"Blubber. Nature's toothbrush."
Cold Open: Backstage
3 Stars
Lorne breaks the news that Francis Ford Coppola is directing the show
In a very deadpan manner, Lorne tells everyone that the network has decided to give complete control of tonight's show to Francis Ford Coppola. He has some ideas on how to make the show better and Lorne will be staying on in an advisory role until he transfers full time into his professional wrestling career. The cast is crushed, Sweeney tells Lorne that the show has never been better, Cusack asks if they will still say "Live From New York". Lorne says it's all up to Francis at this point and we fade out to a shot of the audience as credits roll in order of appearance and a 'Godfather' like score starts to play.
George Wendt Monologue
George Wendt Monologue
4 Stars
George's monologue is interrupted by Coppola's direction
Wendt walks out without being introduced by Don Pardo. I'm sure Wendt is a professional but I would be very upset if I got to host SNL and didn't get to hear my name yelled by Pardo. Wendt is in a weird low angle and tells a joke about Cheers. The audience doesn't laugh as loud as Coppola wants so he yells 'Cut!'. He coaches the audience to laugh at the appropriate time to really capture the feeling that Wendt told a good joke. He advises them to use sense memory and think back to a time when they heard something funny. He cues George to take it again and this time the audience goes wild. George starts to tell an anecdote but is cut of by Francis again who says that they got enough that they can fix it in editing. He sends George to his dressing room to work on the first sketch. Terry Sweeney comes up to Francis and begs him to save this sinking ship. I'm intrigued as to how they are going to keep this joke sustained through the whole episode.
The Honeymooners: The Lost Episodes
2 Stars
The Honeymooners: The Lost Episodes
2 Stars
Ralph is upset about Alice's mambo lessons
Finally we get to hear Don Pardo's voice as he introduces this sketch, now it sounds like SNL. Nora Dunn is playing Alice and she goes to let Ralph in through the front door but Wendt comes in from the wrong door. He improvs that he was hiding in the bedroom all night. She didn't make dinner because she was too busy taking mambo lessons, AMH comes in as Norton to do a little dance. Ralph says his famous catchphrase, "One of these days, Alice, bang zoom, to the moon.". Alice doesn't believe him so he punches her in the face. She falls down, he apologizes and they embrace. I'm really not sure what I'm supposed to think about this. On the one hand, seeing Ralph Kramden punch his wife in the face was unexpected and interesting but there was no commentary on wife beating or if his actions were even wrong. I guess now we know that Alice would have been totally cool if Ralph beat her up every night. Also, I think I saw this same joke on Family Guy, why is everybody always ripping that show off? Come on SNL, you're better than that.
Commercials
4 Stars
Commercials
4 Stars
Francis was promised no interruptions by the president of the network
A Tic-Tac commercial starts playing but Francis stops it. He was promised that the show would have no commercial interruptions. Lorne tries to calm him down and tells him that while he has full control over the show he can't control the commercials. Francis was assured by the president of NBC, Grant Tinker himself that there would be no commercials. Grant Tinker comes over and it's actually Tommy Flanagan who tells Francis that what he saw wasn't a commercial but a news bulletin. This was really cute. I liked how Terry Sweeney is still acting as Coppola's "Yes Man".
Mystery Playhouse
4 Stars
Mystery Playhouse
4 Stars
Coppola live directs a murder mystery
Before the sketch starts Coppola comes into the control booth because it has always been his dream to live switch a TV show. Dave Wilson tells him that it's harder than it looks. We then go to a sketch where George Wendt is a detective investigating a murder. The camera keeps cutting to the person who's not talking. There will be a close up of Randy Quaid's face and you will hear someone else say, "Hey, you, put down that murder weapon". This was really short and really funny. After the sketch we go back to the control room where everyone kisses Coppola's ass and tells him he did a great job. I wish this would have gone on an extra minute and the absurdity kept heightening. What if we cut into Robert Downey's dressing room and he's just eating a bagel or something, or he accidentally puts some weird graphics on the screen?
Phillip Glass
Before the sketch starts Coppola comes into the control booth because it has always been his dream to live switch a TV show. Dave Wilson tells him that it's harder than it looks. We then go to a sketch where George Wendt is a detective investigating a murder. The camera keeps cutting to the person who's not talking. There will be a close up of Randy Quaid's face and you will hear someone else say, "Hey, you, put down that murder weapon". This was really short and really funny. After the sketch we go back to the control room where everyone kisses Coppola's ass and tells him he did a great job. I wish this would have gone on an extra minute and the absurdity kept heightening. What if we cut into Robert Downey's dressing room and he's just eating a bagel or something, or he accidentally puts some weird graphics on the screen?
Phillip Glass
"Lightning"
No sir, I don't like it. My working theory is that Phillip Glass's grandmother bought him a Casio keyboard for Christmas and he figured he could make a career out of having a woman sing over the pre-programmed tracks.
Weekend Update With Dennis Miller
"The day CBS news is number 1 is the day Nell Carter runs with the bulls in Pamplona."
A couple of good jokes this week. The new Surgeon General's warning on cigarettes is, "I hope you get cancer from smoking these", a shipment of rat poison was recalled because they found traces of Tylenol and McGruff the crime dog was caught skimming public funds to pay for his bitches. We get yet another visit from the Weekend Update dancers and Francis Ford Coppola disrupts a satellite interview with Pinochet because he finds it derivative.
Joan Cusack gets her first desk piece of the season. She's here to talk about the Oscar front runner 'Out Of Africa'. Her major complaint was that she didn't think it was funny. A woman gets divorced, gets syphilis and dies. She didn't laugh once. In the old days comedies were about funny situations, like Midnight Cowboy where a guy dreams of being a male prostitute, that's funny. The whole bit is built around the fact that she's an idiot and Joan handled it well.
That Black Girl
3 Stars
Coppola wants more realism from this sketch
Danitra Vance is in a lineup with some other models. Lovitz wants to hire her but is trying to be genteel.
"I want the one in the red, the one with the hair, the bubbly one, fine you're making me say it... That Black Girl!"
Cue the theme song, which I still got a giggle from the second time watching this sketch. She's now in her apartment, giddy that she got the job. Coppola breaks in. The set design is all wrong, he wants more squalor, he doesn't believe that she is a real black woman. The crew starts ripping up the set. Coppola brings the writers in to berate them, they are all white men with pipes and scarves. With the set now ready, Coppola gives Vance some direction to let the comedy from the experience of a sad, unemployed, black woman. Vance gives an emotional monologue over a slow jazz score and the sketch fades out. I feel like we needed one more punchline here at the end. The visual gag of the very white writing staff got the biggest laugh of the night for me.
Fish Market
"I want the one in the red, the one with the hair, the bubbly one, fine you're making me say it... That Black Girl!"
Cue the theme song, which I still got a giggle from the second time watching this sketch. She's now in her apartment, giddy that she got the job. Coppola breaks in. The set design is all wrong, he wants more squalor, he doesn't believe that she is a real black woman. The crew starts ripping up the set. Coppola brings the writers in to berate them, they are all white men with pipes and scarves. With the set now ready, Coppola gives Vance some direction to let the comedy from the experience of a sad, unemployed, black woman. Vance gives an emotional monologue over a slow jazz score and the sketch fades out. I feel like we needed one more punchline here at the end. The visual gag of the very white writing staff got the biggest laugh of the night for me.
Fish Market
4 Stars
George Wendt runs a fish market and we pan over to see that he has a giant whale head in his store. He seems stressed that he's never going to be able to sell 300,000 pounds of whale. Vance walks in looking for some shrimp, Wendt advises her to stay away from shrimp because it's not that fresh, at least not "whale fresh". Nora Dunn enters as a cop to write him a ticket because the tail of his whale is sticking out in the street and blocking traffic, he tries to bribe her with the blowhole. AMH comes in as Wendt's son, he's been outside trying to give out free samples of whale to no avail. He apologizes because this is all his fault, he wrote on the form "whole shipment" but his handwriting is terrible. Wendt leaves and tells his son to push the whale if anyone comes in. The phone rings and Hall starts talking to one of his friends and gets so distracted that he doesn't realize the two eskimos that walk in. They leave because they're not getting any service. The sketch just ends with no Coppola interruption for the first time tonight. This was a really funny premise and the execution was also funny, it just needed one more laugh at the end. Instead we pan over to Downey and Dunn who start the next sketch.
Actors
2 Stars
Wendt, Quaid, Lovitz, Hall and Downey are all behind enemy lines in Vietnam. They vote on who will go try to knock out a sniper. They pick Downey, he fires up his boombox, runs out and immediately is shot. They then realize that they needed the batteries in that boombox for their radio so now somebody has to go get them. They send out AMH who gets shot and then stops the scene because he is really hurt. Coppola comes in and says that the live ammo they are using is to create a sense of realism. The rest of the sketch is just Anthony Michael Hall yelling at Francis Ford Coppola which just isn't funny. Hall seems to be riffing about how angry he is and he just isn't very entertaining when he's off the cuff. They all quit the sketch one by one. Coppola walks through the halls sad. His internal monologue plays as he is despondent and feels that he may have just gotten lucky with The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, The Conversation, Patton, etc.. Lorne meets him in the elevator and begs him to come back for the Grand Finale.
Phillip Glass returns with Rubric which is nigh unlistenable. He plays two keyboards really fast while a woman sings random notes on top of it. They also cut away randomly to weird images like the skyline and a TV changing channels in fast motion. So it's unwatchable too.
Coppola closes out the show with a big finish
Master Thespian appears in front of a green screen, waxing poetically about studio 8H. We then pan around the studio and see the entire set in one take. AMH and Dunn take a bow from the Honeymooners sketch, Quaid is waving from the Vietnam sketch, Dennis Miller gives a nod from the Update desk, we pan up to the band where Terry Sweeney is dancing then to home base where Downey and Cusack are still in their suitcases, the musical area where Danitra Vance is in her That Black Girl outfit with Phillip Glass, then we pan over to dancing girls doing a kick line. I thought all of this was visually beautiful. We've gotten a lot of glimpses of backstage throughout the years but this is the first time I have gotten a 360 view of all the work that goes into this stupid little show in such a cinematic way. It was actually pretty impressive. We then cut to George Wendt who is now watching the show from a bar on TV. Al Franken and Tom Davis are serving him drinks and they ask him how he liked hosting. Wendt only has a few words, "The horror. The horror".
FINAL ANALYSIS
Actors
Vain actors talk about Coppola's choices
Dunn and Downey are smoking and talking about the last sketch and how brave Coppola is for putting it on the air. Downey talks about two meetings he had with Francis, he was drunk during both and Francis forcibly removed him from the set. These characters weren't set up at all so it took me a second viewing to actually figure out what they were talking about. I still didn't think it was funny, but at least I understood it. It was interesting to finally see a Robert Downey character. Again, not funny, but interesting.
Ghost Of Thespians Past
Ghost Of Thespians Past
3 Stars
Master Thespian visits Coppola and asks him to be in the Grand Finale
The ghost of Master Thespian appears to Coppola. He's really only here to set up the grand finale at the end of the show. Thespian asks for a part in the finale. Coppola asks him how he could do it if he's dead, of course the answer is Acting!. The problem here is that Lovitz is hamming up his performance and Coppola is a terrible actor so this was not fun to sit through. The one line I loved in this sketch is when Master Thespian is buttering up Francis and pleads to the great "Francis Ford...Line!".
Vietnam Sketch
Vietnam Sketch
2 Stars
Coppola directs a Vietnam sketch with too much authenticity
Wendt, Quaid, Lovitz, Hall and Downey are all behind enemy lines in Vietnam. They vote on who will go try to knock out a sniper. They pick Downey, he fires up his boombox, runs out and immediately is shot. They then realize that they needed the batteries in that boombox for their radio so now somebody has to go get them. They send out AMH who gets shot and then stops the scene because he is really hurt. Coppola comes in and says that the live ammo they are using is to create a sense of realism. The rest of the sketch is just Anthony Michael Hall yelling at Francis Ford Coppola which just isn't funny. Hall seems to be riffing about how angry he is and he just isn't very entertaining when he's off the cuff. They all quit the sketch one by one. Coppola walks through the halls sad. His internal monologue plays as he is despondent and feels that he may have just gotten lucky with The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, The Conversation, Patton, etc.. Lorne meets him in the elevator and begs him to come back for the Grand Finale.
Phillip Glass returns with Rubric which is nigh unlistenable. He plays two keyboards really fast while a woman sings random notes on top of it. They also cut away randomly to weird images like the skyline and a TV changing channels in fast motion. So it's unwatchable too.
Confrontational Monologue
1 Star
Um, RDJ screams while in a suitcase?
Randy Quaid brings out a suitcase with Robert Downey's head sticking out of it. I thought he died in the Vietnam sketch, but I guess he's better now. He says he is going to do a "confrontational monologue". I don't know what that is and after watching the sketch I still have no idea. He screams a bunch of gibberish like, "I know why whales beach themselves, Spider-Man told me" and "If words could speak I'd still have nothing to say". Quaid then brings out Joan Cusack in another suitcase, she says she is going to do her own monologue after he does his. Downey gets upset and tries to knock her over but he falls down the other way. I don't know what this was and I didn't like it.
Grand Finale
Grand Finale
5 Stars
Master Thespian appears in front of a green screen, waxing poetically about studio 8H. We then pan around the studio and see the entire set in one take. AMH and Dunn take a bow from the Honeymooners sketch, Quaid is waving from the Vietnam sketch, Dennis Miller gives a nod from the Update desk, we pan up to the band where Terry Sweeney is dancing then to home base where Downey and Cusack are still in their suitcases, the musical area where Danitra Vance is in her That Black Girl outfit with Phillip Glass, then we pan over to dancing girls doing a kick line. I thought all of this was visually beautiful. We've gotten a lot of glimpses of backstage throughout the years but this is the first time I have gotten a 360 view of all the work that goes into this stupid little show in such a cinematic way. It was actually pretty impressive. We then cut to George Wendt who is now watching the show from a bar on TV. Al Franken and Tom Davis are serving him drinks and they ask him how he liked hosting. Wendt only has a few words, "The horror. The horror".
FINAL ANALYSIS
"I find it hard taking artistic direction from the guy who came up with 'Rumble Fish'"
Average
3 Stars
MVP
Terry Sweeney
Sweeney didn't appear in a single sketch but provided a great running joke with being Coppola's lackey all night
Sweeney didn't appear in a single sketch but provided a great running joke with being Coppola's lackey all night
Best Sketch
Fish Market
Worst Sketch
Confrontational Monologue
How I Would Have Lorne Michaels-ed It
I like how they worked Coppola in to the episode. They started with The Honeymooners and then he broke into pretty much every sketch after that except for Fish Market. Coincidentally those were the only two sketches that had endings so it's almost like they used the fact that Coppola was there to write sketches without endings. All in all, this was an enjoyable experiment.
Host Analysis
Having George Wendt there was almost superfluous. In the two sketches he headlined he handled himself well but for the most part he just blended into the ensemble while Coppola took over the proceedings. At the end of the show Franken and Davis say that they should have George back and, of course, he became a big part of the show in the 90s guesting in every Superfans sketch even when he wasn't hosting.
Final Thoughts
Like I said, this was an enjoyable experiment. I liked how the show played with the format and did something that they have never done before. I don't know if this did anything to quell the critics who said the show sucked. If they had done this in the 90s it probably would have been championed as a weird exercise. Here it seems like a show trying something, anything, to drum up interest.
Up Next
Up Next
Our future president, Oprah Winfrey hosts. This would have been when she was an actor in The Color Purple and not queen of the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment