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

Here's a little bit of extra nonsense: our journeys through the first week of the quarantine! We discuss Ian Abramson's fantastic Saturday Night Quarantine live stream, trying to unravel the mysteries of mahjong and a few films, including The Hunt!

Bordello of Blood is the second theatrically released Tales From The Crypt film and man, it's a doozy. A troubled production stemming from a cranky and unwilling Dennis Miller nearly threatens to sink a movie that is, at times, kinda fun. We break it all down.

This week, we welcome Justin Hart from the Telehell podcast to discuss a childhood favorite of his: Billy Crystal's season 9 hosting stint! We get a surprising Purim theme, the debut of Fernando and a bunch of questionable ethnic choices.

Last season, we covered Garth Brooks' second hosting gig from S25 and ended up receiving countless requests to cover this one as well. And so, here we are: the first outing of SNL's most unlikely beloved hosts of the 90s, Garth Brooks. We got old French whores, grizzled old men (hi, Robert Duvall!), Shelly Long movie trailers and...Mango!

This week, we're pumping up the jams with one of the youngest hosts the show has ever had: Fred Savage! Fresh from the highs of the cinematic masterpiece The Wizard, Fred anchors the show like a seasoned professional and delivers yet another strong outing for season 15. A small cameo from Rosie Perez is just icing on the cake.

Hoooo whee, this is a big one! This is one of the most fondly remembered episodes in the show's history, complete with the debuts of The Olympia Cafe, The Nerds and Nick The Lounge Singer's famous "Star Wars" song. But the real focal point is the beautiful chaos the show closes out on: The Atomic Lobsters, one of the most impressive sketches the show ever tried to pull off live.

It's January so you know what that means: it's weird character actor time! Peter Sarsgaard drops by the show for a real strange one. Not only do we get TWO sketches based around his name, we also get one that nearly implodes live. It's a beautiful, horrible mess.

To fight back against the boredom from SNL's long winter holiday break, we've decided to let loose an episode from behind the ol' Patreon pay wall! It's the first episode from season 6 and we talk about the events that led up to Jean Doumanian getting the job, set the table for the rest of the season and dig into the horrors that await us!

It's our big ol' honkin' Christmas extravaganza with John Murray of the SNL Afterparty podcast! This week, we're covering Eddie Murphy's first grand return to studio 8H with his 1984 episode (featuring the perennial classic, White Like Me). Elsewhere, we talk Paw Patrol, try to make sense of the dense layers in Lishman's Deli and more!

It's the last show of the millennium and Danny DeVito is on hand to host what is quite possibly the horniest Christmas episode of SNL ever. Sex jokes! Body parts! Al Franken! Come party like it's 1999...because it is.

This week, we're jumping back only a few years to revisit those halcyon days of season 42. Does the show's most recent moment in the sun hold up? We'd like to think so. Containing what is still the show's best and most concise satire of Trump, there's also a bizarre Bryan Cranston cameo, an early Anna Drezen classic, round bananas and more!

Last year we covered the Betty White episode and had so much fun with that one that this week, we're traveling back to the original era to find the only other Golden Girl that hosted the show: Bea Arthur! Join us as we explore the bizarre atmosphere of season 5 and semi-controversial Al Franken pieces "First He Cries" and the Weekend Update cockroach massacre!

Before he was a cast member (but AFTER he was a musical guest), Michael McKean stops by the show for a little Spinal Tap reunion. Oddly enough this one looks to the future, featuring the birth of The Folksmen some twenty years before "A Mighty Wind" was released! There's also a Billy Crystal sketch we actually enjoyed, scattered weirdness and a heavy dose of Rock 'N' America!

Fresh off the success of Bring The Pain, SNL alum Chris Rock comes home for the first time and he's got Dana Carvey in tow. We've got a whole bunch of Bob Dole, an early TV Funhouse, some returning Chris Rock favorites, Charles Grodin and even a bit of Stephen Colbert.

This week, Mad Men's own Jon Hamm stops by to deliver a modern day Halloween classic! We get two all-time great Forte moments, a guilty pleasure Digital Short, Bill Hader's Vincent Price and THREE Coldplay songs...if you're into that sort of thing. Solid as Barack indeed.

This week, we're going all the way back to the beginning. That's right. Season One. Episode One. The big one. The birth of SNL. It's one of the show's most unique episodes, with more discrete segments than nearly any other episode. Things come flying fast and we're breaking it all down (and manage to discuss a bit of the second episode as well).

We're kicking off our third season with one of the show's most fondly remembered premieres! Take a trip back to a wonderfully weird time in America's history when Twin Peaks and Sinead O'Connor were both surprisingly popular and Chris Rock & Farley were just getting started on the show. Featuring fun with commercials!

In an episode already semi-outdated a mere 24 hours after recording it, we sit down to discuss the upcoming 45th season of SNL! We deliberate the announced hosts/musical guests, the departure of Leslie (but NOT the new featured players) and take some questions from the audience.

A semi-indulgent mixtape of interstitial music, BGM and live performances. Derrick J. Hines: Way Back Saturday Night Sax Coolio: 1, 2, 3, 4 (Live 2-10-96) 10CC: The Worst Band In The World Curtis Mayfield: Move On Up Casiopia: Midnight Rendezvous Kendrick Lamar: I (Live 11-10-14) Rotary Connection: I Am The Black Gold Of The Sun Tears For Fears: Everybody Wants To Rule The World Frank Zappa: I Am The Slime (12-11-76) Spanky & Our Gang: Like To Get To Know You Art Blakey: Alamode Marcos Valle: Garra Noel Wells: Sunrise Tahiti 80: Piano Theme Park Blind Melon: No Rain (Live 1-8-94) Yuji Ohno: Dangerous Zone

It's our end of season wrap up extravaganza! Within we discuss our Patreon plans, season 44 and what we'd like to see for 45, answer questions from the audience, gush about Royal Warriors and play some music! Featured Music: Mr. Jukes: Grant Green Ft. Charles Bradley Stereolab: Ping Pong The Isley Brothers: Work To Do Cage The Elephant & Beck: Night Running Post Animal: Dirtpicker Yellow Magic Orchestra: Rydeen Chris Cohen: As If Apart The Mysterons: Bug Powder Dust Vampire Weekend: Sunflower Frank Zappa: My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mama

It's our big ol' honkin' season finale and so, of course, we're rounding things out with SNL's second season finale with Buck Henry! We got Coneheads. We got Emily Litella. We got the Samurai. Hell, even the damn Land Shark shows up! And sadly, It all sounds better than it actually is.

This week, we return to a troubled time in SNL history by dipping back into the infamous season 20 with Bob Saget's episode. Is it as painful Deion Sander's show, the only episode to receive a zero on our podcast? Generally, yes.

In 2010, a Facebook campaign to get Betty White to host the show actually managed to work and so, alongside a murderers row of returning female cast members, Betty knocked down the doors of 8H for a memorable Mother's Day epic.

It's our last Off Week of the season so we're in a boozy and celebratory mood as we cover the Toonces and Friends Prime Time special from 1992! Also within, we do some talking to the audience and even have a special announcement!

This week we welcome fellow salty old dog, Mario Lanza (Staff Picks, SNL Afterparty) onto the show to explore the Dolly Parton episode from 1989! Within we discuss the greatness that is Dolly, the legacy of Dennis Miller, Mike Meyer's strong start on the show and more!

After covering the entirety of season 21 last year, we've finally decided to dip our toes into season 22. What we find is a whole bunch of Heavens Gate and Ellen coming out as gay material, sprinkled with some dead bodies, Goth Talk, misogyny in game show form, further battles with Norm and Robert De Niro's best guest appearance!

Dead Heat is a masterpiece of B-movie proportions. This little action/sci-fi/horror/comedy stars Joe Piscopo and Treat Williams and it's just a blast. A revenge film with slowly decomposing super-powered zombies and even a little bit of Vincent Price! You just can't go wrong.

With the recent news that Kenan Thompson will producing a new reboot of All That, we've decided to go back to one of it's earliest episodes to see where it all began. What we find is Kenan's first outing as Cosby, the debut of Good Burger, plenty of Lynchian nightmare fuel and even a few good laughs.

This week, we're exploring one of the most idiosyncratic episodes the show has ever done! Our host is George Wendt but the real star attraction is Francis Ford Coppola as this episode's "Guest director". It all adds up to one of the few times the show has completely broken format to allow an episode-length story to be told and by god, we love it.

We've covered some bizarre, chaotic episodes of SNL before but nothing in our experience comes close to this one. Not only does this show include the first of the Buckwheat Is Dead trilogy but all sorts of other goodies like suicide, incest, racism, mental health issues and more! And somehow, in the middle of all this, we manage to talk a bit about Harlem Nights.

In 1986, Al Franken and Tom Davis wrote and starred in a small, slice-of-life film about a bunch of people in a small Midwestern town trying to get laid on a Saturday night. Nobody saw it and it faded into obscurity. This week, we're digging it back up from the forgotten realm and exploring it as best we can before the delirium claims us.

This week, we're looking back at a classic and seeing how it how holds up. Featuring one of the most famous Wayne's World sketches ever! Inexplicably this leads to Trump discussion, Russians, Chris Hansen, bizarro commercials from 1990 and more!!

We're heading back to Ebersol Land to complete the Halloween trifecta with Jamie Lee Curtis and The Fixx! Within we discuss more Belushi theories, Joel Hodgson, an impromptu review of Halloween 2018 and more!

In 1979, former head writer Michael O'Donoghue was tasked with creating a show that could potentially run during SNL's off weeks. What he came up with was Mr. Mike's Mondo Video, an avant-garde kaleidoscope of near incomprehensible madness. We attempt to make sense of it all.

Few hosts are as hard to get a bead on as Jason Patric is. Is he uninterested in hosting the show? Is it all a big put on? Is it somewhere in the middle? Join us as we attempt to unravel the mystery.

This week we're exploring a fairly important episode for both SNL and us! Not only is this the one that got us back into watching the modern era of the show but it's also Sasheer Zamata's first episode as well! Join us for all sorts of mispronounced names, hot takes on Rahat and more!

Four years ago, in another place, on another podcast, we first talked about SNL on microphones. It was supposed to be a reoccurring segment for a radio show we once had but it never took. This week, we're taking a look back at this little experiment of ours and seeing just what the hell it was.

We're doing something a little different for our last Off Week of the year: instead of covering season 44, we're watching Scrooged instead! Starring Bill Murray and written by Michael O'Donoghue. What fun!

Our old friend Eggnog is back to help us celebrate the William Shatner Christmas episode! There's Star Trek talk, old photos with Oliver North, a complete disregard for Weekend Update and holiday cheer out the wazoo!

This time around we're bringing Maine Justice to a modern-day classic! Can we withstand the excellence of what is quite possibly the strongest second half the show has ever produced? Shut your butts and tune in to find out.

We're heading back to Season 2 for an old-school holiday classic! Does it hold up all these years later? An intense discussion unravels the mystery. Within, we discuss the nature of Candice's performance, just how over or underrated Belushi and Radner are, and Frank Zappa's amazing performances.

We're exploring the big topics this week as we revisit the November episodes from 2018 under the bizarre, nebulous lens of "Negativity and SNL". Did we get anywhere with it? That's up to you, intrepid listener.

It's Thanksgiving with John Lithgow! This week, we explore John's last hosting gig from 1988, which features some classics and a few not-so-classics. We talk comparisons to John Cleese, Jon Lovitz as the Catchphrase King, a sketch that manages to amuse despite the use of blackface and more!

Before there was Justin Timberlake, there was...Garth Brooks. Hey, simmah down now! It's true! Garth was one of the first to prove that a musical artist could should an adept SNL host, they almost seemed like a part of the cast. This week, we're exploring Garth's second (and, sadly, last) hosting gig from the distant of 1999 so go tell Lorne to grab you a coke and settle in. It's gonna be a fun one.

It's three days before the 2008 election and that means it's time for Ben Affleck and David Cook, with special guest John McCain! We discuss the complicated legacy of McCain, Ben Affleck's ability to elevate sketches, the Kristen Wiig conundrum and more!

Off Week is back for another boozy and chaotic rundown of the first three episodes of season 44! Within we give our final farewell to Luke Null and say hello to Ego; all Kanye and Trump, all the time; strange hosting and musical choices; the tonal weirdness of that Bill Cosby sketch; highlights, lowlights and more. Embrace the madness!

This week, we're covering one the few times the show ever went live on Halloween night and it's a real doozy. The last appearance of John Belushi on the show, pumpkin guts, last minute sketch changes and one of the most infamous musical performances the show has ever experienced! Strap yourselves in. It's about to get weird.

This week, we're going all the way back to 1976 for Eric Idle's first hosting gig during season 2! It's the initial meeting of Monty Python and Saturday Night Live and by god, it's a bit of a classic. Join us as we unravel all the connecting themes within the show, discuss our histories with the Pythons and more!

We're back with a vengeance as we explore the premiere from season 10, one of the strangest run of episodes the show has ever seen! We do battle against Billy Crystal's standup, delight at Marty Short, struggle to remember who Christopher Guest is and marvel at the vintage commercials and other extraneous madness from our live copy of the show. Grab yourself a Mars bar and settle in. We're taking a deep dive on this one.

They said it couldn't be done...but by god, here we are. This week, we join forces with John Murray of the SNL Afterparty podcast to explore the controversial Andrew Dice Clay episode from season 15. Is it worthy of it's infamy? We break it all down.