The Season 6 journey is often one that can give you surprises. Sometimes, when you least expect it, the show will have a small streak of sketches that will make you think that this group is onto something.
And then...it slowly falls apart again.
The season premiere was rather weak for the most part and then that got followed by one of the worst episodes in SNL history.
The 3rd and previous episode, hosted by Ellen Burstyn with Aretha Franklin as the musical guest, proved to be the most consistent outing so far and showed that there could be some promise on the horizon.
However, that high is about to settle back into something of a malaise.
In fact, this is a rare episode of SNL in that the only true highlight of the night (aside from maybe one sketch) belongs to the musical guest...and this is due to the fact that James Brown's performance here is first rate.
Let's discuss the Jamie Lee Curtis/James Brown episode that managed to get a Classic SNL airing on NBC simply due to the power of James Brown and nothing else.
____________________________________
COLD OPENING: The Mean Majority
As one might expect, The Mean Majority is a stand-in for The Moral Majority.
As we've established in the previous reviews, we are currently right in that transition period where Ronald Reagan is the President-Elect. In the world of SNL, it is obvious (and not a surprise) that they aren't exactly fans of a conservative movement.
We start off with the self-dubbed Three Musketeers Charles Rocket, Denny Dillon, and Gail Matthius (and that's not a joke, they called themselves that backstage) staring at the camera with their arms crossed.
They are ready to gloat because they can finally show their true colors and talk about how they were just "playing nice" when it came to civil rights.
Honestly...the lack of subtlety in this material is fascinating because I do have to wonder how something like this would play to today's audience with, perhaps, a rewrite or two.
As it stands, the studio audience doesn't respond much to it and it suffers greatly from bad pacing, erratic usage of a text ticker on the screen, and aiming at easy shock value to drag Republicans through the mud.
Thankfully, it is a mercifully short cold opening but the tone of it is so weird that when they get to the "Live From New York" bit, the audience doesn't even applaud at first.
After talking about shows that they feel audiences shouldn't watch (which include fake and try-too-hard joke names like Sex in a Condo or Let's Spit on the Flag), Dillon mentions that there is another show...
DILLON: It's live...
ROCKET: ...it's...from New York...
MATTHIUS: ...it's SATURDAY NIGHT!
As the three smile into the camera, the audience is so quiet that you can hear the band director count in the musicians to play the theme song.
A very unfortunate way to start the evening.
______________________________________
OPENING MONTAGE leading into Jamie Lee Curtis' Monologue
As I write this review, we aren't far removed from when Jamie Lee Curtis won an Oscar for her performance in Everything Everywhere All at Once.
Like most of the internet, I am not so sure the performance warranted an Oscar...or even a nomination...but it is hard not to be happy for the lady.
This is a woman who worked for years in genre films and even came close to getting nominated for some of them (Trading Places, True Lies, A Fish Called Wanda), and was known first for her Scream Queen title in the early stages of her career. It is in that horror stage that we find Jamie Lee Curtis hosting SNL for the first time.
While this monologue isn't bad, it is pretty par for the course for this season.
It is quick and basically leads up to a one joke premise before it departs.
Curtis talks about how people expect certain things from performers and therefore, she gives us all a very loud scream.
But hey...she is very likable at least!
____________________________________
COMMERCIAL PARODY: Clovin Hind Jeans #1
This will be the first of three commercial parodies in the episode based around the iconic Brooke Shields' Calvin Klein Jeans ads.
This one is based on, arguably, the most famous one where Shields says "Do you wanna know what comes between me and Calvins? Nothing".
Here, Matthius as Shields says "Do you wanna know what comes between me and Clovins? My brains".
It does what it needs to do and leaves. Matthius captures the similar air of Shields, so while not an amazing bit, it works for what it is.
_____________________________________
SKETCH: Attack of the Terrible Snapping Creatures
The obligatory host sketch in that they wanted to do something horror-themed for Jamie Lee Curtis.
They even name her Laurie after her Halloween character.
However, the sketch is structured to be more of a showcase for Gail Matthius...and while she does well with it and the audience responds fairly well, I think this sketch tries a little too hard at times.
I do love the set-up that these two moved into an apartment with several red flags, including the fact that their broker actually paid THEM a fee to move in.
Why is that? The apartment is infested with terrible snapping creatures...AKA...clothespins.
From here, the sketch just seems to bounce back and forth from the two just screaming about clothespins being attached to them which leads Curtis to run out of the apartment to look for help.
As I said before, Matthius ends up carrying this sketch and it soon descends into "shock value" humor of sorts.
Matthius finds "the mother": a large clothespin replica which starts to "snap" towards her and in a loud breathless manner, Matthius has to yell "Not my breasts" and then the comically unnecessary "NO! I WANT TO BEAR CHILDREN SOMEDAY!" as it approaches her vagina.
The ending with Curtis returning covered in clothespin is sort of expected. The sketch is by no means a failure, but it still shows a weird mix of underdeveloped ideas and a penchant for trying to push for brash humor.
________________________________________
SKETCH: Three Card Monty
If this sketch is important for anything, it is the first official sketch pairing (not counting last week's Weekend Update) of Joe Piscopo and Eddie Murphy.
Not surprisingly, Doumanian must have insisted they bring Piscopo's Paulie Herman back despite the fact he had just debuted in the previous episode...and sadly, this one doesn't really live up to the first outing.
Murphy plays a card hustler standing outside of Port Authority...using his exaggerated street wise that would end up becoming the voice he uses for Raheem Abdul Mohammed which...once again...was the name of the character he played in the Update piece from the Burstyn episode.
Piscopo's Herman seems more impressed by the fact that Murphy's character is from NYC...which is humorous considering he is...well...standing in NYC at that very moment.
It is nice watching these two interact but it just isn't an overly strong sketch...and it doesn't help when Charles Rocket shows up as a stereotypical Irish cop.
_____________________________________
SHORT FILM: Linda Lee's Who IS Gilbert Gottfried?
This is another example of something that I really want to like, and I do find it has its moments, but it just doesn't fully click.
This is a short film that tells the "true story" about how down-and-out comedian Gilbert Gottfried managed to weasel his way onto SNL.
I do love some of the bits, like the fact his family lived in a literal revolving door or that Gottfried sold freshly squeezed water (from sponges) to make a living.
_____________________________________
SHOW SKETCH: Dying to Be Heard
Ann Risley playing a stuffy literary figure is about what one would expect her to excel at, but I feel like here, the pretentious tone she is trying to convey is coming off as just too dull.
Having said that, it works fine enough for the sketch...and thankfully, that is a great thing since this is easily my favorite sketch of the night and probably among the better ones of the season.
I mentioned in the last review that writer Mitchell Kriegman seems too have a surprising dark streak in his writing despite his genteel nature...and we see that in full force here.
Dying to Be Heard is a TV show in which poets are looking to get their works known to the masses...but as it was for the likes of Sylvia Plath or Virginia Woolf among a few others...it will probably take their death.
The poet will kill themselves on live TV and then Risley will read their work aloud and thus they will enter true immortality.
The first of these poets is Jamie Lee Curtis, who plans to die via beating herself to death with the hardcover edition of The Joy of Cooking (Risley: "How inventive"). Curtis' husband (Piscopo) and daughter (Dillon) beg her not to do it but she yells at them:
CURTIS: "Get away! You never cared about me! You never cared about my work! All you wanted was DINNER!"
She then proceeds to beat herself senseless in the head with the cookbook before her body collapses over Dillon's lap.
Once she collapses, there is stunned silence and then Risley breaks it with: "I would like to read a poem by the late Anna Louise Ryder", which is probably Risley's best moment of the sketch and the timing of it couldn't be more perfect.
The poem, which insults her husband's size downstairs and also her daughter's behavior, is humorous but what kills me (no pun intended) is when Dillon is so offended by her mom's poem that she disgustingly pushes her dead body off of her to the floor.
Then we get Gail Matthius, who ended up strangling herself with the cord on her Cuisinart, but did it too soon as when the camera cuts to her, she is already sprawled out on her table. Her poem is more straightforward in that it ends with "I am so depressed; I think I am going to kill myself".
It is funny, but I do feel like at that point, they are rushing to end the sketch and I actually wish we got to stay in this morbid world a little longer.
All in all though, this was a dark sketch that was mostly done right.
___________________________________
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE: James Brown performs "Rapp Payback"
The first of two truly fantastic performances by the legendary Godfather of Soul. "Rapp Payback" is not a song most people don't remember but the energy he provides is nothing short of astounding...and it will only become even more impressive in the second performance.
_______________________________________
WEEKEND UPDATE with Charles Rocket: The Man of Smarm
It is with this installment of Update that we see Rocket slowly starting to make changes with how he presents himself and the material.
From here on out, I feel like there is a strong push for him to amp up the "comparison" to Bill Murray by having him take on Murray-isms.
You start to see a glimmer of this on his "vibrating rocket" joke involing Soviet Premier Lenoid Brezhnev. After saying the punch line, he does this sort of quiet cocky laugh as if he just told the funniest joke ever when it was the furthest thing from it.
Interestingly enough, this joke was shown during SNL's 25th Anniversary Special when they featured clips of each Update anchor. While most received more than one, Rocket was one of the only few to just get one clip and it happened to be that joke. Seems kind of surprising because despite the dire nature of Update that year, there were better ones they could've chose.
Rocket may be slowly coming to life as an anchor but he is leaning too much into that smarmy cocky zone that he can't pull off as well as Bill Murray or even Chevy Chase.
Denny Dillon gets a bit as a character she used to perform in her stage act called "Woodswoman". And they try giving her a catchprase: "I been it. I seen it. I am Woodswoman".
This bit is totally what we would call "clapter" nowadays where it is all about how we should be dumping chemical waste at the White House if it isn't such an issue for Reagan to do it elsewhere...even though the man isn't even in office yet. Honestly, it is isn't like I have a problem with bashing Ronald Reagan because I will gladly do that every day of the week...but after a while, material like this can get old and lazy. I am not saying what Dillon is doing here is bad in terms of character work, but there isn't a lot of humor here.
Piscopo comes back as his Sportscaster persona and he is slowly morphing into the character we remember today. The appearance is very brief, but it is certainly more interesting than what Rocket is doing.
THEN - we get Eddie Murphy in his first true solo Update piece.
This is one of the more bizarre pieces he would ever do considering he decides to give himself a southern twang (it sounds a lot like the "white man voice" he would often do but with a strong southern accent) and his editorial is a bit more basic and childish: eating dog food as a means to save money...especially for those on food stamps.
It isn't a great bit, but I do love the small moment as he opens the can of dog food and says "Oh...lord have mercy.
While the audience has been a lot more responsive during this Update, I do have to stress that the material is still incredibly weak. In fact, one of the jokes gets an outright hostile boo from the audience which is the one involving the incoming Reagan Administration only allowing abortions if the fetus is female.
Eeeek indeed.
_____________________________________
PSA: POKER & DRUGS DON'T MIX
This one just screams like one of those "hip" sketches that Doumanian would push for even though she was "vehemently anti-drug" according to everyone who worked for her.
This was an era when basically anything drug related was almost an instant success with audiences (if you watch old episodes of ABC's Fridays from this era, the audiences on there would flip out with great joy at every drug reference)...so this bit with people struggling to play poker because they are high on marijuana is basically presented in the most banal way possible.
I think the only real solid moment is when one of the players (I think Risley?) is hallucinating that the Queen of Hearts is cheating on the King with the Jack.
Otherwise, this is just a sketch that comes and goes with nothing really to offer.
__________________________________
COMMERCIAL: Clovin Hind Jeans #2
"If my Clovins could talk, I could act".
A solid dig at Brooke Shields and another solid send-up on the iconic Calvin Klein Jeans commercials of the era.
____________________________________
SKETCH: Badger Convention
I hate this sketch.
As inspired by the likes of Shriners Conventions and the Elks Club, etc... I think you may already know where this sketch is going.
A group of men participating in a convention for their Badgers group ends up BADGERING the poor waitress who is overseeing the event.
Curtis is the waitress and her performance in the sketch, which is supposed to be outrage and eventually despair over the badgering, is easily her weakest of the night. She gives some awkward line deliveries and just isn't able to overcome the weakness of the material...but I will give her a pass considering how poor the sketch is.
Gottfried's voice in this shows a glimmer of his famous squawking cadence while Murphy uses a very similar twang like he used in Update earlier.
This is just one of those one-joke sketches that gets spread way too thin. It hasn't been an overly strong episode, but this is easily the first real dud of the night.
___________________________________
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE: James Brown performs a medley of his songs and wakes up the audience
This is really what is worth seeking out the episode for.
Brown performs a medley of many of his classic songs and ends up going on for over 8 minutes, which apparently causes the back end of the episode to be rushed and cut down. Granted...it is not like the material coming up was worth anything really.
I would seriously recommend checking out this performance. Brown gives it his all, the band is on fire, and as it progresses, Brown is practically dripping with sweat.
It is a stellar performance and I could make the case that is one of the top 3 best musical performances ever seen on SNL.
______________________________________
COMMERICAL: Tort-u-matic
I would say that the concept for this is a bit ridiculous, but I could also say the same thing about a lot of the commercial sketches from the original era that were presented by Dan Aykroyd.
For that reason, I can't really fault anything with this concept: a machine that seemingly tortures you for the sake of being tortured...but it just isn't presented in any kind of humorous manner.
It also doesn't help that Charles Rocket is not as good in the role of a pitchman like his co-star Joe Piscopo.
___________________________________
SHORT FILM: Martin Brest's Hot Dogs for Gaugin
This is not all of the short film...nor have I seen this short film in its entirety, but I find it to be very well done.
Martin Brest would go on to be known for directing one of Eddie Murphy's earliest vehicles: Beverly Hills Cop and received an Oscar nomination for directing Scent of a Woman...and then his career ended due to Gigli.
Moving past Gigli and the now 20 years we've had to treasure that disaster, Brest's short film about staging the destruction of the Statue of Liberty is dark and very bizarre...but a lot of fun to watch. Perhaps the most fascinating thing about it is that the film features a young Danny DeVito pre-Taxi and he was just as great at playing these darkly comedic roles even in his youth.
__________________________________
SKETCH: Roweena's Cut 'n Curl
This is one of those sketches that briefly becomes recurring this season...and by recurring, I mean it only shows up twice.
I would say that the best part about this sketch is the strong character work between Matthius as Roweena and Nadine, her frequent customer.
Matthius is originally from South Dakota, and while her natural speaking voice shows no hint of it, Matthius is a natural at nailing that Northern Midwest cadence that would become highly linked to movies like Fargo.
Although, to millennials like myself, this voice will be especially familiar as Gail Matthius used a similar voice as Martha Generic on the animated show Bobby's World where she would frequently say the phrase "Dont'cha know?"
The salon sketches never seem to be going for hard laughs, but I still feel like they never quite get off the ground despite the solid character work...particularly from Matthius.
I do sort of like when Jamie Lee Curtis comes in as Dillon's daughter, who is visiting from LA and sporting a very early 80s New Wave look...which leads to Dillon saying that she looks like "a mermaid on drugs".
Solid character work, but the sketch does tend to drag. I wouldn't consider it a disaster by any means, though.
_________________________________
COMMERCIAL: Clovin Hind Jeans #3
The final runner of the night and not as humorous.
She recites a very cheesy and inoffensive limerick before falling out of her pose...and without a real comedic button like the other two, the audience doesn't respond at first and has to be cued to applaud.
________________________________
SKETCH: Osselots
As someone who has not been particularly kind to Ann Risley thus far, I am going to continue down my path of critique.
First of all, the idea of a tough motorcycle gang devoted to giving roadkill a proper burial is not exactly a bad idea, but the writing is weak and they picked the most waspy woman in the cast to try to pull this off.
Curtis plays a reporter interviewing Risley, whose Camille Black leads this gang and its cause. While I will give Risley SOME credit for actually trying to create a strong character here, it is basically an awkward failure and a complete and total miscast.
I have revisited these episodes multiple times and I often skip this sketch mainly because I feel a strong sense of secondhand embarrassment from it.
SNL was simply not the right fit for her.
____________________________________
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE: New talent Ellen Shipley performs "Fotogenic"
Sort of a generic early 80s pop/new wave song that does have sort of a catchy melody, but is mostly just forgettable and nothing that remarkable. I also don't think I have ever heard of Ellen Shipley mentioned anywhere else other than through this SNL appearance either.
____________________________________
GOODNIGHTS:
I do want to acknowledge the vigil that Jamie Lee Curtis promotes as this episode aired just a few days after the assassination of John Lennon outside of the Dakota here in NY.
It truly does feel crazy how he was looking to make a big comeback with the Double Fantasy album and that his and Yoko's legend dominated the first couple of episodes leading up to his death on December 8th.
____________________________________
FINAL THOUGHTS:
While not as bad as the Malcolm McDowell episode, I would say that this episode is still pretty weak.
However, even some of the weaker material is still not necessarily bad.
The worst of the night easily falls upon the cold open, the Osselots, and the Badger Convention. Beyond that, the weaker stuff mostly just flirted with being a disaster, like the Poker and Drugs Don't Mix PSA.
Curtis did a nice job as host except for in the Badger sketch where I think she deserves a pass for dealing with such horrible writing all around.
Taking into account the weak material, I do think this episode gets a major boost from the legendary James Brown performances and also Mitchell Kriegman's Dying to be Heard sketch.
Still, I am not sure it is enough to give the full episode a high or even really an average rating.
Performers wise, Charles Rocket is still settling into that annoying smarmy persona, Ann Risley is still very matronly and stiff, and Gilbert Gottfried feels like a bit of an enigma. When watching these episodes, it is almost hard to believe that this is the same man who would go on to be known for his offensive stand-up material told in his trademark squawk of a voice that he would never drop in public appearances from the late 1980s onward.
Eddie Murphy gets his first multi-sketch episode in which he gets another Update piece, a co-lead with Piscopo, and a supporting role in the dreadful Badger sketch. While he takes on that strange white man southern twang in the Update and Badger bits, he seems more himself in the sketch with Piscopo and you can tell that the two of them have chemistry.
Piscopo, Matthius, and Dillon prove to show the best promise in these earlier stages in terms of the main cast members. I'd say Piscopo and Dillon seem the most assured (considering Piscopo was used to stand-up audiences and Dillon came from live theatre). Matthius is an interesting case, because she also came from a sort of stand-up/performing background but it was more based in character work.
I feel like she sometimes struggles with the weaker writing she is given, but when she nails something, it is typically among the best work you will see from this season. I agree with many who feel that Gail Matthius was the true unsung hero of this cast and I do wish she hadn't gotten fired by Dick Ebersol.
Next up, we have the Christmas episode hosted by David Carradine and it is...weird.
I don't even know if I would consider it worse or better than this episode, but I guess we will see how I feel when I revisit it.
No comments:
Post a Comment