They made a live-action sitcom pilot for hapless clay icon Mr. Bill and it turned out about as well as you would imagine

Hoo boy! NOT a good idea!

Of all of the breakout characters of the original iteration of Saturday Night Live, none was more unlikely than Mr. Bill, a just barely animated blob of helium-voice clay who was forever suffering violent slapstick indignities courtesy of his arch-nemesis Mr. Sluggo and Sluggo's enabler Mr. Hands. 

Mr. Bill was introduced in a segment where viewers could send in two minute short films that the show would air in exchange for no money but priceless exposure. 

The Mr. Bill sketches felt like they could have been written and performed by enterprising if only moderately talented children. There wasn’t much to the character or his world beyond sadism and crudeness but that did not keep him from catching on in a big way. 

He was a fixture of Saturday Night Live during its first five years. Mr. Bill’s creator, Walt Willems, was added to the writing staff in 1978 and Saturday Night Live was inundated with offers from merchandisers hoping to get rich off the public’s love for Mr. Bill. 

Mr. Bill is known for being a badly animated stick of clay and for speaking in a helium squeal that gets higher and higher when he’s worried, which is constantly. 

The 1986 failed pilot/special Mr. Bill’s Real Life Adventures turned the show into a live action sitcom by removing everything that makes Mr. Bill Mr. Bill. The producers, who include Shelley Duvall, thought that the key to making Mr. Bill a star in a new medium involved meticulously removing everything that made him special and distinctive. 

Do you love Mr. Bill because he’s the biggest clay icon this side of Gumby and Pokey? Too bad, Mr. Bill is live action now and he’s being played by Peter Scolari of Bosom Buddies and Newhart. 

Oh, and Mr. Bill’s speaking voice isn’t comically high anymore but he DOES rakishly trot out the silly voice when he’s trying to convince his wife to have sex with him. 

Also, Mr. Sluggo isn’t a psychotic villain whose life’s work involves making Mr. Bill’s life hell. In this perversely off-brand iteration Sluggo is a generic asshole next door neighbor. 

Mrs. Sluggo, meanwhile, has inexplicably been re-imagined as a hot to trot harlot who tries to seduce Mr. Bill by showing up at his house in a slinky outfit and asking him to spread oil all over her body. 

I’m not sure why, but Mr. Bill’s Real Life Adventures establishes, over and over again, that Mr. Bill fucks. He’s packing. At least two women are interested in his no longer clay monster cock. Sexuality does not belong in any incarnation of this character. 

He’s a figure of pure dark comedy but he’s not sexual, or at least he shouldn’t be sexual but Mr. Bill’s Real Life Adventures has some very strange ideas about its titular character. 

Mr. Bill’s Real Life Adventures is so confusing and convoluted that it begins with Executive Producer Shelley Duvall explaining to clay Mr. Bill (AKA the real Mr. Bill) that even though his name is in the title he would not be playing the lead role. 

He seems as confused by this as the audience is liable to be. 

She tells the popular clay figure that he is the inspiration for the show and a creative consultant, but for reasons no one can quite figure out, he would be played by a human being known throughout the industry for cross-dressing with Tom Hanks. In an unrelated development, they also appeared together in the sitcom Bosom Buddies.

Duvall tells the clay Mr. Bill (AKA Mr. Bill Classic) that this way he doesn’t have to endure the violent slapstick assaults that filled his shorts on Saturday Night Live. 

Mr. Bill Classic doesn’t seem terribly convinced but then nothing about this is terribly convincing. 

Just about everything is different here beyond Mr. Bill wearing the same colors, being treated unkindly by Mr. Sluggo and enduring repeated injuries 

Mr. Bill and Sluggo are tiny. They’re the size of dolls in a world full of human beings who tower over them like giants. 

Many of what pass for jokes are size-based, rooted in the heroes being so much smaller than everyone around them. 

Why Mr. Bill and Mr. Sluggo’s families are so Lilliputian is never explained. The remaining comedy comes from from the usual slapstick shenanigans and sitcom stupidity. 

Mr. Bill wants his son to win a merit badge for camping but is sabotaged by Mr. Sluggo, a real creep with a nymphomaniac for a wife and a grifter for a daughter. 

It’s the usual nonsense you’d see in a sub-par live action sitcom blander, meaner, and deeply confused on a conceptual level and every other as well. 

Mr. Bill wasn’t popular enough for Mr. Bill’s Real Life Adventures to get picked up as a series, and for good reason, but he was popular enough for the producers to add a good twenty five minutes of behind the scenes footage and other deleted scenes sadistically included so that it could be sold as a forty-five minute Mr. Bill special and not die as failed pilot. 

This is accomplished by having Duvall explain the show’s unimpressive special effects to Classic Mr. Bill, then having him interact with every cast member. 

Duvall ends this nightmare by teasing more Real Life Adventures of Mr. Bill to come but it was not to be! 

There was, however, a Mr. Bill Christmas special that I will make a point of watching and writing about here because ultimately, when it comes to masochism, poor Mr. Bill has nothing on me.