Saturday Night Live 1980-81 - do you remember it?

I watched the sketch after seeing it mentioned here. While it wasn't "funny" per se, I thought it was a fitting criticism of NC after the Greensboro massacre. Was it just considered too insensitive to the victims?

 

The Doumanian season was the first one in which I was allowed to stay up late to watch (I was 13 - we had strict rules! ). Having friends who had watched quite a bit of the classic seasons I sat there wondering what all the fuss was about. It got better the next season with Eddie Murphy being featured... I still can't quite believe we used to have him on live TV every week, we were a bit spoiled really.

 

Thank you for finding that. Shame it cut off before the part with Piscopo's brilliant Sinatra, trading songs with Mick.

 

Tim Curry can only sound like Tim Curry.

 

Boy, that is a long silence.

 

About NBC president Fred Silverman, who forbade the hiring of Franken.

Evan

 

I watched that season for a while but I stopped watching SNL before it ended.

I didn't start watching it again until the early '90s. I wish they'd release some of the mid-late 80s on DVD so that I could see what I missed.

 

It seems like only the first five seasons are going to get the full-season DVD treatment. I'm honestly amazed they were even able to do that with all the musical guests. I guess they felt the need to preserve the "classic era" in its purest form but don't feel it's quite as important (or practical) to release every other season that way, especially the less popular years. They're probably content with releasing "best-of" DVDs, which honestly isn't a bad way to go.

 

Ouch!

 

No. It was considered insensitive to comedy, TV, humans, air, taste, bad taste, lights, floors...all particle matter really.

dan c

 

I don't think DVD sets make sense, especially now. However, it would be fantastic if they were cleared and available somewhere digitally. On demand, via some subscription service, etc. Anything. The show's been on so long there are so many generations that discovered comedy and pop culture via SNL. I 'found' it in the early 80s, my wife found it in the early 90s, etc. We all have a favorite, or even a few favorite eras of the show. It's been a cultural touchstone for so many years, it's a serious shame that everything isn't available in some way. All of it. The good, the bad, and the Doumanian era.

dan c

 

I was 9 years old at my cousin's house in buffalo during the 1980 season and we saw Mr Robinson's neighborhood "today's word is bitch" .....and thought it was one of the funniest things I've ever seen.
About 10 years ago I got all of the Eddie years on vhs and watched them.
Eddie was not a breakout star until Dick Ebersol took over.....supposedly there was 1 skit that he saw that made him think Eddie was a star....and I only can assume it was the previously mentioned skit.

That season, Joe Piscopo was the one that shined. And some of the Rocket reports were good. But it was a bad season (and many seasons of SNL aren't that great)

Jean, the producer, actually booked a lot of great musical guests that season....including Prince

P.s. Here is a write up of the episode......Can't find the skit on Yahoo SNL
http://bjdwsm.wordpress.com/2012/06...-charlene-tilton-todd-rundgren-prince-s06e11/

 

Just watched this for the first time. Wow! Complete silence from the audience until the awkward applause at the end. But after that one line, it's just painful. Did anyone really think there was going to be a laugh?

 

I bought the first five seasons for surprisingly reasonable prices, I really treasure them. Classic television! The curious side of me wants to see the following 2 seasons mainly to see what happened. I've read about it many times, I just want to see it, since I was pretty young at the time. But I agree it doesn't make good business sense to release what is regarded as their worst season on DVD.

 

I don't see what all the commotion is about. South Park and Family Guy go this route every week. Maybe everyone on this thread is urbane and from more civilized backgrounds, but where I live, plenty of people think like this-
http://blog.al.com/wire/2014/03/mccarthy_was_right_the_crucibl.html

Read the above article. Read the whole article. This is a man that represents his district in Alabama, and one of the more affluent ones too.

I certainly don't, but the skit rightfully hit close to home. It is razor sharp satire that goes after a group of people that are frankly, very dangerous to talk to and be around, and I do not agree that it was the lowest point in the show's history. Far from it. Far too many people think close to these lines today, at least where I'm from.

 

Fred Silverman was fired by NBC around May of 1981, so he wasn't in a position to tell anybody who they could or couldn't hire after that.

 

The sketch Eddie did that "broke him out" (which was a bit of his standup routine) can be seen here:

http://splitsider.com/2013/11/saturday-nights-children-eddie-murphy-1980-1984/

 

"Limo for the Lamo" aired toward the end of the '79-'80 season (Franken left the show for the first time at the end of that season).

 

They could've hired Franken back... and Franken was back in 1985 and stayed 10 full years as one of the defacto head writers.

 

True... though by then Dick Ebersol was in charge, and he probably had had enough difficulties after re-hiring Michael O'Donoghue (see "Silverman's Bunker")...

 

That's the episode I referenced earlier in this thread, which I happen to have in full on VHS from a Comedy Central repeat in the early-90s. The contrast between Murphy and the rest is absolutely staggering. His work still stands up today, while the rest was embarrassingly awful from day 1.

dan c

 

yes I remember it...watched it every week without fail.

 

Well yes... Jean Doumanian. This is the kind of weird sh** she found "funny."

It's pretty much universally accepted by everyone who worked with her that she had absolutely no idea what made people laugh, and often turned down genuinely funny material in favor of garbage like this.

 

Ironically enough, I recently saw on the Internet a ticket stub from an apparently genuine down-South event called "ni**er hunting", in which people actually died. While they might not have known this when they wrote the sketch, it was appalling to find out that such a thing DID exist until fairly recently.

 

My God.

I just noticed something about 'Commie Hunting' I never noticed before - the audience DOES laugh at one point. Lightly, probably nervously. Guess which word it follows.