May 10, 1986 Season 11 episode
| |
|---|---|
| Episode | 211 |
| Season Episode | 16 |
| Host | Catherine Oxenberg Paul Simon |
| Musical Guest(s) | Paul Simon Ladysmith Black Mambazo |
| Song(s) performed by Musical Guest(s) |
"You Can Call Me Al" "Homeless" "Graceland" |
| Previous Episode April 19, 1986 |
Next Episode May 17, 1986 |
The 16th episode of Season 11 and the 211th episode of Saturday Night Live premiered on May 10, 1986. It was hosted by actress Catherine Oxenberg, star of CBS prime time television soap opera series Dynasty & musician, singer, and songwriter Paul Simon, with musical guest Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Special guest appearance by Penn & Teller. This was the only time hosting for Catherine Oxenberg and Paul Simon's 3rd hosting stint and his 5th musical guest appearance on SNL, thus making Paul a former five-time musical guest and reaching into the Five-Timers Club. This is also noted as the first time Ladysmith Black Mambazo is the musical guest.
Cast[]
Repertory Players[]
- Joan Cusack
- Robert Downey, Jr.
- Nora Dunn
- Anthony Michael Hall
- Jon Lovitz
- Dennis Miller
- Randy Quaid
- Terry Sweeney
- Danitra Vance
Featured Player[]
Sketches and Musical Performances[]
Cold Open Sketch Pre-recorded Weekend Update Music Performance Other
| Title | Image | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| Cold Open: Paul Simon performed "You Can Call Me Al" | Paul Simon premieres the yet-to-be-released lead single off his still-unfinished Graceland album, but there’s a particularly big gaffe that exposes that Simon is singing live but the musicians are miming to an instrumental track (identical to the one used on the album): Simon misses his cue to start, so he’s off sync with the track for the first verse, which he has to cut short in order to sing the chorus. There’s also a shot of the SNL Band after the bass solo where Lenny Pickett and Steve Turre don’t have their instruments to their mouths when the familiar horn riff plays. As well, the band continues to mime after the track fades out.
Simon is accompanied by South African musicians Ray Phiri (guitar), Bakithi Kumalo (bass), Isaac Mtshali (drums), as well as Ralph MacDonald (percussion) and South African expat Morris Goldberg (pennywhistle). I’m not sure why the band is miming for these performances; it could be a union issue as far as I know, but maybe Simon just wanted the polish of the overdubbed recorded versions for his SNL appearances.|Paul Simon premieres the yet-to-be-released lead single off his still-unfinished Graceland album, but there’s a particularly big gaffe that exposes that Simon is singing live but the musicians are miming to an instrumental track (identical to the one used on the album): Simon misses his cue to start, so he’s off sync with the track for the first verse, which he has to cut short in order to sing the chorus. There’s also a shot of the SNL Band after the bass solo where Lenny Pickett and Steve Turre don’t have their instruments to their mouths when the familiar horn riff plays. As well, the band continues to mime after the track fades out. Simon is accompanied by South African musicians Ray Phiri (guitar), Bakithi Kumalo (bass), Isaac Mtshali (drums), as well as Ralph MacDonald (percussion) and South African expat Morris Goldberg (pennywhistle). I’m not sure why the band is miming for these performances; it could be a union issue as far as I know, but maybe Simon just wanted the polish of the overdubbed recorded versions for his SNL appearances. | |
| Opening Montage | Don Pardo’s announcement of “Ladysmith Black Mambazo” replaced to correct his mispronunciation of the last word as “Mam-bozo”. Audience response sweetened. | |
| Catherine Oxenberg Monologue | Hosting for the only time, actress Catherine Oxenberg explains how different she is from her Dynasty character, whose mother Alexis (Terry Sweeney) and Aunt Dominique (Danitra Vance) have a catfight. | |
| Geraldo Rivera Opens the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier | Geraldo Rivera follows up his Al Capone vault special with another stunt. | |
| Guys Behind Bars | Despite being shackled to the wall, two prisoners (Paul Simon and Jon Lovitz) are optimistic about their dumb escape plans. | |
| The Late Show with Joan Rivers | Jane Fonda (Joan Cusack), Brigitte Bardot (Catherine Oxenberg) and Catherine Deneuve (Nora Dunn) rebut Roger Vadim’s tell-all. | |
| The Limits of the Imagination | Young Paul Simon (Robert Downey Jr.) and Art Garfunkel (Anthony Michael Hall) trade their souls and bassoons to Mephistopheles (Jon Lovitz) for fame; he returns to collect from Paul in 2010. | |
| Dirk Landers | After a lengthy premise-explaining opening title sequence, former CIA agent Dirk Landers (Robert Downey Jr.) is quickly dispensed of. | |
| Weekend Update with Dennis Miller | Dennis Miller has a mixed bag this week, including more photo-based jokes and digs at Kurt Waldheim and Nell Carter, but gets a fun prop-based bit with a Mouse Trap board game serving as a visual aid as to what happened in Chernobyl, and commemorates Mother’s Day by reading the scene in Oedipus Rex where he gouges his eyes out after discovering Jocasta’s body. A. Whitney Brown discusses Soviet misinformation on Chernobyl, including a well-constructed fart joke, and the ongoing Afghanistan quagmire; as usual, good stuff, with some more particularly prescient jokes in light of the United States’ own involvement in the region and “fake news”. Miller ends this week’s Update by announcing SNL has been renewed for its 12th season and with mock indignation, asks “Did anyone think to ask if we wanted to come back?”. In Live From New York, there is a bit of discussion about how this renewal actually came after Brandon Tartikoff decided to cancel the show but quickly relented, and that this renewal would only be for 13 shows instead of the standard 20. Good thing the show turned itself around the next season, although I wonder if anyone back then would have predicted that the show would still be on the air (with Lorne Michaels still executive producer) 33 years later. | |
| Paul Simon performed "Homeless" with Ladysmith Black Mambazo | ||
| Beverly Hills | Posing as an important movie producer, Tommy Flanagan (Jon Lovitz) swaps fibs with hotel employee and wannabe actress Fern (Catherine Oxenberg). | |
| Brim Decaffeinated | Exhausted waitress (Nora Dunn) serves the coffee to a drowsy customer (Randy Quaid). | |
| Guest Performance: Penn & Teller | Teller does a straitjacket escape as Penn entertains the audience with “the magic of fine poetry” by reading “Casey At The Bat” in 1 minute, 54 seconds. | |
| A Mother's Day Message | Uptight Chicago mother Margaret Carolan (Joan Cusack) mumbles about moral values. | |
| Trojans | Rerun from November 16 and December 14 episodes. | |
| Paul Simon performed "Graceland" | ||
| Goodnights and Closing Credits | Everyone just stands around on stage for a bit as the audience applauds, Paul Simon says something about Mother’s Day but is pretty much inaudible before various people on stage say “Happy Mother’s Day!”. Catherine Oxenberg’s mother Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia (Jelisaveta Karađorđević) joins everyone on stage. |
| Preceded by: April 19, 1986 |
Saturday Night Live episode | Followed by: May 17, 1986 |