Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
DOLE & RODMAN IN ’96
Bob Dole (NOM) declares Dennis Rodman [real] as his running mate
— Feels odd in retrospect to see Darrell as Tom Brokaw. He’s doing fine (despite a flubbed line and the fact that he looks NOTHING like Brokaw), but I prefer Chris Parnell’s later Brokaw impression.
— An amusingly random concept of Dennis Rodman as Bob Dole’s running mate.
— I like Norm’s Dole telling Rodman “Get a hold of yourself, you damn freak!”
— An unintentional laugh from Rodman badly flubbing his “What’s up with that eye?” line.
STARS: ***
MONOLOGUE
host takes offense at Polish jokes masquerading as audience questions
— Interesting bowing-down from Christine upon making her entrance.
— Geez, now she’s doing the bowing-down thing EVERY time the audience applauds.
— Oh, she’s now addressing why she keeps bowing down at applause: she has a background in theater.
— The audience members’ polish stereotype questions are giving me pretty good laughs.
— This monologue ended a bit oddly.
STARS: ***
A.M. ALE
Rerun from 9/30/95. So I guess we’re just going to go through practically the entire second half of this season without having ANY new fake ads?
THE COURTNEY LOVE SHOW
Marge Schott (DAH) & Julie Andrews (host)
— Nice to see Molly’s Courtney Love impression back, but I’m not too crazy about it falling victim to SNL’s lazy habit of putting celebrity impressions in their own talk show sketch. Then again, this is the only time we’ll be seeing this Courtney Love Show sketch. It surprisingly never ends up becoming recurring.
— Long-time SNL stage manager Joe Dicso is leaving after the following week’s season finale (as we’ll see in the goodnights of that episode). Is getting kissed and climbed-on by a wild Molly Shannon during this sketch part of his send-off?
— I like the “Top 10 Bruises on My Body” segment.
— Pretty random casting of Darrell as Marge Schott.
— Overall, just an okay sketch, though Molly did provide pretty good laughs with her performance. No big loss that this sketch never ends up becoming recurring.
STARS: ***
GET OFF THE SHED!
Frank & his wife (host) issue more harsh “get off the shed” orders
— I loved the first installment of this sketch, but yeah, not too sure this needed to be recurring. I don’t mind the variation they’d do of this sketch a few seasons later, in which they change the setting by placing Will’s character in the bleachers at a little league baseball game.
— Now we get Will’s wife, played by Christine (I guess we’re supposed to ignore the fact that she looks NOTHING like the wife that Mariel Hemingway played in the first installment of this sketch?), joining in on the yelling. Unfortunately, Christine doesn’t have Will’s knack for yelling in an amusing manner. Her yelling is just coming off screechy and kinda grating (then again, I’m sure people who don’t like Will Ferrell probably feel the same about his yelling).
— I did love Christine’s threat to shove her kids back into her womb.
— Another funny threat, this time with Will’s “I will take you into a dark alley and fight you!”, which is such a perfectly Will Ferrell-esque line. Even though I feel this sketch is paling in comparison to its first installment, the funny and creatively-written threats from Will and Christine are making this work. In fact, the threats may even be funnier than the ones from the first installment. I guess the only reasons I feel a bit lukewarm on this installment is Christine’s grating yelling voice and the lazy reprisal of the same-old backyard gathering setting.
— Weak ending with it being revealed that the kids weren’t on the shed after all.
STARS: ***
20 YEARS AND ONE WEEK
a Barbara Walters (CHO) special looks back at interviews from the past
— Koechner’s attempt at a Burt Reynolds impression (and a pretty poor attempt at that) feels odd in retrospect, knowing that Norm is in the cast and would soon start regularly doing THE definitive Burt Reynolds impression.
— Pretty fun format to this sketch, and I like how the look of Cheri’s Barbara Walters keeps changing to correlate with the various years the interviews are taking place in.
— I like the ridiculousness of there now being a Barbara Walters interview from 1862, with her interviewing Abraham Lincoln.
— I love Darrell-as-Richard-Dreyfuss’ angry ranting.
STARS: ***½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Mint Car”
WEEKEND UPDATE
for Mother’s Day, Gary MacDonald tries to do Weekend Update by himself
nude Dennis Rodman [real] reviews his new book & makes NOM uncomfortable
— Very interesting how Gary Macdonald gets to “anchor” his own version of Weekend Update, complete with his own opening title sequence.
— I loved Gary Macdonald’s Janet Reno/Dude Looks Like a Lady joke.
— An overall expectedly funny commentary for what sadly ends up being Gary Macdonald’s final appearance.
— Between the cold opening and tonight’s Update, are Norm and Dennis Rodman trying to form a comedy team together?
— I loved Rodman’s delivery of “God, that is beautiful” when looking down at his own erection.
— An odd and random ending to the Rodman commentary, with him headbutting Norm, sending him flying backwards out of his chair. That didn’t come off anywhere near as funny as my description may sound.
STARS: ***½
NIGHTCLUB SINGER
a nightclub audience reacts to a terminally-ill amateur singer (host)
— I like Chris suddenly yelling “You suck!” during Christine’s song.
— A fairly interesting mid-sketch twist with Christine revealing she’s terminally ill.
— The ending with Christine alienating the crowd again after having won them over was kinda funny, but I wanted more from the ending. Something about this overall sketch felt kinda lacking to me.
STARS: **½
SPADE IN AMERICA
Lucien & Fagin spend a day out on the town with DAS
— The overused Fops surprisingly haven’t appeared in quite a while. Having them on Spade In America is a decent change of pace. And considering how detached Spade has mostly been from the new cast onscreen, it’s interesting seeing him interacting with The Fops.
— Fun idea for a pre-tape with Spade and the Fops out in the city.
— Spade throws in a half-assed Gap Girls reference, which fell really flat.
— The whole dressing room segment isn’t working.
— Fairly weak ending to the pre-taped video.
— Overall, meh. A disappointment. This didn’t turn out to be anywhere near as fun as I wanted it to be.
STARS: **
DEATH ROW
Rolf (COQ) & fellow death row inmates gossip about chair-bound comrades
— The debut of a now-forgotten Colin Quinn character. We’ll be seeing him a few times in the upcoming season 22.
— I love that we’ve been seeing tons of Koechner tonight, especially given his decreasing amount of airtime the last few preceding episodes. Sadly, there’s also a bittersweet air to his heavy usage tonight, considering tonight’s episode basically ends up being his last hurrah. The following week’s season finale is his ACTUAL final episode, but he practically gets shut out of the show that night. (Notice I said “practically”. There’s a common misconception that Koechner doesn’t appear in the season finale at all, but he actually does, albeit in a VERY small non-speaking role that might as well have been played by an extra. I’ll point out this appearance in tomorrow’s review.)
— I like Tim whining “As soon as you take me out of the room, these guys are gonna talk about me!”
— Pretty short sketch, but decent, and I like the relatable feel of the prisoners’ conversations.
STARS: ***
GOAT BOY SINGS POPULAR SONGS OF THE 80’S
freak-of-nature Goat Boy’s (JMB) album features popular songs of the ’80s
— Ladies and gentlemen, we have a major recurring character debut!
— Such a humorously absurd and random concept of this character, and a good premise for his debut, having him sing 80s hits.
— I particularly like the part with Goat Boy “singing” the lyric-less theme song from Taxi.
STARS: ***½
NEW TRAITS
(JMB) alters his personality to suit the whims of his corporate employers
— Wow, Jim is having his biggest night of the season, with a noteworthy lead role in TWO back-to-back sketches. He’s coming a long way from the first half of this season, where he rarely got any lead roles and spent multiple episodes not appearing in anything.
— I love Will’s deadpan threat of “There’s muscles in this suit, and I’ll use them if I have to.”
— Another funny line from Will: “If you leave, we’ll sue you, take away your children, and burn all your possessions.”
— Jim repeating his “This is ridiculous, you can’t do this to me!” line in a British accent by request provided a pretty good laugh.
— Funny scene with Jim returning to the office with all the personality traits that he was told to take on.
— A great increasing absurdity to this sketch, especially the memorable turn with Jim being forced to say “Oh, bippity boppity!” whenever he enters and leaves an office.
STARS: ****½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Inbetween Days”
1-600-LANSING
Lansing-area residents can receive phone sex from operators like (NAW)
— A variation of the 1-600-555-AUSSIE sketch, only with Michigan accents replacing the Australian accents. IIRC, we later get another variation of this in the Alec Baldwin episode from the upcoming season 22, though I can’t quite remember what the accent in that one is (New York perhaps).
— Very funny how the display we see of “girl-on-girl action” just turns out to be a housewife and a phone sex operator having a friendly conversation about food and sales.
— An amusing Boston mix-up bit with Will.
— Nancy’s hamming it up quite a bit with her facial expressions during this sketch, but I’m still enjoying her performance, especially for what I think ends up being her final big role on SNL (I don’t recall her having any lead roles in the following week’s season finale).
STARS: ***½
FUZZY MEMORIES BY JACK HANDEY
learning the truth about a haunted house
— Random cameo from a young Jim Gaffigan! (the last screencap above)
GOODNIGHTS
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— An average episode for this season’s standards, and ends the streak of really solid episodes that we’ve had starting all the way back in the John Goodman episode from March. Still not a bad episode or anything. While there were a few weak sketches and the overall show had a bit of a forgettable feel, I found a lot of the sketches to be okay and there were some interesting pieces towards the end of the show, especially the two Jim Breuer-starring sketches, both of which I feel are representative of some of the things I love about season 21 and symbolize how much more willing this season is at doing absurdist humor than the troubled preceding season was.
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Teri Hatcher)
a step down
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
Season 21 comes to an end, with host Jim Carrey. It’s also the end of the road for veteran David Spade and rookies David Koechner and Nancy Walls.