TV Quote of the Day (‘SNL,’ With Rodney Dangerfield on ‘The Pepsi Syndrome’ at Three Mile Island)

Rosalyn Carter [played by Laraine Newman]: “Where is Jimmy? I have a right to see him!”

Ross Denton, head of public relations [played by guest host Richard Benjamin]: “Mrs. Carter, the president is receiving special treatment right now.”

Mrs. Carter: “What kind of special treatment? Why can’t I see him?”

Denton: “Mrs. Carter, this is Dr. Edna Casey. Perhaps she can explain better than I what has happened to the president.”

Dr. Edna Casey [played by Jane Curtin]: “Mrs. Carter, your husband was exposed to massive doses of radiation. Now this has affected the entire cell structure of his body and greatly accelerated the growth process.”

Mrs. Carter: “Well, what does that mean?”

Dr. Casey: “It means, Mrs. Carter, your husband, President Carter, has become [camera zooms in on Dr. Casey] the amazing colossal president.”

Mrs. Carter: “Well, how big is he?”

Dr. Casey: “Well, Mrs. Carter, it’s difficult to comprehend just how big he is but to give you some idea, we’ve asked comedian Rodney Dangerfield to come along today to help explain it to you. Rodney?

”

[Rodney Dangerfield enters]

Rodney: “How do you do, how are you?”

Denton: “Rodney, can you please tell us, how big is the president?”

Rodney: “Oh, he’s a big guy, I’ll tell you that, he’s a big guy. I tell you, he’s so big, I saw him sitting in the George Washington Bridge dangling his feet in the water! He’s a big guy!”

Mrs. Carter: “Oh my God! Jimmy! Oh God!”

Rodney: “Oh, he’s big, I’ll tell you that, boy. He’s so big that when two girls make love to him at the same time, they never meet each other! He’s a big guy, I’ll tell you!”

Mrs. Carter: “Oh no! Oh Jimmy! My Jimmy!”

Rodney: “I don’t want to upset you, lady, he’s big, you know what I mean? Why, he could have an affair with the Lincoln Tunnel! I mean, he’s really high! He’s big, I’ll tell you! He’s a big guy!”

Mrs. Carter: “No! No! No!”

Denton: “Rodney, thank you very much. You can go.”

Rodney: “It’s my pleasure. He’s way up there, lady! You know what I mean?”—Saturday Night Live, Season 4: Episode 16, “The Pepsi Syndrome” skit, Apr. 7, 1979

The nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania may have occurred 40 years ago today, but we live in its shadow even now. The techno-utopia pushed by the nuclear power industry to that point proved, as utopias invariably do, a chimera. An industry that took wing through Dwight Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” program received a decisive check in the early spring of 1979, and subsequent incidents at Russia’s Chernobyl and Japan’s Fukushima plants proved far more damaging, both to the environment and to public trust in institutions.

Only two nuclear power plants are currently under construction in the U.S., and the average age of existing ones is 40 years old, according to an Andrew Maykuth article in the Philadelphia Inquirer last month. The industry has been forced into expensive safety and security measures, with its representatives increasingly compelled to explain themselves.

Speaking of explaining themselves, Saturday Night Live gave a hilarious preview of the parlous future in the week for industry mouthpieces in the week following the accident. The skit title, “The Pepsi Syndrome,” was a send-up of The China Syndrome, the Jane Fonda-Michael Douglas-Jack Lemmon thriller that was still only in its second week when Three Mile Island gave it the kind of unexpected boost that film flacks can only dream of.

“The Pepsi Syndrome,” cited by ex-Senator Al Franken as one of his 10 favorite SNL political sketches, kicked off with Bill Murray spilling the soft drink over the plant’s control board, leading to a meltdown in the plant’s core. Two unconventional people come either to clean up or inspect the damage: a female maintenance worker (Garrett Morris, in drag) and President Jimmy Carter, who, as a former self-advertised “nuclear engineer,” walks in to inspect the core, wearing yellow boots that prove inadequate to the danger he faces. 

I had not seen (or read a transcript of) this scene until now, but I have always recalled my surprise and delight when Rodney Dangerfield came out of nowhere to describe the President’s medical “condition.”

If you want to know more about the scientific and political fallout from Three Mile Island, there are plenty of background sources. (For instance, this past weekend, C-Span re-ran a 2004 interview with J. Samuel Walker, author of Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective.) But comedy forms part of the historical record, too, in telling later generations how contemporary society reacted to events—and in this case, it was just plain fun to see.