Imagine turning on Family Feud and discovering that one of the competing families isn’t actually from Earth.
That is essentially the wonderfully ridiculous premise behind one of the most memorable early Saturday Night Live combinations: “Coneheads Family Feud.”
The sketch brings together several ingredients that defined the original era of SNL.
Dan Aykroyd.
John Belushi.
Jane Curtin.
Gilda Radner.
Laraine Newman.
Bill Murray.
And host Steve Martin.
Put all of them inside a parody of one of America’s most recognizable game shows and the result was almost guaranteed to be strange.
The sketch originally aired during Season 3 of Saturday Night Live in 1978. SNL’s official upload describes the premise simply: the Mels, played by Steve Martin, Gilda Radner and John Belushi, compete against the Coneheads, played by Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtin and Laraine Newman.
Bill Murray completes the setup by portraying Family Feud host Richard Dawson.
And that’s where the fun begins.
By this point, audiences already knew the Coneheads.
The characters had first appeared on SNL in January 1977 and quickly became recurring favorites. Dan Aykroyd played Beldar Conehead, Jane Curtin portrayed his wife Prymaat, and Laraine Newman played their daughter Connie.
Their basic premise was absurdly simple.
They were aliens.
They had enormous cone-shaped heads.
They spoke in a bizarrely formal, nasal style.
Yet somehow they expected everyone around them to accept that they were ordinary human beings.
Whenever anyone became suspicious, the Coneheads had an explanation.
They were from France.
Of course.
That running joke became one of the most recognizable elements of the characters.
The Coneheads attempted to understand ordinary American life, but they described everything using strange alien terminology.
Food became “consumables.”
Parents became “parental units.”
Normal human activities were treated as strange rituals that needed to be carefully studied.
That made Family Feud a perfect setting for them.
After all, the entire concept of Family Feud depends on understanding ordinary people.
Contestants have to predict how a group of people responded to survey questions.
For an extraterrestrial family still trying to understand human behavior, that presents a rather obvious problem.
The comedy doesn’t require an enormous setup.
Just put the Coneheads behind a game-show podium.
Ask them ordinary questions.
Then let them answer.
Opposite them are the Mels.
Steve Martin plays Joe Mel Jr., Gilda Radner plays his sister Joanie, and John Belushi plays their father Joe Mel Sr.
That casting alone makes the sketch a remarkable snapshot of early SNL.
Steve Martin wasn’t technically a regular cast member, but his repeated hosting appearances made him deeply associated with the show’s first years.
John Belushi was already becoming one of the program’s most explosive performers.
Gilda Radner had established herself as one of the original cast’s most versatile comedians.
Dan Aykroyd could disappear into bizarre characters.
Jane Curtin’s controlled delivery made her the perfect partner for absurd material.
Laraine Newman brought Connie Conehead’s teenage alien awkwardness to the family.
And then there was Bill Murray.
Murray’s Richard Dawson impression is crucial because every game-show parody needs someone trying to maintain the illusion that this is a perfectly legitimate competition.
The more seriously the host treats the situation, the funnier the Coneheads become.
That’s a classic comedy principle.
If everyone behaves as though the absurd thing is absurd, there is nowhere for the joke to go.
But if one character behaves ridiculously while everyone else tries to continue normally, the contrast becomes funny.
The Coneheads were built around that contrast.
Look at Beldar.
Dan Aykroyd doesn’t play him like someone trying to make the audience laugh.
Beldar takes himself completely seriously.
His unusual speech sounds perfectly normal to him.
His enormous head seems perfectly normal.
His strange descriptions of everyday activities seem perfectly reasonable.
And that commitment is what makes the character work.
Jane Curtin approaches Prymaat in much the same way.
The character’s strange behavior is never treated as a performance for the humans around her.
Prymaat simply exists according to the logic of Remulak.
Then Connie adds another dimension.
She is the younger member of the family, increasingly exposed to ordinary American teenage culture.
That creates a familiar sitcom conflict inside an alien household.
Parents don’t understand their teenager.
The teenager wants to fit in.
Except the parents are extraterrestrials with enormous cone-shaped skulls.
That mixture of something familiar and something completely ridiculous helped make the characters memorable.
But “Coneheads Family Feud” is especially enjoyable because it doesn’t rely only on the Coneheads.
The Mels are equally exaggerated.
Steve Martin immediately brings his own strange energy to the competition.
John Belushi has the ability to make even a reaction feel unpredictable.
Gilda Radner understands exactly how to make a seemingly small character detail funny.
This means the sketch isn’t simply:
Normal people versus aliens.
It is one collection of bizarre SNL personalities facing another.
Bill Murray is stuck in the middle trying to run the game.
That is an ideal setup for sketch comedy.
The official SNL clip has remained popular decades later, accumulating millions of views online.
Part of that longevity comes from the extraordinary concentration of comedy talent visible in a single sketch.
Consider the names again.
Bill Murray.
Steve Martin.
John Belushi.
Dan Aykroyd.
Gilda Radner.
Jane Curtin.
Laraine Newman.
Today, those names represent an enormous amount of American comedy history.
But in the late 1970s, viewers were watching many of these performers while they were still establishing the characters and comedic identities that would define their careers.
Aykroyd and Belushi would soon take the Blues Brothers far beyond SNL.
Bill Murray would become one of the most recognizable comedy stars in American movies.
Steve Martin would build an extraordinary film career.
Gilda Radner would become one of SNL’s most beloved original performers.
And the Coneheads themselves would survive long beyond their original television sketches.
The characters became culturally recognizable enough to eventually inspire a feature film in 1993.
But the early SNL sketches retain a special quality.
They feel experimental.
The show was still discovering what its recurring characters could do.
A successful character didn’t necessarily have to remain inside the same setting every week.
The writers could take the Coneheads out of their home and put them into another familiar American environment.
A restaurant.
A movie theater.
A game show.
Every new environment created another opportunity to contrast their alien logic with everyday American culture.
Family Feud was especially perfect because the game itself was already built around families.
The Coneheads insist that they are a family.
Technically, they are.
They simply happen to be a family from Remulak.
And nobody seems quite willing to address the giant cones on their heads.
That’s another essential part of the humor.
The characters around the Coneheads often recognize that something seems strange.
But the world keeps moving.
The game must continue.
Questions must be asked.
Answers must be given.
The scoreboard must be updated.
That commitment to the format makes the parody stronger.
It also captures something special about the first generation of Saturday Night Live.
The cast wasn’t afraid of looking ridiculous.
They could build a sketch around enormous prosthetic heads.
They could parody a popular game show.
They could introduce bizarre vocabulary.
And they could trust the performers to make the idea work.
Sometimes the premise was sophisticated.
Sometimes it was proudly silly.
“Coneheads Family Feud” is both.
Underneath the giant heads and strange voices is a clever collision between two pieces of American television culture:
The traditional family game show and SNL’s most unusual family.
Nearly five decades later, the sketch still works because you don’t need to understand every reference from 1978.
The visual joke is immediate.
Three people with giant cone-shaped heads are standing behind a Family Feud podium.
Bill Murray is trying to host.
Steve Martin and John Belushi are on the other side.
Something ridiculous is obviously about to happen.
And it does.
That’s early Saturday Night Live at its best.
Take an ordinary television format.
Add extraordinary performers.
Make everything slightly more ridiculous than it has any right to be.
Then let the cast loose.
The Coneheads may have claimed they came from France.
But on Family Feud, they came from exactly where SNL audiences wanted them:
Remulak.
