Cold opening:"Beauty pageant"
When Sherry (Laraine Newman) a beauty pageant contestant is about to be crowned the winner, she refuses to accept the crown. She places it on the head of the pageant's MC (Chevy Chase), who proceeds to take the victory lap, fall down and shout "Live, from New York, it's Saturday Night!"
Monologue:
Host Robert Klein talks about how wild animals (like bears and foxes) are much more fearsome than how they are portrayed in cartoons.
ABBA on the Titanic: "S.O.S."
Musical guest ABBA performs their 1975 hit song "S.O.S." (which peaked at #15 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart) on the HMS Titanic.
During their performance, the ship's captain (Klein) notices that the Titanic is leaking.
Pong:
Written by Alan Zweibel.
Two college students (Al Franken and Tom Davis) play video pong and talk about their recent history exam.
Minute Mystery:
Written by Michael O'Donoghue.
Crime photographer Mike Mendoza (Dan Aykroyd) attempts to solve a murder in one minute.
Bee Centennial Minute:
A bee (Garrett Morris) tells the story of a bee named Henry who was killed during the American Revolution.
Loudon Wainwright III:"Bicentennial"
The satirical folk singer performs a song that would be recorded and released on his 1976 LP T-Shirt.
Gregg Allman:
An unseen interviewer (Lorne Michaels) asks rock star Gregg Allman (Chase) about the current state of this love life.
Sam Peckinpah:
Written by John Belushi.
Famed tough guy director Sam Peckinpah (John Belushi) physically abuses his actors in order to get them to deliver the performance he wants...until an actor named Rex (Klein) decides to give Peckinpah a taste of his own medicine.
Weekend Update:
Chevy Chase reports that an "overworked and exhausted" Gerald Ford "mistakenly bumped his face on the head of a little girl."
Commercial:"Jamitol"
A husband (George Coe) keeps his wife (Jane Curtin) busy by giving her Jamitol vitamins.
The Eternal Crawl:
Two exterminators named Bugs (John Belushi) and Kid (Klein) are searching for cockroaches.
Kid is reluctant to kill roaches ever since he saw their cartoonish portrayal in a Raid commercial and because of what he's read about roaches in a book called The Eternal Crawl.
"Fireman":
Written by Alan Zweibel and Gilda Radner.
A fireman (Gilda Radner) tells why she enjoys being a fireman and gives viewers some fire prevention tips.
"Land of Gorch," featuring Jim Henson's Muppets:
King Ploobis (Jim Henson) has a vicious headache and is in search of a cure. Scred (Jerry Nelson) looks up some headache treatments in a book that gives instruction on performing acupunctures.
Robert Klein monologue #2:
Klein discusses his college years and science experiments.
Commercial:K-Put Price is Rite Stamp Gun:
Written by Al Franken and Tom Davis.
"Inflationary prices getting you down? Then get down on inflationary prices with the new Price-Is-Rite Stamp Gun from K-Put!"
Loudon Wainwright:"Unrequited To The Nth Degree"
This song appeared on Wainwright's 1975 album Unrequited.
"Looks At Books"
Written by Gilda Radner and Tom Davis. Host Jane Curtin interviews children's author Emily Litella, who is promoting her new book Tiny Kingdom.
Ambassador Training Institute:
Repeat from Episode 4.
Robert Klein:"I Can't Stop My Leg"
Written by Robert Klein, Paul Shaffer and Howard Shore.
Klein performs a blues song, but can't stop his leg when he starts tapping his foot.
ABBA on the Titanic:"Waterloo"
This song won the Eurovision song contest in 1974 and was a #1 hit around the world. The Titanic begins to sink, but ABBA keeps performing.
Goodnights:
Klein, alone, wearing a bathrobe, bids the audience and viewers goodnight.
Notes about this episode:
ABBA was booked by Dick Ebersol, NBC's Vice President for Late Night Programming. They were the first musical guest to lip-synch on SNL, which Lorne Michaels didn't appreciate. Band leader Howard Shore says head writer Michael O'Donoghue put Abba on the Titanic and sunk them because he thought they were "kitsch." [1]
The "Beecentenial Minute" sketch is a parody of Bicentennial Minutes. This was a series of minute-long educational shorts that ran on CBS from July 4, 1974 through the end of 1976. Some of these minute-long history lessons can be found on youtube. [2]
The pageant sketch during the cold opening was probably inspired by the Miss Teenage America Pageant, which was shown on NBC earlier that night. It caused SNL to be preempted until midnight. [3]
Classic moment:
Emily Litella, Gilda Radner's first breakout character makes her first appearance. While she usually appeared on Weekend Update as an editorial commentator, in this sketch Litella is introduced as the author of children's books. Her name is a reference to her habit of using euphemisms for "little" (little, teeny, weeny, itsy, bitsy, tiny, etc).
What stands out:
Laraine Newman as "Sherry" in the cold opening-Newman introduces an early version of her character Sherry the stewardess, one of the first (if not THE first) "Valley Girl" characters in popular culture and one of the few recurring characters Newman played on SNL.
Minute Mystery-A funny sketch with good performances from Aykroyd and Belushi.
Gilda Radner as a "Fireman."-Radner is very charming and funny here, especially when delivering the poem at the end of her monologue.
What doesn't work:
"Land of Gorch"-This episode's Muppet sketch features Ploobis and Scred going to their deity, Mighty Favog (Frank Oz) to get an answer to a problem. This is exactly what happened in the previous four Muppet sketches. The "Gorch" sketches have been too formulaic so far.
J.A. Morris' rating:
This is a good episode, important for the introduction of Emily Litella and Klein's monologues are amusing. But this isn't exactly essential viewing for SNL fans.
2 and a half stars.
Footnotes:
[1]Live From New York, by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales, p.73.
[2]"The Grim American History Of The Bicentennial Minute," by Sarah Marshall, The Awl
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