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Complete fourth season features infamous show with host Milton Berle
By Rich Heldenfels
Beacon Journal popular culture writer
Published on Sunday, Nov 30, 2008
Saturday Night Live has had a rocky run this season. Highs have included Tina Fey's Sarah Palin, Justin Timberlake's pre-Thanksgiving cameo and the episode hosted by Mad Men's Jon Hamm. But the lows have been abundant, especially since the presidential election ended, and the recent show hosted by Tim McGraw was painfully bad.
When it's bad, or wildly uneven, the show invites comparisons to the supposed good old days, especially the early years, when the cast included Jon Belushi, Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin, Laraine Newman, Dan Aykroyd, Garrett Morris and Bill Murray (who more than ably succeeded Chevy Chase). But nostalgia can be misleading, as a new DVD set demonstrates.
Due in stores Tuesday, Saturday Night Live: The Complete Fourth Season (Universal, 20 episodes, seven discs, $69.98) collects episodes from 1978-79. The show was a commercial powerhouse by that time, and the season has its creative gems: the Nerds, the Al Franken-Tom Davis mime segment of the movie parody The Pepsi Syndrome, Carrie Fisher singing Teenager From Outer Space in a beach-movie parody, Gregory Hines performing with Eubie Blake, Buck Henry as Uncle Roy.
But it was also a season when fame and personal problems were weighing down the cast. Newman looks frighteningly emaciated in one sketch. Belushi's demons were considerable, as Kate Jackson — who hosted that year — notes in the oral history Live From New York.
And it contains one of the worst SNLs of all time, one hosted by Milton Berle; it was among the rare episodes that was little seen after its first telecast, and this set demonstrates why. Berle's humor, though only intermittently used, is overbearing when on display and out of keeping with the rest of the show. His closing song-and-monologue is pure horror. (Live From New York and the earlier Saturday Night: A Backstage History of ''Saturday Night Live'' contain accounts of Berle horrors off-camera.)
That said, the episode and the DVD set are still fascinating documents, both for the good things and as a reminder that, at its most acclaimed, SNL was and is an inconsistent work.
'X-Files' movie
Moving to the big screen — or, to small-screen transfers to the big screen — Tuesday also brings The X-Files: I Want to Believe in various configurations: single disc ($29.98), three-disc set including a digital copy ($34.98) and high-definition Blu-ray ($39.98), all from Fox.
This was the second movie to be drawn from the TV series, and the first pulled in $83 million at the North American box office in 1998, as well as considerably more money worldwide. The second film also hedged its bets by being somewhat self-contained, and drawing inspiration from the horror stories that had dotted The X-Files' TV series run from 1993 to 2002.
But the movie proved a bit of a dud, with a less-than-profitable $20 million in North America, according to Box Office Mojo. While it eased into profitability from international revenue, the movie didn't measure up to the earlier effort.
So what went wrong? It could be argued that, coming more than five years after the end of the series, the film had lost its fan base to other endeavors. But fan enthusiasm for, say, Star Trek went on far more years than that. I Want to Believe has a more basic problem: From the beginning, it's a bore.
I didn't get very far into it before deciding life was too short to continue. The scary flourishes were not especially effective, and stars David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson offered credible imitations of sleepwalkers.
Down the DVD road: Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands, previously announced for DVD release on Dec. 9, will now come out on Dec. 30. . . . Songs in Ordinary Time, the TV movie with Sissy Spacek, will hit DVD on Jan. 27. That same day will bring Lakeview Terrace, with Samuel L. Jackson. . . . Comedy The House Bunny will hop in on Dec. 19. . . . ABBA fans will want to note that Mamma Mia! The Movie will be available for stocking-stuffing on Dec. 16.
Rich Heldenfels writes about popular culture for the Beacon Journal and in the HeldenFiles Online blog at http://heldenfels.ohio.com. He can be reached at 330-996-3582 and rheldenfels@thebeaconjournal.com.
Saturday Night Live has had a rocky run this season. Highs have included Tina Fey's Sarah Palin, Justin Timberlake's pre-Thanksgiving cameo and the episode hosted by Mad Men's Jon Hamm. But the lows have been abundant, especially since the presidential election ended, and the recent show hosted by Tim McGraw was painfully bad.
Get the full article here.
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