Classic SNL Review: November 8, 1986: Rosanna Arquette / Ric Ocasek (S12E03)

/

RATINGS SYSTEM:
***** - Classic
**** - Great
*** - Good/Average
** - Meh
* - Awful

MISCELLANEOUS: PREEMPTION NEWSREEL

  • Don Pardo narrates a newsreel documenting how the Mets’ 10th inning comeback caused Saturday Night Live to be taped for later viewing for the first time.

  • This 90 second disclaimer isn’t a rateable segment, but it was actually quite funny and well-done, especially the overdramatization of SNL’s first-ever canned show and Ron Darling’s apologetic press conference (“We didn’t mean to do it”).

  • The aired version of this episode is actually a combination of the dress rehearsal and final taping because by the time the show got around to starting, pretty much everybody in the studio was exhausted and it showed. While there are some segments where the edits are pretty obvious and the audience response sounds sweetened, I have no way to tell for sure what specifically was changed for broadcast unless I somehow get access to the unaltered recording, which is pretty unlikely. If a hard copy of the original rundown still exists, that’s something I would like to see.

  • Written by Robert Smigel

OPENING: DRESSING ROOM

  • Rosanna Arquette rehearses a “Neck With The Producer” sketch suggested by Tommy Flanagan (Jon Lovitz) posing as Lorne Michaels.

  • This was alright; again, pretty much what you’d expect with the Liar, but there are some good jokes in the fibs, especially the “plea for the homeless” that was in the sketch and Flanagan showing his producer bona-fides by saying “there’s no money, but there’s great exposure”.

  • According to this photo, there was originally a mock-up of Lorne Michaels’s show rundown board on the wall in dress, complete with occasional “neck with the producer” segments.

***

MONOLOGUE

  • The Equal Time Rule forces Rosanna Arquette to be non-specific in her political criticism.

  • This was very short and there wasn’t really a whole lot to it; there are a few laughs from the vague way Arquette was describing the president but that’s it.

  • Arquette opens with “How ‘bout those Mets?” which makes me think this is from the late taping.

  • When Arquette appeared on Kevin Nealon’s Hiking With Kevin web series in 2018, she mentioned that she wasn’t told that the show’s broadcast was cancelled.

  • Barry Rogers fills in for Steve Turre on trombone tonight.

**

SHOW: THE PEOPLE’S COURT

  • Judge Wapner (Phil Hartman) mediates a case involving a hairdresser’s (Rosanna Arquette) deal with Mephistopheles (Jon Lovitz).

  • This sketch is well known for its inclusion in various compilations and is probably the quintessential appearance of Lovitz’s Mephistopheles. The premise is solid, and Phil Hartman’s perfect as Judge Wapner, who isn’t fazed in the least by the Prince of Darkness. There are some great bits throughout, including the contact written in blood, Jan Hooks as the plaintiff’s mother (a 33 year old barfly) and the bickering between the plaintiff and defendant, and it ends strong with Lovitz trying to get the viewing office to worship him as bailiff Rusty Burrell (Andy Murphy) drags him away. A classic.

  • This is the first SNL appearance for recurring extra Grafton Trew, who would show up in bit parts in the late 80s and early 90s, mainly when they needed an older black man for a role.

  • Written by Jim Downey

*****

SHOW: CHURCH CHAT

  • The Church Lady (Dana Carvey) is indignant about Halloween, Jenny Barton’s (Victoria Jackson) missing church, Rosanna Arquette’s politics and Ric Ocasek’s music.

  • A quick return for one of Carvey’s breakout moments from the premiere, which was only two weeks before this episode’s taping. This one is still one of the more embryonic versions of the sketch (with more emphasis on the “Could it be….SATAN?” hook) and some of it felt a little too much like a retread of before, but there are still some good moments, particularly Arquette calling the Church Lady “a sexually-represessed closed-minded little bitch.”

  • The cuts between dress rehearsal and the final taping are more than obvious here; in the dress rehearsal footage (stills of which are on Getty Images), the Church Lady’s desk isn’t decorated and Arquette’s jacket is closed at the bottom.


  • Written by Dana Carvey and Rosie Shuster.

***

COMMERCIAL: HELMSLEY SPOOK HOUSE

  • Leona Helmsley (Nora Dunn) spares no expense in her spook house because her guests expect the finest frights.

  • Dunn’s impression of the tyrannical Queen of Mean is the highlight (and makes the final line “I’ll be seeing you…in your nightmares!”) and I liked the detail of Hartman and Hooks nodding at each other with approval of the walls dripping with real human blood. I feel this could have gone a little further, though.

  • Written by George Meyer and directed by Matthew Meshekoff.

***

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE: “EMOTION IN MOTION”

  • Ric Ocasek performs his current single from his solo album This Side of Paradise along with fellow Car Greg Hawkes on keyboards, and SNL Band members G.E. Smith, T-Bone Wolk and Steve Ferrone. This was decent, if lightweight, melodic pop rock, and Smith has some beautiful guitar lines here.

  • One of Hawkes’ keyboards is an E-mu Emulator II sampler.

  • The set for “Make Joan Baez Laugh: is visible in some of the shots.

  • I like the touch of having posters for the host on the wall around the door in front of which the host stands for their introductions this season. It feels like another small carryover from the previous season’s set design.

COMMERCIAL: PORK I

  • Pole vaulter (Kevin Nealon) chose pork after a competition because his body can still handle it.

  • Brief, but it works. Nice tagline (“Eat it while you’re still healthy”).

  • Directed by James Signorelli.

***

WEEKEND UPDATE

  • Best jokes: Joan Rivers, Nobel Booby Prize, Tit-For-Tat

  • Opening music: “Communication Breakdown” by Led Zeppelin

  • Tonight’s Weekend Update feels a bit more compact than usual, but Dennis Miller has a decent number of solid jokes, and his scream after he screwed up his line in the tit-for-tat joke was funny.

  • A. Whitney Brown puts censorship and the Meese Commission into the Big Picture tonight, with some good jabs at the “unholy alliance” between reactionaries and militant lesbianism about opposing pornography, the one-sidedness of anti-crack PSAs, and comparing the restrictions of network TV to the freedom of cable (which would rather show C.H.U.D for the 47th anyway).

  • Miller’s mention of the Mets beating the Red Sox places this segment as part of the final taping, and he mentions the show began at 12:40 AM (though Pardo’s intro says it began at 1:30). It also sounds like the audience response was sweetened because some of Miller’s ad-libs (“Dig out of that hole”, “Why? He’s a Russian! You can laugh!”) make it sound like the previous jokes died with the studio audience.

  • According to Getty Images, Victoria Jackson had an appearance cut after dress rehearsal. I wonder if it was the “looking for terrorism” report that she does in the next live show.

***

SKETCH: A COUPLE OF SAMMIES

  • Beer guzzling couch potatoes Sammy (Kevin Nealon) and Sammy (Dana Carvey) discuss plans they admit they’ll never fulfill.

  • The first on-screen collaboration of Nealon and Carvey; they work together well pretty well here, which foreshadows their more significant collaboration as Hans and Franz. Not really a whole lot else to say about this, though Hartman and Dunn did well in the straight roles.

  • Another reference to the Mets winning tonight’s game.

  • Written by Dana Carvey and Kevin Nealon.

***

FILM: “DOG BASEBALL” BY WILLIAM WEGMAN

  • William Wegman, his dog Fay, and their friends have a game.

  • More cute than outright funny, but Wegman’s deadpan narration has its moments.

***

SHOW: MAKE JOAN BAEZ LAUGH

  • Howie Mandel (Jon Lovitz) is the first contestant to get Joan Baez (Nora Dunn) to laugh in nine years.

  • This was quite fun, with another great performance by Phil Hartman (returning as Bill Franklin from “Quiz Masters” in Weaver), and Nora Dunn gets some good laughs as the dour Baez (I love the over-the-top seriousness of her song, which rhymes “Chernobyl” with “George Gobel”).

  • Who’s the extra playing the assistant?

  • Written by Andy Breckman.

*** 1/2

COMMERCIAL: PORK II

  • Think of pork as a reward for your workout.

  • A decent follow-up to the other Pork commercial; its brevity helps.

  • Directed by James Signorelli.

***

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE: “KEEP ON LAUGHIN’”

  • A more uptempo number, but aside from the synthesizer hook it’s fairly non-descript as a song. The band plays it well, though.

  • Unusually for a musical performance, this comes immediately after another sketch (even if that was a pretape).

SKETCH: MISS CONNIE’S FABLE NOOK

  • Miss Connie (Jan Hooks) tells the tale of clowns Koko (Dennis Miller) and Mishu (Dana Carvey) teaching their giant friend Lebee (Kevin Nealon) about patience.

  • This is an oddity, more amusing for the ridiculousness of the whole thing and sight of Dennis Miller prancing around in a pink outfit than anything else. I wouldn’t quite call it “good”, but there is a fun quality here.

  • Written by Dana Carvey and Dennis Miller; essentially, this was a throwaway that they wrote just to see how it would be received during read-through that, to their amazement, made it into the show somehow.

** 1/2

SKETCH: I SAW GOD

  • A young woman (Rosanna Arquette) sings about how her decision to become a rock star was divinely inspired.

  • Another oddity; this one doesn’t have the same “done as a joke” energy that helped the Miss Connie sketch. Arquette’s singing voice isn’t particularly good either, and not in a comic way.

  • This is the first we see of Arquette since Church Chat.

  • Written by Marc Shaiman with lyricist Robert I.

**

FILM: “PANGO, GIANT DOG OF TOKYO!” - STEVE FARRELL

  • A kaiju about a dog who becomes huge after ingesting a beaker of juice that wasn’t normal.

  • This isn’t so much a film so much as a montage of still photos with a recorded soundtrack (which sounds like it was being played on a cassette tape); the dialogue is very funny (and has a great closer), but the film went a little long.

  • This was an outside film acquisition written and performed by the Radio Music Theatre out of Houston, TX.

  • In repeats, this is replaced with Jim Jarmusch’s “Coffee and Cigarettes”.

** 1/2

GOODNIGHTS

  • Rosanna Arquette says she had a great time.

  • Don Pardo announces that next week’s show with Sam Kinison and Lou Reed will be completely live, “just like in the old days”

  • This appears to be from dress rehearsal.

Final thoughts: A bit of a step down from the previous two shows; the new cast keeps things at a decent enough level, but it doesn’t seem like the writers really knew what to do with Arquette, and the combined exhaustion of doing three shows in a week plus having to record much later than usual really does show here. As well, the use of canned audience response (which sounds a little too energetic at times) gives this a bit of an 1985-86 feel. I also find the pacing of the show is incredibly off, with a lot of segments going into pretapes before they go to commercial; that, and the odd Pango film makes me think that there wasn’t enough useable material from the final show for the aired version.

SHOW HIGHLIGHTS:

  • The People’s Court

  • Make Joan Baez Laugh

SHOW LOWLIGHTS:

  • I Saw God

  • Monologue

MVP:

  • Jon Lovitz

CAST & GUEST BREAKDOWN:

cast

  • Dana Carvey: 3 appearances [Church Chat, A Couple Of Sammies, Miss Connie’s Fable Nook]

  • Nora Dunn: 4 appearances [Helmsley Spook House, A Couple Of Sammies, Make Joan Baez Laugh, Pork II]

  • Phil Hartman: 6 appearances [The People’s Court, Helmsley Spook House, A Couple Of Sammies, Make Joan Baez Laugh, Pork II, I Saw God]; 1 voiceover [Church Chat]

  • Jan Hooks: 4 appearances [Dressing Room, The People’s Court, Helmsley Spook House, Miss Connie’s Fable Nook]

  • Victoria Jackson: 2 appearances [Church Chat, Pork II]

  • Jon Lovitz: 3 appearances [Dressing Room, The People’s Court, Make Joan Baez Laugh]

  • Dennis Miller: 2 appearances [Weekend Update, Miss Connie’s Fable Nook]

featured players

  • A. Whitney Brown: 1 appearances [Weekend Update]

  • Kevin Nealon: 4 appearances [The People’s Court, Pork I, A Couple Of Sammies, Miss Connie’s Fable Nook]

unbilled crew, extras and bit players

  • Joe Dicso: 1 appearance [Dressing Room]

  • John Henry Kurtz: 2 voiceovers [Pork I, Pork II]

  • Andy Murphy: 1 appearance [The People’s Court]

  • Don Pardo: 2 voiceovers [Preemption Newsreel, Make Joan Baez Laugh]

  • Grafton Trew: 1 appearance [The People’s Court]

G.E. Smith and the Saturday Night Live Band

  • Steve Ferrone: 2 appearances [“Emotion In Motion”, “Keep On Laughin’”']

  • G. E. Smith: 2 appearances [“Emotion In Motion”, “Keep On Laughin’”]

  • T-Bone Wolk: 2 appearances [“Emotion In Motion”, “Keep On Laughin’”]

guests

  • Rosanna Arquette: 5 appearances [Dressing Room, Monologue, The People’s Court, I Saw God]

  • Ric Ocasek: 3 appearances [Church Chat, “Emotion In Motion”, “Keep On Laughin’"]

  • Ron Darling: 1 appearance [Preemption Newsreel]

  • Bill Wegman: 1 appearance [Dog Baseball]

REBROADCAST HISTORY:

  • April 4, 1987

  • August 29, 1987

Known alterations:

  • Pango, Giant Dog of Tokyo! removed

  • Coffee and Cigarettes added

Repeat-only material:

FILM: “COFFEE AND CIGARETTES” - JIM JARMUSCH

  • Roberto Benigni and Steven Wright chat over caffeine and nicotine despite a language barrier.

  • A bit low-key (much like Steven Wright), but amusing enough, particularly Wright talking about caffeine popsicles and coffee making him dream faster.

  • Jarmusch ended up using this film as the first vignette of his 2003 anthology film of the same name, though this segment was retitled “Strange To Meet You”.

***

Additional screen captures from this episode are available here.