Frank Zappa's Excruciatingly Awkward Saturday Night Live Episode is Nothing Short of a Zapptastrophe!

Milton Berle and Frank Zappa were very different men. They weren’t just different; they were antithetical. Berle was corny and old school, the living personification of television’s deeply embarrassing past. 

Zappa, in sharp contrast, was a sneering provocateur who broadcast his contempt for just about everything, but particularly consumerism, capitalism, materialism and the counterculture. 

Despite their differences Berle and Zappa failed spectacularly as Saturday Night Live hosts in similar ways.

Zappa and Berle had the misplaced audacity to behave as if they were doing Lorne Michaels’ deathless comic institution a favor by hosting a show that was, honestly, beneath them. 

Mr. Television and Moon Unit Zappa’s dad hated their audience but not as much as they hated Saturday Night Live’s live and home audience. 

They did not understand that their job as hosts was to keep things running smoothly, not to impose their personality and will on a show that literally has a different host every episode. 

Berle was too corny for Saturday Night Live. Zappa was too hip. They were both all wrong for the show.

There are two sides to Frank Zappa. One is a huge asshole who despises humanity. The other is ALSO a huge asshole who despises humanity. So really, I guess, there’s only side to Frank Zappa and he thinks you suck.

The raging asshole within Zappa was intent on subverting Saturday Night Live from the inside. He wanted to illustrate that even the hippest, most with it and satirical television shows were still television, and consequently unworthy of respect. 

It was the television equivalent of Kurt Cobain wearing a “Corporate Magazines Still Suck” tee shirt on the cover of Rolling Stone but a much emptier and infinitely more obnoxious gesture. 

Like Berle, Zappa uses the monologue to try to get audiences on his side. He does not realize that the audience for Saturday Night Live is there to see an iconic sketch comedy show, not root for some asshole to steer the show into a brick wall. 

The show gets off to a gracious start. We open with Belushi’s NBC bigwig Fred Silverman announcing that Frank Zappa will be the new face of the network, having signed an exclusive deal with NBC that includes his own sitcom. “You’ll be NBCing a lot of Frank!” Belushi’s Silverman wisecracks, deriving altogether too much enjoyment from his little joke. 

Then Zappa has to actually show up and ruin everything. Everything that Zappa does seems sarcastic and ironic. I’m not just talking about his line readings and inflections or even his gestures and mannerisms; he’s an incorrigible, insufferable smart-ass down to a molecular level. He breathes sarcastically. His blood flows in an ironic fashion. 

Zappa bounds ironically onstage and issues a highly “Hiya, Hiya, Hiya.” After thanking the audience, he tells the audience, “Remember, I’m reading this off these cards underneath this camera here!” 

The foe of censorship and hater of humanity might think that he’s giving the audience a tantalizing glimpse behind the curtain or engaging in Brechtian distancing technique that highlights the artificial nature of the show, and by extension, show business, but really he’s just being a dick. 

That’s the common denominator that unites everything Zappa does here: he’s not being funny. He’s just being a dick. 

Here’s the thing: the audience KNOWS that hosts are reading from cue cards. They can see it with their own eyes and hear it in the halting cadences of hosts. Zappa isn’t exposing the artifice of live television. He’s just telling the audience what it already knows, which is the job of a medium that Zappa has richly merited contempt towards. 

Zappa doesn’t even need to talk to convey superiority, arrogance and contempt. In the show’s portraits of Zappa he has an expression that unmistakably says, “You’re dumb and I’m smart.” 

Zappa follows up the line about the cue cards by announcing, “It’s an awesome responsibility being selected out of millions of people to become the banner of NBC’s new look. God I hope I’m good.”  

By delivering the line with sneering sarcasm Zappa is making fun of lines he himself signed off on and, by extension, the Saturday Night Live writer who wrote them. While sarcasm is almost invariably intended as comic the lines about Zappa being the banner of NBC’s new look weren’t written to be sarcastic so there is a weird disconnect that’s not funny in a conventional way but also doesn’t work as proto-anti-humor. 

Then Zappa slides back into his comfort zone by performing “Dancin’ Fool”, a seminal comedy track about how disco is dumb, and people who like disco and dance to disco are dumb and everything is dumb in general. 

Saturday Night Live went out of its way to make the show as easy and organic as possible for Zappa. He’s a musician not an actor or comedian so he performs three songs, which is one more than just about anyone else gets. 

Zappa is barely in any sketches and when he is in a sketch he’s playing himself. It doesn’t matter. Zappa taints everything he touches. The show is only safe when he’s offscreen or performing music. Thankfully that is much of the time. 

Next comes a Coneheads sketch where alien parents Beldar (Aykroyd) and Prymatt (Curtin) prepare daughter Connie (Newman) for a date by discussing their own romantic histories and the importance of purity. Beldar says that when he got married his cone was untouched with the exception of “those two Flathrags from Meepzor.”

Only Aykroyd could make the phrase “those two Flathrags from Meepzor” sound both natural and vaguely filthy. Aykroyd, Jane Curtin and Laraine Newman were virtuosos by this point. They could do this material blindfolded. 

The only thing that could possibly throw them is sharing a scene with Frank Zappa, who plays Connie’s human date. 

When Beldar asks him his name and Prymatt his job he robotically intones “Frank Zappa” and “I am a musician” in an apparent imitation of Aykroyd and Curtin. 

You know how sometimes you’ll be around someone with a strong accent and you’ll slip into it without knowing and then feel embarrassed when someone points that out to you? That’s Zappa here but he seems thoroughly above everything, including embarrassment. 

Zappa is clearly not supposed to be talking like a Conehead because his delivery is much different afterwards. 

Zappa was supposed to say, “I’m Frank Zappa. I’m a musician. I’m giving a concert and Connie is my special guest” but he forgets the line midway and there is an awkward extended silence between “musician" and “I’m.”

He also mumbles “that should be out there” to no one in particular at one point and nervously interjects, “Oh yeah,” before “Connie.”

For good measure Zappa consistently seems to be looking into the wrong camera. While consuming “mass quantities” alongside Beldar Zappa visibly cracks up. It’s the only time in the show that he seems to be having even an iota of fun. It passes quickly. 

Also, Zappa is chewing gum during a sketch that requires him to both pretend to eat an enormous amount of food and talk extensively. That seems counterproductive and unprofessional. 

Zappa doesn’t appear at all in a sketch about a suburban family that takes in convicts to make money that’s well-written and deftly acted if not particularly funny. Then comes a “Weekend Update” segment highlighted by a scorching point/counterpoint with Jane Curtin and her old nemesis Dan Aykroyd and a non-speaking turn by Brian-Doyle Murray as Sid Vicious. 

Zappa returns as himself in a sketch that parodies old haunted house movies except that the spooky old domicile the innocent winds up at is occupied by a pair of cartoonish hippie stoner freaks who want to get Zappa high. 

The divisive musician was famously sober because it allowed him look down on everybody who used drugs. There are all kinds of different reasons for people to not use drugs but I’m guessing that Zappa’s primary motivation was feeling morally superior to all those weak-minded souls who need to get zooted just to make it in this unconscionably difficult universe. 

During the sketch Zappa will make goofy faces. I don’t know if he made these weird faces because he was nervous or he thought they were funny or they’re related to his contempt for Saturday Night Live as a pop culture institution and television program but they do make you wonder what the hell was wrong with Zappa. 

Then Zappa departs for two sketches and the show instantly and dramatically improves. Gilda Radner and Jane Curtin are a hoot on “Woman to Woman”, a talk show where a bitter single woman tries to get her married guest that marriage is a trial of the damned that she regrets everyday with no success. 

The episode peaks with a very long installment of “The Franken & Davis Show”, a showcase for the comedy writing team of Al Franken and Tom Davis, at least one of whom later became a United States senator. It begins with the duo explaining that they are in favor of the violent overthrow of the government because they are members of the revolutionary Communist Party. 

Then, as an illustration of the inherently corrupt nature of democratic American politics they air a series of fake political commercials from rival candidates played by Franken and Davis that escalate in accusations and intensity until one candidate is stabbing the other to death. 

It’s a very funny sketch from a show that was firing all cylinders aside from a host intent on ruining it rather than enjoying it. 

The episode ends with the cast trudging onstage to shake Zappa’s hand. It has the energy and vibe of two rival softball teams giving each other passionless high fives and murmuring, “Good game” as they shake each others hands without an ounce of conviction or passion. 

Zappa’s disastrous performance here is even more remarkable when you consider that through the decades dozens upon dozens of athletes and politicians and consumer advocates and other non-funny people hosted the show and didn’t make any of the mistakes Zappa did here. 

This was easy enough for Ralph Nader, Steve Forbes, George Steinbrenner, Donald Trump and Wayne Gretzky but comic genius Frank Zappa stumbled his way through an episode that’s historic for all the wrong reasons. 

Failure, Fiasco or Secret Success: Secret Success 

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