Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
CLASS REUNION
Unabomber Ted Kaczynski (WIF) attends his Harvard class reunion
— The debut of Will’s memorable Ted Kaczynski impression. I love the huge laughter the audience gives as soon as they realize who Will’s playing as soon as he makes his entrance.
— Will’s jovial, friendly characterization of Ted Kaczynski is brilliant and is the type of performance that Will is tailor-made for.
— I like Nancy being able to guess that it’s Kaczynski’s hands covering her eyes by feeling the chains on his wrists.
— Lots of funny one-liners from Kaczynski all throughout this sketch. I especially love “I have a different nickname these days” as well as him responding “I’ve been doing a lot of writing” when asked “What are you up to?”
— Great walk-on from a left-arm-missing, head-bandaged, and crutches-bound Norm, playing Kaczynski’s school tormentor.
STARS: ****½
OPENING MONTAGE
— SNL writer and occasional onscreen performer Fred Wolf has been added to the cast as a featured player.
MONOLOGUE
host plugs the flat tax & answers audience questions about his wealth
— Was Steve Forbes’ echo-ish “flat tax” exclamation supposed to be a subtle reference to Church Lady’s “Could it beeeeee….. SATAN?!?” routine?
— Feels a little weird seeing a questions-from-the-audience monologue in this particular season.
— Adam McKay’s suggestion of what Steve should do about the situation in Bosnia is funny.
— Another funny audience member line, this time from Jim Downey asking Steve if whenever he sees Thurston Howell on Gilligan’s Island, he thinks to himself “I can buy and sell that guy.”
— Steve’s line about “locking my cars inside my helicopter” appeared to be a flub, as he was most likely supposed to say “keys”, not “cars”. The audience still laughs heartily, showing that the botched line still worked.
STARS: ***
GRAYSON MOORHEAD SECURITIES
YET ANOTHER rerun of this ad, from 10/21/95. Jesus Christ, didn’t they just re-air this TWO EPISODES AGO? (*sigh*) Remember the days when this season used to have new fake ads? What ever happened to those days?
DRILL SERGEANT
soldiers can’t follow drill sergeant Suel Forrester’s roll call orders
— After debuting only two episodes ago, newbie Chris Kattan’s Suel Forrester character already returns. I don’t mind, though, because I’m always a sucker for this character.
— Fred Wolf’s Gordon Lightfoot line was really funny.
— Chris is great at combining his Suel Forrester routine with the delivery of a typical drill sergeant.
— The use of two black extras in this sketch makes me remember that we’re not going to be seeing Tim Meadows AT ALL tonight. He is mysteriously absent in this episode. I wonder if all of his appearances just got cut after dress rehearsal, or if he was out sick this week.
— I like the ending with the unintelligible army song Suel Forrester makes the soldiers sing.
STARS: ***½
NIGHTLINE
it’s obvious that host authored a tell-all book about GOP race
— A very funny premise, and I like Steve’s various ways of presenting Teve Torbes as an admirable, masculine character who has a “musky Victor Mature-like scent”.
— Lamar Alexander’s disguised name simply being “Lamar Alexander #2” is hilarious.
— A good little laugh over how the book includes a gaffe where Steve wrote “Did I mention how much the ladies love me, I mean him?”
— I love how the very first thing Norm’s Bob Dole says in this sketch is a blunt “Steve Forbes wrote the book.” But, my god, Norm could not have delivered that line with ANY less enthusiasm. In fact, he is really half-assing his performance in this sketch in general, putting zero effort into his delivery. He seems to officially be over his role as Bob Dole. (I think he would later go on to say in the “Live From New York” book that he mainly just cared about doing Weekend Update during his SNL years, and basically found it a chore to perform in what he considered to be lame Dole sketches the writers gave him.) And yet, he’s still slaying me in this sketch. What can I say? Even when putting no effort into a performance, Norm still cracks me up.
— Steve’s stiff demeanor and delivery is strangely very fitting and charming in this sketch.
— I like Darrell’s Ted Koppel calling Steve out on his questionable decision to cover up the word “senator”.
— Very impressive and funny delivery from Darrell’s Koppel quickly reading off the succession of fake names when quoting a statement from the book (the last above screencap for this sketch).
— Dole: “I just have one thing to say to you, Teve Torbes: TUCK OFF!”
STARS: ****½
SCREEN DOOR
during a visit from (host), Rita Delvecchio guards her screen door
— A change of pace for the Rita Delvecchio sketches. I like that they’ve taken her out of the porch setting and we’re now getting to see the inside of her house, giving us more insight into her life. This is a more developed, layered character than the usual type of recurring characters from this era.
— I love Rita casually walking over to the screen door while talking to Steve and then suddenly whacking the face of the child who has his face pressed against the screen door.
— Rita, regarding the endless amount of people coming up to her screen door: “The screen comes, and they’re runnin’ wild like Ted Kennedy at a strip joint.”
STARS: ***½
FORBES ON FORBES
MAM as Steve Forbes chastises host for ending his run for the presidency
— A pretty fun concept, and a nice way to work in tonight’s obligatory appearance from Mark’s Forbes impression. Much more tolerable than SNL’s usual corny “a cast member doing an impression gets confronted by the celebrity they’re impersonating” trope.
— A great meta turn, with Mark’s Forbes going on about “The Mark McKinney Factor”, complaining about Steve dropping out of the presidential race right as Mark’s impression was taking off.
— A funny line from Mark’s Forbes theorizing that the entire Steve Forbes presidential campaign was just an attempt to screw Mark McKinney.
— Mark’s Forbes ends this sketch by saying “And maybe for the last time, I’m Steve Forbes”. I believe this indeed ends up being the final appearance of Mark’s Forbes impression.
STARS: ***½
GRAYSON MOORHEAD SECURITIES
Another rerun from 10/21/95
WEEKEND UPDATE
FRW talks about receiving personalized mailed requests for donations
— Fred Wolf getting his own Update commentary for the first (and only) time.
— Speaking of Fred, what’s been going on with him lately? In the last two episodes, he was mysteriously removed from the writers credits during the goodnights, and then tonight, he has not only been reinstated back into the writers credits, but he’s been bumped up to a featured player in the cast.
— Fred’s commentary isn’t particularly great, but there are some okay laughs, especially the whole bit about the American Lung Association being only two dollars short from finding a cure.
— I loved the audience’s “Ohh!” response to Norm calling an ailing Katharine Hepburn “decrepit”.
STARS: ****
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Bulls On Parade”
ROOFERS
while on the job, roofers (COQ), (DAK), (host) dream about the good life
— A memorable instance of the “host plays against type” trope.
— Some good laughs from Steve playing such a badass character. Steve’s stilted delivery makes his lines as this character even funnier.
— A funny part with Koechner expressing his dream of getting a box of gold just so he can melt it down, which Colin questions the logic of.
— Was it really necessary to repeat the “somebody lands off-camera on a car, a car alarm goes off, one of the main characters takes out their car keys and turns off the alarm” gag from just a few episodes earlier in the Gary Macdonald sketch in this season’s John Goodman episode? Lazy move there.
STARS: ***½
SEATTLE TODAY
Unabomber sketch artist Stan Hooper isn’t very skilled
— This feels like the most appearances Norm has made in an episode this season.
— I love Stan Hooper’s various explanations for why his sketch drawings of the Unabomber look nothing like the man himself.
— Some more good laughs from Hooper’s details about the other criminal sketch drawings he’s done.
— This ends up being the final Stan Hooper appearance. Interesting how all of his appearances were in this season. Considering the nondescript, inconsistent nature of the character from sketch-to-sketch, there’s some later Norm sketches that I kinda wish named his character in them Stan Hooper. For example, the car accident victim who tells Sylvester Stallone that his movies suck.
STARS: ****
FUZZY MEMORIES BY JACK HANDEY
using his car to splash a schoolkid
BEAUTY SCHOOL
host gets a free haircut from barber school student Gerald Tibbins
— Another welcome appearance of T-Bones, and sadly, I believe it’s our final one. I like how he always has a different occupation in each sketch he appears in.
— Odd moment with Steve being shown visualizing in horror a dollar bill floating away after hearing that he’ll have to pay for a haircut at another barber shop.
— I love the vocalization T-Bones makes after taking a sip from the barbicide.
— This sketch strangely felt short, too much so for this particular sketch. I was hoping this would go on a little longer.
STARS: ***½
FAST TALK
during WWII, Johnny Jones (CHK) catches up with waitress Dottie (MOS)
— After the preceding Phil Hartman-hosted episode dusted off an old unused script of a black-and-white 1940s-set sketch (the “You’re The Man, Johnny” sketch), this new SNL era tries their hand at an original black-and-white 1940s sketch.
— Not sure what to say about the sketch itself so far, but I’m really enjoying the performances, especially Chris’ impressive delivery. I never knew he had the ability to pull off the fast-talking 1940s way of speaking.
— This truly does have the feel of the type of black-and-white 1940s sketches that SNL’s late 80s cast excelled at doing.
STARS: ***½
FLORIDA BUGS
a motorist (host) is lectured by a large & irate bug (JMB) that he hit
— There’s a strong possibility that this sketch wasn’t supposed to make it on the air. It was probably originally cut after this episode’s dress rehearsal, but was thrown into the live show at the last minute because of the infamous behind-the-scenes incident that led to Rage Against The Machine getting kicked off of SNL mid-show (here’s a very detailed rundown of that behind-the-scenes incident and everything that led up to it). Since RATM’s mid-show dismissal meant that the second musical performance had to be scrapped, that unexpectedly left SNL with a few minutes to fill. And with this Bugs sketch being the final sketch of tonight’s episode, I’m guessing that they pulled this from the “cut after dress” pile.
— A goofy but pretty fun concept to this sketch.
— Bug: “Is that a fly swatter that I see over there?” Forbes: “Yes.” Bug: “You’re a sick bastard, you know that?”
— Boy, Chris has been getting tons of airtime for a new featured player. I’m pretty sure he’s gotten more big roles in just three episodes than repertory player Jim Breuer has gotten in the entire first half of this season, back when Jim was really struggling for airtime.
— I like Chris’ performance as the tearful crushed bug.
— Funny ending meta line from Steve: “Three weeks ago I was running for president, now I’m on TV with a guy in a bug suit.”
STARS: ***½
GOODNIGHTS
host’s wife Sabina & daughters [real] join him on-stage
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A solid episode that was consistently good, especially some of the highs in the first half of the show. An overall much better episode than some might expect a Steve Forbes-hosted episode to be. And despite his limitations, Steve Forbes wasn’t a bad host and he came off as a good sport that seemed to be enjoying himself.
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Phil Hartman)
a slight step up
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
Teri Hatcher