* Caution: This may have spoilers. *

If only one thing about this otherwise sub-par episode was worth saving, it was the installment of "Weekend Update with Chevy Chase." ("The official news broadcast of the 1976 Olympic Games," announcer Don Pardo solemnly proclaimed.) With a particular teletype SFX heard only once on the show (but in use at the time on one of the local New York TV news broadcasts), Chevy was in particular form, from his opening remarks to the anti-climactic end with the phone call about the Democratic convention. A particular highlight was John Belushi, standing in front of a chroma-key blue background, wearing glasses and sporting a slight Eastern European accent, interviewing Olga Korbut (Gilda Radner) about Nadia Comaneci's victory at the Summer Olympics in Montreal. One of her answers was spoken in plain English and involved wanting to stick a balance beam in Nadia's eye - but Belushi "interpreted" her comments with such twaddle as along the lines of "wishing Nadia the very best" and "very appreciative to be part of the Olympics." Eventually Gilda would play Ms. Comaneci herself. And of course, here was the last of Chevy's fake "file reports," this time from "correspondent Leon James" about the Viking spacecraft, which didn't even finish as they prematurely cut back to him in the studio after the simulated Martian landing scenario went awry. Too bad the rest of this episode, for every reason cited, didn't measure up . . .

Here is where it all began for Benny Hill at Thames Television, after years of shuttling back and forth between the BBC and ATV. Though the episode moved a tad slower than editions to follow, this show did bring such classics to the fore as the "Lower Tidmarsh Hospital Service" sketch (with Jackie Wright as a patient going in for an operation and all the misadventures happening therein); the sound delay interview where Benny as a viscountess gives answers to the previous questions; the Russian Zone sketch where a newlywed couple is caught in the crosshairs of Cold War tensions right in their honeymoon suite; and of course, the mammoth "European Song Contest" sketch with Benny as all the main contestants and (in a bit cut out of U.S. syndication) hostess Katie Boyle (whose name was "Hill-ized" to "Katie Boiler"). It is here that Boots Randolph's "Yakety Sax" was first used on the show - three times: in the opening "Ye Olde Wishing Well" sketch (with a pre-Darth Vader David Prowse as the strongman), the opening moments of the hospital sketch, and the part with which the song would forever be associated: the ending runoff. Not to mention "Yakety Sax'" being as synonymous with "TBHS" as John Philip Sousa's "Liberty Bell March" would be with "Monty Python's Flying Circus" (another show which began in this year of 1969).

Actually, the entire 1977 series pointed the way for the future direction of the show, insofar as: a) Sue Upton made her first appearances this year, b) Ted Adcock was film cameraman (he would be cinematographer for the outdoor sequences on all but two shows in the years 1980-85), and c) Lorraine Doyle, one of the most prominent Hill's Angels in the show's last years, also debuted here, first as a member of the Love Machine and, on the next show, as one of the supporting cast. But this show in particular was a turning point in that it was the first show on which Benny did not say his customary good nights ("Thank you for being with us, and we look forward to seeing you all again very, very soon") - going instead from the "Double Date" sketch (a one-off attempt to revive his "Layabouts" type of sketch he had done on and off since the 1950's) directly to a filmed segment called "Scouts and Guides Annual Fete" which ended in a chase that commenced as the end credits began to roll. This development ended up being the template for the final years of the show, where an episode went from one sketch or quickie to an elaborately constructed silent, mostly filmed sketch that ended in a runoff over which the credits rolled - and no "good nights" from The Lad Himself.

* Caution: This may have spoilers. *

While the 1982 series seemed to show Benny and his cohorts running on autopilot and the show becoming increasingly rote and formulaic, this season seemed to reach a particular nadir in terms of taste (or lack thereof). I'm talking specifically about the "Superteech" sketch. While ordinarily Benny playing an inept, ridiculously-costumed superhero would have potential for a laugh riot, it's who he's battling that is the issue here - and may well have been the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back, in the sense of the "politically correct's" escalating war against Mr. Hill and his show; it may not be a coincidence that after this season the programme came under increasing scrutiny from censors and, with a new choreographer in tow, began toning down the racier parts of the Hill's Angels act (as exemplified in this year by the double-jointed Corinne Russell) - not that it did any good in the end, mind you, given his disappearance from the airwaves in his own country after 1989. You see, here "Superteech" is battling, in essence, an S&M dominatrix who has guards goosestepping a la the Nazis. And the crux of the plot - a princess from a (fictitious) Middle Eastern country who's enrolled in the school where Benny's professor is on faculty, being abducted by said dominatrix - also served to make this perhaps my least favorite moment out of the entire series. It's also, I.M.H.O., one of two examples of how comedy and S&M don't mix - the other being the misbegotten Dan Aykroyd / Rosie O'Donnell movie "Exit to Eden."

In the 50 or so minutes this episode ran, are contained many of the fan favourites one can recite in one's sleep. Benny's opening "The Beach of Waikiki." The legendary "Gavin Blod" sketch. The Tennessee Williams spoof "Long Dry Summer." The talent(less) show spoof "Newer Faces." But even in the material not seen by Americans until the latest DVD set was released, there are gems. The last part of "Newer Faces" with Mr. Hill as the host and all the panelists (one of whom had been his record producer in the 1960's!). The "Host of All-Time Favourites" segment which would open many a show on and off for the next five years. Lee Gibson's knockout performance of "The Moment of Truth," which in a sense foreshadowed her current reputation as one of the world's premier jazz singers - and not just her Ella Fitzgeraldesque scat singing during the instrumental break, as this tune had also been recorded many years before by American jazz/pop legend Tony Bennett. In short, as Hill in disguise as Clifford Davis in "Newer Faces" would put it, "All in all, a resounding success."