May 10, 1986 – Catherine Oxenberg and Paul Simon / Ladysmith Black Mambazo (S11 E16)

Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars

COLD OPENING
Paul performs “You Can Call Me Al”

— We start off with a straightforward musical performance.
— Feels weird seeing an SNL episode beginning in this manner, but it’s not the first time Paul opened the show with a musical performance. The first time he did it was a special case, though, as that episode in general consisted almost entirely of musical performances.
— Interestingly, we get a slight variation of the usual “Live from New York…” tagline, with Paul announcing “We are live from New York on a Saturday Night.”

MONOLOGUE
Catherine’s Dynasty rivals Alexis (TES) & Dominique (DAV) have a catfight

— In hindsight, it’s good that Catherine’s going into a lot of detail about what she does on the show Dynasty, as I’m sure there’s a lot of modern-day viewers who have no idea who Catherine Oxenberg is.
— Terry’s Joan Collins portrayal is pretty funny.
— I got a laugh from Terry’s Aunt Jemima insult towards Danitra’s character.
— Not caring for most of the Terry/Danitra physical fight, though it was kind of a nice touch with them crashing through breakaway glass on one of the doors on the home base stage.
STARS: **½

GERALDO RIVERA OPENS THE TOMB OF THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER
Geraldo Rivera’s next stunt

— A funny parody of how Geraldo Rivera’s then-recent televised opening of Al Capone’s vault infamously turned out to be a bust.
STARS: ***

PRISON
prisoners (Paul) & (JOL) try to escape despite being shackled to a wall

— I got a big laugh from Paul’s asinine idea of Jon melting down the iron bars with heat from his eyeballs.
— Haha, I love the repeated visual of Paul straining to attack Randy while being held back by the chains.
— Some more really funny asinine escape plans from Paul and Jon.
— An overall solid sketch.
STARS: ****

THE LATE SHOW WITH JOAN RIVERS
Roger Vadim’s ex-wives fight back

— Until now, I had forgotten that I heard about Joan Rivers having a short-lived late night talk show in this era, competing against Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show.
— Two drag roles for Terry in one night. At least this appears to be a better vehicle for his Joan Rivers impression than the way it was bafflingly shoehorned into that Cleveland Vice sketch earlier this season.
— The only thing Randy’s Ed McMahon impression seems to consist of here is increasingly-exaggerated “ho ho ho” laughter, which made me laugh early on but is running out of steam fast.
— Is that a bespectacled Don Pardo who has randomly walked into the scene at the very end, during the sketch-ending audience applause? (screencap below) What was THAT all about?

— Didn’t care too much for this sketch overall.
STARS: **

THE LIMITS OF THE IMAGINATION
Paul’s hell is Muzak versions of his music

— They surprisingly haven’t done this sketch in a quite a while, after overusing it in a consecutive string of episodes around the midpoint of the season.
— A lot of the Floating Head’s demonstrations are falling flat in tonight’s installment, but I laughed at the demonstration with him putting a cigarette out with his tongue.
— Joan flubs her line, mistakenly addressing young Paul Simon as “Seymour” before mentioning an Uncle Seymour who’s upstairs.
— I kinda like Robert’s badly-rhymed Uncle Seymour song.
— Good to see the return of Jon’s Mephistopheles character.
— Funny “So am I” response from Mephistopheles when young Simon and Garfunkel reveal to him they’re Jewish.
— In hindsight, it’s interesting seeing Paul Simon playing himself in a scene taking place in a then-much later year that has now long since come and gone (2010).
— I love the gradual reveal that Paul’s hell is staying eternally stuck in an elevator while being tortured by musak versions of his songs.
— Overall, I found this sketch more interesting than flat-out funny, but it was entertaining either way.
STARS: ***½

DIRK LANDERS
former CIA operative (RDJ) is offed by stranger (Catherine)

— Fairly amusing cheap opening credits.
— Very funny how after such a lengthy opening credits sequence setting up the premise of the show, the episode itself turns out to be a very quick scene that immediately ends as soon as the main character is all-too-easily shot dead.
STARS: ***½

WEEKEND UPDATE
Mouse Trap board game helps DEM explain what happened at Chernobyl
AWB chides the Soviet Union’s policies on Chernobyl & Afghanistan
for Mother’s Day, DEM reads an excerpt from Oedipus Rex

— Funny in retrospect hearing the then-new network FOX being mentioned as “Rupert Murdoch’s fledgling fourth network.”
— I love Dennis using the Mouse Trap board game to demonstrate the then-recent Chernobyl disaster.
— Dennis delivers a random “Back to you, Dennis” “Thank you, Dennis”. Why are we reusing old Brad Hall bits all of a sudden?
— I like how it’s become a recurring thing for Dennis to do random one-liners about Nell Carter’s weight.
— Surprised to see an A. Whitney Brown commentary tonight, as he wasn’t credited in tonight’s opening montage for some reason.
— Tonight’s overall Big Picture commentary wasn’t one of my favorites from A. Whitney, but this featured some funny comments about radioactive gas and Soviets.
— Good bit with Dennis’ Mother’s Day present to his mom being him reading a disturbing excerpt from an Oedipus story.
— Nice part with Dennis announcing that SNL (despite its many troubles and cancellation worries this season) was renewed this week for a 12th season. This gets a good amount of audience applause. Also, this reminds me that I remember hearing season 12 was originally only picked up for 13 episodes, because a wary NBC wanted to wait and see if the retooled version of SNL that season was a success before giving it the usual full 20-episode order. So I guess we can say that if season 12 hadn’t turned out to be such a hit, SNL would’ve officially been canceled somewhere around February 1987, which is around the time the 13th episode of that season aired.
— Yay, we went through this entire Update with no appearance from the Weekend Update Dancers!
STARS: ***

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
Paul & musical guest sing “Homeless”

BEVERLY HILLS
producer Tommy Flanagan swaps falsehoods with an “actress” (Catherine)

— After having a break from him in the last episode, Tommy Flanagan goes back to being overused.
— I did like Flanagan’s Taiwan/Out Of Africa bit just now.
— Overall, this was pretty standard Flanagan stuff that’s been suffering diminishing returns lately, but I did like the nice chemistry between Jon and Catherine.
STARS: **½

BRIM DECAFFEINATED
drowsy waitress (NOD) recommends Brim Decaffienated to sleepy (RAQ)

— Is this offering ANYTHING other than frequent yawning from Nora and Randy?
— (a few minutes later…) I guess not. Overall, this was a waste.
STARS: *

PENN AND TELLER
Penn & Teller [real] execute strait jacket escape during Casey At The Bat

— Surprised to see Penn and Teller appearing for the second episode in a row, but I’m not complaining about seeing more of these guys, especially considering the lack of quality this season.
— Ha, great reveal of a spiked platform that’s now under an upside-down dangling Teller.
— Quite funny seeing Teller’s unsuccessful frantic attempts to free himself while Penn is reading.
— Hilarious part with Penn comically speeding up his reading as Teller is finally starting to untie himself.
— LOL, that overall trick was great. An improvement over Penn and Teller’s appearance in the last episode.
STARS: ****

A MOTHER’S DAY MESSAGE
half-audible (JOC) stresses “moral values”

— What… the… hell??? Is the joke here supposed to be Joan occasionally silently mouthing random parts of her sentences? How is that even remotely funny?
— Overall, YIKES. The audience’s silence said it all. How did something like this make it on the air?
STARS: *

TROJANS
— Rerun

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
Paul performs “Graceland”

GOODNIGHTS

— This is coming off kinda awkward. Why aren’t Paul or Catherine saying the usual goodnights speech? They’re just standing there smiling silently as the audience applauds.

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IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS:
— A pretty forgettable episode. There were some things I liked in the first half, though most of them weren’t anything particularly great. Then the show got REALLY rough in the second half where, aside from a solid Penn & Teller segment, we got a mega-overused recurring character (Tommy Flanagan) and horribly-written sketches where the only “joke” (if it can even be called that) was people repeatedly yawning or silently mouthing random parts of their sentences.

HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Tony Danza):
— a step down

My full set of screencaps for this episode is here

TOMORROW:
Jimmy Breslin