Saturday Night Live Season One (Review 2 of 8)

As promised after a long hiatus, probably get the next couple up within a few days while I write this. Anyways let's get quickly onto Disc 2 in the same format.

Disc 2

Episode 4: Candice Bergen

The Good

• THE LAND SHARK. Comedy genuis.
• Andy Kaufman's Foreign Guy bombing terribly.

The Bad

• Nothing overly bad, a lot of it though is not brilliantly memorable.

Episode 5: Robert Klein

The Good

• the Sam Peckinpah sketch
• The cockroach exterminator sketch.
• Gilda Radner's fire safety tips.
• Loudon Wainwright's musical performance.

The Bad

• Should take time to mention here the amount of times the fake adverts seem to get repeated over the season. Sometimes the ads are funny but not at the third or fourth time they've been repeated.
• Again nothing too bad, it's starting to find it's feet here.

Episode 6: Lily Tomlin

The Good:

• John Belushi as Beethoven. Again comedy genuis.
• The Return of the Land Shark.
• Lily Tomlin is an excellent host.
• Lily Tomlin and the Muppet Scrat (if my memory serves me right). The few times the Muppets are enjoyable in the entire show is when there with a human.

The Bad:

• Nothing really, a strong episode, like anything so some sketches are stronger then the others.

Overall a strong collection of episodes. The show was really starting to find it's feet here and 9/10 does get better as the season goes on. I can still recommend the set at this point. I'm also falling in love more Gilda Radner as the show goes on.

Saturday Night Live Season One (Review 1 of probably 8)

It came out on R2 DVD yesterday and picked it up today. I always think of this and another sketch show as the groundbreaking North American sketch shows, the other one I am referring to is of course SCTV. I am actually more of an SCTV fan myself. There's a lot of reason to compare both, both feature very funny people who had successful careers ahead of them, both used the sketch format obviously, and both had musical guest. However SNL was recorded live as the title suggests and SCTV had a laugh track added later (much to the hate of the SCTV cast), Saturday Night Live is still going after beginning in 1975 whilst SCTV lasted in a couple of versions between 1976 and 1984. Let's cover the first disc of SNL...

Episode 1: George Carlin

The Good

• George Carlin's monolagues, always funny. Big fan of him so I'm bias.
• Andy Kaufman's performance of Mighty Mouse- Genius
• Albert Brooks Mock Documentary "The Impossible Truth"
• The Musical performances of Janis Ian and Billy Preston.
• Gilda Radner's reaction in the courtroom scene.
• The expecting fathers what are bees waiting at hospital.
• The video asking people to show there guns.
• The debut of the weekend update with Chevy Chase. Little uncomfortable here but still funny.
• The Home Security sketch.

The Bad

• See I'm a Jim Henson fan. Love Seasame Street. Love The Muppets. Don't discount Fraggle Rock, Labyrinth or Dark Crystal either. But what the hell is going on here. This muppet sketch with characters like King Ploobis and the Mighty Favog just doesn't sit well.
• Lack of Gilda Radner
• Valri Bloomfield's stand up routine, just not very funny, no suprise Kaufman was asked about multiple times and not her.

Episode 2: Paul Simon

The Good:

• Simon and Garfunkel reforming and sing a few classic songs.
• The basketball game between Paul Simon and Connie Hawkins.
• The Weekend Update again.

The Bad:

• Too much Paul Simon. Now I am a big enough Simon and Garfunkel fan, anything solo of theirs just doesn't do it for me.
• The cast (Not Ready for Primetime Players) are in for only about thirty seconds in bee costumes.

Episode 3: Rob Reiner

The Good:

• Rob Reiner's lounge singer monologue.
• Reiner with Penny Marshall presenting the segment on fashion faux-pa's, features most the cast.
• Andy Kaufman's performance of Pop Goes the Weasel, even funnier then his first appearance.
• The Squeaky Fomme interview.
• The end skit with the Bees.

The Bad:

• Albert Brooks' short film on heart surgery just goes on way too long.

All in all not three bad episodes, all have their shining moments for tuning in. It's clearly a show evolving into what it became within these three episodes. Gilda Radner is wonderful, John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd wonderful and Andy Kaufman's bits are genius. I can strongly recommend the first disc.