Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
MARTHA STEWART LIVING
Easter fun & a half-hearted nod to Passover
— Interesting seeing a Martha Stewart Living sketch as a cold opening for a change.
— Some good laughs from Ana-as-Martha-Stewart’s dismissive attitude towards Passover, especially her line about “giant Jew crackers”.
— Random use of a host at the end of a cold opening.
— Greg Kinnear being quick to respond “Dear God, no!” when asked if he’s Jewish was very funny.
— While Ana is saying “Live from New York…”, the camera man seems confused, as the camera starts to zoom into a silent Greg Kinnear at first, before suddenly panning over a bit and zooming into Ana. I wonder if Greg said LFNY in dress rehearsal, and the camera man perhaps wasn’t informed of the change between dress and live.
STARS: ***½
MONOLOGUE
host analyzes his As Good As It Gets co-stars’ Oscar-winning performances
— Solid premise with Greg obsessing over why he lost the Oscar. I love how it gets to the point where he pulls out a TV and over-analyzes an As Good As It Gets scene he was in, playing it in slow-motion, and even using a telestrator to draw on the screen in the same manner as football analysts.
— Greg is handling himself really well in this monologue.
STARS: ****
COOKIE DOUGH SPORT
Rerun from 10/4/97
NAME THAT DOG
game show contestants try to guess pooches’ appellations
— A funny idiotic premise for a game show.
— I love Tim’s over-enthusiasm throughout the sketch.
— A good laugh from how Chris’ score total in the “Wall of Dogs” round (where you have to quickly guess the name of 10 dogs who are brought out together) ends up being a whopping 0.
— Ehh, it wasn’t necessary to repeat the above-mentioned “Wall of Dogs total score being 0” joke with Tim.
STARS: either ***½ or ****, I can’t decide yet
NEW HORIZONS
Marty & Bobbi perform a drug medley for patients at a rehab center
— Funny line during Greg’s opening speech: “Freon won’t get you high. It will kill you.”
— The Culps again this season? I actually always enjoy this recurring sketch, but I can’t help but feel we’ve already seen it enough times this season.
— I like the running bit in tonight’s installment with the Culps occasionally admonishing the crowd for laughing during their speech.
— Funny bit with Marty Culp thinking someone in the back is using sign language to refer to his wife Bobbi as a “j-hole”, which he is then told by Bobbi is actually sign language for “a-hole”.
— I like how the songs in tonight’s Culps song medley have a drug theme.
— I love the Culps singing an opera-ized version of “Insane in the Membrane”.
STARS: ***½
FIVES
(CHO) endures obnoxious blind date’s (host) compulsive need to high-five
— A perfect sketch for Greg Kinnear, who is solid at pulling off this character’s ridiculous habit of giving high-fives for every little situation. I especially like when he starts getting elaborate with the style of his high-fives.
— I love the quick bit with Darrell fake-laughing and then just walking off when Greg requests a high-five from him (the third and fourth above screencaps for this sketch).
— Very amusing reveal that Greg has named his penis Anthony.
— Weird how this is the second consecutive sketch tonight to use the insult “a-hole”.
— Funny turn with Greg somberly asking Cheri for a low high-five after she mentions bad news about her ailing grandfather.
— Good ending with Darrell’s “Grow up” comment to Cheri.
STARS: ****
TV FUNHOUSE
For, I believe, the only time in SNL history, a new SNL episode re-airs a TV Funhouse from an earlier episode. Tonight’s re-airing is a season 22 “Fun With Real Audio” cartoon with Tom Snyder stalking Dolly Parton. I wonder what the reason for this re-airing is.
THE HOUSE OF DOGS
Thurmond Sykes (TRM) pitches House of Dogs as a source of dangerous mutts
— Two dog sketches tonight? Am I watching a modern-day episode from season 45?
— I love Tracy’s line about how his dogs only care about “chewing faces and nuts”.
— Tracy’s a good spokesman for this sketch.
— Haha, Greg is playing his game show host character from the Name That Dog sketch! I always love the very rare times on SNL where one sketch crosses over into another sketch in the same episode.
— Funny detail with Greg’s obviously-fake hand.
— The ending text crawl is going on too long.
STARS: ***
WEEKEND UPDATE
COQ considers what Holy Week would be like had there been no Resurrection
Gunner Olsen delivers heavy metal-enhanced news stories to the crowd
— Man, is Colin capable of going through a single joke without muttering an unnecessary, barely-coherent ad-lib afterwards?
— Hmm, it’s like Colin somehow heard my above complaint, because immediately after I wrote it, Colin has thankfully gone through a long string of jokes without making any ad-libs after them.
— A particularly harsh and funny O.J./murderer joke from Colin tonight. Norm would be proud. By the way, anyone who believes Norm was fired for doing O.J./murderer jokes clearly has no memory of Colin’s Updates (which is understandable), because Colin’s been getting away with doing plenty of O.J./murderer jokes in his Update tenure so far, and as far as I know, he didn’t have Ohlmeyer on his ass for it.
— Colin’s straight-to-camera rant about Easter is pretty funny, but his delivery is off during certain parts.
— The return of Gunner Olsen, who’s making what ends up being his final appearance.
— Once again, Jim is doing a solid rock star imitation and is displaying fantastic energy. I just wish the lyrics he sings about news stories were actually funny, like Operaman’s lyrics were. Where are the jokes in Gunner Olsen’s lyrics? I guess these Gunner Olsen commentaries are more about the performance than the lyrics, but we’ve already seen Jim do it all in the first Gunner Olsen commentary. There’s nowhere left for this bit to go. Thankfully, however, Jim is still making this fun with his performance.
STARS: ***
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Never Ever”
KOPPEL BROTHERS
Ted Koppel (DAH) & his junkie younger brother (host) reunite & reconcile
— Pretty fun having Greg play Ted Koppel’s similarly-voiced brother. Greg’s doing a good Ted Koppel voice, which shows that he probably came in to SNL at the beginning this week with this impression in his back pocket, and asked the writers if he could do his impression in a sketch with Darrell’s already-existing Koppel impression. I bet that’s also how we ended up with John Turturro playing Christopher Walken’s similarly-voiced brother in one of Jay Mohr’s Christopher Walken Celebrity Psychic Friends Network sketches.
— Hilarious line from Greg as Koppel’s brother: “Smoking cigarettes through a filter is like sucking tit through a sweater.”
— Some laughs from hearing Greg’s character talking so much about drugs in that professional Koppel voice he’s using.
— Good ending, showing Greg’s character in bed with two Asian businessmen while emotionally reacting to a report he’s watching his brother Ted do on TV.
STARS: ***½
THE PLANK
Captain Kidd (Bob Hoskins) makes (WIF) walk a really, really long plank
— I’m curious to finally see this sketch for my very first time. I recall someone on an SNL message board once naming this sketch in a list of all-time worst SNL sketches, but I’ve also seen some people defend this sketch over the years.
— Bob Hoskins becomes the latest in season 23’s recent habit of randomly bringing in a legendary actor (e.g. Robert Duvall, John Hurt) as a credited special guest and putting them in a sketch or two.
— The ridiculousness of how long it’s taking Will to walk to the end of the insanely-long plank is decent. Things get funnier when the pirates try coming up with alternative ways to kill Will. The idea of one of the pirates running in front of Will and sawing off the remainder of the plank is hilarious.
— Very funny fake-out when we hear an off-camera splash, as if Will finally fell off the plank, only for it to turn out that something just fell out of Will’s pocket.
— I love Darrell’s defeated delivery of “This is just unacceptable” before walking off. Between the Fives sketch earlier tonight and this sketch, I’m surprised by how many laughs I’ve been getting from Darrell in non-impression roles tonight.
— Weak ending.
— Overall, pretty good. Definitely not “Worst sketch ever” material. However, I can’t help but feel that this could’ve been even better. I bet SNL’s late 80s era would’ve done more with this sketch’s premise.
STARS: ***½
THE ROBIN BYRD SHOW
fresh-faced (host) is victim of faulty booking
— Even though the preceding installment of this sketch was an improvement over the first one, I can’t help but be kinda happy that tonight’s episode is the last time we’ll ever be seeing this sketch.
— Greg’s out-of-place family-friendly cowboy character is pretty funny.
— I liked Greg ad-lib about being out of breath.
— Hmm, while I’m enjoying the whole mix-up with Greg’s character, Cheri and Tim’s timing and delivery is starting to feel off and is kinda taking me out of the sketch.
STARS: **½
FORMER HOSTS OF LATER REUNION
Later reunion brings together host, Bob Costas (DAH), thousands more
— Uh-oh. The endless announcing of many former Later hosts one-by-one is bringing back unwanted memories of that awful Super Sports Tours sketch from the season 20 premiere, in which an endless number of baseball players are announced one-by-one for a cruise they’ll be on.
— This Later sketch is such a knock-off of the Super Sports Tours sketch that it even has the same fake-out where the announcer finally stops listing off names and just says “and many more…”, only for him to immediately follow it up by actually announcing each of the names in that “and many more” list.
— Okay, this is getting funnier when the announcer’s listing-off of names starts getting increasingly sped-up to a comical degree.
— Notably, one of the many Later guest hosts mentioned in this sketch is then-current SNL cast member Jim Breuer. Are they just throwing him into this as a random meta joke, or did he actually guest host Later at one point?
— Hmm, now they’re even rapidly scrolling a long list of extra names, divided into three columns, which is exactly what the Super Sports Tours sketch did at one point. It’s official: this sketch has to be written by the same person who wrote Super Sports Tours.
— I got a laugh from the stock footage of a huge award show crowd when we’re shown all the Later hosts in attendance at this reunion special.
— I love the part with all of the off-camera Later hosts interviewing Bob Hoskins in unison. Funny uncomfortable facial reactions from Hoskins during that.
— Overall, better than it initially seemed like it was going to be. This is what that Super Sports Tours sketch should’ve been.
STARS: ***
THE LOST DEEP THOUGHTS BY JACK HANDEY
GOODNIGHTS
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A pretty good episode. Most of the episode consistently stayed in just the “pretty good” range, but there were a few fairly strong pieces, and none of the sketches fell really flat for me; even the sketch I gave the lowest rating to (The Robin Byrd Show) wasn’t too bad. Greg Kinnear was a pretty solid and charming one-time host, and I like the way he carried himself throughout the episode, coming off as comfortable and experienced as someone who’s already hosted the show before.
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Steve Buscemi)
a mild step down
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
Matthew Broderick