guest star in the opening credits who is immediately killed, the title card that does not match the narration, the detective so tall that his head doesn’t appear in the shot, the police scientist conducting odd experiments, the shoeshine boy who sees & knows everything, the closing credits freeze frame that doesn’t actually freeze the camera; the actors needed to remain in pose. There was also the scene in which Drebin would always crash his car into a row of garbage cans. In the first episode he knocked over 1 can, in the second, 2 cans, etc. etc. I’m curious to see what they would have done had it lasted into a second season and beyond. It would have been necessary to shake the format up; that shoeshine boy would have eventually gotten too repetitive.
The show didn’t last long, but it did lead to the popular series of Naked Gun movies. Nielsen was back, but two of the show’s characters were recast. In addition to George Kennedy taking over the role of Ed Hocken, in the movies former Mission: Impossible actor Peter Lupus was replaced as Norberg. Lupus’s take on the character was that Norberg was a big dumb guy, in the movies a famous former star athlete - you know who, I don’t need to mention his name - took over so ZAZ went with the incongruity of casting a legendary athlete as a clumsy oaf.
It still baffles me that the show failed. Airplane! was a huge hit, so it’s not as if audiences were unfamiliar with the whole Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker vibe. There’s something to be said about a show that gave us 6 perfect episodes. To use a baseball term, it never had a decline phase.
Closing Laughs
That is all for today you good people. Thank you for your patronage, and I will see you all again on Friday.
