November 13, 1976, Dick Cavett is the host and Ry Cooder is the Musical Guest 

Here's some stuff that happened in the past

Saturday Night Live began repeating itself early. Audiences for its second season undoubtedly experienced a feeling of deja vu over hosts like Lily Tomlin, Buck Henry, Dick Cavett, Candice Bergen, Elliott Gould, and Paul Simon, all of whom hosted in the first season. Audiences for its second season undoubtedly experienced a feeling of deja vu over hosts like Lily Tomlin, Buck Henry, Dick Cavett, Candice Bergen, Elliott Gould, and Paul Simon, all of whom hosted in the first season. 

It’s easy to see why Lorne Michaels kept inviting hosts back. With a returning host, the show didn’t have to start from scratch. A returning host understood the assignment. A returning host understood the process. A returning host understood how things worked. And if they were being asked back, it was probably because they’d done a good job the first time, and the cast and crew enjoyed working with them. 

That was Dick Cavett. Television’s most loquacious interviewer embraced an opportunity to show the world that he was funny as well as intellectual. Cavett was a good boy and a smart boy. Appearing on Saturday Night Live illustrated that he could be a funny boy and a naughty boy. 

Having Cavett as host made the show smarter. Hosting made Cavett cooler but also more ribald. Instead of a monologue, Cavett answers questions from the audience in a way that strongly suggests that he saw them in advance and had time to dream up funny answers. Many of the questions involved the famous talk show host’s dong and other decidedly non-cerebral subjects. 

Cavett returned to 30 Rock at a very uncertain, transitional time. Chevy Chase, the show’s big breakout star, had left the episode before. Bill Murray, his replacement, would not debut for another few episodes. He would be introduced in the Ralph Nader episode. 

Chase isn’t entirely absent, however. In a taped bit, he plays himself as the star of a new NBC drama, Mobile Shrink, an amusing fake spiel for a show about a psychiatrist who meets his patients where they live and work. 

You FEEL the episode’s ninety minutes here. A sketch about John Dean (Cavett) scheming seems to last a veritable eternity despite Dan Aykroyd’s dead-on take on Richard Nixon and John Belushi’s equally convincing Henry Kissinger. 

The Bees are the first recurring characters to wear out their welcome and test the audience’s patience. In another sketch that seems to last a half hour, John Belushi’s intensely ethnic bee recounts how he tried to assimilate among WASPs upon immigrating to America, only to be the subject of intense anti-bee bigotry. 

Saturday Night Live had exhausted every bit of bee-themed wordplay by this point. They were reduced to puns, famously the lowest form of humor outside of gay panic and prop comedy. 

In its outlaw early years, Saturday Night Live was infamous for its sexual innuendos, profanity, and drug references. Still, it also managed to fit a surprising amount of violence into the proceedings. 

In another sketch that seems to last several eternities, John Belushi plays an earnest young man trying to get through to his narrow-minded father. Instead of listening, the father, played by Dan Aykroyd, pummels him with his fists. Then, he appeals to his mother (Gilda Radner), who also smacks him. 

Then Dick Cavett’s priest enters the picture and continues the physical abuse. It’s a sketch that offers nothing but facile shock and meaningless violence. Still, it’s preferable to a fake ad for the Marines starring Garrett Morris as a man in uniform who loves a fellow man in uniform that exploits the homoeroticism endemic in the Marines’ “We looking for a few good men” slogan. 

Jane Curtin debuts as Chevy Chase’s replacement as the anchor of “Weekend Update.” There are a few minor technical glitches, but it’s nevertheless an assured and very funny performance from a woman who was honestly too goddamned beautiful to be so funny and talented. It took one episode to have me saying, “Chevy who?” 

The show returns to its beloved drug references in a commercial for Puppy Uppers and Doggy Downers for the dog that needs to be artificially perked up or wound down. It’s a quick blast of subversion on an episode where everything seems to last too long. 

The final 15 minutes of Saturday Night Live is a weird universe in itself. The show assumes, not without reason, that a lot of the audience is asleep or too stoned to pay attention, so it tends to run its weirdest and most conceptual pieces when it matters least. 

In the early years, that meant that the comedy and writing team of Franken & Davis got rare showcases, first in a series of deeply tedious pieces revolving around the game Pong and then in more ambitious, visually dynamic pieces. 

Franken, who looks like a goddamn high school student, and Davis play linguistic scientists running a survey involving words that make Franken nearly vomit in inexplicable disgust. 

In a deeply dorky middle-aged dad development, I was so impressed by musical guest Ry Cooder that I listened to one of his early albums on Amazon Music. It’s really good! The man can play guitar. There is a reason he’s considered one of our greatest living musicians. 

In its first post-Chase episode, the show struggled, but even at its weakest, it was capable of moments of greatness. 

Grade: C+

Best sketch: Puppy Uppers/Doggy Downers 

Worst sketch: “Crossroads” 

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