Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
CANING
Michael Fay (host) gets his punishment from a friendly caner (KEN)
— A funny idea for a spoof of the Michael Fay caning incident.
— A perfectly Kevin Nealon-y concept, and great execution of it by him. I love his casual, friendly performance as the caner, and how he’s a little too eager about his job.
— Knowing how the upcoming season 20 goes for Kevin (hint: not well at all), I guess we can consider this sketch one of the final successful displays of his brand of humor.
— Poor utilization of Phil, but what else is new for season 19?
— A huge laugh from Kevin’s story about caning a dead guy.
— The good news/bad news bit at the end, with Rob delivering “Live from New York…” as bad news while looking into the camera with an apologetic face, appears to be a self-deprecating jab at SNL’s declining quality and the fact that viewers have recently developed a lot of ire towards the show. At least that was the theory on the SNL newsgroup back when this episode originally aired (read here and here). There’s kind of a sad quality to that self-deprecating jab, especially with how the audience is oddly silent after that “Live from New York…” and don’t applaud until after the theme music and opening montage starts. (Reruns would later fix this by adding in canned applause after the “Live from New York…”.)
STARS: ****
MONOLOGUE
(no synopsis available)
— Nothing special overall. A promising idea, updating us on what the Brat Pack is up to nowadays, but aside from one or two chuckleworthy lines, the result was fairly forgettable, and all the jail stuff at the end was overkill.
STARS: **
GEEK DWEEB OR SPAZZ
cool kids identify types of high school outcasts
— Interestingly, Ellen’s character is named Serena Williams.
— I loved Adam’s line “Yeah, Steven Tyler sang at my bar mitzvah.”
— I’m kinda iffy on the premise, as it has the type of mean-spirited, sneering tone that both this and (especially) the following season are negatively associated with, but I can look past that and enjoy the sketch, as it’s being executed well.
— I’m getting good laughs from David’s character, who appears to be a more fleshed-out version of the “shweet!” character he briefly played in the Bike Messenger sketch earlier this season.
— Good turn with Emilio’s unexpectedly bad-ass character.
— I love Adam’s quivery-voiced “No more questions” and “I swear to god, just leave me alone” responses to Emilio.
— Another good turn, with it being revealed what Emilio was like at his previous high school.
STARS: ***½
THE WHITEWATER FOLDER
host in latest movie based on a John Grisham book
— Interesting format for a topical Whitewater parody.
— During Emilio’s rapid typing, I love the reveal where the computer monitor shows that he’s just typing gibberish.
— The unnecessary repetition of car explosions and Emilio subsequently yelling a stiff “Noooo” into the camera is overkill.
— The overall sketch was kind of a letdown. What could’ve been an interesting sketch ended up being forgettable and a little bland. I wonder if this would’ve been executed better if it were done as a pre-taped movie trailer.
STARS: **
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Not For You”
WEEKEND UPDATE
KEN gives a subliminal editorial about flogging in Singapore
Operaman sings a medley about Whitewater, Singapore, Eddie Vedder
— Here comes a Subliminal Editorial, which IIRC, ends up being Kevin’s last one ever during his tenure as Update anchor.
— Tonight’s overall Subliminal Editorial ended up being Kevin’s best one in a good while. (I’ll just ignore the fact that he stumbled over the Leona Helmsley bit.) The bit with him subliminally mentioning Pee Wee Herman when talking about a public “beating” especially had me howling. Good to see Kevin’s subliminal routine go out on a good note.
— Operaman’s appearances have been strangely scarce this season, compared to how frequently he appeared the preceding season.
— Operaman’s overall commentary tonight was particularly solid, especially the Singapore bit, “Coppa-feelo!”, and the very memorable Eddie Vedder bit.
STARS: ***½
HOW MUCH YA BENCH?
supposedly steroid-free weightlifters take some calls
— This seems to be a fairly popular sketch, but I’ve always felt it was overrated. I usually still enjoy it to an extent, though.
— Phil’s tough guy voice-over at the beginning always cracks me up whenever I watch this. It feels a little weird, though, hearing Phil do new voice-overs at this late stage of his SNL tenure, maybe because it sometimes feels like he’s starting to do more voice-overs than actual sketch appearances (a.k.a. the Chris Parnell treatment).
— Funny reveal of the performers each having fake skinny, tiny legs (minus David, who’s apparently considered skinny and tiny enough that his real legs are being used).
— A screaming Chris Farley role, but I admit his energy is actually coming off contagious in this sketch so far.
— Ha, and now David even acknowledged Chris’ contagious energy, by following up one of Chris’ rants by initially saying “I can’t follow his energy. HOWEVER–”, which has me wondering if it was an ad-lib.
— I loved Emilio’s “It’s my guess we lost a few callers with that one” line after Adam showed off his nasty back hair.
— The homophobic jokes peppered throughout this sketch make me realize that there’s been an unusually large amount of homophobic jokes in tonight’s episode in general (e.g. Adam guessing that David’s “shweet!” character in the Geek Dweeb or Spazz sketch is a “homo”, Kevin subliminally calling Operaman a “queer” after his confessed feelings for Eddie Vedder, etc.). A sign of the growing homophobia and misogyny that soon comes to a head in season 20. I recall Julia Sweeney once saying in an interview that one of the many reasons she was so miserable working at SNL this season is because of all the rampant homophobic jokes thrown around backstage. According to her, Norm Macdonald was the king of homophobic jokes. While I love Norm, that’s not hard for me to believe AT ALL.
— We get a sudden breaking-the-fourth-wall turn with Charlie Sheen calling and threatening his brother Emilio. Is that really the voice of Charlie Sheen on the phone? Unlike the previous callers, who’s voices were clearly coming from inside SNL’s studio, “Charlie Sheen’s” lines sound like they’re really being delivered via phone.
— When talking about this sketch in his SNL book, Jay Mohr gripes about the fact that the audience was completely dead for all of his lines despite laughing consistently at his more popular scene partners. He’s not wrong: his lines ARE being met with uncomfortable silence from the audience, yet the audience is eating up all the Farley and Sandler stuff. But here’s the thing: Jay’s delivery in this sketch is TERRIBLE. I think perhaps that may have a little something to do with your lack of audience reactions, Jay.
— Okay, Chris’ screaming rants in this sketch are starting to get tired.
— Overall, not a bad sketch as a whole, but yeah, it’s still overrated in my eyes. It also could’ve used some serious trimming, as it was too long.
STARS: ***
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Rearviewmirror”
THE HERLIHY BOY GRANDMOTHER SITTING SERVICE
he wants to bathe, marry her
— Aaaaaaaand season 19 continues to run this “Only funny the first time” Herlihy Boy idea into the ground.
— Even Adam’s delivery seems a little off compared to the previous Herlihy Boy sketches.
— Speaking of Adam, he’s been dominating tonight’s episode.
— Chris’ look seems to change every time they do this Herlihy Boy sketch. The first installment had him with a dark wig, the second installment had him with a gray wig, and now he has glasses (comparisons below).
— Chris is ALREADY exaggerating and overacting his delivery right from the start, when he’s supposed to be speaking calmly the first minute or so. He’s ruining the whole concept of his character, who’s supposed to start off low-key and rational, and then gradually build up to crazy screaming rants.
— Yeah, this sketch isn’t working for me at all. The magic from the first Herlihy Boy installment, which was still around slightly for the second installment, is officially gone by now. And Chris’ screaming rants are falling completely flat for me.
— Oh, and speaking of which: TWO screaming Chris Farley roles back-to-back tonight? I feel like I’m already in season 20.
— Okay, 3 or 4 minutes into this, I finally got a laugh, just from the unexpectedness of Herlihy Boy bluntly saying “Let me shave your grandmother’s beard.”
— Emilio’s interjection is actually funny, unlike when they tried to do a similar thing with Jason Patric in the preceding Herlihy Boy installment.
— You can tell Chris is trying particularly hard to make Adam crack up throughout this sketch. Well, I’m glad SOMEBODY’S having a good time during this sketch, because I’m sure not.
— This sketch is going on too long for something that’s just an endless cycle of “Please let me (insert innocent thing here) your grandma” and “For god’s sake, let the boy (insert innocent thing here) your grandma!” 6 minutes of that, people. 6 minutes! END THIS ALREADY.
— This at least ended on a funny note, with Jim Downey’s deadpan voice-over saying “He loves your grandmother because he is your grandmother. I don’t know what that means.”
STARS: *½
POKER BILLY
stupid Poker Billy (host) doesn’t know how to play the card game
— This sketch is AWFUL so far. Just the same unfunny joke being repeated over and over and over and over and over and over. Yet ANOTHER unpleasant characteristic of season 20 that we’re seeing a preview of tonight.
— I want to like Michael’s musical narration, but it’s doing nothing for me.
— Chris, in one of his lyrics: “Even though it’s clear we’ve gone on way too long…” Truer words have never been spoken about this sketch.
— Julia makes her first and only appearance of the episode, in a very small straight role in the final sketch of the night. (*sigh*) It’s becoming more and more obvious that the end is near. This has been a terrible final season for her.
— Overall, not a single redeeming factor to be found here.
STARS: *
DEEP THOUGHTS BY JACK HANDEY
— Man, even THIS fell flat for me, which is unheard of for a Deep Thoughts.
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Daughter”
GOODNIGHTS
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— Only marginally better than the weak episodes that have been dominating the back half of this season. Most of what was good tonight was solid and memorable, but I found that there was an equal amount of bad stuff, particularly some of the dreadful and insufferable things towards the end of the show. I also don’t like how overly long some of the sketches were – thanks to that, there was an unusually low number of only FIVE sketches all night, though another reason for that is because Pearl Jam got three musical performances (then again, so did Aretha Franklin a month earlier, yet that episode had LOTS of sketches). Another thing hurting my enjoyment of this episode is the fact that I couldn’t help but see so many warning signs of the doom that awaits us in season 20 (e.g. unfunny one-joke sketches, homophobia, overreliance on Chris Farley screaming and overacting, sketches with a mean-spirited and sneering tone, etc.). I noticed those warning signs in previous viewings of this episode, but back then, I was able to ignore them and still enjoy the episode. I think the warning signs bother me more now because I’m going to actually have to review all of season 20 just three episodes from now.
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Kelsey Grammer)
a mild step up
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
Our annual John Goodman episode. Goodman’s apparently a last-minute substitution, as tonight’s episode had a bumper announcing Heather Locklear as the next host. A scheduling conflict must’ve ended up occurring with Locklear, as she would instead host the episode after next.