That Week In SNL (A Vintage Saturday Night Live Podcast)

Ah, yes. Another infamous outing from a rather infamous season. We return to S30 to explore what is probably it's most notable episode and sadly, it's notoriety has nothing to do with the comedy or the host or anything like that. It's all about Ashlee Simpson and her second (botched) musical performance. But there's still an episode that happens on either side of that. Kinda. Mostly, it's Oops! All Cold Opens! Uh oh!

Eddie Ham and Mattalamode join us for another odd little outing of the show. A still mostly unknown Fred Willard hosts one of the mellower episodes of the original era, with Devo, still at their most abrasive, making their national television debut. It's slice of life heavy, including the debut of Don Novello's Mall sketches, while also being incredibly broad, with the official debut of Bill Murray's Honker character and a big, physical sketch for John Belushi. Does it work? Tune in to find out!    

WE'RE BACK AT IT ONCE AGAIN, kicking off the premiere of the eighth season of the podcast with the episode that began one of SNL's more successful and celebrated transitional years. We've got some late period bangers from Bill Hader, some late period slop from Fred Armisen, attempts at capitalizing on the summertime explosions of Gangnam Style and Honey Boo Boo and, at the center of it all, the rather divisive figure that is Seth MacFarlane.

While the Fonz was out jumping sharks on ABC, Richard Pryor was giving one hell of a bizarre history lesson on NBC. Ancient Japan, Mississippi in the 20s, finding the Book of Life in Egypt. It's all in a days work for a man who keeps another man's head in a bird cage.

Our long preamble journey is finally over; it's time to finally dig into The Richard Pryor Show proper and my lord, does this show come out swinging. We discuss the events the transpired over the summer between Richard's TV special in May and the debut of the show, attempt (and fail) to uncover the mystery of Al Alen Peterson, and generally marvel at how this damn thing even ended up on air. 

As a companion piece to both last month's Richard Pryor special and last week's S5 coverage, we're digging into Chevy's first special for NBC. Basically the first thing of note that he did after leaving SNL, this one contains some interesting correlations to his earlier Groove Tube/Radio Hour days but the question remains: is it funny?  

It's the last stop before we get to the Richard Pryor Show: Richard's NBC special that precedes the show by just a few months! It's a cameo-filled journey through the back stages of NBC and beyond, including an earth shattering performance by Maya Angelou and the first televised appearance of Sandra Bernhard! 

It's that time of year again! Time to check back into MADtv with season four's Christmas special from 1998! There's been a few scattered changes from last year (some of better, some for the worst) but we're definitely in the era of peak popularity for the show and you know the show is gonna ring all the bells it's got to ring. Spishak, Ms. Swan, Stuart, Rusty, the Vancome Lady; they're all here! And by gum, we discuss them all.  

We begin our Richard Pryor Show journey here, in 1974, with a Flip Wilson special. Produced by Lorne Michaels a full year before SNL started and only a few months after Flip's show had ended, it acts as a sort of passing of the torch moment from the old guard to the new guard. Too bad it never really comes together in any cohesive way...and too bad William is dead.

We're again returning the Cannon Group well for this year's October Off Week and coming up with Tobe Hopper's Invaders From Mars remake from 1986, featuring Laraine Newman! It's got Hooper in the directors chair, Dan O'Bannon on script and Stan Winston on effects. Can such pedigree produce a fun, sci-fi romp? Tune in to find out!