Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
COLD OPENING
crack-holding George Bush (DAC) dares Medellin cartel to attack his clan
— Hmm, they’re starting the season with another Bush address, which is exactly how the previous season’s finale started.
— I liked the part about how Hurricane Hugo is a natural disaster, and thus, “not my fault.”
— Very memorable visual of him holding up a bag of crack that we’re told was purchased right there in the White House.
— A lot of great laughs from him detailing how tough his family is, especially the part with him talking about how his son Jeb is “packin’ heat” and can pull out a man’s heart and show it to the victim.
— Not too crazy about how the special segue to “Live from New York…” was just a carbon-copy of the one they used in the season 14 finale, with Bush saying “People up there are trying to drag me into that ‘Live from New York’ thing, but that’s something I’m not gonna do…. etc.” However, I would like to point out that when saying “not gonna do it” during that spiel tonight, he used the now-famous “nah gah dah” pronunciation for the first time ever.
STARS: ****
OPENING MONTAGE
— Same as the one from last season. No noteworthy changes here.
MONOLOGUE
host plays the harmonica with SNL Band & sings “Pep Talk”
— This is the first regular episode where the upper part of the home base stage has a triangular rooftop with a big neon version of SNL’s 15th anniversary logo (screencap below).
They actually first used this rooftop in the 15th Anniversary Special the previous week. Despite this, tonight’s opening montage still used the regular SNL logo from the previous season. The montage doesn’t begin using the 15th anniversary logo until some point in the 1990 half of this season (which I guess makes sense, as 1990 is technically the year SNL turns 15), though I think it would later be added into some of the reruns from the 1989 half.
— Great energetic entrance from Bruce, dancing to the theme music.
— Pretty funny story from Bruce regarding being an SNL caterer.
— We get a full-out blues musical number. There’s no comedy at all here, but it’s high-energy and fairly fun.
— They would later replace the first half of this monologue (as well as the theme music during the opening montage) with the dress rehearsal version in reruns. The most noticeable difference to me is Bruce’s entrance. Instead of entering with a lot of energetic bopping to the theme music as mentioned earlier, the rerun version has Bruce making a straightforward, dull, just-walk-out-onto-the-front-of-the-stage-and-stand-there-stiffly entrance.
STARS: ***
THIRTYSOMETHING
avoid nutritional angst by starting your day with thirtysomething cereal
— Pretty funny reveal of a breakfast cereal based on the show Thirtysomething.
— Even though I was only 5 years old at this time in 1989, I do remember Thirtysomething being a popular show back then, and I even have memories of watching it. Hell, I can even remember what the show’s logo looked like in the opening credits. I know it probably seems baffling that a 5 year old would be watching that show, but the more I think about it, I vaguely recall 5-year-old me just playing with my toys and stuff in the living room while my mom and/or dad was watching the show in the same room. That’s most likely where my childhood memories of the show come from.
— This commercial is an accurate parody of Thirtysomething’s acting style. Jan is especially giving a good mock-dramatic performance.
— Amusing how the cereal comes in the shape of Thirtysomething characters. I liked Jan’s delighted “I got an oat bran Elliott.”
— Kinda funny how at the end, they spelled Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (now THERE’S something that 5-year-old me was interested in) as “Teenage Mutant Ninja Tertles” (screencap below), though I assume that’s for copyright reasons.
STARS: ***
WAYNE’S WORLD
coolest senior (host) makes “sphincter” the new hip word
— Wow, in just half a year, this sketch has gone from always being stuck in the 10-to-1 slot at the end of the show to now being the lead-off sketch in a season premiere. Let me remind you readers, Mike Myers is still just a featured player at this point and has only been on the show for half a season so far, and they’re letting him star in the lead-off sketch of the big season 15 premiere. That is INCREDIBLE.
— Loved the random Extreme Close-Up segment.
— Bruce’s too-cool-for-school character is okay, though it’s a somewhat dull role involving no effort.
— More and more, these early Wayne’s World sketches have been gradually growing into what everyone now remembers them as.
— Pretty funny reveal of “sphincter” being the cool word for the new school year.
— Another great random segment, this time with the Unnecessary Zoom.
— For the first time ever, we get an utterance of the soon-to-be catchphrase “Schwing!”, though it’s not used in the sexual context that we would typically hear it in during future Wayne’s World sketches. Tonight, Wayne says it as he mimes pulling out a proverbial knife that Garth stabbed him in the back with.
— Very funny part with the “sphincter” prank the guys pull on Wayne’s mom.
STARS: ***½
DONAHUE
topic-starved Phil Donahue (PHH) previews show about breast-naming women
— Short and sweet with the sudden hilarious reveal of “Women who name their breasts” being the next topic on Donahue’s show.
STARS: ****
HOME IMPROVEMENT
anal-retentive Gene shows how to saw a board & dispose of the refuse
— Nice to see them continuing to give this character new occupations.
— Good part with him detailing his method of using initials to help him remember the tools in his toolbelt.
— Very funny how he has a handy mini-vacuum for instantly cleaning up sawdust while he’s sawing wood.
— More funny details with how he prepares a scrapbag for throwing unused wood away in.
STARS: ****
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Rockin’ In The Free World”
WEEKEND UPDATE
recent widow Imelda Marcos (NOD) wants to get rid of Ferdinand’s body
VIJ reports from Times Square about lack of activity during Rosh Hashanah
a retrospective of SNL’s second 15 years uses clips from tonight’s show
to AWB, legislation to outlaw flag-burning is simple idolatry
— Dennis’ delivery seems slightly lower-energy tonight.
— Hmm, we’re starting off Update with an awful lot of corny picture-based gags.
— Nora’s Imelda Marcos impression makes me laugh, and her overall commentary was decent.
— Dennis’ abortion joke receiving groans from the audience was pretty funny.
— Dennis’ whole “Depp! Grieco!” bit was priceless. Probably one of my favorite random bits that Dennis has ever done on Update.
— I mentioned this in two earlier Weekend Update reviews from the original era (read this one), but Victoria’s Times Square/Rosh Hashanah commentary tonight is a complete rip-off of something that Laraine Newman once did in a season 2 Weekend Update. Victoria’s version would later be completely removed from reruns. In the old review linked above, I had a theory that the reason Victoria’s commentary is removed from reruns is because the writer of the original Laraine commentary probably called in and complained to the show about stealing his or her bit. However, I now have another theory: they may have removed Victoria’s commentary from reruns to make extra room for a cut-after-dress-rehearsal sketch that’s added in reruns to replace a Johnny O’Connor sketch from later tonight.
— In response to SNL’s recent 15th Anniversary Special, Dennis makes a tongue-in-cheek announcement that later tonight, NBC will present a retrospective celebration of SNL’s second 15 years. We’re then shown highlights from that celebration, which is just clips of sketches from earlier in tonight’s episode. Funny bit. SNL would later do a gag in a similar vein during the season 24 premiere, where they show a fake ad for “The Best of the First 20 Minutes of Saturday Night Live”, a compilation special consisting only of clips from the first 20 minutes of that night’s episode.
— A. Whitney: “To me [as a teenager], a Playboy centerfold picture was a symbol of sex in the same way a photo opportunity in a flag factory is a symbol of freedom. In other words, they’re both just jerking off.”
STARS: ***
NEW LEADING MAN
Johnny O’Connor takes a backseat to new leading man (host)
— Here’s the aforementioned sketch that’s removed from reruns. The cut-after-dress-rehearsal sketch that replaces it is about terrorists hijacking a plane and killing innocent passengers whenever one passenger (Bruce Willis) keeps making wisecracks in response to everything the terrorists say.
— The return of Phil and Jon’s characters from the famous Johnny O’Connor sketch from way back in Phil’s second episode as a cast member. Weird how it took the show THREE YEARS to make this sketch recurring.
— Great interplay between Phil and Jon as usual.
— I love Phil’s manic “RAT-A-TAT-A-TAT!” delivery.
— A good laugh from the casual mention of a movie titled “Water Baby Virgins of Krakatoa”.
— What’s with Bruce’s exaggerated double-takes throughout this?
— I found this overall sketch fine in its own right, though it pales badly in comparison to the classic first Johnny O’Connor sketch.
STARS: ***
SPROCKETS
Jimmy Stewart’s (DAC) cute poems have nihilistic undercurrents
— Proving even further that Mike is continuing to move up in importance on the show, we now get our second big Mike Myers recurring sketch tonight alone. Really makes you wonder why they haven’t promoted Mike from a featured player to a regular cast member yet. (He does eventually get promoted later this season)
— I like Dieter’s dark intro to Jimmy Stewart, and then adding as almost an afterthought, “He has also appeared in films.”
— Dieter mentions a fictional critic named Graus Grek, which is a name that would later be used for Woody Harrelson’s character in a future Sprockets sketch (not the one from Harrelson’s episode this season, but from Harrelson’s season 17 episode; he plays a different character in both Sprockets sketches).
— I like how they’re having Dana’s Jimmy Stewart as a Sprockets guest.
— Dieter: “That poem pulls down my pants and taunts me.”
— Jimmy Stewart: “I wrote that poem on a piece of toilet paper after waking up in a puddle of my own sick.”
— Jimmy Stewart’s fight with Dieter’s monkey is hilarious.
— An overall big improvement over the underwhelming Sprockets sketch from the previous season’s finale.
STARS: ***½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Needle & The Damage Done” & “No More”
BRUCE WILLIS: THE MAN AND HIS MUSIC
album of host’s bluesy commercial jingles pays for all his possessions
— Bruce missed his cue to start singing the Depends jingle, which threw him off when he finally did start singing it. Because of this, SNL would later use the dress rehearsal version of this sketch in reruns.
— Catchy jingle, but pretty much a one-joke sketch, and not a particularly hilarious one.
STARS: **½
DONAHUE
another topic for desperate Phil Donahue (PHH)- shoelaces caught in shoes
— Ehh, nowhere near as funny as the one from earlier tonight, though I do like the idea of it being a runner tonight that Donahue is increasingly desperate for show topics.
STARS: **½
GOODNIGHTS
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A decent season premiere, though felt a little too average for this era’s standards. Compared to the phenomenal season premiere from the year before (Tom Hanks/Keith Richards), this one doesn’t measure up. However, judging this episode on its own merits, I was fine with a lot of the show and there were some really solid pieces in the first half.
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING SEASON (1988-89)
a mild step down
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
Rick Moranis
The hijacked plane sketch should have stayed cut after dress. In my copy, this sketch is the first one after the monologue, why? I don’t know. Bruce Willis plays a Peter Griffin-esqe sort a guy making cracks. It is horribly dark.
The hijack plane sketch is available on NBC.com – it’s not that funny and there is absolutely NO WAY the show would do such a sketch like that today. I’m all for dark humor, but it’s just too dark and the premise is just not funny.
The hijacked plane sketch is not great but it was ok at the time. It looks verboten today because the population recalls 9/11 and now experiences major tragedies in a very personal way through their phones.
Now that you’re all the way through the Paul Miller era, have you noticed any differences between his directing style and Dave Wilson’s?
The only directorial differences I’ve noticed is the camera angles when the hosts make their monologue entrance, and some of the camera angles during the goodnights. I haven’t noticed any directorial differences during any of the actual sketches.
The directorial differences are most obvious in the musical guest performances, but in general, Paul Miller’s camera shots are more active and “MTV-ish” than Dave Wilson’s ever were. Dave Wilson is also very fond of pulling back the camera to show the sets/audience applause prior to commercial, something Paul Miller I don’t think ever did, preferring to cut to G.E. and the band.
When Beth McCarthy (the former director of MTV Unplugged!) takes over in Season 21, the camera work throughout the show gets a little more vigorous.
Kevin Nealon, appearing in the filmed commercial and nowhere else in this episode, looks more like a featured player in seasons 14, 15, and 16 than the actual featured players. That’s too bad because when he does appear, his dry wit is a refreshing balance to Dana and Lovitz’s over-the-top styles. I personally liked KEN’s Bob Waltman, Mr. No-Depth-Perception, Politically Incorrect Private Investigator, etc., but they come and go. OTOH, that might be just as well because they don’t give you a chance to get tired of his characters.
Stooge, I think there’s a bit of a mixup on the screen caps for Weekend Update.
Brendan, those screencaps are from the portion of Update where they show clips of SNL’s second 15 years. I had a bad feeling those screencaps would cause confusion among readers, so I should probably remove them.
Never mind, that makes sense. Ha.
Was “Johnny O’Connor II” or “Terrorist Wisecracks” the sketch added in reruns? Because here it’s saying two different things and other sources are inconsistent on which it was.
“Because here it’s saying two different things”
Where does it say two different things? I thought I made it clear that the terrorist sketch was the sketch added in reruns. Here are two quotes from my review:
” … they may have removed Victoria’s commentary from reruns to make extra room for a cut-after-dress-rehearsal sketch that’s added in reruns to replace a Johnny O’Connor sketch from later tonight.”
(from my review of the Johnny O’Connor sketch) “Here’s the aforementioned sketch that’s removed from reruns. The cut-after-dress-rehearsal sketch that replaces it is about terrorists hijacking a plane and killing innocent passengers whenever one passenger (Bruce Willis) keeps making wisecracks in response to everything the terrorists say.”
Where’s your confusion stemming from?
My bad, I might have read on TV.com a couple years ago that “Highjack” was cut after the live show and I just rolled with it. Believing this, I interpreted Dkrom’s comment above to say that the sketch should have never aired originally. But looking back, the source isn’t very reliable and everywhere else says that “Johnny O’Conner” was in the live show.
Johnny O’Connor II definitely aired in the live show – I saw the episode’s live airing on NBC. I have never seen the “Terrorist Wisecracks” sketch, so that had to have aired in reruns.
Yeah, just watched the “Hijack” sketch on NBC’s site….. gaaah. That’s like something 1994-95 would’ve found funny.
I remember reading on an old SNL message board, around the time that this episode aired on in the classic SNL timeslot, that Hijacking was written by Greg Daniels and Conan and that the premise is what if the wisecracking personality of Bruce Willis’s David Addison character from Moonlighting started to negatively the people around him instead of helping David solve crimes. Willis’s character’s name in the sketch is David, which is circumstantial. This is one of my personal favorite SNL fan theories and really hope that it’s true.
I just saw the terrorist sketch for the first time. I had never heard of it before tonight. That has to be one of the absolute worst sketches ever, definitely the worst of the 86-90 era. At least it got cut after dress, but still, I don’t get how it got added to the rerun version. Even pre- 9/11 it is still horribly offensive.
The 1989 appearance on Donahue by most of the cast (minus Jan and Mike) has been posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVGAxFn8Ny8&t=1378s
It’s pretty funny how Jeb is described as this killer considering he’s now known as one of the most milquetoast people in the world.
I remember getting into a supreme disagreement with an older friend of mine over Neil Young’s performance of Rockin’ In The Free World around the time this episode originally aired. For context, I was 18 at the time and my friend was in his mid 30s. He was embarrassed by Neil’s (let’s just call it) “energetic” performance. “He’s too old to be running around like that. Who does he think he is? A teenager? That’s so embarrassing.” As I said, I wholeheartedly disagreed. I loved every minute of it.
Meanwhile, thirty four years later…
The Peacock version of this one is absolutely bizarre. They cut to the monologue with about 10 seconds to go, then cut to a promo shot, and just hold on it for about 30 seconds (and they do this throughout the episode). Then later on you just the last 10 seconds of Sprockets. It’s like this one was edited by a drunk monkey.
It’s a shame the movie UHF flopped as badly as it did. Maybe if it had been the blockbuster smash that Orion was hoping it would be, Weird Al would have hosted SNL sometime this season. That would have been great.