Bob Uecker/Peter Wolf (10.13.1984)

Password – Bert Convy (Guest) hosts this game show where Robin Williams (Short) is a celebrity contestant receiving clues from Stephenson. He would just go off on a tangent and not say anything close to the right answer causing Stephenson to pass on every category. Short’s impression needed some serious work, although he certainly looked the part. He was just screaming at the top of his lungs through the whole thing like he was just trying too hard. At the end, the secret word was “evening.” The clue was “night.” Short said “like Saturday Night…like that series with miss Gilda” as he pulled his face back to do a quick Emily Litella impression. He opened the show with “she was wonderful…for she was Live from New York, it’s a baby boy Mr. Williams!” This was a rather weak sketch, but it was still a creative opening. Thankfully, it didn’t drag on too long. C+

Monologue – Mr. Baseball himself, Bob Uecker walks out on stage and tells a needlessly detailed anecdote about going to the St. Louis Cardinals 20 year reunion. After he gets to the other ballpark, he talks about the statue he thinks they built in his likeness. At first he says they didn’t invite him until he called and asked them and he ended up going to the wrong ballpark at first. He then talks about an endorsement deal he made with Rawlings Sporting Goods. They paid him lots of money not to be seen with any of their equipment. Then, a stage hand comes out on carrying a phone and mentions that they want him to take this call on the air. The caller is President Reagan (Shearer) who tells Uecker as an ex sportscaster, he has a great career ahead of him as an ex sportscaster. He then says he was joking and that he’s glad to be a part of the premiere broadcast of SNL’s tenth anniversary. Uecker reminds him that the premiere was a week ago and Reagan says he knew that, but he was busy “getting ready for his disaster.” He then clarifies some statements he made in last week’s debate regarding taxes, social security and abortion and then states that this call has been pre taped and is being fed to the show from the White House so Reagan didn’t have to stay up late as he had more important responsibilities. This could’ve been funnier. Uecker had some funny material, but his delivery bought it down a bit. The funniest thing about the whole monologue was Uecker’s frustration with Reagan’s long windedness. As far as Reagan impressions on SNL go, Shearer definitely did the most accurate vocal imitation of The Gipper even though Hartman’s was the funniest. If I had to rate all the Reagan impersonators on SNL form best to worst, I think it would go Shearer, Hartman, Quaid, Rocket, Piscopo. C+

Snap, Crackle and Pop – The Rice Krispies mascots are played by Short, Guest and Crystal respectively. They are playing at a Holiday Inn in the small town of Zainseville. Crakcle plays guitar and Pop plays the clarinet. Snap apparently plays an electric drum machine. After their opening song, they briefly acknowledge their legal troubles over the past few years and Crackle’s apparent breakdown. Belushi aggressively heckles them to the point where Crakcle yells at him and tells him the story of how they left Kellogg’s because “they wanted to replace Pop with a big black guy named Thud” and they didn’t want to split up. Crakcle then pulls out a gun on the heckler. This was a mostly weak sketch that really dragged in the beginning, but it had its bright spots toward the end. I liked when Belushi threw bowl of potato chips at Short. C-

American Portrait – Cyndi Lauper (Stephenson) hosts this profile of the great poet Dylan Thomas where she bops around and sings toward the end. I can’t really tell what Pamela was going for with this impression. She sounded more like a cross between Tracey Ullman and Fran Drescher and I couldn’t really tell if her impression was that accurate. Thankfully, they kept this short because it was pretty pointless. D+

Little League Trade – Crystal was a little league baseball player and Uecker was his father trying to break the news to him that he is releasing and trading him to another family for making an error on the field last week. He is being traded in exchange for a kid named Juan from Havana, Cuba. It is also revealed that Crystal’s mother put a special hormone in his cereal to keep him small enough to play little league forever. This wasn’t the most creative premise ever and Crystal wasn’t really that believable as a ten year old, but Uecker’s performance made this funny. I especially liked the lines “To err is human, to forgive is unheard of” and suggesting that Crystal paint himself gold and sit on the shelf where his trophy should have gone. Maybe Short, Gross or Stephenson would’ve been better suited to play ten year olds, but this seems like something Crystal would’ve written so I can see why he was in this. B+

Brokaw and Grossman – Tom Brokaw (Shearer) barges into the office of NBC News President Lawrence Grossman (Short) because he thinks someone is going out of their way to insert as many L’s as possible into his news copy just to torment him. Grossman suggests he make an appointment with a speech therapist. There wasn’t a lot to this sketch and the material seemed a little thin, but it was good to see Shearer’s dead on Brokaw impression again and I would guess that he wrote this since it seems like his style of humor. C-

Mamie Eisenhower Center for the Dull – This is the first taped segment of the night. It opens as Clinical Psychologist Dr. Troy Soren (Short) discussing the first lady’s struggle with tedium and her going public with the affliction. We then see footage of the treatment which includes Uecker playing himself and telling the exact same story he told in the monologue and Kroeger trying to describe the plot of “Gremlins.” We then see the weekly jazzercise class and monthly sing a long session conducted by Sorens’ wife and former patient, Hildy (Gross) This was actually another clever premise and it was executed well, but at the same time it felt like they could have done more with it. It was a bit shorter and had a faster pace than I was expecting. Normally, I would say I’m glad that a certain premise was kept short and didn’t just drag on, but I wanted to see them do more with this instead of cutting it short. I did like the guy being dragged in kicking and screaming at the end and the establishing shot of a large gray building with short explaining that it was based on Mamie’s own design. B-

7X4=? – This was a game show with Kroeger as the host and Gross, Dreyfus and Hall as the contestants. All the contestants attempted to buzz in with the answer before they even got to introduce themselves as an increasingly frustrated host attempted to pad out the show. They were all playing for a house and they ran out of time before the host could even ask the first question. This was a great sketch. I particularly liked Kroeger’s performance, Dreyfus mentioning that she was 28 years old and Hall as Andy A. Abbot asking if they would be going alphabetically. This sketch was quite similar to “Where in the World is San Diego, California?” from the infamously bad Bob Saget/TLC show, but this was obviously much better. This sketch didn’t take forever to get to the joke and it didn’t belabor the point when it got there. A-

Negro Baseball – Uecker introduces this second filmed piece of the night saying he was “very privileged to observe a very special era of baseball” as a youngster and he hopes we enjoy this as much as he did. This is a mockumentary profiling former Negro league players “King Carl” Johnson and Leonard “The Rooster” Willoughby (played by Guest and Crystal respectively in HEAVY BLACKFACE MAKEUP) who discuss their glory days. Dave Winfield and Yogi Berra are also briefly interviewed. Wow…just, wow…I don’t even know where to start…there were some mildly funny lines here and there, but as a whole this was just utterly horrendous. I will admit that Guest and Crystal were pretty convincing as old black men (Guest was almost unrecognizable in his makeup) but the illusion was totally destroyed when they showed mock pictures of them on the team. I did like the lines about Guest playing an entire double header with a broken leg and only making $200 after playing for 30 years but otherwise this was just impossibly long and just meandered along way too much. I have no idea why Winfield and Berra would agree to do this because they were just utterly wasted here. For Christ’s sake, the first time I saw this I couldn’t even make it through the whole damn thing without falling asleep at least twice! This was a horribly overrated filmed segment. D+

Saturday Night News w/ Guest Anchor Bob Uecker – Uecker (getting no applause for some reason) reports on some of the “shocking” language use in the 84 campaign (Ferraro being referred to as “bitchy and arrogant” by Barbara Bush) and how it pales in comparison to some of the language he heard as a baseball player. Gross comes out as Ferraro and mentions that Barbara Bush called her “a four million dollar word that rhymes with rich” and says “that bitch has no right calling me a snitch” referring to her husbands’ tax troubles. This wasn’t too bad. At one point Uecker accidentally says “Barbara Rush” and corrects he saying she was in the news “some time ago.” He shows us some photos from the World Series and makes a string of lame gags based on them. Crystal debuts his Lew Goldman character to bitch about the weather and give the forecast for his family. He just played the most stereotypical old Jew ever while hacking up mucus. There was nothing to see here. C-

Lost and Found – Guest walks into the Lost and found office at the police station where Uecker is attending and attempts to claim the most valuable items they have to the complete obliviousness of Uecker. Belushi attempts to warn him that Guest came in every day at his old precinct and will lose just about anything. Uecker attempts to give him a pool skimmer but he claims that isn’t his. This was a pretty clever sketch. It was rather dry, but it was well preformed and funny to watch. A-

Tippi Turtle – This is a cartoon about an anthropomorphic turtle that shows us new ways to bother and annoy everyone you come into contact with. In this installment, he shows us how we can bother post office workers by stuffing a balsa wood box with a helium balloon and wrapping it up. He then takes it to the post office (where they charge according to weight) and demands they give him money when the box floats into the air. This was also pretty funny. A-

Peter Wolf – I usually don’t review the musical performances, but I thought this was worth mentioning. Before his second performance, Wolf introduces his backup band which includes G.E. Smith who he says played with Hall and Oates.

SNL Mailbag – Gross and Dreyfus read three letters that are all addressed to Dreyfus. They are all from the same Texas prisoner who is obsessed with her. Gross tells Dreyfus that she uses to date ex cons and they are not so bad. It turns out he is in the studio for tonight’s show. Gross tells Julia to run away and that she will talk to the prisoner, but just ends up hitting on him. This wasn’t really hilarious, but it was pretty well written. B-

Fresh Baseball – This seemed to be a parody of Uecker’s beer ads, but in this one he and Hall were telling us to start the day with a freshly squeezed glass of baseball and how it’s healthy. It contains fiber, cow hide for skin tone and cork for…floatation. If I had to guess, I’d say he was just drinking milk with seams painted on the glass. Belushi comes in and orders a diet platter. I liked the absurdity of this piece. B+

Goodnights/NBC Sports Wrap Up – Vin Scully (Shearer) and Joe Garagiola (Crystal) rate Uecker’s performance saying he seemed nervous, but he obviously came to play. Uecker himself says he wasn’t as nervous as when he signed his first pro contract. Scully and Garagiola then announce next week’s show just before the goodnights. This was a cute way to end the show and nothing I haven’t really seen before.

I can remember being a bit disappointed by this episode the first time I watched it. Uecker seemed like he would be a good host since Artie Lange and Norm MacDonald had some great stories about him, but he obviously seemed a tiny bit uncomfortable doing live TV and he would’ve had to tone it way down for network TV in the 80s (especially during a bland Ebersol era) but upon reviewing it I’ve rediscovered a few odd gems here and there. So far, I would still say the premiere was a consistently better episode. Next episode is hosted by the Reverend Jesse Jackson with musical guests Andre Crouch and Wintley Phipps. See ya then!