Set the TiVo!

Most (not all) NBC affiliates run a "classic" episode of Saturday Night Live early on Sunday morning around 3:00 AM.  As per usual for the teevee business the term "classic episode" refers to any episode they have on the shelf…though whoever's programming this slot has generally avoided shows from the years when Executive Producer Lorne Michaels was in absentia.  (Apropos of nothing, I recently heard a former SNL cast member say that the three most unlikely events that could happen in this world were an invasion from another planet, the discovery that Hitler and Elvis were both alive, and Lorne Michaels hiring a cast member who was losing his hair.)

Anyway, for the rerun scheduled for this coming Saturday night or Sunday morn, they're reaching back to 1982 and the Ebersol/Eddie Murphy years .  It's the episode hosted by Drew Barrymore during which viewers were asked to call in — at fifty cents a call — and vote whether Andy Kaufman should be banned from the program.  Kaufman had been wrestling women on the show and being generally obnoxious and that led to this phone-in poll, which A.K. expected to win.  And if he didn't win, he expected to return to SNL in his Tony Clifton identity.  Neither of these occurred and he was reportedly quite upset at losing that outlet for his performing.  Kaufman did not appear live on the episode, by the way.

The Saturday PM/Sunday AM SNL reruns are sometimes worth catching because they run the full, as-broadcast 90-minute episodes, as opposed to the hour-long cutdowns that turn up on Comedy Central and E!.  Generally, chopping a Saturday Night Live to an hour improves things by excising a couple of misfire sketches.  But every so often, a treasure gets lost and it's nice to see the shows in their full length.