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Martin > other sitcoms

431. Martin Lawrence’s SNL Monologue (2-19-1994)

Wait, how did I get to this subject? Oh, right I was reading one of the final articles on the SNL a Day Blog. In the farewell post, Martin Lawrence’s notorious SNL monologue was listed as one of the items that the author overrated upon his original viewing. For the record, he originally gave the monologue 1 ½ stars. I was trying to remember what Martin had said that was so controversial…something about him lecturing women about their dirty private parts?

No, it’s far worse.

(Because the SNL stage during the “Saturday Night Dead” period in the show’s history is the perfect place to voice your opinion on feminine hygiene.)

The best copy I found of the episode is on archive.org. The episode starts out with Rob Schneider playing Jeff Gillooly!

Martin enters the studio with a phrase I say to myself all the time:

He starts out with a lame bit about Lorena and John Bobbitt. He uses the strangest term I’ve ever heard for male genitalia: pilly-packers. I know he’s trying to get around the censors, and he said at the beginning that they’re on him a lot these days, but pilly-packers?

He makes up a story about a brother finding the penis, and putting it on a snow-cone to preserve it:

And he thought, and he said “what would a white man do, what would a white man do?” You know, and the first thing came to the brother’s head was get it on ice, you know. So he saw an ice cream truck, you know, threw the pilly-packer on some sno-cones, you know. It scares me so bad I don’t go to bed without a Nutty Buddy by my side, y’all.

I had forgotten how it was really found, so I looked it up, and turns out the cops did put it on ice … and put it in a big bite hot dog box. really?

Let me prepare you for what happens next, when this episode later aired in repeatsthis pops up after the Bobbitt bit:

But if you were watching on the East Coast, the night it aired, this is what you got:

(source)

Something else concerns me and it hurts, see I’m, I’m single, I’m a single man, I don’t have nobody, I’m looking for somebody and- but I’m meeting a lot of women out there, and you got some beautiful women, but you got some out there that, uh, I gotta say somethin’. Um… some of you are not washing your ass properly.* (laughter & applause) OK? Don’t- don’t get me wrong, not all, some of you, you know what I’m sayin’, uh… I’m sorry, ‘Cause uh, listen, now, I don’t know what it is a woman got to do to keep up the hygiene on the body I know, uh, I’m watching douche commercials on television, and I’m wonderin’ if some of you are reading the instructions. I don’t think so. Y’know, ’cause I’m getting with some of the ladies, smelling odors, going “Wait a minute. (gestures with index finger) Girl, smell this! This you! Smell yourself, girl.

Smell yourself! I tell a woman in a minute, douche! douche! Some women don’t like when you tell them that, when you straightforward with them. “Douche!” They, (imitating woman) “Forget you! You cannot douche all the time, you’re gonna wash all the natural juices out the body.”

I say, well, I don’t give a damn what you do, put a Tic-Tac in your ass. Put a Cert in your ass. Oh, oh, y’know, this look like a good damn place for a Stick-up up in your ass.

I’m sorry, y’all. You got to wash properly. You know, and then, you know, ’cause I’m a man, I like to kiss on women, you know, I like to kiss all over their bodies, you know. But if you’re not clean in your proper areas I can’t… you know… kiss all over the places I wanna kiss. You know, some women’ll let you go down, you know what I’m sayin’, knowin’ they got a yeast infection. (Some audience disgust) I’m sorry. Sorry. Come up with dough all on your damn lip… Got a bagel and a croissant on your lip. “Anybody got any butter?” I like jelly on mine.

—

I love that the transcriber put “some audience disgust”. When Martin said, “Yeast infection”, this one lady definitely yelled out, “EW!”

Welp, the calls started coming in on the East Coast. 117 complaints 1. Speaking of which, who calls who when they want to complain? The local channel? the FCC? Martin did the hygiene routine in dress rehearsal, telling the audience that he knew he couldn’t do it live. 3 Well, he did it anyway.

On the West Coast, parts were silenced out 3. Here is a post from 1994 to the alt.snl.tv newsgroup:

In the aftermath, Martin’s appearance on the Tonight Show later on that week was canceled, much to the objection of host Jay Leno. 2

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1. AP NEWS. “NBC Official Apologizes to Affiliates for ‘Saturday Night Live’ Gaffes.” Accessed April 18, 2021. https://apnews.com/article/ae84c412a4639129423fa1e5e8a3d4e1.

2. “Martin Lawrence: Dr. Dirt or Mr. Clean? : Barred by NBC, He’s Generally Blue on Stage but Not on TV.” Los Angeles Times, March 8, 1994. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-03-08-ca-31550-story.html,https://archive.is/Z5Wks#selection-1991.9-2004.0

3. Mink, Eric. “NBC Says `SNL’ Host Broke Promises on Monologue.” Tulsa World. Accessed April 18, 2021. https://tulsaworld.com/archive/nbc-says-snl-host-broke-promises-on-monologue/article_486f1b9c-6d60-5a44-933e-4b96d3f218f3.html.