DAY 21. Free Space!

Aired on February 13, 1982, this 90-minute bizarro sketch comedy pilot was co-executive produced by Steve Martin. NBC was trying to figure out what to do to relieve the pressure on Saturday Night Live‘s grueling production schedule, so they preempted SNL for a week to give Steve’s brain-child a test drive. What we got was a head-on collision between old-school variety show cheese and the new-wave, cocaine-fueled, anarchic comedy of the early 80s.

The framing device is honestly the best part. It plays like a parody of Masterpiece Theatre, celebrating the show’s 25th season. The legendary Roddy McDowall hosts from a plush wingback chair, wearing a tuxedo and cape, seated beneath oil portraits of the cast members (women included), all in formal wear, holding pipes. It sets you up for some high-concept satire. Instead, you get greeted by a black guy in drag humming the theme from Gone With the Wind and then things get really weird.

Like any pilot, this thing throws everything at the wall to see what sticks. Some of it is pure late-night genius; some of it makes you wonder if the writers’ room was just a pile of loose scripts and paranoia.

• Playhouse Minus-One: This is the absolute crown jewel of the special. It’s a Civil War melodrama where the camera is the main character, a Southern belle named Mary Lou. You play Mary Lou, and your dialogue flashes on the screen with stage directions, and actors like George Peppard, Michael York and Steve Martin wait patiently for you to deliver your lines at home. It culminates in Steve Martin aggressively making out with the camera lens. 
• Auto Interruptus: Steve Martin plays a guy driving a carpool of three dudes to work. He turns on a radio talk show only to hear his own wife blabbing to the host about his terrible sexual performance. The punchline? She’s sleeping with all three guys in his carpool. It’s a dark, cynical take on the mockery of 80s machismo.
• Women Who Have Made It With Me: Martin Mull hosts a talk show where he interviews three of his ex-lovers, only for them to systematically dissect how completely unmemorable he was in bed. 
• The No-Arms Bandits: Martin Mull plays a bank robber with no arms. He holds up a couple with a gun in his mouth, but the victims can’t understand his muffled orders, and he steals their wallets out of their pockets using his teeth. 
• Party in My Pants: A literal interpretation of the phrase in a song written by Robert Haimer and Billy Mumy, better known as Barnes & Barnes. You watch well-dressed people shrink down and disappear into the giant pant cuff of a derelict’s trousers to dance to disco music. It’s a classic Steve Martin concept—absurd merely for the sake of being absurd.

Plus, you get Harry Anderson (right before Night Court fame) playing an overage grade-school pervert and a hidden-camera sketch where Steve Martin tries to romance a girl using a series of terrible visual puns (she asks for flowers, he brings her cooking flour; she tells him to “stuff it,” so he slam-dunks a basketball in his bedroom).

Because it’s 1982, the musical interludes are delightfully all over the place. You get a performance by the legendary Devo, some cowboy yodeling from Riders in the Sky and the Temple City Kazoo Band playing Strauss. 

The critics at the time absolutely hated this. They complained about the obtrusive, unconvincing laugh track that sounded like a drunk guy guffawing at his own jokes. They called it tedious, juvenile and a pale imitation of Fridays or SNL.

But looking back at it now through the lens of obscure television history? It’s a fascinating time capsule. It sits right in that awkward transitional phase where comedy was trying to evolve past the Carol Burnett Show format but hadn’t quite figured out how to sustain that new-wave, anarchic energy for a full 90 minutes.

The cast includes Candy Clark, Rosemary Clooney (singing on a show called “Common Nightmares”), Pam Dawber, Shelley Duvall, Bill Murray, Carl Reiner, Rick Moranis, Mr. T, Leslie Neilsen, Betty Thomas and even Pee-wee Herman, fresh off his Groundlings days and his 1981 HBO special, performing a bit of The Pee-wee Herman Show on network TV before the world even knew what hit ’em. This was written by Jim Fisher and Jim Staahl from SCTV; Carmen Finestra, the writer and executive producer who guided The Cosby Show and co-created Home Improvement; Gary Jacobs, who would go on to write for Newhart and create Empty Nest; SNL writer Kevin Kelton and sitcom vet Jeffrey Barron. They were joined in the writer’s room by executive producer Neal Israel, who, along with Pat Proft, pretty much shaped 80s movie humor. Or they made Police Academy. Director Perry Rosemond worked on a variety of shows and directed episodes of Bizarre.

It ends with Steve Martin doing his classic stand-up routine in front of a giant American flag, reciting the ridiculous things he believes in. There’s a second one of these with Leslie Nielsen hosting, and you better believe I’m looking for it now.

You can watch this on YouTube.