When the last of the original Not Ready for Primetime Players left Saturday Night Live, there was a chance for a new late night sketch comedy series to get a foothold. Jean Doumanian took over from Lorne Michaels and drove SNL into a creative wall. ABC smelled blood in the water and green lit their own late night comedy series that would get jump on the older show by airing on Friday nights. Fridays hit the air almost live from the Los Angeles basin on April 11, 1980 right before the final disappointing episode of SNL. This was perfect timing for a changing of the guard. Sure critics quickly called Fridays a clone of SNL, but SNL was a bad clone of its former glory. Fridays didn’t have too high of a hurdle to become the new king of late night counter culture comedy. The Best of Fridays collects 16 of the 58 episodes that aired.
The first episode has the show playing off the idea that it’s an SNL knock off by dressing the cast in the classic characters from SNL‘s glory years. The cast was completely unfamiliar to viewers and for quite a while after the show went off, none of them were considered the next Bill Murray or even Chevy Chase. But nearly a decade later Michael Richards would become a superstar playing Kramer on Seinfeld. Two of the three major creative entities of Seinfeld would meet on the set with cast member Larry David (Curb Your Enthusiasm) meeting writer Larry Charles (director of Borat). Larry David has a massive balding head of curly hair that makes him look like an academic stalker. There’s no way anyone would predict that he’d become a near billionaire. Monkees’ Mike Nesmith contributes “Police Gynecologist” tv series spoof. Melanie Chartoff (Rugrats) hosted the fake news segment that investigates a muppet slaughter. Kenny Loggins was the musical guest. The DVD only has him playing “Keep the Fire” and deletes “This Is It.” Sadly there are many missing musical moments on the collection. This is frustrating, but seems to be the game when getting music rights. The Cars played three songs on Episode 15, but only “Touch and Go” was cleared for the DVD. This isn’t that bad since “Shoo Be Doo” and “Gimme Some Slack” aren’t that great.
The third episode would be the turning point for the series amongst viewers and affiliates. Fridays scored a major deal by getting The Clash to be their musical guest. The punk legends had just released London Calling and this was their first time on American television. The show laid out the red carpet by letting them perform four songs. “London Calling,” “Train in Vain,” “The Guns of Brixton” and “Clampdown are all here. The episode also contained two sketches that were too much for six ABC affiliates. “Diner of the Living Dead” sends a couple into a zombie restaurant where the patrons are eating human body parts. “Women Who Spit” is a talkshow that features women spitting and talking about spitting. These two sketches got the show yanked from a few markets where the station owners thought that was too disgusting for their audience watching TV after midnight. Sadly my city was one place that lost Fridays. Watching this DVD is a brand new experience.
Graham Parker and the Rumor spread their music on Episode 10. Interestingly enough the extended footage of their concert reunion in This Is 40 is coming out on Blu-ray as This Is Live. Their time on Fridays is a good way to see what they were like in the early days. The musical guests get even better with Dire Straits arriving with “Skateaway” and “Romeo and Juliet.” Episode 24 opens with the epic “The Ronny Howard Picture Show” that turns the cast of the cult film into the Reagan White House. Reagan struts around in his Dr. Frank-N-Furter finest for nearly 15 minutes without an ad break. Rocky Horror producer Lou Adler (the guy who sits next to Jack Nicholson at Lakers games) demanded the show never rerun the sketch because it damaged his movie. Decades later Lou would allow Glee to water down and desexualize the musical. Luckily the entire sketch is here to be enjoyed. Sadly Steve Forberts’ three songs had to be snipped? Why did people connected to Steve Forbert not make a deal? When was the last time you thought about Forbert? Do you even remember him singing “Romeo’s Song?”
Jack Burns introduced the first sketch and acted as the wise old den father to the gang of misfits. Burns was more than some old guy sent over from central casting to appear on camera. He was George Carlin’s early stage partner. He hosted a second season SNL episode. He was the headwriter for the birth of Hee Haw and The Muppet Show. He co-wrote the script for The Muppet Movie. Plus he voiced a Crash Test Dummies from the PSAs. Burns should be treated as royalty and not merely remembered as the guy who threw a punch at Andy Kaufman.
The notorious Andy Kaufman episode is included. The highlight of him quitting on a sketch and getting into a fight with Richards and Burns gets repeated often in Kaufman documentaries. People often ask if it was real or staged. But when you canwatch Kaufman’s antics throughout the night, you know that this is a set up. From the start, Andy pointed out that the show is live and they can’t stop him from doing what he wants. This isn’t the complete episode since the Sir Douglas Quintets three songs are missing. Oh well. They also have the Billy Crystal episode when Andy returned to tell the audience that the fight was staged. But Andy takes the moment to dip into psychodrama.
The third season featured the arrival of Rich Hall to co-anchor the Friday Edition with Melanie Chartoff. It’s amazing how funny Hall is. Granted the studio audience of Fridays mainly reacted to drug references. But Hall is so . Strange to think that producer John Moffitt would take Hall to HBO for Not Necessarily the News to be Mr. Sniglet. Hall would go on to a one year stint on SNL before he’d be reduced to performing on a tragic court show taped on a cruise ship with Victoria Jackson and Dom Irrera.
Fridays gained the same cool factor as SNL with high schoolers simply because of its time slot. In most markets, the series didn’t air until midnight which meant you had to sit through the 11 o’clock news and Nightline. It was also opposite of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson so for a high schooler, there was a major chance the parents weren’t going to surrender the remote control. NBC ultimately went after Fridays by booking the stars of SCTV to make SCTV90. ABC gave the show one shot to take their act primetime and it failed big time. After barely two years on the air, Fridays was unplugged. Can there be a second volume of episodes since there’s still plenty of great guests and musical acts in the vault. Please can we see the King Crimson, Rockpile and Split Enz? Can we see the episode where Andy Kaufman returned with the desire to be a Christian music recording artist? In the end, the legacy of Fridays is a show that made its name with sex, drugs rock and roll plus mocking Ronald Reagan.
The video is 1.33:1 full frame. There’s an odd video glitch in the transfers. The audio is mono. The bands don’t sound bad, but since it was recorded live, there’s a few moments where actors walk away from the boom microphones.
Actor’s Conversation (58:54) lets John Moffitt explain that a recent reunion of the cast and crew is what inspired the DVD release of Fridays. Michael Richards gets a chance to relax instead of be pursued by TMZ cameras. Larry David isn’t there although he’s in the photos for the previous reunion.
Writer’s Conversation (58:52) includes Larry Charles, but no Larry David. Oddly enough, Larry Charles has long grey hair and a beard like Larry David sports in the Clear Memory HBO special. The writers are friendly to each other which is better than the blood feuds that remain on SNL‘s writing staff.
Maryedith Burrell Interview (13:34) lets her discuss how Fridays was West Coast comedy and took advantage of the scene. She talks about the pilot and how it became a clone of Saturday Night Live.
Andy Kaufman Incident – What Really Happened (9:05) goes into the mystery of did Andy really plan out the end of the episode. What’s interesting is that a lot of people knew that it was going to happen, but very few knew other people knew it. This compartmentalization worked to create the perfect TV meltdown moment.
Photo Gallery are dozens of promo pics.
Fridays on the News (8:01) is from Eyewitness Los Angeles. They go behind the scenes to get a big view of how the show is put together.
The Best of Fridays gives a fine sampling of the first show to really scare Saturday Night Live for late night comedy. It’s a shame that musical moments have been cut, but such is the nature of licensing bands for DVD. What’s important is that the four highlights that defined Fridays are on this collection.
Shout! Factory presents The Best of Fridays. Starring: Michael Richards, Larry David, Jack Burns and Melanie Chartoff. Boxset Contents: 16 Episodes on 4 DVDs. Released: August 6, 2013.
