“In my heart I’m wearing a leather mask and breathing in your ear”
2 Stars
Jane tells us that Chevy has returned to the show after his season opening groin injury. John pushes him out in a wheelchair and throws him to the ground where he says "Live from New York...". I'm probably reading a lot more into this than I should be but John's shove to the floor seemed to me like "Here he is, folks. This is the guy you like to see open the show. Can we just get this bit over with?". The last two Chevy-free episodes have had a nice feel to them that I've enjoyed. This is leading me to think we're heading backwards, but only for a few more shows.
Karen Black Monologue
Karen brings out her newborn son, Hunter, who steals the show as he goes in for some boob. Karen trudges on with her bit about mothers through history, going from the horse-drawn mother to the steam powered mother to the incandescent mother you can read by. None of this really lands due to Hunter's yawning and writhing around but that's alright because it's pretty adorable.
Baba Wawa At Large
Baba Wawa interviews Indira Gandhi and is more interested in her clothes than her politics. It's a lot more of the Rs swapped for Ws bit that we've already covered with this character. Some of it made me laugh purely on a performance level. Gilda and Laraine are funny but I'm already growing bored of this (and as I've said before, I don't think it was that great in the first place). "Let's be 'Fwank'" and "free ewections" made me giggle. Also got a perverse chuckle from Baba pointing out the pimento on Indira's forehead.
Debate ‘76
Chevy's back so that means we can do the same debate sketch from earlier in the season. The Chevy as Ford bumbling is getting less and less fun and also more random. At one point he just shoves a pencil directly in his face. We get the same fumbling with the water that we got last time. I did enjoy him buzzing in during The National Anthem thinking he was on Name That Tune as well as the syringe sticking out of his arm that's never explained. I couldn't begin to tell you what John was doing as one of the moderator, Marilyn Kraus, who had a plethora of tissues at his (or her) disposal.
John Prine
“Hello In There”
Weekend Update
Triple-Trac
Green Cross Cupcakes
I feel like this could have been the mid-Update commercial instead of Triple-Trac for the 4th time. Karen assures John that the cupcakes she just fed him don't cause cancer and she has the live laboratory rats to prove it. The acting and timing is stilted in a way that I think is intentional (to look like a really crappy advertisement) but they are either too good at bad acting or there were some missed cues that make this a little sloppy. A very long shot of scientists dragging a tray of cupcakes through a lab complete with a few seconds of John and Karen just staring at the camera before and after had me questioning if this was part of the bit or a lazy camera switch. Plus you got John shoving an entire cupcake in his mouth in an effort to add a laugh. On it's own this is forgettable but if it were in the middle of Update I would probably enjoy it more as just a non sequitur.
A*M*I*S*H
Chevy, John, and Jane are all Amish folk who spring into action when they get word of a bank robbery. We get a nice 70s style cop theme song as they walk down a road, put on their hats, sit in the woods and eat cornbread, wait at a crosswalk, then wait in line at the bank. I guess the joke is that this is supposed to be very boring, which it is. It's got a decent enough punchline when the teller tells them that the robbery happened a week ago and the culprits have already been arrested and are awaiting trial but I'm not sure it was worth the time it took to get to it. The Amish are simple folk who don't drive cars, get it? I do like the look of it though. There's something about that grainy and shitty 1970s film look that I just find aesthetically pleasing for some reason.
Love Russian Style
Karen plays Catherine The Great and listens to a long and rambling story from John all while Dan hums music as underscoring. This all leads to nothing as Gilda comes in and tells the empress that her lover is waiting.
She then goes to greet a horse in her underwear. So today I learned that there was a rumor that Catherine The Great died while fucking a horse. I had no idea what this sketch was about so I went to Google, typed in "Catherine The Great horse" and had a good old time researching gossip and heresy from the 1700s. Come to think of it, there was another SNL sketch with this same premise, I want to say Roma Downey without looking it up. I probably Googled the same thing back when I watched that episode but apparently forgot that the empress of Russia was accused of being fucked to death by a horse. This is reminiscent of the sketch from the Season 1 Jill Clayburgh episode about that lady who died from wearing a long scarf (yeah, I couldn't tell you the actual name of the person). Who in the SNL writer's room had the obsession with strange deaths? I got an idea who it could it be.
Pips
This week's Gary Weis film is introduced by Chevy who is hilariously picking his nose when the camera cuts to him (because we've never seen that before), damn, there really needs to be a sarcasm symbol on the keyboard. I guess I could use italics or something. We've never seen Chevy pick his nose and that's why it's hilarious. Is that clearer? This is another guy you've never heard of just talking about random shit. George Schultz talks about booking a comedian for an audience of mentally challenged people. The comedian thinks he destroyed but didn't know that the crowd was laughing at random noises. Then he talks about his nervous ticks as he fishes. I can't tell if he's trying to be humorous, I can't tell why this was filmed, I have no idea why it was broadcast on television.
John Prine
“The Bottomless Lake”
Reunion
Dan runs into an old classmate, Jane, and annoys her with stories about high school that she doesn't remember and what he's been up to after graduation. She was the head cheerleader and he was captain of the audio visual team but he sees her as an equal now that they're just two adults. A fun performance piece for Dan and something that almost feels like a precursor to the nerd characters we'll soon be seeing.
Mr. Bill Goes To A Party
The second appearance of Mr. Bill. He's getting ready for a party but gets his arm ripped off, gets lit on fire, and has his feet sawed off. Things end poorly when he eventually gets to the party as we end with a nice shot of a smooshed Mr. Bill stuck to a man's shoe.
Karen Black
“Ten Cents A Dance”
American Coinage
Karen’s song about paying ten cents for a dance leads to other songs about coins. Garrett sings Pennies From Heaven, Chevy sings Put Another Nickel In The Nickelodeon, and Dan sings Brother Can You Spare A Dime. All of them seem like they’re doing Nick The Lounge Singer before Bill has joined the cast. John’s song includes a text scroll about how there’s been a rash of small change thefts while Belushi always seems to have plenty of small change. Then we start running out of time because it speeds up so fast you can’t read it.
FINAL ANALYSIS
“Here is a picture of the locusts raping my sister”
2.3 Stars
MVP
Dan Aykroyd
Debate ‘76, A*M*I*S*H, Love Russian Style, Reunion, American Coinage
Best Sketch
Reunion
Worst Sketch
Love Russian Style
How I Would Have Lorne Michaels-ed It
I understand why they did it but I really didn’t like the cold open. It’s interesting to watch in a historical context but after the Eric Idle episode, where they more than proved they could survive without him, this felt like a step back. As I said before, Green Cross Cupcakes should have been the mid-Update commercial and if you cut Triple-Trac you’d have time for the Goodnights and to give the last sketch a proper ending.
Host Analysis
Unremarkable and probably a bit on the bad side. It's been quite a while since I watched Season 6 but I recall her episode being a highlight so I may have had higher expectations than I should going into this. Her monologue was fine but her son took the spotlight, she didn't add much to the debate sketch as the moderator, her stilted delivery in Green Cross Cupcakes was either good or bad depending on your perspective, I couldn't have cared less about that Catherine The Great sketch, but her ending song was pleasant. So when you add it all up, yeah, not a great outing.
Final Thoughts
One of the more forgettable episodes in the show's history thus far. My favorite sketch wasn't even that great and certainly isn't anything I would call "must-see". John Prine was probably the most interesting part of the show. I can't quite say I'm a fan just based off of these two songs but at least I watched my television with a touch of engagement. The most notable thing about this episode is the return of Chevy and how it makes the show feel a little stale. I can't put all the blame on Chevy, I hate when the show makes references to any cast member not being there (like they did with Pete Davidson years later). The show goes on without you, if you're not there the show will still start at 11:30. It's not all about you, it's bigger than you'll ever be. But the opening made it seem like a grand return for Chevy and then we got the same old Gerald Ford shtick and a fairly lukewarm Weekend Update. In some ways, this is an important episode because it proves that the show works perfectly fine without him and is larger than just one man. SNL was fine with Chevy Chase, it was fine without him, and now that he's back it's...just...fine. A lot of this hostility probably comes from the fact that I know this isn't Chevy's grand return but just the last few shows before he moves on and honestly I'm looking forward to the show without Mr. Chase.
Up Next
Some punk kid named Steve hosts and SNL audiences are introduced to a mainstay for the next 50 years by the name of Kinky Friedman
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