the host is Fran Tarkenton and the musical guest is Leo Sayer

Here's some stuff that happened in the past

Here at Every Episode Ever, we’re thirty-seven episodes into the epic complete history of Saturday Night Live. I don’t like to brag, boast, be arrogant, or waste words unnecessarily, but I am NEARLY done with four percent of the project. 

How you like them apples, huh? Yet, we’re still encountering firsts. The twelfth episode of the show’s second season, for example, marks the first time the show has been hosted by an athlete. 

Host Fran Tarkenton was not the first superstar athlete to visit 30 Rock, however. I was both amused and mortified to spot O.J. Simpson, a superstar running back who later got into trouble with the law, in the front row of a second-season episode. 

The Juice, as I like to affectionally call him, was perhaps there on a reconnaissance mission since he would become the show’s fourth black host (don’t worry, they’re all male! Saturday Night Live wasn’t too “woke” back in the day) when he hosted the twelfth episode of the third season on February 25, 1978. 

I don’t remember how Simpson did, but he is a hilarious, lovable guy, so I’m sure he absolutely killed—in the comic sense, of course. 

I’m fascinated by many things about Saturday Night Live (hence this project/newsletter/future book), but I am particularly intrigued by the superstars in the crowd. 

If you look closely, you can spot a Jaws-era Steven Spielberg in a season one episode. Even more fascinatingly, in a clip from the show’s fortieth anniversary (a milestone we can all agree is utterly meaningless compared to lasting a half CENTURY), Dakota Johnson is seated in between Donald Trump and Taylor Swift. 

They are among the most famous, controversial, and talked-about celebrities in the world. The big difference is that one of them is a billionaire, and the other is Donald Trump. 

Why does an ostensibly rebellious, counter-cultural show regularly have professional athletes on as host? While athletes don’t have much experience with sketch comedy, many are familiar with skit comedy, which Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip helpfully informed us, is when the football team players dress up as the cheerleaders and think it's wit. 

The other big reason the show has people like O.J. Simpon and Lance Armstrong host the show is money. Athletes are extremely popular. Having Fran Tarkenton host brought in a whole new audience that might have seen the show as distasteful or unfunny or never really thought about it at all but were curious to see how a favorite athlete would fare as the center of ninety long minutes of live sketch comedy. 

Saturday Night Live turned into a music show with comedy to accommodate Paul Simon’s hosting gigs. Here, it transforms into a sketch comedy show about football. 

Tarkenton plays himself in all of his sketches, many of which are football-themed. Things get off to a rollicking start with a cold open in which John Belushi plays an old-school, Vince Lombardo-style coach, giving the cast, all clad in football gear, a pep talk in which all of the sports cliches are replaced with comedy. 

Belushi returns as a coach throughout the show. It’s a role that comes easily to him since he was the co-captain of his high school football team. 

Nothing wins over audiences quite like being able to make fun of yourself. While Tarkenton stumbles over some self-deprecating remarks about recently losing the Super Bowl, he rebounds by singing “Feelings” while an announcer played by Bill Murray delivers a play-by-play. 

Later in the show, Belushi returns to coach Tarkenton on scoring with a Valley girl airhead played by Laraine Newman.

Tarkenton’s rendition of “Feelings” is supposed to be bad and cheesy, but musical guest Leo Sayer’s “When I Need You”is supposed to be non-ironically good. Instead, it plays like an unintentional parody of an overwrought ballad. 

On “Weekend Update” Jane Curtin responds to letters requesting the return of sexy Chevy Chase by angrily ripping open her shirt, revealing a black bra. 

I’ve read that Curtin, being a straight arrow, was embarrassed by her colleague’s behavior behind the scenes and on the show. So I can only imagine how she must have felt about tearing open her shirt for a gag that doesn’t land, perhaps because her anger feels so real. 

If Curtin happens to be reading this, and I have only written nice things about her, I would be overjoyed to co-write a book about your early years at 30 Rock. I’m thinking of Mortified: My Time at Saturday Night Live as a working title. 

In another sketch that doesn’t comment on racism so much as it is just racist, Tarkenton plays himself talking to an interviewer played by Garrett Morris about the dearth of black quarterbacks in the NFL. 

Tarkenton confidently rattles off extremely racist reasons for this absence, explaining, “Even the black kids in the summer camp I run don’t have it. Sure, they can dance in the end zone; they’ve got the bones in their feet. But when it comes to leadership, one black quarterback on the forty-yard line ends up in the parking lot with a bucket of chicken!” 

He follows it up by asserting, “Garrett, let’s face it – try to be objective. If you were on the offensive line, would you turn your back on a black guy standing behind you? Especially during a night game?”

Rather than refute the star quarterback, the show’s only black cast member enthusiastically agrees. 

Tarkenton wisely isn’t in the show’s funniest, most involved, and ambitious sketches, as none of them required someone to play a quarterback who had recently lost the Super Bowl.

In “Credit Card Counseling,” Gilda Radner and Jane Curtin play consummate New Yorkers trying to one-up one another with increasingly insane, impossible boasts, while in “Amy Carter in School” a pair of Secret Service agents played by Murray and Aykroyd terrorize a classroom in order to ensure that the First Daughter does well on a test. 

Tarkenton does a solid job as a host. In doing so, he proved that jocks can get laughs. If nothing else, Tarkenton proved that there’s a lot more to world-saving sketch (or skit comedy, as it is also rightly known) than football players dressing up like cheerleaders and thinking it is wit. 

Grade: B

Best Sketch: “Amy Carter in School” 

Worst Sketch: Alsatian restaurant 

neat, eh? Man, I LOVE this silly newsletter.