Wednesday’s Newsletter
Programming Note
With tomorrow being Opening Day, this week there will be a bonus 4th edition of Tending The Herd. I will continue the long standing tradition, going all the way back to 2023, of ranking the 30 clubs as I see ‘em. Don’t touch that dial.
Classic SNL Recap - Season 3 Premiere
The general consensus is that season 3 was the peak of the initial run. Bill Murray had meshed with the rest of the cast, and although the drug usage/misogyny/eating disorders were all firmly a part of the culture by this time, the underlying damage wasn’t yet fully apparent. Fittingly enough, the year began with Steve Martin hosting the show, which was now officially renamed Saturday Night Live. (Sadly, I couldn’t find any shareable clips from this episode on YouTube.)
The drawback of an episode from 1977 is that there are inevitably going to be bits whose timeliness may be lost on future audiences, which can be seen in the opening & closing pieces. The cold open featured Dan Aykroyd’s Jimmy Carter consoling John Belushi’s Bert Lance, who had just resigned as OMB director. It quickly veered into Lance turning to the camera and asking “do you know me?” in a riff on the long-running American Express ad campaign. The closing piece was another commercial parody, this one satirizing the first generation digital watches, which required the user to press multiple buttons simply to see the time momentarily displayed on the watch face. In this instance, the Kromega III required two different people to press three buttons to make the watch work.
Martin at the time was in the middle of his phenomenal standup comic as rock star phase. His monologue included some of his classic jokes (Ramblin’ Guy, cat handcuffs.) Then, the first post-monologue sketch introduced one of his most famous characters - the Festrunk Brothers. He & Aykroyd were much more sedate in their initial appearance; their strut was nowhere near as exaggerated as it would become, and their voices were not very animated. But the basics were there, from their backstory running from the tanks in Czechoslovakia to their inept attempts to seduce American foxes.
There was a change to update as Aykroyd was now Jane Curtin’s co-anchor. As great as Aykroyd was on the show, Update was a poor fit. He was obviously uncomfortable in that role; other than the Point/Counterpoint pieces he contributed little that was memorable in his time at the Update desk. This week also featured Bill Murray’s movie critic, reviewing the movie The Deep which he admitted he hadn’t seen and was basing his review on the brief clips the studio had supplied. In this edition Garrett Morris served as the sports reporter, but notably as himself. It would still be some time before the introduction of Chico Escuela.
The singular highlight of the episode was not something that featured Steve Martin, it was a commercial parody for the Royal Deluxe II automobile. If you’re old enough to remember, that’s the one that promoted a ride so smooth that a mohel could perform a circumcision in the back seat. The nervous looks from Morris’s chauffeur were precious.
As for other noteworthy moments, the episode continued the running gag of Lorne’s offer to have the Beatles reunite on SNL. This time he promised that NBC will up the offer to a whopping $3,200. There was also an edition of the Franken & Davis Show, with a Mr. America beauty pageant sketch that seemed to go on forever with little payoff. And in another sign of how the show was slightly different at the time, this week’s musical guest was Jackson Browne in his commercial prime. He performed Running On Empty, but for his second song he did The Pretender, the title track from his previous album. You don’t see artists perform older songs anymore, they are there to promote their current release. Overall, it was a decent episode. There have been several Martin hosted episodes that were much better than this one. The show returns with a new episode this weekend, so it’ll be a few weeks before I look at the midseason episode from season 3. That one was hosted by Robert Klein, and it is a stone cold classic SNL episode. Looking forward to rewatching that one.
Why Tamper With THIS?
Do you want a sure sign of how dramatic and enjoyable a sporting event is? It’s if it’s so strong that not even the people in charge can screw it up. Take the Olympics for example. It’s hard to think of an institution more corrupt than the IOC, yet when you see the emotional reactions from the competitors you forget about that. Which brings us to the NCAA tournaments. In this case, the underlying issues with the sport are more the fault of the university presidents and conference commissioners than they are with the NCAA itself, but the facts are the same. The first two rounds showed once again that this is the perfect athletic competition; why the desire to fix something that ain’t broke?
If CBS & WBD execs could envision their ideal scenario, the men’s tournament provided it. Round 1 came with the usual set of upsets from double digit seeds that make the tournament so special, but form held in round 2. Not only are all of the top 8 seeds still alive, but 13 of the top 16 seeds have made it to the Sweet 16. The only remaining double digit seed is North Carolina State, and they can hardly be called a Cinderella. Last year’s Final 4 which included the likes of Florida Atlantic was cute and all, but when it comes down to crunch time it’s the big names that generate interest, which is exactly what we have this year.
The women’s tournament, which has historically been more chalky than the men’s, is playing out in a similar manner. In the women’s draw there are no remaining double digit seeds, but just like with the men 13 of the top 16 seeds have advanced, although unlike the men the women’s tourney has lost a 2 seed. More important, almost all of the major stars are still playing - Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, Paige Bueckers, Cameron Brink, plus freshman stars JuJu Watkins and Hannah Hidalgo among others. ESPN execs are beside themselves with joy in anticipation of some of the potential future matchups.
And have I mentioned how great the action has been? Obviously with so many games in such a brief span of time there are bound to be duds here and there, but when there’s a great game, oh boy. By Sunday evening I was nearing exhaustion, but in short order there was the men’s match between Houston & Texas A&M in which the Aggies made a furious comeback to force overtime, only to fall short in OT. That was quickly followed by the Stanford/Iowa State matchup on the women’s side, which also went to overtime, the star player on each team fouled out, and the remaining players hit clutch shot after clutch shot in the extra period with Stanford ultimately prevailing.
I don’t see how adding teams to the field could possibly improve the product. In addition the SEC commissioner has floated the idea of cutting back on automatic bids, which would be a devastating mistake. The tournament is fine as is; protect this golden goose at all costs.
Who Could Have Possibly Forseen This?
On Monday we saw the 2 sides of the issues sports leagues are going to continue to have with the embrace of gambling; and let’s be honest, there’s no going back. First off was of course the nightmare scenario that everyone has - a scandal involving a sport’s biggest star. Shohei Ohtani faced the press on Monday, and although he did not answer any questions, he read a lengthy statement of defense.
Everything I know about the law I learned from watching Matlock, so I clearly have a lot of expertise to share. To be more serious, the most valuable bit of advice a lawyer can offer their client is to strongly encourage them to keep their mouths shut. That’s not what Ohtani did here, which leads me to believe he is being honest when he says he was caught unaware by the action of his now former translator, Ippei Mizuhara. Ohtani was very specific with the details of his defense, I can’t imagine that a team of attorneys would have let him speak like that without his comments having been carefully vetted. In addition, reporters have dug into Mizuhara’s background and it appears that he has the same relationship with the truth that George Santos does. This story will be with us for quite some time, and Ohtani is far from being fully in the clear yet. But I have to say that unless he & the Dodgers have incompetent legal representation - which seems implausible - then there is reason to believe in the best case scenario, which is that he is merely an innocent dupe.
At almost the exact moment that Ohtani was holding his press briefing, word came out that the NBA is investigating suspicious betting activity surrounding Jontay Porter of the Toronto Raptors. If Ohtani is the nightmare, Porter is the chief concern. A player on a 2-way contract with a team outside of playoff position is exactly the sort of under the radar figure whom gamblers could exploit. Look no further than professional tennis. There have been a few low profile gambling scandals, all involving players well outside the top 100 playing in obscure tournaments.
The excuse leagues have used to justify getting in bed with gambling is that the sports books follow things so closely that they have a sixth sense for when something smells fishy. A surprisingly large amount of action on a tennis match between players that few have heard of raises red flags. So does a series of odd prop bets involving Jontay Porter, a guy so obscure that I suspect many of you had no idea he was even an NBA player.
The fear is that this is only the tip of the iceberg. Will things reach a point that the sports gambling infrastructure grows too large to properly monitor? Remember, it’s vital that when we watch sports we need to feel comfortable about its authenticity. I don’t want to sound like a nag, but I’m concerned that we’ve already opened Pandora’s Box.
The Magic Of Milestones
Really interesting article from Jayson Stark here (behind paywall) about a sea change in the pursuit of some of baseball’s most significant career milestones. Simply put, there are no current active players who have amassed either 500 home runs, 3,000 hits, or 300 victories, and no one is particularly close. Therefore, we are several years away from anyone approaching any of those numbers. For the last time this has been the case you would need to go back to the 1977 season. Pete Rose finally passed 3,000 in 1978 to get that ball rolling again.
There are a number of factors that have caused this - the parade of fireballing relief pitchers + pre-ban shifts have made it more difficult to accumulate base hits, changes in usage have drastically reduced the number of victories that even the best pitchers tally, every player lost 100 games in which they could add to their totals during the COVID season, etc. It’s tough to imagine a 300 victory pitcher any time soon; as much as Justin Verlander pledges that it’s a reachable goal, the stark reality is that he’s past 40 & as much of a physical marvel as he has been, you can only hold off the effects of age for so long. As proof, he’s starting this season on the IL. And look at Gerrit Cole. He’s one of the top pitchers in the game, if not the top, he’s durable, and he pitches for a strong team. Yet even he is going to turn 34 by season’s end, has “only” 145 career wins, and will miss significant time this year due to an elbow injury. If even he has little chance, what hope is there for a promising twentysomething pitcher?
As Stark points out in the piece, it’s more than simple numbers. We lose a little bit of connection to the sport’s rich history. It’s fun to watch the pursuit of a milestone and numbers are part of what makes the game so special. Everyone knows that LeBron James is the career NBA points leader and that Emmitt Smith is the NFL career rushing leader; how many know the actual numbers? Baseball fans, however, know exactly what the numbers 714, 755, and 762 mean; just as well as they recognize the number 511.
50 Years Ago - Planet Of the Apes - The TV Series
It’s hard to think of a more ideal TV show for an 8 year old than a small screen adaptation of the Planet Of the Apes franchise. At the time of the show’s premiere I believe that Escape From was the only one of the movies that I had actually seen, but the TV show completely reeled me in. I collected the trading cards, I got the poorly constructed action figures from MEGO, the whole kit and caboodle.
The show took the basic construct from the first film - astronauts stranded in a nightmarish future, a hierarchy among the assorted ape species that in no way matches actual primate behavior - but didn’t limit itself to any preexisting canon. Roddy McDowall stars, for example, but as a completely different chimpanzee character than he was in any of the movies. This time, instead of Chuck Heston hamming it up as the lone human, this one had two astronauts who survived the initial crash.
In addition to McDowall, the other recognizable actor (although I suppose McDowall was not recognizable behind the heavy makeup) was James Naughton as one of the astronauts. The name may not immediately ring a bell, but he is yet another prominent That Guy. I linked the opening credit sequence below, you’ll recognize him. Mark Lenard, probably best known as Spock’s father, was the gorilla leader who served as the chief antagonist. Coincidentally, Ron Harper, who portrayed the other astronaut, passed away earlier this week.
The show only lasted one season on CBS. This actually is one of the reasons why I started to become interest in TV ratings. The cancellation made no sense to me. I loved the show, everyone I knew loved the show. That was enough of a focus group for me - the show was obviously a major hit, why cancel it? Little did I know at the time that it was a ratings dud. Was it also a creative dud? Probably. I haven’t seen the show since that limited run 50 years ago; I’ll go out on a limb and guess that it doesn’t hold up well. In fact, the only 2 episodes that I remember seem cheesy in retrospect.
One of those vaguely involved brainwashing. Lenard’s character couldn’t quite grasp the concept. He thought it involved actually removing the brain from the skull and washing it. In another one an earthquake trapped him and one of the astronauts in the rubble of an abandoned subway station. Their cooperation as they struggled to escape involved a bit of “we’re not so different after all” cliches. Upon their rescue of course, the antagonism between humans & apes reverted to the norm.
It’s safe to say that everyone has in their memories examples of TV shows that they loved as children which have zero revelance for anyone slightly older or younger. Planet of the Apes was one of those for me.
Help Me, Ronna
Anthony Scaramucci had a nice run, but I believe that Scaramuccis should no longer be used as a metric to measure a comically short stint in an organization. Going forward, they should be known as Ronnas. Her tenure as a contributor at NBC News lasted only slightly longer than Emily’s Reasons Why Not.
When word came out that NBC had hired Ronna McDaniel my immediate reaction was WTAF? Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good thing to have a variety of perspectives on NBC & MSNBC. But to hire a serial liar who was an apologist for the Big Lie & everything that came with it? No way.
It was clear this was going to end ugly. Internet detectives noticed that she had scrubbed her Twitter feed of all past criticism directed towards the mainstream media in general and NBC in particular. The last time she had so completely whitewashed her past was when she dropped her maiden name to appease Orange Napoleon. And it’s never a good sign when you walk into a new job & realize that all of your coworkers already hate you & want you to go away.
Just think of how many good journalists NBC could have hired or retained rather than pay McDaniel the big bucks. Instead, it looks like she won’t be invited back for NBC’s 100th anniversary celebration. This of course comes only a few years after the Megyn Kelly fiasco. Can’t wait to see who they will recruit next. Surely the third time will be the charm.
Closing Laughs
The Dodgers & Padres provided an appetizer from Seoul last week, but tomorrow the season begins in full swing. So we go to bed tonight on Opening Day Eve with visions of sugar plums dancing in our head. Rest up everyone, and I’ll see you next time.