User Reviews

Raquel is here with Phoebe Snow & John Sebastien. There are some questionable high jinx & one of the low moments of the entire series. That is when Chevy & Jane do the Claudine Longet Ski Shooting Competition. It is not only questionable taste, but a cheaply done sketch as well.

Some of the other stuff is creative. Lorne Michaels sincere pitch to the Beatles seemed funny to the audience at the time but after getting Simon & Garfunkel to reunite earlier this season, his offer was serious. Sadly the Beatles did not take him up on this offer. It would have been an interesting show as the Beatles never did get back together before John Lennon was murdered.

A take off, One Flew Over The Hornets Nest with Raquel as a sexy Nurse Rachett & Belushi as Nicholson is good. This show has some moments, including John Sebastiens appearance where he starts his song "Welcome Back" & gets interrupted by live feedback on the microphone. He then resets and does it again. At least this tells us he wasn't doing lip syn ch like many artists on SNL have done over the years.

The opening of the show, where Lorne Michaels offers the Beattles $3,000 dollars to reunite and perform on SNL is a classic, and by far the best part of this entire episode. Then it's all down hill after that.

However, one surprising thing about this episode of SNL is that Raqhel Welch opens the show by doing a cover of Karen Carpenter's "Superstar". I didn't even know Raquel Welch could sing until I saw the 18th episode of the 1st season of SNL. And now, I'm absolutely convinced that Requel Welch can't sing. While Raquel's singing isn't horrible to-listen-to. However, her singing voice is very average at best, and instantly forgettable.

On top of that, Pheobe Snow was one of the 2-musical acts booked on the show that night, along with John Sebatian of 'The Loving Spoonfull'. I found Pheobe Snow's singing and song writing so annoyingly awful that even Yoko Ono would walk out of the room. Pheobe Snow was introduced by Raquel as an extremely talented musical genius just before Pheobe's 1st performance. But, does anyone remember hearing a single song by Pheobe Snow on the radio in the 70's, or any other decade? I sure don't.

John Sebatian later performed his hit single at the time "Welcome Back". Which would've been easily the best musical performance of the entire episode. However, unfortunately due to sound problems with his microphone at the beginning of the song, John's live performance seemed uninspired after the rough start.

As for the comedy sketches themselves, other than a running joke about trying to con Raquel Welch into undressing in front of the cameras. Which was pretty funny. The rest of the sketches for the night reminded me of bad high school talent show routines.

Two skits in particular standout in my mind because they at least had a pretty good creative idea behind them like, "One Flew Over the Hornets Nest", a parody of the now classic film "One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest" involving the 'Killer Bees'. And, a sketch called, "Howard Hughes New Golden Bra for Jane Russell", featuring Raquel Welch of coarse. However, neither of these 2 sketches ever panned out comedicly, and ended-up once again coming off as rather amateurish in execution by the end.

In my opinion, there's a reason why no skits from the 18th episode of Season-1 are ever included in the Best of SNL broadcasts or DVD releases, because there are no skits or musical performances in this episode worth remembering, other than that awesome opening bit with Lorne Michaels.