The Continental

It starts off as a point-of-view shot of the camera walking to a hotel/apartment door, with "The Continental" on a gold plate on the door.

The door opens, and Christopher Walken, wearing a robe and a pencil moustache. As he speaks in a European accent, hitting on whoever the camera is acting as. He'll kiss your gloved hand, and try to seduce you.

Here is where the plot changes every sketch. Sometimes he offers you Champagne, and the camera sips it, while he tries unsuccessfully to woo you. Sometimes he shows you his newest statue, shaped like a phallus, or tries to cop a feel.

Once he spilled champagne on her/your chest, and tries to take a picture, then shows you the bathroom so you can dry yourself. As you're looking into the mirror, you catch him on the other side of the two-way mirror, lighting a cigarette and peeping at you. You rush to leave, but he blocks the doorway. Eventually you punch him a couple of times, even use Mace/hit him with the statuette, and rush out as he yells come back and says how much he loves you.

It's probably the best reason to keep having him as a host, aside from the fact that he's just sooo creepy.

Mr. 100 Percent's WU doesn't show the half of it. "The Continental" was a popular late-night TV show during the early 1950's on CBS starring Renzo Cesana, a playwright and actor born in Italy and educated in the Jesuit Academy in Rome, who also worked on developing Art Linkletter's House Party, among other shows of the period.

The format of the show was simple. Like Hugh Hefner's Playboy shows in the 1960's, The Continental would "meet" you at the door, take your coat, present you with a rose, sit you down to a sumptuous dinner, and proceed to have a date with you...all in monologue.

He was always polite, and almost never ate or drank on-camera...what you were having, though was meticulously described and served. Courses switched during commercials, and "conversation" turned often towards art, literature, other light, but sophisticated subjects and the doings of his estate in Tuscany.

Men hated him. Women doted on him. Although the show ran less than a year, it became a nine-day-wonder — it was literally a tutorial on how to charm women. In just two years, it had been parodied by everyone from Red Skelton to Popeye, and even Mad Magazine and Jerry Lewis had their crack at him, somewhat later.

The following year, it was revived, with The Continental greeting pairs of newlyweds...again on summer-replacement status. It disappeared as quickly as it came, leaving only its ghosts behind.