Charles Grodin's bizarre 1977 SNL episode embodied his brand of meta-comedy

The Washington Post

The October 1977 episode reportedly got Grodin banned from Saturday Night Live because he missed much of the week's rehearsal and blew his lines during the show, but Grodin later said he was invited back to host. "Many SNL episodes have versions of this routine, with the host chatting backstage with cast members early on about how the television magic comes together," says Zachary Pincus-Roth. "But Grodin, who died Tuesday at 86, keeps the conceit going throughout the show as he stops sketches in their tracks, trips over his lines and comments on the performances, the whole time hoping to perform a song 'to express how I feel about life.' The episode was emblematic of a looser, more experimental SNL era, but also demonstrated aspects of Grodin’s comedic persona: his confounding mix of boyish affability and faux-rudeness, or self-deprecation and self-obsession, sometimes in the service of questioning the institutions around him." ALSO: Watch Grodin's best moments as a "talk show genius."