Saturday Night Live

This volume features Tom Hanks' work on Saturday Night Live, from his first appearance on the ill-fated '85-'86 season through the late nineties, but the majority of the material deals with the Hartman-Lovitz years, my personal favorite cast. Hanks and Lovitz, in particular, are paired quite often, especially in their frequent "Girl Watchers" sketches and an audience interview segment with Lovitz asking Hanks who his favorite performer on the show was (and he doesn't stop until he hears Jon Lovitz). Some of the stuff is familiar--the Wayne's World represented here is the Aerosmith one, and that and "Jew, not a Jew" were available on the videotape. However, there are a LOT of sketches here that will likely not see the light of day again, like Hanks, Damon Wayans, and others playing stand-up comics who deliver every line in their lives like a stand-up act, the really funny "Five-Timers" sketch, which centers around an exclusive club where five-time hosts reside (with SNL poking a little fun at its rarefied image), and a sketch where Hanks plays a loving husband that occasionally fantasizes that his wife is dead.