Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
A MESSAGE FROM GEORGE BUSH
from Houston, George Bush [real] starts show as a favor to his friend DAC
— A huge deal for SNL to get an appearance from a former president.
— Bush is coming off as a great sport here, and there’s a lot of laughs from his statements, made even funnier by his deadpan delivery.
— I particularly like the line about how if sketches get too long, he’ll flip over to Tales from the Crypt.
— A rare occurrence of a Don Pardo-delivered “Live from New York…”.
STARS: ****
MONOLOGUE
George Bush [real] to DAC- “your impression of me is too exaggerated”
— Great how Dana is entering as Bush. I’m a sucker for hosts doing their monologue in character as someone.
— As expected, Dana’s Bush is doing lots of fun things here.
— Solid exchanges between Dana and the real Bush. Even though this is featuring the cliched “celebrity talks like their impersonator while complaining that they sound nothing like their impersonator” trope, there’s enough goodwill towards this Bush appearance that the trope is coming off charming, and it’s helped by Bush’s aforementioned deadpan delivery.
— Dana briefly breaks out into his Church Lady voice, which reminds me that there would be no Church Chat sketch tonight, I’m assuming because Church Lady was still retired after the Misery II sketch from the season 16 Roseanne Barr-hosted episode. It appears that Dana would end up officially un-retiring Church Lady sometime after tonight’s episode, as all of his future hosting stints feature a Church Chat sketch.
— Speaking of recurring Dana Carvey characters we surprisingly won’t be seeing tonight, there’s also no Wayne’s World sketch, despite the fact that Mike is still in the cast. I wonder if the reason for Wayne’s World’s absence is because of the alleged feud going on at the time between Dana and Mike, which started sometime during the filming of Wayne’s World 2.
STARS: ****
VIRTUAL REALITY BOOKS
Virtual Reality Books are a poor use of technology, but (MMK) loves them
— I got a big laugh from “Call me Ishmael” being divided into two pages.
— Michael’s overexcitement over such a useless product is funny.
— Overall, this was better than I had remembered it, though I wish they went further with the downsides of the cheapness of mid-90s technology.
STARS: ***
THE SIMPSON TRIAL
Johnny Carson (DAC) cross-examines witnesses in the O.J. Simpson trial
— Fun topical use of Dana’s Johnny Carson impression.
— I can’t help but grit my teeth a bit seeing Michael do an Ed McMahon/Robert Shapiro hybrid. The only thing his attempt at a McMahon impression is succeeding in doing is making me miss Phil Hartman even more than I already have this season.
— “LAPD detective Rick Fuhrman”? Isn’t it Mark Fuhrman?
STARS: ***½
HALLOWEEN IN DALLAS
Ross Perot’s (DAC) Halloween visitors include ADS as Crazy Eggbeater Head
— The Dana Carvey Nostalgia Tour continues tonight with his Ross Perot impression now appearing.
— When one group of kids botch their “trick or treat” greeting, I loved Dana ad-libbing in character “Now that is a pitiful trick-or-treat. You couldn’t even get together on that.”
— A lot of laughs from Perot’s berating of the trick-or-treaters.
— I love the way they’re working in Adam’s traditional Halloween costume routine from Weekend Update.
— There’s Dana-as-Perot’s famous “Can I finish?!”
— The exchanges between Kevin and Perot have some awkward pauses on Kevin’s end.
STARS: ****
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest & Paul Simon [real] perform “Green”
WEEKEND UPDATE
ALF presents some examples of outrageously negative political commercials
Hans & Franz warn other recurring characters to avoid Weekend Update
— Feels weird seeing Al Franken as himself in an Update commentary this late in his SNL tenure, especially knowing how upset he reportedly was that he lost a potential anchorperson spot to Norm.
— The “Kennedy: He’s a big fat drunk” attack ad shown by Al is hilarious.
— More funny attack ads, such as the “She’s a Jew” one and especially the chainsaw-between-the-legs one.
— Norm’s recurring David Hasselhoff theory now finally gets applause, after receiving a mixed, confused audience reaction in Norm’s previous Updates.
— Here’s our latest of The Dana Carvey Nostalgia Tour. Very interesting to see Hans and Franz on Update.
— I absolutely LOVE Hans and Franz calling out then-current recurring characters (Linda Richman, Stuart Smalley, Matt Foley). I’m always a sucker for when different recurring characters collide, even if it’s only by mention in this case.
— Now the Hans and Franz commentary gets even more meta, with Franz (Kevin) telling Norm “The guy who was here before you was much nicer.”
— I love Norm’s running gag throughout this Update with various books having a variation of “O.J. is guilty” in their title.
— The strongest Update of the season so far.
STARS: ****
PEPPER BOYS
master pepper miller (DAC) teaches apprentice (ADS) nuances of the craft
— Very funny characterization from Dana, and even Adam’s goofy voice shtick, which I had previously stated officially ran out of steam during the homestretch of the preceding season, has some new spark here.
— I love the way Dana is presenting the art of pepper grinding. His seductive actions towards Tim are especially hilarious.
— Such a great sketch so far. Feels like something that would’ve aired a few seasons earlier. In fact, I used to feel this was, in some ways, a sister sketch to the Italian Restaurant sketch from Kirstie Alley’s season 17 episode. Maybe because both sketches use the same restaurant set, both star Dana doing an Italian accent, and both have a raunchy sexual theme.
— When showing off a new pepper dispenser, I love Michael’s delivery of “How about that, huh? Ha ha! You’re both fired.”
STARS: ****½
64TH ANNUAL NOBEL PRIZE AWARDS
Nobel Prizes are awarded in a star-studded, televised extravaganza
— As I often say, SNL usually has a bad track record with award show sketches. The dull subject matter of this particular sketch isn’t making me any more excited for it.
— Is this opening song with Michael’s Tom Skerritt ever going to end? It’s going on way too long for something that contains no apparent humor.
— Dana’s Garry Shandling impression is a hoot.
— No comment about Jay’s brownface Indian routine.
— Michael in two different live roles? Fast costume change. Then again, this insufferable sketch is certainly long enough for a cast member to have time for a costume change.
— Not sure how I feel about Laura’s Paula Poundstone impression. At least she’s actually being given something comedic to do, though, for the first time since the season premiere.
— Oh, great, more stereotypical middle-eastern accents, with Chris Elliott now being dragged into this.
— The “John Denver is dead” announcement comes off as a case of Harsher in Hindsight, considering Denver’s untimely real-life death just a few years later.
— Finally, this sketch is over. As awful and long as this was, it’s sadly still not the worst nor longest awards show sketch this season would have to offer (hint: Deion Sanders).
STARS: *½
BAND SHOT
going to commercial, G.E. Smith [real] & doppelganger (ADS) play guitar
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Tomorrow Comes”
MADE UP STORIES
(TIM) shamelessly makes up excuses to avoid getting in trouble at work
— A good laugh from the reveal that Tim’s dramatic, tragic drive-by story was just fabricated to get himself out of trouble.
— Ehh, now this is just repeating the same joke over and over. Tim’s performance is good, though.
— Okay, I did get a big laugh just now from Tim’s definition of hypoglycemic: “’Hypo’ means ‘make’, ‘glycemic’ means ‘stuff up’.”
— Didn’t care for the fourth wall-breaking ending with David, and it featured the type of unlikable, aloof, sneering, half-assed performance we would often see from him this season.
— While I’m griping about David, let me just say that I hate his hairstyle this season. It makes him look like a middle-aged man who’s starting to go bald, when in previous seasons, he practically looked like a 13-year-old. He’s aged a lot this season in general, and it’s not just the hair.
STARS: **
OFFICE SPACE
by Mike Judge- Milton’s area gets a roach bomb
— I believe this is the final Office Space cartoon to air in a new SNL episode.
— Wait, is this a rerun? So far, Milton’s opening spiel is pretty much the exact same one from a previous Office Space cartoon.
— Never mind, turns out this is new. Maybe they just repeated Milton’s opening spiel for narrative exposition.
— Milton’s boss always cracks me up. He’s coming off particularly cruel towards Milton in tonight’s cartoon.
— The roach bomb bit is really funny.
STARS: ****
GOODNIGHTS
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A solid episode, even if it started tapering off towards the end. This didn’t feel like a typical season 20 episode at all, but of course, the main reason for that is because a lot of the episode was basically just a throwback to old recurring Dana Carvey favorites from the late 80s/early 90s glory years. No complaints there, though, as I found it welcome seeing Dana and his recurring bits return to the show, especially during trying times for SNL like this season. The best sketch of the night, though, was actually an original non-recurring Dana sketch (Pepper Boys). Also, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the episode’s quality started tapering off when beginning to focus on sketches not centered around Dana.
— Tonight makes the third consecutive good episode of this young season. If I had been watching this season live when it originally aired and didn’t know what the outcome of the season would be, the past three episodes would have me fooled into thinking this was going to be a good year, ignoring the rough season premiere. Then again, season 11 also had a misleading streak of three solid consecutive episodes early on (Pee Wee Herman, John Lithgow, Tom Hanks) before being immediately followed by a terrible point-of-no-return episode that accurately set the tone for the season (Teri Garr). Sadly, that mirrors what ends up happening this season.
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (John Travolta)
a slight step up
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
Sarah Jessica Parker, this season’s equivalent to season 11’s tone-setting, point-of-no-return Teri Garr episode. Get ready for what will probably be one of the most negative reviews you’ll ever see me do.