(Slightly) revised NTTD spot appears on SNL

Last shot of No Time to Die spot on Saturday Night Live

Despite being delayed unti November, a spot for No Time to Die appeared during the first half-hour of the March 7 telecast of Saturday Night Live.

The spot appeared after an uneven skit featuring Daniel Craig, who was the host of the March 7 broadcast. The skit had Craig playing James Bond going crazy after placing winning bets in a casino.

As soon as the skit was over, the No Time to Die spot began.

That spot didn’t appear much different from recent commercials for the 25th James Bond film.

The major difference was the final shot at the end. It said, “THANKSGIVING.”

No Time to Die has been scheduled for next month. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Univeral (the international distributor) and Eon Productions said March 4 that the movie would now come out in November. The coronavirus has shut down theaters in key international markets, including China.

Both Universal and NBC (which televises Saturday Night Live) are owned by Comcast.

UPDATE (1:10 a.m., March 8): Saturday Night Live sent out a video of the skit on Twitter.

And now…a sneak peek of 𝐍𝐨 𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐃𝐢𝐞. #SNL pic.twitter.com/EQuxdIvX6P

— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) March 8, 2020

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

UPDATE II (12:25 p.m., March 8): I missed this because it aired while I was writing the original post. The Weekend Update segment saw one of its “anchors” deliver a No Time to Die joke. Noting the delay in release date, it was suggested the date should have stayed in April but the title changed to “Time to Die.”

Dark side of 1960s escapist entertainment

Solo tells Chris that “the game is over.”

1960s TV shows are often dismissed as escapist. But even some escapist TV episodes have their dark side.

Case in point: The Finny Foot Affair, the 10th episode of The Man From U.N.C.L.E., which originally aired in 1964.

Here are a few examples from the episode.

–U.N.C.L.E. agents Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn) and Illya Kuryakin (David McCallum) investigate an “island off Scotland” where all the inhabitants are dead from old age. That’s not the real reason, but it’s a grim mystery to start off an episode.

–The episode’s innocent, Christopher Larson (played by Kurt Russell, then 13), witnesses an U.N.C.L.E. agent stabbed to death during a fight by a thug working for the villain. The agent apparently dispatches the thug with some kind of gas, although this isn’t fully explained. But Christopher saw everying.

— Christopher watches Solo kill one of the villain’s thugs, using one of Christopher’s toys as decoy.

— Christopher watches Solo kill the villain in a shootout.

One might think Christopher would suffer psychological trauma from all this. He might even have mental health issues later in life. Perhaps, perhaps not.