Season: 2 (The Sonny & Cher Show)
Episode: 13
Guest(s): Barbara Eden and The Smothers Brothers
CBS Air Date: October 3, 1976
Also aired: TVLand, GetTV
Opening Song: “Heaven Must Be Missing an Angel” (Video)
Cover of Tavares (1976)
When they walk onstage, from the audience shot, someone is actually pumping a fist. It’s pretty funny. The same person does it at the very end of the song. Sonny & Cher are wearing brown and gold again, Sonny in a brown suit and Cher’s dress has gold tassels and a pleated gold skirt. This is one of my favorite outfits of this second show. Sonny ‘s hair is getting longer. Sonny grows when he sings, “love your sexiness.” Big finish!
Breakout: Back at the bar with Alvin and Laverne watching The Sonny & Cher Show again. Laverne calls them “two bozos” but turns out she’s confusing Sonny & Cher with Donnie & Marie. Alvin claims Sonny & Cher must be identical twins. The bartender invents a Sonny & Cher cocktail that entails a short, little shot on the side.
Opening Banter: Sonny wants to tell “the people” some things they don’t know about Cher, “which is hard,” he complains. This is a reference to the fact that in 1976 Cher is on the cover of almost every magazine and in tabloid. He calls her a “free-thinker, a woman who knows her own mind.” They then talk about who they will vote for in the upcoming U.S. presidential election. Cher is supporting Jimmy Carter and Sonny is supporting Gerald Ford. This might have been the first inkling American had that Sonny was not the liberal hippie he once purported to be. Sonny makes one of the peanut-farmer jokes that were popular at the time.
My family saw this episode and then later gaslit me about Cher’s political affiliations. If I had seen any part of this episode at age six, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have known what the hell was going on anyway.
But in fact, Cher and Gregg Allman were heavily invested in Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign, as Allman was still a part-time a resident of Georgia and supporter of Carter as the state’s Governor. Later, Carter claimed The Allman Brothers put him in the White House with their fundraising. Cher and Allman were invited to Carter’s inaugural ball after he won.
Jimmy Carter also attended Gregg Allman’s funeral.
Duet with Guest (Video)
Cher (in pink) and Barbara Eden (in yellow) wearing complementary polka dot dresses sing about how they innocently thought they’d make it in Hollywood or Broadway. But that’s all very dull. The new Babylon is Washington, D.C. Then dressed in pink and yellow gowns with pink and yellow boa trims and their hair swept up to the side, they sing a song about the Women of Washington. They sing about current political scandals. My notes say this goes on and on and it’s long and boring.
The Prisoner: I’ve starred this one. Cher claims this is her last goodbye to Rococo. Her friend Dr. Zimmerman has left her eight million dollars. Roccos says, “I’m gonna kill you when I get outa here.”
Skit: My notes say that next to The Smothers Brothers, Sonny & Cher look very short. We’re on the old Smothers Brothers set. The Smothers Brothers claim this is their last appearance on TV as a team and they all four sing “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do.” Cher says this is very sad because their old CBS show was the first show Chastity ever watched. This gag likens the brothers to the situation of Sonny & Cher. There’s an alimony joke and they talk about other acts that have broken up. The Smothers Brothers of course continued appearing on television periodically and did other comedy tours together again.
Cher Solo: “I’m Easy” (Video)
Cover of Keith Carradine from the movie Nashville (1975)
Cher wears what appears to be sexy Victorian pajamas, (a real ruffle-rama). Her hair is up, Victorian-style. She’s framed in gauzy dark-blue material. At the start, she does that thing where she lackadaisically twirls her microphone around. I love this song. Keith Carradine also wrote it and the song won an Academy and a Golden Globe award for Best Original Song. It’s a great scene from the Robert Altman movie, too. Cher kills it.
Laverne: I have to say more than one Alvin and Laverne skit per episode might just be too much. One is quite enough. Laverne is blowing bubbles. Alvin claims he liked Cher better last season when she was “pregnant and chubby.” This skit was cut from GetTV.
Mother Goose: A new alternative to the Always a Woman Behind Every Man, the Peanuts and the Vamp skits, this one focusing on fairy tales. Cher wears a very colorful dress, a tall curly white wig and she sings like Mae West. There’s a Ferris Wheel in the background. Her Mother Goose outfit sold at Julien’s Auction for $8,400. Below is also the original Bob Mackie sketch for the dress and the little doll version.
+ Jack Sprat: Sonny & Cher in fat suits eat everything at the buffet. There are jokes about the grapefruit diet and the Atkins diet.
+ Little Bo Peep, played by Barbara Eden, and Little Boy Blue, played by Dick Smothers.
+ Tom Smothers plays Humpty Dumpty embroiled in a court case. There’s a Gloria Steinem joke.
Skit: “In the Beginning” – Ted Zeigler tells Tom Smothers how dogs came to be: a shyster salesman tries to pass a tame wolf off as a dog or the idea of the dog. This was also cut on GetTV.
Skit: “Morbid Manor” – Yea, a Halloween skit! The skit has the book cover opening. Cher plays an evil baroness of a haunted house and she wears a purple dress and her black hair has a white streak in it. She says it’s dangerous to play with books. Tom Smothers has crazy hair and drinks oil. Sonny is the heir to the mansion. They all change clothes. Cher cracks up. I’ve starred this skit but don’t remember much about it. GetTV cut this skit.
IGUB: No song or banter, just a walk off.
Thanks to Jay for the official run-down on this episode. GetTV cut a lot, the second Alvin and Laverne skit, the dog skit and Morbid Manor.
Highlights: Interesting election banter. Mother Goose is an improvement on this show’s other thematic attempts at a framing device. Lowlight: for the last two episodes we’ve had no concert. What’s up with that?
