E-mail buddy Cory Strode bills himself as "The Best Dressed Man in Comics." This is quite a claim until you look at everyone else in comics and see how they dress. At many a comic convention, Emmett Kelly could be a fashion plate. In any case, Cory is also wise in many things, one of them being matters of Monty Python. In response to my earlier item, he sent me the following explanation, which I believe I've heard elsewhere…
Cleese and Palin came to SNL to do the dead parrot sketch as a promotion for a movie coming up…and when they came out, the audience went completely insane, cheering and applauding. They went through the sketch, and there was no laughter…they started to panic, wondering what they were doing wrong, made it through the sketch and were again greeted with thunderous applause, cheering and stomping. Cleese and Palin went off stage, went to Lorne and started apologizing for how they bombed, saying that they were horribly sorry…and Michaels said, "You're kidding, right?" No, they insisted and started to apologize more, and Michaels cut them off, "You weren't watching the audience. They were mouthing the words to the sketch along with you. They didn't hate it, they loved it because they knew it by heart. You're like a band that comes out to perform its greatest hits and the audience sings along. You've become the Beatles."
I wouldn't doubt that Michaels said that to them but I was in the audience at the Hollywood Bowl when those gents performed the sketch for a stadium full of Python fans, every one of whom knew the lines, verbatim. There was riotous laughter and cheering at the close of every sentence. There was no silence because the crowd was mouthing the words along. For that matter, Saturday Night Live audiences seem to express their greatest audible glee when they're getting catch phrases and characters they already know by heart. Familiarity does not stun them into silence. (If it did, Adam Sandler would not have a career.)
So I think Mr. Michaels was just being graceful and soothing. I think the sketch bombed.
Nevertheless, I thank Cory for an alternate theory. He's an enormously bright guy as you'll see when you visit his website and 'blog, which you can do by clicking right, smack-dab here.