Mabuse

The whole reason Eddie was doing Gumby and Our Gang material back in the early ‘80s is that it was utterly ubiquitous at the time on syndicated tv. Everyone knew those characters.

Giantrobo

I guess young white kids wouldn't know Eddie or his characters outside of "Shrek". But young Black Kids sure as fuck know who he is and what he has done.



Eddie Murphy Gives 'SNL' Its Best Ratings in Two Years

Paff

I had actually never seen Gumby until Murphy did his bit, and I always watched afternoon TV after school. I was in the NY area at the time, just like Murphy was, but I never saw Gumby.

But I was very familiar with Little Rascals.

Mabuse

I was in the LA market and it was daily. And Gumby was available on early VHS.

mwbmis

I was a latchkey kid and I never saw any actual Gumby stuff until the mid-80s revival. When Eddie did it in the early 80s I had no idea what he was doing. It was just funny.

bluetoast

I had no idea about the Gumby obscurity until the mid-80s. I knew about the revival, but I always thought he was in the public consciousness. I got into Gumby in the late 80s myself.

Deadman31

Pretty good episode. I like the baking show bit and seeing Buckwheat was unexpected in this pc age. Does anyone know is Dave Chappelle dying? He looked awful up there

covenant

yeah, you’ve already weighed in on that song before.
What do you think about Good as Hell?

Troy Stiffler

I was born in 1983. I remember my parents really pushing Gumby. But I don't remember liking it. It was more about their idea of me liking it.

bluesix

Agreed.

Paff

I swear, some of you guys would go to a Paul McCartney concert and complain that he played Beatles songs, which you weren't around for when they were big.

Even though I think some of the sketches with old characters weren't fully developed, it was still great seeing those classic Murphy characters. Was it fan service? Sure. But as I've said a dozen times, it's those characters that kept the show afloat when it was damn near cancelled. Without Mr. Robinson, Buckwheat, Gumby, there would BE NO SNL today. Surely you can appreciate that. And even if it was before your time, so what? I didn't get into SNL till around 1979, yet I still know that "I'm Chevy Chase and you're not" is an all-time SNL catchphrase.

One big change I would have made with the episode? Instead of Velvet Jones on Black Jeopardy, why not Tyrone ("kill my landlord.....kill my landlord") Green?

The Questyen

The difference being Beatles songs are timeless and hold up to this day. None of these Eddie Murphy characters hold up to being redone in 2019 and if it wasn't for your nostalgia for them you would agree.

Paff

I would indeed have to disqualify myself from that argument, as I did watch those sketches when they aired live.

But is there anyone here, born in say the 80s or later, who has gone back and seen classic Murphy sketches and found them funny, despite discovering them long after originally airing?

Mabuse

His SNL best of video is/was a perennial favorite. Cottonland, the camera commercial with Stevie Wonder, the duet with Paul McCartney but it was Sinatra, of course his legendary bit with Rick Baker. That’s maybe the single greatest thing ever on SNL.

bluetoast

Me. I was born well after Murphy left SNL, and this was a great episode. Every cast member on this episode should thank their lucky stars that they get to say they were on an episode with Murphy. Every SNL cast member from the last 20 years was probably watching and wished this could have happened during their tenure.

I knew about Gumby and Mr. Robinson, but didn’t know details about how they really were portrayed (Gumby being an old performer, Robinson leaving through the window) until I saw a few sketches - a little prior to this episode airing. Saw the one where he walked the streets as a white guy which was still solid.

Paff

Since we're talking about Murphy's genius work on SNL, I thought some of his best bits were his ad-libs. A lot are hard to find, but I know one is on the Best Of compilation, where he was the angry historian complaining about how two white professors ("Professor Jif" and "Professor Skippy") stole George Washington Carver's idea for a peanut-based butter solution. He blows a line, and in character says "Yeah, I messed up. So what??"

But there was the Stevie Wonder episode, where they had a sketch with Stevie playing a bad Stevie Wonder impersonator. So Eddie, the talent buyer, has to show him how to act and sing like Stevie. First off, just that concept is ballsy, and Stevie was a really good sport to do it. But then when Stevie was singing his off-key rendition of "My Cherie Amour", he messes up a bit, and Eddie without missing a beat says "See man? You don't even know the words!"

Mabuse

Also, the thing about Eddie on SNL back then, and he recreated perfectly last week, is almost everything he did had this sort of underlying tone of “I’m pissed off just for having to be here.” It gives a unique edge to everything he did.

Mabuse

Here’s his whole best of.



https://dai.ly/x2ix03e


At 20:20 is the George Washington Carver bit where he breaks character almost immediately and gets over the top angry. Amazing stuff.

JeffTheAlpaca

JJ Watt will host the Feb 1 show the day before the Super Bowl