Since the beginning of Saturday Night Live , the show has been something of an anti-television show, turning the medium on its head with endless fake commercials and parodies of TV shows themselves. The most common style of their recurring sketches has been the talk show format. However, anything from cop shows to children's shows has been fair game for the ever-changing cast.
Sketches with TV show themes are listed here chronologically. Some TV show sketches do not appear here, because they fit into one of the other categories listed below.
Character lists: Alphabetical and Chronological
Character categories:
- Weekend Update characters
- Short-lived characters
- Animal sketches
- Musical sketches
The Mr. Bill Show
Mr. Bill is the clay figurine star of a series of short subjects shown from 1976 to 1980 on Saturday Night Live (SNL). The "Mr. Bill Show" was a parody of children's shows.
Mr. Bill got its start when Walter Williams sent SNL a Super-8 reel featuring the character in response to the show's request for home movies during the second season. Williams became a full-time writer for the show in 1978, writing more than 20 skits based on Mr. Bill.
Each Mr. Bill episode would start innocently enough but would quickly turn dangerous for Mr. Bill. Along with his dog, Spot, he would suffer various indignities inflicted by Mr. Hands, a man seen only as a pair of hands (played by Vance DeGeneres).
Sometimes the abuse would ostensibly come from the mean Mr. Sluggo, another clay character. (However, Mr. Hands did most of the violence himself, because Sluggo would tell him to, i.e. "Mr. Sluggo says to...") The violence would inevitably escalate, generally ending with Mr. Bill being crushed or dismembered while squealing, "Ohhhh noooooooooooooo..."
Characters: Mr. Bill, Mr. Hands, Spot, Sluggo, Miss Sally, Mr. Bill's Mom & Sluggo Clones.
The character's popularity spawned the 1986 live-action movie Mr. Bill's Real Life Adventures , which did poorly at the box office.
Beyond SNL
- In the 1980s, Mr. Bill was featured in advertising spots for Pringles Butter and Herb flavored Potato Chips, where he gets run over by a can of Pringles and says "oh no". In 1988, Mr. Bill also appeared in a series of anti-drug announcements which showed him engaging in various activities such as basketball until Sluggo would bury him under a bunch of pills, in which the tagline would be "Say OH NO! to drugs".
- In the 1990s, Williams created a series of Mr. Bill-like advertising spots for Pizza Hut, featuring "Pizza Head" in the usual Mr. Bill role and a pizza cutter named "Steve" in the Sluggo role.
- In 1998, Mr. Bill was given his first television series in nearly 20 years, which was titled Ohh No!!! Mr. Bill Presents and aired on the Fox Family Channel. As well as featuring typical Mr. Bill-type skits, other sketches, most notably ones from British personality Mr. Bean, were present in the one-hour variety show. It lasted forty episodes.
- In 2004, Mr. Bill was part of a campaign aimed at teaching people, especially children, about the loss of Louisiana's coastal marshes and swamps. According to CNN, one segment predicted the effects of a hurricane on New Orleans about a year and a half before Katrina.
- In early December 2008, Mr. Bill became one of Subway's spokesmen, along with Mr. Hands. In the commercial, Mr. Bill learns how to make bread with Mr. Hands, but suddenly Chef Sluggo comes in to roll the dough. But Sluggo never gets a chance to hurt Mr. Bill, as a boulder comes and crushes the whole Subway restaurant with both characters inside. When Mr. Hands finds Mr. Bill flattened with the dough on the side of the boulder, he says, "Great idea, Mr. Bill! Flatbread!"
- MasterCard has enlisted Mr. Bill for one of its "Priceless" ads, which officially began airing on June 9, 2008. It is interesting to note that the commercial was noticeably nicer to Mr. Bill. Although he was thrown around as he usually is, he isn't crushed as in the SNL sketches. The commercial starts with Mr. Bill being served coffee by Mr. Hands (coffee: $2). Mr. Hands fills the cup too much causing the coffee to spill all over the floor and Mr. Bill, but Mr. Bill takes it with good nature, saying, "I always wanted brown shoes. Yay!" Next, Mr. Hands tells Mr. Bill at a gym, "Your fitness instructor says to take it up a notch. " He turns the treadmill all the way up and drops Mr. Bill on it, causing him to fly across the gym. Luckily, Mr. Bill lands safely on a stationary bike, where he says, "Hey! There's a bike open!" Next, Mr. Bill is seen in his luxurious office, where Mr. Hands helps him unpack his suitcase (suitcase: $18). When the suitcase opens, it knocks into Mr. Bill, sending him flying out the window. He lands on the windshield of a bus, where he remarks, "Hey, the bus is right on schedule!" He is then knocked off the bus by its windshield wipers as the commercial ends (Getting through the day: Priceless).
External links
- Mr. Bill's website
- Mr. Bill and the Estuarians Begin Filming
- Vance Degeneres' Official Website
Consumer Probe
Toy maker Irwin Mainway (Dan Aykroyd) would appear on this talk show and hopelessly defend his company's extremely dangerous products such as "Bag O' Glass", "Bag O' Vipers", "Bag O' Sulfuric Acid", "Mr. Skin Grafter", "Pretty Peggy's Ear Piercing Kit", "Doggy Dentist", "Chancellor Tron's Secret Police Confession Kit", "Johnny Switchblade Adventure Punk", and "Chainsaw Teddybear". A sketch frequently aired by SNL on their Halloween retrospective special had Mainway defending Halloween costumes such as a military outfit that included an actual working rifle ("very popular in Detroit!"), an entirely black and non-reflective uniform called "Invisible Pedestrian" (which had a warning on the package that read "NOT FOR BLIND KIDS"), an airtight plastic bag that was to be affixed over the head with a rubber band called "Johnny Space Commander Mask", and an oil-soaked costume called "Johnny Human Torch", which came complete with an oversized lighter. Each sketch would end with the host (Jane Curtin) condemning Mainway's products, while Mainway would make pathetic attempts to show how more commonplace toys/clothing were equally harmful.
E. Buzz Miller and Christie Christina
Sleazy public access host E. Buzz Miller (Dan Aykroyd) made crude and lascivious remarks about otherwise commonplace subjects (such as fine art or exercise) to which his ditzy co-host Miss Christie Christina (Laraine Newman) would giggle and make obtuse responses.
The Continental
This character has been played six times by Christopher Walken so is technically not short-lived (four appearances or less). He is a stereotypical middle-aged European playboy who refuses to be put off, after he has attracted a woman to his apartment. His approach is non-violent but also hilariously uncharming. Camera angles are always from the woman's view.
Leonard Pinth-Garnell
Leonard Pinth-Garnell was a recurring character played by Dan Aykroyd. Pinth-Garnell, always clad in a tuxedo and black tie, would lugubriously introduce a short performance of "Bad Conceptual Theater", "Bad Playhouse", "Bad Cinema", "Bad Opera", "Bad Ballet", "Bad Red Chinese Ballet", or "Bad Cabaret for Children", and then exult in its sheer awfulness. Aykroyd played the character nine times from 1977 through 1979, and returned for a single appearance on November 3, 2001, introducing "Bad Conceptual Theater." (The show was hosted at least one time by Laraine Newman as Lady Pinth-Garnell .)
Pinth-Garnell was loosely based on the longtime PBS Masterpiece Theatre host Alistair Cooke.
Memorable quotes
- "Stunningly bad!"
- "Monumentally ill-advised!"
- "Perfectly awful!"
- "Couldn't be worse!"
- "Exquisitely awful!"
- "Astonishingly ill-chosen!"
- "Really bit the big one!"
- "Unrelentingly bad!"
- "Rally socks!"
- "There... That wasn't so good now, was it?"
Episodes featuring Leonard Pinth-Garnell
- March 13, 1977 host: Sissy Spacek
- April 9, 1977 host: Julian Bond
- May 14, 1977 host: Shelley Duvall
- October 8, 1977 host: Madeline Kahn
- December 10, 1977 host: Mary Kay Place
- March 18, 1978 host: Jill Clayburgh
- May 20, 1978 host: Buck Henry
- November 18, 1978 host: Carrie Fisher
- February 24, 1979 host: Kate Jackson
- November 3, 2001 host: John Goodman
The Ex-Police
Joe and his ex-partner Bob (Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray) are two cops that were kicked off the force (apparently for being intrusive bigots) that harass the people that live in their apartment building for not living up to their arch-conservative standards (a man and a woman living together without being married, an allegedly lesbian couple, etc.) with disastrous results.
The Franken and Davis Show
SNL writing partners Al Franken and Tom Da
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