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

Sometimes you get towards the end of a season, you're getting tired and you just say "screw it" and hit the big red button labeled John Goodman. It's the eighth time hosting for the beloved character actor and this go-around gives us a chance to finally cover a perennial SNL favorite that has somehow alluded this podcast: Celebrity Jeopardy. Elsewhere, it's a pretty typical slice of this era: some real diffie takes on current events, recurring sketches aplenty (featuring the debut of Collette Reardon), a Mike Myers cameo and so on and so forth. Grab a glass of your favorite vintage of Will Ferrell vomit and enjoy.

Pass the podcast 'pon the left hand side, ammirite? Ha ha ha. We have fun. And speaking of fun, here's a wild one from the Ebersol years. Joan Rivers! Y'all know her. Comedienne extraordinaire, red carpet correspondent and world class Liz Taylor hater. She's here to host one of the loudest episodes of the show's history, complete with one of the show's most strangely under-seen moments of joyfully coming off the rails. And then there's poor Musical Youth, exhaustedly performing their early 80s hits late in the night's proceedings. It's a bit of a mess and Update...ooh boy, Update. Are the bits of shocking racism and Joan River's bursting-at-the-seams energy enough to sink Timmy's ship or will the gleeful madness save him in the nick of time? Tune in to find out.

It's another historical outing for the show, with the first political figure to ever host the show: Ron Nessen, Press Secretary for Gerald Ford! What better way for Ford to gain some momentum in the upcoming election against Jimmy Carter then make it seem like he's in on all the fun going on down at SNL? Just have Ron host the show, Ford can make a few pre-taped appearances, everything will be fine! Except it wasn't. Arriving late in the week, Ron didn't quite realize that the show had quietly written it's raunchiest outing to date, but with no time to do anything about it, well...the show must go on. In the end, Ron and Ford were made to look quite the fools indeed. But what about the show? Well, it lands an early classic (Super Bass-O-Matic), exposes America to some early punk with Patti Smith and keeps it's counter-culture image intact by making a fool of the president. Not bad for a show that was still trying to figure out just what the hell it was.

I've been meaning to get around to this one forever and so, by god by Gumby, we finally did it. William Ham returns to fold to discuss an episode that I firmly believe might be the most underrated of the entire OG era. Few outings of the show crackle with as much southern chaos as this one and that's not entirely surprising considering, ya know, Gary, a host the show gives way to so completely that he's actually doing a double duty stint here (with Rick Danko & Paul Butterfield in tow). And then you got Eubie Blake and Gregory Hines as well? Man, this one is a fun one. So pull up a chair, fellow slop jockeys, and join us as we try to figure out just what the Hot Bone is.

The night before the very first Wrestlemania, Mr. T and Hulk Hogan drop by to host the show together...except they mostly don't. It was supposed to be Steve Landesberg but he had to drop out for reasons. I guess? He's still a special guest though, as well as Liberace, Bob Orton Jr. and Rowdy Roddy Piper. I know I say this a lot, but this is an ODD one. It's basically a host-less episode, one of the rare episodes with no Update and the best moments of the show coming from places you would least expect them. And you get The Commodores post Lionel Richie, which is sadly, not great.

Here's a bit of an oddity selected for us by one of our Patrons. Mostly known these days for having a surprise appearance of Barbra Streisand in Coffee Talk (which already has a sketch-long cameo performance from Madonna), there's also the fascinating and far less talked about case of the Red Hot Chili Peppers basically imploding live on stage, with John Frusciante going completely rogue from the band. And you've also got Roseanne, who's, uh...a lot less fun personality these days than here in 1992. Tom Arnold is there too, i suppose. The whole thing is just a strange gumbo. There's a lot of narratively focused sketches that work out both for the better and for the worse, the tricky balance of having two hosts, and just a strange vibe overall.

By special request, we're heading back to S38 to cover Christoph's only hosting gig to date. Why this one in particular? I dunno. Mattalamode really wanted us to do it so...here we are! And it's certainly an episode, that much is true. Join us as we discuss a surprisingly stellar cold open, a memorable pre-tape, whether or not Christoph is a decent host and oh! The Alabama Shakes! They're a really good band. And speaking of music, we also get to hear some of the modern SNL band playing during commercial break so that's fun. Timmy might not agree but I certainly think so.

This week, we've got what is quietly one of the most important episodes of SNL ever. Not only do we get Ralph Nader, who would go on to cameo on the show up until 2000, but it's also the debut of one Mr. Bill Murray on the cast side of things, Jim Downey on the writing side of things and the very first appearance of both the Coneheads AND Rhoda Weiss. Even Andy Kaufman gets in one of his most celebrated bits. It's a big one. Join us as we dig in.

It's the first episode of 2025 and we're kicking it off in style with two of America's most beloved performers still to this day: DAG and Snoop Dogg. It's the first time going back to S22 in quite some time for us and we've landed on a pretty fascinating one. Can the show correctly navigate yet another Jesse Jackson sketch? What does Snoop Dogg have in store for his first album in three years, sans Dr. Dre? Where the hell did that ten-to-one come from? These are only some of the questions we attempt to hash out in this Hugh Fink dominated episode.

Our old pal Jon Schneider is back once again to discuss one of the most integral episodes of the first season: it's Christmas episode. Not only is it the first time a host would return to the show but it manages to include a number of iconic moments while somehow also managing to seem incredibly loose and nearly incomplete at times. But that's just the magic of S1 SNL. Lots of weirdness abounds: live Polaroid commercials, Mel's Char Palace...done three times with almost no change, the fastest the show would ever get to a musical guest that wasn't pulling double duty, and, most importantly, Maggie Kuhn.