Saturday Night Live Season 11 Reviews - Episode 8 - Dudley Moore / Al Green

 

"How crazy are we driving you?"

Cold Open: Monks

1 Star

Monks break their vow of silence to report on their financial earnings

Silently a group of monks enters and sits down at a table.  Quaid rings a bell to officially break their vow of silence, they then start a rundown of different departments and how they are doing.  Miller says that the wine business is doing very well, Downey reports that the kennel is seeing lots of action, Sweeney claims that the fudge division is selling great.  It's been about 3 minutes and we haven't gotten anything close to a joke yet.  Lovitz stands up to say that they have earned over a half million dollars in profit this year.  Quaid asks him how they should invest and he says they should put all their money on The Patriots.  An argument erupts over whether they should bet on the Bears or the Patriots in the Super Bowl.  They vote to bet on the Bears and before Quaid can officially re-enact the vow of silence Downey screams, "Live from New York...".  This didn't even seem like it was trying to be funny.  If your sketch is only going to have one joke in it you should probably make it short.

Dudley Moore Monologue

4 Stars

Dudley plays some piano

It's been 10 years since Dudley Moore hosted and the show was such a success that they made sure to have him back 10 years later.  He sits at a piano and plays a little Beethoven and while he does he makes some faces.  It sounds simple and stupid but it's very entertaining.  It reminded me of Chico Marx, he's playing this beautiful piano piece and reacting to what he's playing with exaggerated facial gestures.  It shows you what an incredible showman Moore was, he's able to make you laugh by just playing the piano and he's also incredible at playing the piano.

Miss Pregnant Teenage America

I have the rerun of this episode instead of the live broadcast

I don't have this sketch, which must have been long because my rerun had a repeat of Big Ball Of Sports, Where You're Going and Trojans and a sketch that was cut from dress rehearsal so I'll review that sketch instead.

3 Stars

A woman discovers that her husband named their baby after his ex

Dudley Moore and Joan Cusack are in a laundromat cooing over their baby when Nora Dunn enters.  Dunn's names is Phoebe which coincidentally is the baby's name too.  Some more similarities emerge as well, Moore bought a jacket for Cusack that Dunn used to own, took her on the same vacation that he took Dunn and also sent her to school to become a dental hygienist, the same job Dunn has.  Joan also gets upset because Moore once suggested that she cut her hair short and dye it black.  She exits in a huff, leaving Moore and Dunn alone.  He asks if she ever thinks of him, she says no and then calls her dog, who she has named after Dudley Moore's character.  This was cute and had a nice payoff.  It's nothing special but was at the end of my episode and I liked it.

Al Green

"Going Away"

Hot damn, has a better voice ever been given to another man?

The Pat Stevens Show

2 Stars

Pat Stevens interviews race car driver Jackie Stewart

Pat shares a letter from a woman with low self esteem.  She is having what is called a "fashion feeling" which means you want to commit suicide but you need to get your weight down first.  Pat advises her to never read Vogue without looking your very best.  Try striking a pose in your best outfit before flipping through.  She then introduces Dudley Moore as race car driver Jackie Stewart and asks her a bunch of questions.  This seems improvised as some times Moore doesn't have a punchline to her questions and the sketch just ends with Dunn looking in the camera and saying, "I'm Pat Stevens".  Moore and Dunn both break character and start to laugh during the sketch, the giggles were a little contagious but I still don't understand this character nor do I find her funny.

Weekend Update With Dennis Miller

"This just in.  In an unknown part of the world something happened involving some people and something else, then it stopped.  More details later."

I think every joke this week had something i liked in it.  Even if I wasn't laughing out loud at the punchline I at least smiled and thought what was said was clever.  I really did not expect to enjoy Miller at all this season but 8 episodes out of the gate he is firing on all cylinders.  My favorite jokes include Lee Iacocca's book being recalled, Herb not only never having a Whopper but also never having sex and a rant about how astrology is made up garbage.
Tommy Flanagan shows up to talk about Philippine president Ferdinand Marco and how he lied about being a war hero.  Holy crap, this is an SNL character on Weekend Update talking about a headline in the news and then sticking to that topic.  Nowadays Pete Davidson and Leslie Jones will be introduced with some kind of statistic that leads into what they are going to do 3 minutes of stand up on and then they do 3 minutes of stand up.  After the bit Miller even brings it full circle and asks Tommy who he thinks is going to win the Philippine election, Tommy replies that he's going to win and in fact already has.  Tommy's story includes being in battle with Ferdinand Marco when they discovered the Philippines, trapped in a foxhole with their water boy Douglas MacArthur and fending off flying Japanese sand tigers.  Marco even took Tommy out to dinner with his game show winnings and even invited Tommy's wife, Morgan Fairchild.

The Limits Of The Imagination

3 Stars

A bad comic makes a deal with the devil

Randy Quaid appears as the floating head to do some more Outer Limits style gags before transitioning to Dudley Moore as a stand-up comic bombing on stage.  After his set his manager tells him to take the rest of the week off which makes him break down and yell that he will do anything to have a good audience.  Turns out the devil, played by Lovitz, was overhearing this and promises him he will have the most responsive audience ever in exchange for his soul.  Moore agrees and goes back on stage where the audience is eating out his hand, laughing hysterically at his punchlines and helping him by asking him questions about his setups.
It's very cold outside...
How cold is it?
The food here is really good...
How good is it?
But then it starts getting out of hand.
My wife is a bit on the heavy side...
Then why did you marry her?
My sister is really thin...
You should take her to the hospital, she might be anorexic.
The audience is responding to much which ruins Moore's act and we cut to Lovitz laughing maniacally in the audience.  This took a long time to get to the joke but the payoff was satisfying.  My only problem is, once we got to the joke I would have liked to seen a little more of it.  We spent so much time setting this up and then once we got to the joke the sketch was over.  Why couldn't we see him succeed in more clubs, or go on The Tonight Show and have Johnny Carson ruin his punchlines?  A good idea that failed a little in the execution.

Name That Tune

3 Stars

Contestants aren't doing well on Name That Tune

Lovitz is hosting and Cusack and Moore are the contestants.  Lovitz plays an obvious song and neither of them knows it.  That's all the sketch is but it works due to the commitment to the performances of all three.  Neither of them knows 'New York New York' even after the whole song is played, Moore is given 48 notes of 'Take Me Out To The Ballgame' but can't come up with it, Cusack has no answers for 'Three Blind Mice', 'Happy Birthday' and 'Jingle Bells'.  I really enjoyed Cusack's confused pantomime during the lightning round but it would have been nice to have some sort of reveal.  Why can't these contestants figure out these songs?  Are they making the songs easy on purpose?  Nothing is really answered but then again, there wasn't a question to begin with.

Al Green returns to sing 'True Love' which is a really good song.  As I was listening to lyrics I realized that it wasn't a lady he was singing about but God.  "I know who made me, I know who saved me."  I can't really fault the man for changing his world view.  If a woman poured boiling hot grits on me and then shot herself I would probably see the world different too.

Master Thespian

3 Stars

Master Thespian rehearses with another actor

We open with Master Thespian writing in his diary, he is able to eat cheese again and he has been invited to perform for the queen.  Last year he gave a 9 hour performance but this year he will be limited to 5 minutes.  The actor he will be sharing the stage with is expected to rehearse with him, enter Dudley Moore pretending to be Master Thespian's old landlady.  He was just acting and when he dramatically removes his shawl it gets stuck on the chandelier, Moore breaks character and starts winking at the audience while Lovitz stays in character and improvs, "Thank you for the lampshade".  They start rehearsing which results in the two getting into a fight and Moore stabs Lovitz with a feather quill.  Lovitz starts to die when Moore realizes that it was just a feather.  They have fooled themselves, which is the ultimate in acting.  Maybe it was Moore's hamminess but this seems sloppier than the first incarnation.  When we saw the character with John Lithgow they were both completely in character and it was more fun.

I Got You

 

4 Stars 

Moore plays piano with the band

Don Pardo introduces Dudley Moore to play a piece from Tchaikovsky.  As he sits down to the piano, the band starts to play "I Feel Good" by James Brown.  Moore gives them a confused look but then plays a classical piece to coincide with what the band is playing.  We then get a musical mashup of the two pieces which is surprisingly beautiful.

We end with a rerun of Die Foreigner Die!

FINAL ANALYSIS

 
"I love it when the T-man talks that talk"

Average

2.9 Stars

MVP

Jon Lovitz
Monks, Weekend Update, The Limits Of The Imagination, Name That Tune, Master Thespian

Best Sketch

I Got You

Worst Sketch

Monks

How I Would Have Lorne Michaels-ed It

Missing the lead off sketch really throws off my perception of the episode as a whole.  You really gotta cut that cold open though, I'd rather have nothing than something long and awful.  I liked opening and closing with Dudley Moore's piano bits, both were really entertaining and different.  As for the rest of the episode, I'd move Master Thespian to before Update and push The Pat Stevens Show to closer to the end of the night.  Name That Tune and The Limits Of The Imagination were fun but needed another pass in the writer's room to flesh them out.

Host Analysis

Moore's energy probably worked better live than it did for the home audience.  His character breaking in The Pat Stevens Show and Master Thespian was fun but derailed the sketches, in the case of The Pat Stevens Show, no great loss but I started to feel bad for Lovitz as he was trying to hold his sketch together in between Moore's winks to the audience.

Final Thoughts

A few stinkers spread throughout but all together another enjoyable episode.  I'm still waiting to see why everyone hated this season.  I also noticed that Anthony Michael Hall has been MIA since episode 6 and before that he wasn't seen since episode 2, Out Of Bounds must have had some extensive re-shoots.

Up Next

Ron Reagan, youngest son of the sitting president, hosts.  Excuse me for not having my hopes up.  Plus side, The Nelsons are the musical guest, but this is before their 1990 album 'After The Rain' which is one of my guiltiest of pleasures.