Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
GIFTS FOR THE MIDDLE CLASS
Bill (MMK) & Hillary (JAG) Clinton pander to the middle class with gifts
— Hoo, boy, tonight’s episode is already starting rough.
— Hartman and Hooks, these two are not. This feels just plain sad to watch.
— This ends up being the ONLY time in SNL history that we ever see Janeane as Hillary, and the second and final time we ever see Michael as Bill. SNL must’ve realized how poorly the new Bill Clinton impression was going, and put the kibosh on it real quick. And considering there’s nobody else in this season’s cast suitable for the role, SNL ends up going through the entire second half of this season without doing ANY sketches portraying the president, which is almost unheard of.
— The topical bit with gunshots being heard outside the White House fell completely flat.
— Feels odd (and sad) seeing Mike doing his usual George Stephanopolous impression next McKean’s Clinton, when I’m so used to seeing Mike’s impression in Hartman-era Clinton sketches.
— (*groan*) They keep repeating the unfunny gunshots bit when it didn’t even work the first time.
— This whole cold opening is very weak political satire that’s landing with a resounding thud.
— Even the “To Angela” gift bit at the end came off lazy.
STARS: *
MONOLOGUE
(no synopsis available)
— I did get a chuckle (my first of this entire episode) from George trying to keep the opening applause going by saying “I said ‘thank you’, not ‘stop’.”
— I do like his mentions of some of the individual cast members, but nothing he’s saying about them is particularly hilarious.
— “Your shoes untired”??? Our first of many odd line flubs from George tonight.
— This ended pretty awkwardly.
STARS: *½
TIME BOXER
host fights Hitler (MIM) in 1939; Michael Buffer cameo
— Oh, god, I’ve always absolutely hated this sketch and have found it an absolute chore to watch.
— After playing broad Asian stereotypes for an endless amount of consecutive episodes this season, Mike takes the only logical step left by now playing freakin’ Adolf Hitler.
— Also, since when was Hitler a redhead?
— Even something about Farley’s fight introduction into the camera is coming off so shoddy, poorly staged, and low-budget-looking.
— They got the “Let’s get ready to rumble” guy to cameo for THIS?
— Wow, that “Yaaay…. I mean, booo” comedic line from an off-camera extra was very poorly delivered and fell completely flat. Man, what is happening to SNL this season? Why do some things this season have such a low-budget, high school production-esque feel? Actually, I started noticing this in the second half of the preceding season, but it’s carried over into this season.
— The “Let’s get ready to rumble” guy and Farley sloppily keep accidentally talking over each other throughout this sketch. Did SNL even bother doing rehearsals for this sketch?
— The ending with George asking “New fuhrer? What??!” was awful.
— Oh, god, now we get a text crawl ending, one of the laziest ending tropes that SNL has a habit of occasionally falling back on.
— Mercifully, this sketch is over. Unmercifully, this is FAR from the last bad, laughless sketch I’ll have to suffer through tonight.
STARS: *
LOOKING GOOD
host’s makeovers involve beating up his subjects
— George has appeared in three things so far tonight, and every single one of them have revolved around “George Foreman solves everything by beating people up… because he’s a boxer, get it?” Could SNL’s writing tonight be any lazier?
— Pretty dead sketch so far, and George’s line deliveries are painfully awkward.
— I got a laugh from Adam entering with that grotesque makeup. Jesus Christ, I just realized, we’re about 15 minutes into tonight’s episode, and I’ve only gotten TWO laughs all night so far. TWO laughs, and one was more of a chuckle than an outright laugh.
— The “before” picture of Elliott with that goofy grin is hilarious (the second-to-last screencap above).
STARS: *½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Doll Parts”
WEEKEND UPDATE
Martha Stewart’s (JAG) past Christmases don’t jibe with New Jersey locale
Two Guys From A Religious Cult & their Leader (CHF) review a restaurant
— Boy, the audience is pretty dead during Norm’s jokes so far. Has all the horrible comedy from earlier tonight completely killed the audience’s energy by this point?
— Okay, the audience is starting to get more responsive.
— As odd as it was seeing Janeane doing a Hillary Clinton “impression” earlier tonight, it’s almost as weird seeing her as Martha Stewart. I can’t help but compare her impression to the famous one that Ana Gasteyer would later do, and even the forgotten one-off impression that Nancy Walls would do in the upcoming season 21, and needless to say, Janeane’s take is coming up short.
— Norm’s baffled questioning of the odd words Janeane’s Martha keeps throwing into her sentences is making this whole commentary.
— Norm makes his very first joke about The Byron Allen Show, which would go on to be a running gag this season.
— God, no. The damn Two Guys From a Religious Cult become recurring. I hate these characters.
— Yep, this Religious Cult commentary so far is more of the same.
— Now we get an addition of Farley as the leader of the Religious Cult, which is just yet ANOTHER season 20 Chris Farley screaming role.
— I do admit to getting a big laugh from Farley’s coy delivery of “The peach cobbler was deliiiiightful!”
STARS: ***½
FOLEY TRAINS FOREMAN
Matt Foley’s unorthodox training revives host’s will to hit people
— Interesting different use of Matt Foley, and it seems to be a fun idea seeing where he lives.
— Yikes at Farley’s voice in this. I recall commenter and fellow SNL reviewer Ben Douwsma saying in the comments section of my Martin Lawrence episode review that by the time of the George Foreman episode, Farley’s increasingly exaggerated Matt Foley voice has gotten to the point where it’s just a whine. Ben definitely wasn’t kidding. Farley’s voice is unbearable in this.
— Turns out the change of format in this Matt Foley sketch, which initially seemed promising, isn’t doing ANY good. This sketch is not working at all, and the training montage is completely laughless. It’s sad seeing a Matt Foley sketch die a horrible death like this. While I’ve always been of the opinion that they should’ve kept Foley a one-off character after his classic first sketch, at least most of his subsequent installments have had SOME laughs, despite how few they are in comparison to the laughs in the classic first sketch. But THIS installment is simply pathetic.
STARS: *
UNCLE JOE
(KEN) recruits reluctant Uncle Joe (host) to sing at a wedding reception
— This sketch is known as the nadir of Kevin’s SNL tenure and is often used as an example of how unnecessary this 9th season of Kevin’s tenure is.
— The “comedy” in this sketch is dreadfully unfunny, and yes, it’s indeed sad watching Kevin in this, considering how consistently funny his character pieces were during his prime years.
— THAT’S how the sketch ends? Man, they didn’t even TRY with this sketch.
STARS: *
THE INCREDIBLE HULK
Incredible Hulk (host) shares viewers’ ire toward SNL writers, G.E. Smith
— Aaaaand the show continues to sink further and further. As if things hadn’t already been dire enough tonight, here comes a particularly notorious sketch from this season.
— What’s with Elliott playing so many scientists in this episode?
— I did get a chuckle from Elliott’s deadpan delivery of “What the hell was that?” after the first instance of Hulk Foreman transforming back into Tim.
— Jesus Christ at the unfunny repetitive nature of this. If they cut to that Hulk transformation pre-tape ONE more damn time…
— (*sigh*) Yep, and there goes the transformation pre-tape once again. My god, you are DESTROYING me with tonight’s episode, SNL. Destroying me.
— Now Hulk Foreman breaks the fourth wall and calls out the sketch on its bad writing and repetitive one-joke nature. This is just coming off as a poor man’s version of what they did in the first Hub’s Gyros sketch. At least the repetitive one-joke nature of that sketch was actually FUNNY, even before they broke the fourth wall and called the sketch out.
— Now Hulk Foreman goes further with the fourth wall-breaking, by calling out how bad this season is, expressing the same complaints that many viewers had towards SNL at the time. At least this shows how self-aware SNL is of its own suckiness lately, but openly mocking that doesn’t make the problem go away.
— Okay, I do love the ending with this sketch overlapping with the subsequent SNL Band shot, by having Hulk Foreman interrupt G.E. Smith’s guitar-playing to smash his guitar to pieces (a bit that would sadly be cut from this sketch in Comedy Central’s 60-minute version of this episode). Considering the ire that some SNL fans at the time had developed towards G.E. Smith’s “mugging” and “grandstanding” during the SNL Band shots (I’m not saying I agree with those complaints), this Hulk bit probably satisfied those G.E. haters.
STARS: *½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Violet”
BEDTIME STORY
CSE wants host to read him a bedtime story so he can sleep during show
— God bless Chris Elliott, who has come to save tonight’s trainwreck of an episode with another one of his patented oddball sketches, which have been a consistent bright spot these last few episodes.
— Elliott, on if he’s supposed to be getting ready for a sketch right now: “I’m gonna leave that for the kids. You know, the Farleys and the Spades and the Piscopos.”
— A lot of funny little lines from Elliott from here.
— I love the reveal that Elliott wants George to read him a bedtime story; Goodnight Moon, to be specific.
— Elliott’s really good at selling the childlike behavior while George is reading to him.
— Good inclusion of Lorne at the end, and I like seeing the interaction between him and Elliott.
STARS: ****½
STALKING
by Bruce McCulloch- stalkee (JAG) calmly converses with suitor
— Our first Bruce McCulloch film of the season. Needless to say, his work is VERY welcome in this particular season.
— I like Janeane’s very casual reaction to Bruce flat-out telling her he’s stalking her.
— This film is a very interesting change of pace, not only for this episode, but this era in general.
— Great turn with Bruce disturbingly waxing poetic about why he decided to stalk Janeane, complete with a lighting change.
— Solid film overall.
STARS: ****
JACKIE STALLONE’S PSYCHIC CIRCLE
be like Sylvester, not Frank
— I’ve sometimes seen this referred to as one of Janeane’s better performances during her short-lived SNL tenure, a compliment that I’ve never understood. To me, Janeane’s performance in this sketch is just one of her many sullen, lifeless, “I don’t wanna be here”-type of performances, which gives this sketch too much of a dead, slow feeling for me. I can’t help but think of how much better this Jackie Stallone role would’ve come off had it been given a season earlier to Julia Sweeney, who, despite her many frustrations with SNL that season, still would’ve put actual effort into the role and would’ve done an actual characterization, unlike what Janeane is doing here.
— Using the name “Frank” as a substitute for negative words is an okay idea, and is coming off funny with Adam’s delivery during his testimonial. David’s testimonial, on the other hand, was pretty bland, adding to the slow, dead feeling of this sketch. (Much like Janeane, David is another cast member who’s guilty of giving many lifeless, “I don’t wanna be here”-type of performances this season.)
STARS: **
GOODNIGHTS
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— Simply awful. One of the worst episodes I’ve reviewed so far in this SNL project. Until the last 15 minutes, this episode was one laughless, painful dud after another (aside from Weekend Update) and seemed to get even worse and worse in the second half of the show. Thankfully, that disastrous downhill slide was cut off by a brief sudden upswing in quality towards the end of the show, with our weekly oddball Chris Elliott sketch and a refreshing Bruce McCulloch film, before the episode’s quality dipped again with the not-terrible-but-dull closing Jackie Stallone sketch. Tonight’s episode also wasn’t helped by George Foreman’s dreadful hosting performance and his consistently awkward line deliveries. This was also possibly the least Christmas-feeling Christmas episode in SNL history. Almost none of the material was holiday-related.
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
plus this bonus shot…
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Alec Baldwin)
a big step down
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
We enter the year 1995, with host Jeff Daniels. We also get a new addition to the cast.