Donahue Green Room – Fernando (Crystal) announces that Phil
has begun filming his show in New York this week and decides to step into his
green room for bit. His guests include two midget transvestites, a Nazi and
subway vigilante shooter Bernard Goetz. As expected, Fernando merely tells them
how “mah-velous” they all look. Fernando talks to Goetz to get him on his show
to which he agrees without hesitation. Fernando makes the mistake of asking
Goetz for a quarter to use the phone and call his producer. He threateningly
gives Fernando change and Fernando tells us how he is glad to be alive from NY.
This open doesn’t hold up well at all. Even when it was fresh, it doesn’t look
like it was all that funny. I didn’t really get all the Goetz references so
that joke was lost on me. Still, I have to give them credit for bringing
Fernando out of his “hideaway” setting. C+
Monologue – Turner comes out and talks about how some movie
stars look different in person and then points out her friend Jack Nicholson
(who is shown as some regular guy with a jew fro) and talks about how different
she looks in all of her increasingly racy movies, but the censors wouldn’t let
them show the photo from “Crimes of Passion.” This wasn’t really much of a
monologue. C-
MacDouglass-Drummond – Shearer advertises a wrench in a
Popeil style infomercial. This wrench is made to work on Air Force jets as it
is the only “Pentagon approved” wrench on the market. It goes for $50,000 and
if you call now, you can get a $24,000 coffee pot. This seemed to be another
horribly dated heavy political piece that didn’t hold up well. I have no idea
what sort of scandal this was referring to. I did like lines such as “but wait,
there’s less” and “our prices are indictable” and the joke about how this
wrench “can withstand the heat of a congressional investigation.” C-
Waterskiing – Willie and Frankie are back, except this time
they are on a waterskiing team. Willie complains that about how hard it is to
meet people in this job, but at least there’s girls standing on their
shoulders. I did like the bit where Crystal talked about how he Krazy glued his
eyes shut to get some sleep, but other than that this was just the most tired
thing ever. I did like how they pulled off the illusion of two girls holding on
to ceiling restraints while their feet are placed on Crystal and Guests
shoulders. C+
Nose Hair Trimmer – People come to Walter’s (Kroeger) stand
expecting to get their shoes shined, but he offers to trim people’s nose hairs.
This is the same character he did in the Flip Wilson/Stevie Nicks episode who
offered to tie peoples shoes. Guest is the building manager (doing the same
voice he did as Mort Schmegman) on the last show who is trying to get in the
Guinness book of world records while trying to get Walter kicked out of the
building. Turner is a customer and Crystal is his friend Winslow to whom he
gave his Stevie Wonder nose hair braid which he says gets girls notice him.
Turner even asks him out on a date. The building manager agrees not to kick out
Walter if he braids his nose hair, but he soon finds out he just has one long
one at 15ft. He could get in the Guinness book with that, but Hall comes in and
trips over it. This wasn’t the funniest sketch ever, but it was a different
premise. Crystal’s character made me chuckle. C+
SafeCo – Pitchman Don Mowser (Kroeger) illustrates the
sturdiness of Duraguard glass by using a helmeted Joan Collins (Stephenson) as
a battering ram. Duraguard glass doesn’t break. This was funny. It was kind of
a silly premise for a commercial, but they had fun with it. B+
Hypnotism By Fire – Bald, middle aged Brad (Short) is making
his own slightly anti Semitic golf instructional video when his daughter Sharon
(Dreyfus) announces she is going out on a date with Larry Pacon (Crystal) who
isn’t the son of Brad’s associate) Sam Pacon (Guest). Gross plays a mom who is
upstairs (and offscreen) fighting with her whole family and is barely
acknowledged throughout. Brad and Larry bond over the fire while Sharon
finishes getting ready. Brad uses the fire to hypnotize Larry into admitting
that he plans to have sex with Sharon later that night and change his plans. Sam
Pacon drops by and Brad attempts the same premise. This was another sketch with
an interesting and different premise. It was pretty funny on its own. Short was
the center of it and he was playing a more subdued character we haven’t seen
him play before. Also, it’s sort of semi famous because Short kept smacking
Crystal upside his head which knocked his wig completely askew. Crystal didn’t
even notice this until Dreyfus and Short actually adjusted his wig in the
middle of the sketch. This caused everyone to break character so bad that
Crystal couldn’t even deliver his last line. They even talked about it on the
“Lost and Found” 80s special. Short said he appreciated that experience because
you couldn’t have moments like that on a taped show like SCTV. B+
Predictions – Jeanne Dixon (Gross) hawks her own bizarre
predictions in this months’ “Star” magazine. These include Elizabeth Taylor
changing her name to Florence Schnurr, a celebrity mispronouncing “holocaust”,
Bob’s Big Boy coming out on the top of the Burger King/McDonalds’ price wars
and the commercial ending with a close up of her face curing the nations’
hiccups. This was a little strange. The only funny part was an audience member
pointing out that Elvis’s 50th birthday celebration already happened. B-
Joe Franklin II – Franklin (Crystal) interviews famed
magician Doug Henning (Short), actor Alan Arkin (Guest) and rising actress
Daphne Clayton (Turner) who is appearing in a production of “Wake Me When I’m
Nude”. This was actually better than the first Joe Franklin sketch. I liked
Short as Doug Henning and Guest as a bewildered, succinct Arkin made me
chuckle. Turner didn’t really add that much, but I her purposely bad lip
syncing during her big musical number was pretty funny as well her song ending with
“it’s 1983”. Crystal asking about Ben Turpin was also a nice touch. B-
Boxer – This was another one of Crystal’s “character” pieces
that was essentially him doing a monologue. Here, he played old senile corner
man Tony Minetti catching up with one of his old boxers and making fun of the
AMA from trying to ban boxing. I didn’t much care for this. I much prefer him
as Ricky. I did like the line about bleeding at the weigh in, though. C-
Fast Love – At what appears to be the most aggressively 80s
party ever, Adam Sherman (Short) meets the seemingly insane and sexually
intimidating Victoria Kingsley (Turner) who comes on quite strong to Adam in
the midst of his relationship problems with another girl. Adam desperately
tries to get away from her, but not without a passionate kiss which completely
changes his mind. This was very funny and well acted. Short was great here.
This seems to surreal to be a Marylin Suzanne Miller piece though. B+
Saturday Night News – Guest delivers a mostly jokeless
commentary on “job shuffling” within Reagan’s cabinet. Some random TV
personalities and Johnny cash are mentioned to be replacing each other. Kroeger
plugs his own “Kroeger-a-Month” calendar (which he is selling for less than a
dollar) under the guise of a consumer report. His goofy scantily clad
pictorials made me chuckle. I also liked Guest’s line “that’s very sad” after
Kroeger’s commentary. Doug Henning (Hall) delivers a commentary on the deficit
as Guest states the Henning is Reagan’s new economic advisor. I don’t know why
Hall had to play Henning this time. I liked Short’s impression much better.
Hall even comments on this saying that two Doug Hennings on SNL is the greatest
illusion of all. Anyway, Hall basically forces Guest to “cough up” some money
to make the “deficit” disappear and “barf up” some military spending. That was
alright by itself, but the funniest part was when Hall’s fake teeth fell out
and he tried to pass them off as another “illusion” when Guest handed them to
him. This Update was actually pretty good considering it was kept short and
most of it was commentary. B-
Strictly From Blackwell II – In this installment, Blackwell
(Shearer) chats with guest Bobby Bouchet (Short) who is involved in musical
dinner theater. This made the previous Blackwell sketch look much better by
comparison as Guest had a more developed character than Short did. He did claim
however, that his biological parents were JFK and Marylin Monroe and his
adopted parents didn’t even know this. This was okay, but it had little to do
with the sketch. C+
Well, this was pretty much and average, run of the mill show
outside of a few good moments. Next episode is Roy Schieder/Billy Ocean.
No comments:
Post a Comment