Aired February 14, 1976.
Cold opening:"St. Valentine's Day Massacre"
Chicago, St. Valentine's Day, 1929. In an underground restaurant, a customer asks the Jimmy waiter to move his car into the parking garage. Unfortunately, the St. Valentine's Day Massacre is happening above the restaurant. Jimmy returns full of bullets and bleeding profusely.
He falls down the stairs, then exclaims "Live, from New York, it's Saturday Night!"
Monologue:
In honor of Valentine's Day, host Peter Boyle sings "My Funny Valentine" (written by Rogers and Hart for the musical Babes In Arms) to his girlfriend Lorraine, who's sitting in the audience.
While Boyle serenades her, Lorraine makes out with the man sitting beside her.
Commercial:"Corrida"
Ricardo Montalbahn (Aykroyd) shills for a car named after bullfighting.
"Samurai Divorce Court":
Samurai Futaba (John Belushi) and his wife (Jane Curtin) both want a divorce. She alleges mental anguish, he says she committed adultery.
The presiding judge (Boyle) must decide who gets custody of their daughter Bingo (Jenny Shapiro).
The Shapiro Sisters:"This Will Be"
Sisters Helena, Emily and Jenny Shapiro dance and lip sync Natalie Cole's recording of "This Will Be," which reached #6 on the Billboard chart during the previous year.
"Jason & Chole's Slideshow":
Burned out stoners Chloe (Laraine Newman) and Jason (Dan Aykroyd) invite their very normal neighbor Bob (Boyle) to watch a slide show of their recent acid trip.
Al Jarreau:"We Got By"
Al Jarreau performs the title track of his 1975 album.
"Weekend Update":
Chevy Chase's top story is that Pres. Gerald Ford celebrated Valentine's Day "at the White House with the First Family by trimming the tree, hunting for eggs, vetoing a $6.1 billion Public Works employment bill, calling it: "An election year pork barrel" to the confusion of everyone."
Garrett Morris reports on the Winter Olympic games in Austria.
Commercial:"K-Put Price-Is-Rite Stamp Gun"
Repeat from Episode 5.
"All-Pro Wrestling":
In a tag team bout, the Bees (Boyle and Belushi)...
...face off against the WASPS, as in "White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (Radner and Chase)"!
"Remembrance Of Things Past":
Jane Curtin interviews a masked "statesman" who sounds a lot like a certain disgraced former U.S. President.
Film by Gary Weis:"Pledge Of Allegiance"
A montage of school children reciting pledging allegiance to American Flag, with a surprise "pledger" at the end of the film.
"Dueling Brandos":
While "Deuling Banjos" plays in the background, two Marlon Brandos (Boyle and Belushi) recite dialogue from Brando movies.
"Janitor in the Fridge":
A household is overrun with anthropomorphic cleaning products.
"Home Movie:
A very short movie about a home.
"Garrett's Valentine Card":
Garrett Morris gives Gilda Radner a Valentine card that contains a very suggestive poem he composed about her.
Al Jarreau:"Somebody's Watching You"
This song was released on Jarreau's 1976 album Glow.
Film by Gary Weis:"Homeward Bound"
Repeat from Episode 8.
Goodnights:
At home base, Boyle says they're running a bit late, then acknowledges a "dear friend" named "Patty" in the audience. A woman wearing handcuffs waves from the crowd (she's supposed to be Patty Hearst, who was on trial for bank robbery when this episode aired).
Notes about this episode:
The woman Peter Boyle sings to during the monologue was his girlfriend Loraine Alterman, a music journalist and Rolling Stone editor. They were married in 1977 and were together until Boyle's death in 2006.
The Shapiro Sisters are the daughters of Ken Shapiro, who founded Channel One, a comedy troupe that videotaped sketches and showed them in theaters. A compilation of Channel One sketches titled The Groove Tube was released theatrically in 1972.
Chevy Chase got his start in Channel One, and before the launch of Saturday Night, Ken Shapiro signed Lorne Michaels to write a movie (which was never produced). This is likely how the Shapiros got booked on SNL.
At the end of Gary Weis' "Pledge Of Allegiance" film, Garrett Morris appears onscreen in a bald wig. He's playing Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, the boxer who was wrongly convicted and imprisoned for murder. Carter's case was a big news story at the time of this episode. It was later dramatized in the 1999 film The Hurricane, which starred Denzel Washington as Carter.
Dan Aykroyd's "Corrida" commercial is a parody of ads for the Chrysler Cordoba that featured Ricardo Montalban as their celebrity pitchman. Here's one of Montalbahn's Cordoba comercials:
Montalban famously talked about the Cordoba's seats made of "rich Corinthian leather." The leather actually had no connection at all to Corinth, it was a term created by an advertising agency.
Classic Moment:
"Remembrance Of Things Past"-This introduces Aykroyd's impression of Richard Nixon, a role he would play eight more times during his years on SNL.
What stands out:
"Corrida"-Aykroyd is hilarious here.
"Dueling Brandos"-A great sketch, Belushi and Boyle's facial expressions are just as funny as their "Brando" voices.
"Jason & Chloe's Slideshow"-Newman and Aykroyd are great as the stoner couple, Boyle is perfect as their "square" neighbor. While drug use was frequent behind the scenes and the show featured lots of drug humor, this sketch shows that SNL also depicted the negative impact of drugs.
J.A. Morris' rating:
This is a great episode, Boyle seems like the sort of host who would do just about anything the cast or writers asked of him. He's especially funny in "Dueling Brandos." One of the better episodes so far of Season 1.
4 stars.
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