He did, indeed. It’s a famous episode, one that I, sadly, have yet to see. Eddie Murphy’s lobster skit is actually a perfect follow-up to my entry last week about the ethics of lobster boiling.
On Saturday Night Live, Murphy held up a live lobster he called Larry. He told the audience at home that they would decide Larry’s fate. People were then instructed to call in and vote to spare Larry or boil him.
What I hadn’t realized was that Murphy’s stunt was groundbreaking in a way that had nothing to do with lobsters. It appears to have been one of the first examples of what we take for granted now on shows like American Idol—viewers calling in to cast votes. According to Wikipedia:
In an early example of interactive television, ... Murphy then read two "900" phone numbers, one for those who wanted to spare Larry, and another for those who wanted to see him cooked. In the span of 30 minutes, viewers made nearly 500,000 calls, sending phone traffic soaring. The heavy phone use stood as a record, or near-record for many years. The spike in traffic perplexed AT&T employees, who eventually figured out that Larry was responsible. Though the phone network survived the spike, it was sufficiently threatening to operations that AT&T established communication with the television networks so that they could be warned of potentially disruptive future events; this system remains in use to this day.
So you have Larry the lobster to thank for your personal stake in American Idol—and for the fact that your phone still works while American Idol is on.
Incidentally, Larry narrowly escaped—227,452 callers voted for him to be boiled, while 239,096 voted to save him.
But the story did not have a happy ending. Again, Wikipedia:
On the next week's episode, however, Eddie Murphy raised the subject of Larry the Lobster again, saying that he had received letters protesting the crustacean's treatment the previous week, including one that contained the racist barb "I didn't even know you people liked lobster." Murphy then displayed a boiled lobster on a plate, announced that Larry's stay of execution had been revoked, and ate it. Larry is cited to this day in discussions of cruelty to animals, and in rosters of famous animals.
If anyone finds a video of the Larry the Lobster skit, let me know!
