Season: 1 (The Sonny & Cher Show)
Episode: 5
Guest(s): Don Knotts
CBS Air Date: February 29, 1976
Also aired: TV Land and GetTV
Opening Song: “Take Life a Little Easier” (Video)
Cover of the Rodney Allen Rippy (1974)
Sonny & Cher also did this song as the opener for The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour episodes #56 and #62. They’re wearing blue outfits, Cher in a slip dress and Sonny in a blue shirt and dark blue suit. This is the episode where Sonny walks off the stage. Cher looks surprised at first and it’s hard to tell if this was an intentional fall or not. Cher mocks Sonny’s pointing gestures as they sing. Cher’s dress unsnaps (possibly due to her pregnancy). Sonny helps her fix it. He’s really fast at it.
Opening Banter: They shake hands and talk about Cher’s zipper issue and about Sonny wanting to make a movie about the Sonny & Cher story. Cher says it would be a disaster film. Sonny says Robert Redford or Paul Newman should play him. Cher jokes it should be Gaby Hayes. Funny.
Battle of the Sexes: So happy this skit is back from the 1974 season where it was called Mr. and Mrs. I love this satirical look at how feminism was chaffing the mainstream in the mid-1970s and how Sonny & Cher get to enact new, more fluid gender roles. I think this couldn’t have not had an effect on the relaxing of gender-role rigidity. The new intro is much less offensive, too.
Sonny and his friends are playing cards (Ted Zeigler, Billy Van and Don Knotts). The men talk about how cold-hearted their wives are. Cher wears her short, bobbed wig. I’ve said this a million times but a suit makes Cher look smaller. She comes home from work and complains dinner isn’t ready and she’s hungry. Sonny and Cher each argue about how their respective days are hard. Don Knotts complains that his wife walked out on him last night after his constant nagging. Sonny & Cher make up by the end of the skit.
Concert: “United We Stand/Without You” (Video)
Cover of Brotherhood of Man (1970) and Harry Nilsson (1971)
Love, love, love and of course starred this. Cher wears a flower-print dress and has yellow flowers in her pony-tailed hair. Her dress looks strapless but there are two very stealthy crisscross straps you can see in some shots. Sonny wears a yellow suit. Something makes them laugh at the beginning. They’ve sung this medley a few times before: on The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour in episodes #13 and #28 and later they would do this duet medley on their reunion on The Mike Douglas Show (1979) which is also a nice, affectionate version and proves they’re still pros at this, one of their last reunions before the final reunion on David Letterman in 1987.
Sonnytone News:
– Boon to TV Newscasters: Don Knotts reading the news with his eye closed.
– Great Debate Starts: a debate about Republicans versus Democrats. The upcoming election is happening that will narrow down in the fall of 1976 to Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.
– The world’s oldest cab driver retires.
– The youngest pitchwoman in TV history: Chastity’s Tricycles. Chastity, a.k.a. “Honest Chas” is pretty good at memorizing lines! Sonny comes riding in on a tricycle and wants to exchange it. Chastity laughs and says he looks silly on a tricycle with a mustache (Sonny, not the tricycle).
– First woman ambassador to England: Cher’s character Laverne Lashinsky is the ambassador and Ted Zeigler interviews her. They mess up their lines and laugh.
Skit: Don Knotts and Cher are on a bridge. Don Knotts is threatening to jump because he’s depressed but he’s really just trying to get Cher to take him home. My old notes call this skit a “suicide pickup.”
Cher Solo: “Solitaire” (Video)
Cover of Neil Sedaka (1972) and the Carpenters (1975).
Cher wear a really beautiful dress and matching hat and the set is black and white stenciled silhouettes. It’s very cool how Cher’s silhouette moves out of the middle panel. My starred notes indicate I loved Cher’s blue and pink eyeshadow. What a great song, too. Cher emotes it well but gets pretty low with the words “concealed” and “down” and a “solitaire” or two.
The Prisoner: This is the first airing of another one of my favorite recurring skits on the show. Sonny is in prison and Cher plays his seemingly dimwitted and promiscuous girlfriend, whose stories of accidental sexual adventures and spending his money drive him crazy. She’s been visiting him weekly for 14 years now and she often “accidentally” talks too much about the money he stole and how she’s spending it (this time on a trip to Catalina Island). This is very classic Sonny & Cher, the best of what they could do. Sexual tension and frustration all over the place. They don’t get enough credit for this stuff. That they could pull it off divorced is just all the more amazing. The skit usually ends with Sonny saying “I’m gonna kill her when I get outa here.”
CBBS: I’ve starred this too. Sonny & Cher and Chastity are at home. Cher is in a blue outfit. Sonny is in all white. hey introduce The Chastity Bono Broadcasting System (CBBS). The shows on this network include Koquack (like Kojack, get it?) with Don Knotts as a detective who is a duck. (I can’t overemphasize how popular Don Knotts was with kids in the mid-to-late 1970s. I had one birthday party that was just my mom schlepping all my friends to the movie theater to see one of the his Apple Dumpling Gang movies. It was like the best day of our lives.)
Other characters include Sonny as Geppetto and Cher as Pinocchio who Sonny is the smart Alec puppet who gives his father “splinters in my blocks.” Also included: Popeye, Mickey Mouse, Tweety Cher and Chastity and Sonny as Sylvester.
IGUB: Sonny says, “Let’s have a hand for Don Knotts!” Chastity wears a blue dress and sings along to the song. Jay remarks that this is one of the rare, last times on the new show that Sonny is holding Chastity in his arms. Chastity is getting bigger (and heavier) and will henceforth usually be found standing between Sonny & Cher during these later-day closings.
Thanks to Jay for the run-down on the re-airings of this episode. GetTV is missing the retiring cabbie sketch.
Highlights: The Mr. and Mrs. skit is back as Battle of the Sexes. Another good version of the “United We Stand/Without You” medley and Cher’s solo number “Solitaire” is great. Chastity’s first public ID as Chas. The first Prisoner sketch.
