(no subject)
I'm not watching vintage SNL in order anymore, but I am watching random episodes if I'm interested in the host.
Eric Idle was quite good and the whole show took on a slightly Monty Python-ish feeling, down to details like the transitions between sketches. Dan Aykroyd's great one-man radio announcer bit turns into the next sketch, for example, with his voice playing on their radio, and Eric walks right from the intro to the first sketch, itself a very Python-esque bit where Eric explains the increasingly absurd options available to a couple interested in genetically modifying their unborn child. A silly but spot-on filmed parody of the Beatles might have come directly from Python.
A "Dragnet" parody where all the men wear dresses is a direct nod to Python. My favorite part is probably the end that sketch, where John Belushi breaks the fourth wall to complain that he's not comfortable with it, "I'm not overreacting over any homosexual thing," he seems to be apologizing to Idle, "but drag is not funny in America!" After he storms off, Dan Aykroyd thinks John might have a point and "my Jack Webb is the worst anyway," and Eric, in a callback to an earlier moment where he was hit on by Laraine Newman, shyly asks Dan, "You want to come back to my dressing room and discuss it?" Dan agrees, and John warns, "Remember, if you do it ONCE..." Dan's reply is undecipherable (to me), but it makes the audience howl. I know I'm a sucker for slash and everything, but I'm a modern person, I don't laugh at the very idea that people could be gay, and Chevy Chase fretting about coming out to his parents as an elf in the Christmas episode kinda grated, so it's nice to see this tense moment translated very positively and cutely into a flirtation between two likeable performers who do kinda seem to have chemistry.
Weird note: There is a ton of stuff about Swine Flu in this episode. It must have been a big worry during that news week. I didn't know it had been around that long! B
Steve Martin was a blast to watch because he's great and because I just read his autobiography, in which he fondly recalls this first hosting experience. Steve and the cast/writers seem to have similar absurdist comedy sensibilities, which I guess explains why he is so often misremembered by me as an original cast member. You can tell he was in on a lot of writing, because even sketches he isn't in, like Chevy's advertisement for milk, feel very Steve Martiny ("...the waiter comes to me and says 'What'll it be?' and I pipe right up and say, 'Milk, please!' You know why? Because I know that a single glass of delicious, ice cold milk in the summer can give you a quick heart attack if you drink it too fast. That's right--" "Cut!"). Some of the sketches are overlong (particularly a beatnik nightclub in which Steve's poetry the highlight), but most of them are quite fun, and Steve's stand-up is pretty delightful, even if he does only have one mode and that is Cocky Asshole. I wish I'd seen his stand-up when I was 12 or 13, because that was exactly the personality I most enjoyed. A
Jodie Foster was the youngest host to date at 14 (Drew Barrymore would snag the record for all time in the 80s). I knew she was a child star, but I'd never seen her as a kid. She's pretty in a fresh-faced blond snub-nosed kind of way, with an alarmingly deep California-accented voice and tomboyish clothes and body language. If I were ten years younger, and in the 1970s (so... 25 years older?) I'd have a crush on her. Unfortunately, the audience seems to hate her. They don't laugh at her jokes in the monologue, and the continuing problems in future sketches seem to make her more nervous.
The whole cast and crew seems to be off tonight: sketches are rife with technical difficulties and flubs, even infecting Jane Curtin's usually unflappable news delivery. The writing is subpar, too, perhaps tamped-down in an effort to keep Jodie from doing anything too adult. Many of the sketches use Jodie's age as a punchline. (It's interesting how far they haven't come: compare this episode with the most recent Daniel Radcliffe episode, in which the 23-year-old is doomed to play teenagers and send up his own generation.) Jodie has to play too young often, especially in one creepy sketch where she sits on Michael O'Donahue's lap for a story. But through it all Jodie is good, and in one slice-of-life sketch where she plays a girl with a not-as-subtle-as-she-thinks-it-is crush on her biology teacher, she's amazing, playing it like a straight drama, so it's more heartwrenching than funny. C+
Eric Idle was quite good and the whole show took on a slightly Monty Python-ish feeling, down to details like the transitions between sketches. Dan Aykroyd's great one-man radio announcer bit turns into the next sketch, for example, with his voice playing on their radio, and Eric walks right from the intro to the first sketch, itself a very Python-esque bit where Eric explains the increasingly absurd options available to a couple interested in genetically modifying their unborn child. A silly but spot-on filmed parody of the Beatles might have come directly from Python.
A "Dragnet" parody where all the men wear dresses is a direct nod to Python. My favorite part is probably the end that sketch, where John Belushi breaks the fourth wall to complain that he's not comfortable with it, "I'm not overreacting over any homosexual thing," he seems to be apologizing to Idle, "but drag is not funny in America!" After he storms off, Dan Aykroyd thinks John might have a point and "my Jack Webb is the worst anyway," and Eric, in a callback to an earlier moment where he was hit on by Laraine Newman, shyly asks Dan, "You want to come back to my dressing room and discuss it?" Dan agrees, and John warns, "Remember, if you do it ONCE..." Dan's reply is undecipherable (to me), but it makes the audience howl. I know I'm a sucker for slash and everything, but I'm a modern person, I don't laugh at the very idea that people could be gay, and Chevy Chase fretting about coming out to his parents as an elf in the Christmas episode kinda grated, so it's nice to see this tense moment translated very positively and cutely into a flirtation between two likeable performers who do kinda seem to have chemistry.
Weird note: There is a ton of stuff about Swine Flu in this episode. It must have been a big worry during that news week. I didn't know it had been around that long! B
Steve Martin was a blast to watch because he's great and because I just read his autobiography, in which he fondly recalls this first hosting experience. Steve and the cast/writers seem to have similar absurdist comedy sensibilities, which I guess explains why he is so often misremembered by me as an original cast member. You can tell he was in on a lot of writing, because even sketches he isn't in, like Chevy's advertisement for milk, feel very Steve Martiny ("...the waiter comes to me and says 'What'll it be?' and I pipe right up and say, 'Milk, please!' You know why? Because I know that a single glass of delicious, ice cold milk in the summer can give you a quick heart attack if you drink it too fast. That's right--" "Cut!"). Some of the sketches are overlong (particularly a beatnik nightclub in which Steve's poetry the highlight), but most of them are quite fun, and Steve's stand-up is pretty delightful, even if he does only have one mode and that is Cocky Asshole. I wish I'd seen his stand-up when I was 12 or 13, because that was exactly the personality I most enjoyed. A
Jodie Foster was the youngest host to date at 14 (Drew Barrymore would snag the record for all time in the 80s). I knew she was a child star, but I'd never seen her as a kid. She's pretty in a fresh-faced blond snub-nosed kind of way, with an alarmingly deep California-accented voice and tomboyish clothes and body language. If I were ten years younger, and in the 1970s (so... 25 years older?) I'd have a crush on her. Unfortunately, the audience seems to hate her. They don't laugh at her jokes in the monologue, and the continuing problems in future sketches seem to make her more nervous.
The whole cast and crew seems to be off tonight: sketches are rife with technical difficulties and flubs, even infecting Jane Curtin's usually unflappable news delivery. The writing is subpar, too, perhaps tamped-down in an effort to keep Jodie from doing anything too adult. Many of the sketches use Jodie's age as a punchline. (It's interesting how far they haven't come: compare this episode with the most recent Daniel Radcliffe episode, in which the 23-year-old is doomed to play teenagers and send up his own generation.) Jodie has to play too young often, especially in one creepy sketch where she sits on Michael O'Donahue's lap for a story. But through it all Jodie is good, and in one slice-of-life sketch where she plays a girl with a not-as-subtle-as-she-thinks-it-is crush on her biology teacher, she's amazing, playing it like a straight drama, so it's more heartwrenching than funny. C+