Season: 2 (The Sonny & Cher Show)
Episode: 15
Guest(s): Charo, Wayne Rogers, Carol Burnette
CBS Air Date: October 17, 1976
Also aired: Never re-aired
Opening Song: “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” (Audio)
Cover of Elton John and Kiki Dee (1976)
Breakout: Yes, of course it’s Alvin and Laverne. Oy. Alvin tells Laverne he has heard that Sonny is one of the richest TV stars. Bartender Ted Zeigler points to the TV and asks, “from doing that??”
Opening Banter: Sonny tells Cher he likes her dress and that she fills it out well. He asks her if she likes his new suit and Cher tells him it’s okay, he fills it out OK. She says it makes him look taller. Sonny says, no that’s actually just his shoes. They’re higher this year. (That’s actually pretty funny.) They talk again about the election.
Mother Goose: Cher doing her Mae West impression.
+ Charo plays Little Bo Peep at a police station to report her missing sheep. Sonny is the cop filling out the forms and can’t understand her due to her Charo accent. (That sounds kinda funny too.)
+ Cher and Charo dressed as little girls sing “What Girls Are Made Of.” This might be a song original to the show. Not sure.
+ Wayne Rogers is the Colonel (in a Kentucky Fried Chicken spoof) selling pea porridge to Sonny, claiming he has sold over 6 million pea porridges, all of them “finger lickin’ good.”
The Prisoner: Sonny is happy because he gets a conjugal visit with Cher after three years. He predicts to the guard, (Ted Zeigler, who seems to be the only remaining cast member this season), that Cher will have only one thing on her mind when she comes in and that will be “sleep.” Cher is tired when she arrives and Rocco tells her she needs to go to bed at night. Cher claims she does go to bed, she just doesn’t do any sleeping. She pulls out a sexy nightgown from her bag and says, “I brought your favorite nightie. You are the one who likes it, aren’t you?” In the end, Cher begs off, being too tired for the conjugations. This is yet another skit that explores the idea of Cher as a promiscuous femme-fetal, but a new liberated incarnation of this character type who never gets any comeuppance.
Laverne: Back at the bar, Alvin says he read in “Teen Tiger Fan Magazine” that Sonny & Cher are only using their show as a stepping stone to get to the circus. Laverne quips that Sonny should be used to working with high platforms but “can he sing without a net?” A drunken bartender Ted Zeigler interjects apropos of nothing that Annette was one of his favorite Mouseketeers. Carol Burnette walks into the bar as herself and says she is lost and looking for Hollywood. Laverne tells her to forget about Hollywood. Due to her looks, she’ll never make it. Alvin asks Laverne if she knows who she’s talking about. He tells her this is a big star! Vicki Lawrence! Burnette and Laverne trade insults about their respective figures and Burnette leaves.
Cher Solo: “Ain’t Misbehavin” (Audio)
From the Broadway musical Connie’s Hot Chocolates (1929)
Cher also sang this song on episode #15 of the Comedy Hour. In this version, Cher wears a short blonde wig and a black gown with sequins in the front and featherlike, red sleeves.
Guest Skit: Roving Rogers interviews Milo Henderson (Sonny) who has just flown the Supersonic Concorde twenty times and now has reverse jet lag, meaning that he’s living two seconds into the future and can answer Rogers’ questions before he asks them.
Skit: Charo and Sonny play honeymooners in a three-room house that spans three countries. They can dine in Austria, make love in Italy and bathe in France. But they can’t do any of these things because border guards are at each door telling them their documents aren’t in order. Charlo gets into the bedroom (Italy) but Sonny can’t get in. Presumably Charo is carrying on with the border patrol in Italy off camera. Sonny says, “Honey, as long as you’re in Italy, can you bring me back a pizza for breakfast?”
Concert: “Fooled Around and Fell In Love” / “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again” (Audio)
Cover of Elvin Bishop with Mickey Thomas (1976) and Eric Carmen (1976)
Again the contemporariness of these song choices is kind of freaky to me. Not that S&C didn’t cover very contemporary songs on their other shows. It’s just that in my own mind I had organized two buckets of songs in this world: the songs during S&C and the songs after S&C and these songs were in the wrong bucket is all. Jay notes that in this concert segment, the backdrop is black for one song and red for the other and they’re without their band. Their heads show in silhouettes within each other’s closeup shots.
Skit: Another “In the Beginning” skit where Ted Zeigler explains to Wayne Rogers the myth of how banks started and operate.
Operetta: “I Am the Hotel” (take on Barry Manilow’s “I Write the Songs”). During the roaring 1920s, Wayne plays Florenz Ziegfeld who checks into a hotel while starting his Ziegfeld Follies. Sonny plays gangster John Dillinger Cher play a wealthy Mrs. Van Snootington and Charo plays Eliza Doolittle from My Fair Lady. What a mashup! Dillinger holds everyone in the lobby hostage because he wants to be in show business. Ziegfeld asks him if he can dance. They all dance and Wayne Rogers dips with Sonny. All of the Ziegfeld girls have broken their legs, Zeigfeld finds out, and so everyone in the lobby becomes the new Follies. They do a medley of movie tunes with new lyrics.
IGUB: Fade to Alvin and Laverne again before the end again. Zoinks. They thank their guests. Sonny says it’s nice to thank the guests but “we never thank ourselves and we do the whole show.” Cher says this is a good point and she takes the opportunity to thank “someone who’s really a good performer and the greatest pleasure that show biz has ever seen. Let’s hear it!” The audience responds and Sonny pats her on the shoulder thinking she’s referring to him. He says “thank you. That’s really nice of you, pal.” and Cher says, “I know. Now what can we say about you?” They sing the full closing song.
Thanks to Jay for entirety of the run-down on this episode, especially since it hasn’t re-aired and there’s no guide for these later-day episodes.
Highlights: The liberated Prisoner sketches. Some funny sounding sketches with Charo.
