Saturday Night Live/Raquel Welch/Phoebe Snow, John Sebastian

Raquel Welch/Phoebe Snow, John Sebastian
Season 1, Episode 18
Airdate	April 24, 1976
Production Number	021
Written by	Anne Beatts, Chevy Chase, Al Franken & Tom Davis, Lorne Michaels, Marilyn Suzanne Miller, Michael O'Donoghue, Herb Sargent, Tom Schiller, Rosie Shuster, Alan Zweibel
Directed by	Dave Wilson Gary Weis (film)
← 1x17 Ron Nessen/Patti Smith Group	1x19 → Madeline Kahn/Carly Simon
Saturday Night Live — Season One

Raquel Welch/Phoebe Snow, John Sebastian is the eighteenth episode of the first season of Saturday Night Live. It is the first appearance by its host and by musical guest John Sebastian and the second by musical guest Phoebe Snow.

Guest Stars: Raquel Welch (Host), Phoebe Snow (Musical Guest), John Sebastian (Musical Guest)

Muppet Voices and Puppeteers: Frank Oz (The Mighty Favog), Jerry Nelson (Scred), Alice Tweedy (Queen Peuta), Richard Hunt (Wisss), Jim Henson (King Ploobis)

Episode Breakdown

• Chevy Chase: Chase appears as a presenter at the Academy Awards, and he presents the award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Political Campaign. All of the nominees are the 1976 presidential candidates, and Chase makes a joke about each candidate. He asks for the winner, but the card reads, "Get to the fall, Chevy." Offended, Chase says he is a satirist, not a buffoon, and he refuses to move forward until he gets the punchline to the sketch. When the second envelope arrives, it reads, "Don't stretch this out, Chevy. Get to the fall." In a huff, he threatens to quit the show, but as he crosses the stage, he trips over some chairs set up and falls forward off the stage.
• Raquel Welch's Monologue: Welch shimmies out onto the stage and implies this episode will be even more tasteless than the previous week's. She begins to sing "Superstar" and is joined by Joe Cocker (Belushi), who staggers and jerks spasmically across the stage until he falls onto the floor. Before Welch can kiss him, he faints.
• Purina Rat Chow: A poor couple (Radner & Morris) worry about their "dull and listless" rats. The Pied Piper (Chase) enters and tells them of the cheese-flavored Purino Rat Chow, which contains all the vitamins and nutrients rats need.
• The Decabet: Joseph Franklin (Aykroyd) of the US Council of Standards and Measures explains another change to be made as the US converts to the metric system, the condensing of the alphabet into the decabet. Franklin says the letters A, B, C and D will remain, but E and F will be combined into one letter, as will G, H and I and L, M, N and O. The letters P through Z will also become one letter. Franklin gives examples of how the spelling and pronunciations of words will change, including "eagle," "fish," "goat," "hotel," "industry," "mucus," "light," "open" and "stop." Franklin ends by singing a new version of "The Alphabet Song," which is very short.
• The Muppets - The Muppets Are Fired: King Ploobis (Henson) and Scred (Nelson) sneak into the studio, from which they have been barred. They run into Welch and try to hit on her, but she rejects them because they are puppets. She says they are "all talk" as they "don't even exist below the waist." Chase arrives and informs them they are not scheduled to appear on the show, and he tells them to leave. Scred makes one more attempt at hitting on Welch, but Chase closes his mouth and kicks him out. After they are gone, Chase asks Welch to take her shirt off, but she again refuses.
• All Over: Phoebe Snow song.
  

  

  "And of course, we're here in Vale, Colorado to cover the Claudine Longet Invitational." Tom Tryman and Jessica Antlerdance report from an event in which the competitors are all "accidentally" doomed.

• The Claudine Longet Invitational: Tom Tryman (Chase) and Jessica Antlerdance (Curtin) cover the Claudine Longet Invitational, a skiing competition in which all the competitors fall after they are "accidentally shot" by Longet. They move on to a clip of various skiers being shot by Longet before making a pun about skeet-shooting.
• Polaroid: (Note: Live commercial, not an official sketch.) "Jane Curtin" (Belushi) and "John Belushi" (Curtin) do a commercial for the Polaroid Deluxe SX70 Land Camera. To demonstrate the camera's effectiveness, they show pictures the fake Curtin has taken of the fake Belushi from various distances.
• Great Moments in Herstory: In 1941, movie star Jane Russell (Welch) complains to her boyfriend and director, aviator, movie mogul and billionaire Howard Hughes (Aykroyd), of her small role in a grade-B Western. Hughes rambles on and on about aviation, war, satellites and Russell's "gazongas." Hughes says he has invented a bra just for her, and he has his assistant Skip Dixon (Morris), his "most trusted Mormon welder," bring out a bra with airplane propellers over the nipples. Russell refuses to wear the bra until it has been safety tested, so Hughes himself dons the bra. When he turns it on, it blows him off his feet.
• Weekend Update.
  • Newman analyzes 1976 presidential election polls which reveal more voters don't know for whom they intend to vote than for any individual candidate. Of those undecided voters, Newman says 36% don't know if they are male or female, 32% don't know why they don't know for whom they intend to vote, and 40% don't know when they will know. Newman says she doesn't know how to sway these undecided voters.
  • Morris interviews news reporter Barbara Walters, aka Babwa Wawa (Radner), about her decision to leave NBC's news division for ABC. She says she is leaving because she can't see Tom Snyder's ears. At times, Morris has trouble understanding her because of her lisp, which causes her to pronounce R and L sounds as W's.
  • Chief Meteorologist Belushi gives an editorial entitled "Downpours and Downbeats," on songs which make reference to weather conditions. He says the song "It Never Rains in Southern California" is inaccurate, while the song "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!" is insensitive to livestock which die in the winter. He also says the song "Don't Rain on My Parade" is unfair, as someone blowing his nose, throwing up or dumping kitty litter on a parade would be worse than rain. As he says this, he starts to get agitated, and Chase tries to calm him down, but Belushi brushes him off. He gets increasingly enraged when he talks about The Wizard of Oz and how Toto didn't receive a gift from the Wizard. Chase tries to intercede, but Belushi shoves him back and starts to foam at the mouth until he screams unintelligibly and collapses to the floor.
• Bisexual Moment: Bisexual author Gore Vidal (Welch) describes his family lineage as it was in the year 1776.
  

  

  John Sebastian performs "Welcome Back."

• Welcome Back: John Sebastian song.
• Lorne Michaels' Beatles Offer: In response to rumors that the Beatles may soon be reuniting, producer Lorne Michaels addresses the concern that no TV show is willing to pay enough money to have them perform. He says he has been authorized to offer them $3000 to perform three songs on Saturday Night. He shows them a check, made out to "The Beatles," which he says they can divide any way they choose.
• The Bees - One Flew over the Hornet's Nest: Nurse Ratched (Welch) passes out medication to bee mental patients Billy (Aykroyd), Broccoli (Radner) and others (O'Donoghue, et al.), when the orderly (Morris) announces the arrival of her newest patient, McMurphy (Belushi). As McMurphy enters, he tries to strike up a conversation with an apparently deafmute patient, Chief (Chase), but he gets no response. Ratched starts the group therapy, and she gets Billy to admit all the patients are giving the catatonic Broccoli their medication. She moves on to discuss Billy's Best Supporting Actor nomination, but McMurphy interrupts to ask that they watch the Oscars. Ratched puts it up to a vote, and all the physically capable patients—including Ratched herself briefly—vote to watch, but Ratched says McMurphy does not have a majority without the "vegetables," a literal basket of lettuce and tomatoes. With the meeting adjourned, McMurphy offers the Chief a piece of gum, and the Chief reveals he can talk, and he is an Asian Indian, not an American Indian. In lieu of watching the Oscars, McMurphy and the Chief hold their own Oscars ceremony, and when they announce Ratched has won Best Actress, she is nearly brought to tears. She changes the subject to Billy's loss, and he stammers until he chokes on the envelope and collapses. McMurphy chokes her and says he deserves the Oscar, so she orders the orderly to "fry him" by removing his antennae, which turns him into a vegetable asking for butter.
• Gilda's Equal Time: Radner says her experience over the last week has shown her it is difficult to be a widely desired sex symbol like Welch, and she says Welch deserves respect. She also confesses she peeked in on Welch in the bathroom and learned she and Welch "have exactly the same body... parts," but Radner admits, "mine need a little regrouping."
• Raquel Dancing: A short film of Welch dancing in a slinky black and gold evening gown against a white background.
• Two-Fisted Love: Phoebe Snow song. Welch and Snow preface the song by discussing Snow's upcoming gig at a benefit for the New York Public Library.
• Ain't Necessarily So: Raquel Welch song.
• The Muppets - Muppets Calls It Quits: Distressed over having been revealed as puppets, King Ploobis (Henson) and Scred (Nelson) come looking for the Mighty Favog (Oz). They find him covered in cobwebs backstage and ask him for advice. He recommends they give it up and go to sleep in the trunk. They open the trunk to find Queen Peuta (Tweedy) and Wisss (Hunt). Peuta objects there is not enough room to breathe with all four of them inside, but Ploobis points out puppets don't need to breathe. After they are all inside the trunk, Favog wonders if he can get a hosting gig on the show.

Notes

"Live from New York, It's Saturday Night!"

• Chevy Chase as himself, after trying to quit but tripping over chairs set up on the stage.

Music

• Superstar, performed by Raquel Welch and John Belushi: Leon Russell and Bonnie Bramlett originally wrote this bittersweet song about a fan's devotion to a pop superstar with whom he or she has had a love affair (originally called "Groupie Song") in 1969 for the group Delaney, Bonnie & Friends. The most famous version was recorded by the Carpenters in 1971 and released on their self-titled album that year. Although the real Joe Cocker recorded a version prior to the Carpenters, the version sung here is decidedly Carpenters-esque.
  

  

  Phoebe Snow performs "All Over."

• All Over, performed by Phoebe Snow: Snow wrote this jazzy track from her 1976 album Second Childhood, the first album released since the birth of her daughter and her second album overall.

• Welcome Back, performed by John Sebastian: Sebastian originally wrote the first verse of this song as the theme song to the hit sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter, but after the show's success, the former member of the Lovin' Spoonful wrote a second verse and released it both as a single and as the title track of his 1976 album. Although the single was a hit boosted by the show's success, sales of the album tanked. In the version Sebastian performs here, after his two false starts, he asks for audience participation. On the soundtrack, it sounds as though he does not receive this participation, but close attention reveals the audience is, in fact, singing along, but with no microphones on them, their singing is almost inaudible.

• Two-Fisted Love, performed by Phoebe Snow: Snow also wrote this lead-off track for her album Second Childhood.

• It Ain't Necessarily So, performed by Raquel Welch: This seemingly sacrilegious song was written by the team of George and Ira Gershwin for their 1935 folk opera Porgy and Bess. In the opera, it is sung by the character Sportin' Life, who is a drug dealer.

Trivia

The Show

• MIA: Cast member George Coe is not credited and does not appear on this episode. Michael O'Donoghue also is not credited, but he appears briefly in the sketch "One Flew over the Hornet's Nest."

• Callback: The poor couple portrayed by Gilda Radner and Garrett Morris in the sketch "Purina Rat Chow" are identical in voice, costume and setting to the Alvarezes, the characters they portrayed in the sketch "Jill Carson, Guidance Counselor!" from episode 1x15 - Jill Clayburgh.

• First Appearance: This episode's Weekend Update sees the first appearance of Gilda Radner's impression of Barbara Walters as "Baba Wawa" on the show.

Allusions and References

• Claudine Longet: French singer and actress and ex-wife of singer Andy Williams who achieved infamy in 1976 when she was accused of killing her boyfriend, famed American skier Spider Sabich, in Vale, Colorado. At the trial, Longet claimed the shooting was an accident, but forensic evidence suggested her version of the events was not possible.

• One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest: The sketch "One Flew over the Hornet's Nest" is a parody of this classic 1975 film starring Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher and Brad Dourif. In the film, based on the novel by Ken Kesey, Nurse Ratched (Fletcher) is the severe, dictatorial head nurse of a ward of mental patients, whom she controls through psychological warfare and medication. Her world is turned upside down by her newest patient, R.P. McMurphy (Nicholson), a brash, boisterous cowboy who encourages the patients to stand up for themselves. While in the hospital, McMurphy makes friends with a seven foot-tall American Indian patient named Chief Bromden (Will Sampson), who pretends to be a deafmute. (In the novel, Chief Bromden was the narrator.) Ratched makes her final move after a night in which McMurphy and other patients attempt to escape but get drunk first and pass out. The next morning, Ratched is angry with McMurphy, but she reserves her greatest ire for the shy, stuttering patient Billy Bibbit (Dourif). When Ratched threatens to tell Billy's domineering mother of his misbehavior, Billy commits suicide. Enraged, McMurphy tries to strangle Ratched. In response, Ratched has McMurphy lobotomized, which turns him into a vegetable, but the Chief smothers McMurphy with a pillow and escapes by throwing an enormous panel through the window. A month prior to this episode's airing, the film had made Oscar history by being the first to sweep the "top five" awards—Best Picture, Best Actor (Nicholson), Best Actress (Fletcher), Best Director and Best Writing, Screenplay Adapted from Other Material. Of its three acting nominations, the only one which did not win was Dourif's for Best Supporting Actor.

Memorable Moments

• The Claudine Longet Invitational.

Quotes

• Tom Tryman: (Providing commentary for the Claudine Longet Invitational skiing event.) He caught an edge there, but he seems to be okay. He's in good shape, exce... uh, I think he's, he's a li.... (Gun shot. Skier falls.) Uh oh! He seems to have been accidentally shot by Claudine Longet! Yes, and I'm afraid Helmut Kindel is out of this race.