Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
MAC’S BAR
Newt Gingrich (CHP) & Bob Livingston (WIF) ask “What the hell happened?”
— I love Will-as-Bob-Livingston’s sudden delivery of “What the HELL happened?!?”
— The occasional repetition of “What the HELL happened?!?” continues to be funny.
— I like Tracy’s bartender character telling Livingston “You this close from gettin’ cut off, bro” when Livingston directs one of his many “What the HELL happened?!?”s towards him.
— Great part with Gingrich telling Livingston that the Macarena, Yahoo Serious, and The Magic Johnson Show all lasted longer than him.
— A hilarious sudden turn with Darrell’s President Clinton exiting from the bar’s backroom with a black woman.
— I love the very energetic “Live from New York…” delivery from Parnell, getting his first-ever solo LFNY (he previously said it in unison with Darrell in an earlier cold opening this season). The fact that he’s only been a featured player for half a season so far and is ALREADY delivering his second LFNY just shows how quickly he’s fit into the show.
STARS: ****
OPENING MONTAGE
— Don Pardo noticeably sounds sick tonight. SNL would later fix this in reruns by replacing Pardo’s announcements with ones where he sounds like his normal self (though I recall Comedy Central’s 60-minute version of this episode using the live version with Sick Pardo intact).
MONOLOGUE
castmembers douse host Carrie-style after he drops Sissy Spacek’s name
— I like the randomness of Darrell doing Will’s hair in the makeup room.
— Some laughs from the cast backstage making fun of Bill while he’s doing his monologue.
— I like the Bill Paxton/Bill Pullman mix-up.
— A good Carrie-esque turn with pigs’ blood being spilled on Bill.
— When we’re seeing various people’s reactions to the pigs’ blood prank, I love the shot of a shocked Lorne whipping off his headphones and mouthing “What the…?” in horror.
— Funny detail with a clip of Sissy Spacek and Bill Pullman from their respective SNL monologues being played in small circular images around a blood-covered Bill.
— During this Carrie parody, I absolutely love the lights in the studio going red and Bill using telekinesis to get revenge on everybody laughing at him. Pretty ambitious visuals for a simple SNL monologue.
STARS: ****
THE VIEW
fired Debbie Matenopoulos [real] makes an eloquent exit
— This ends up being the final View sketch in this era.
— Ah, I see this is after Debbie Matenopoulos got fired from the View in real life.
— Cheri’s Barbara Walters: “I haven’t felt this girlishly giddy since I was 70!”
— Now the real Debbie Matenopoulos appears.
— Tracy’s Star Jones, to Debbie Matenopoulos: “Girl, if brains were a crime, you’d never do time!”
— When the View ladies’ talking over each other at Matenopoulos starts dying down, I love Tracy’s Star Jones being heard saying “–drag your little Greek ass back to MTV.”
— A pretty funny uncharacteristically-poignant exit speech Matenopoulos gives when telling off the View ladies, before doing a pratfall when exiting the scene.
— Overall, not quite as strong as these View sketches usually are, but this was still good, and the Matenopoulos cameo gave this series of sketches a good feeling of closure.
— Odd how tonight’s host was nowhere to be seen in this first post-monologue sketch, but maybe he needed time to get the fake blood washed off of him after the monologue.
STARS: ***½
THE CULPS AT O’HARE
in an airport terminal, Marty & Bobbi serenade fellow stranded travelers
— I like how we’ve been seeing the Culps being placed in out-of-the-ordinary settings lately (Yankees game, airport).
— For once, a Culps sketch actually involves various cast members besides Will and Ana, though it’s only at the beginning of this sketch.
— Some good laughs from Marty Culp’s line about somebody filling his shoes with “dangerously hot” nacho cheese.
— During the song medley, I absolutely love the Culps’ take on “In the Air Tonight”, but I may be biased, as I’m always a sucker for that song.
— An overall good song medley from the Culps as usual.
STARS: ***½
TITANIC
Titanic director’s cut has shake down of Rose (CHO); James Cameron cameo
— I love Horatio as the fat bearded guy from Titanic.
— Bill’s performance in this is great.
— Funny turn with everyone violently turning on Cheri’s Rose, to get her to confess the location of the necklace.
— Why exactly is Darrell playing himself in this particular sketch? Horatio even flat-out referred to him as Darrell at one point.
— Funny pre-taped ending with James Cameron. He had several funny lines here, and I liked the visual of him casually using money to light his cigar.
STARS: ****
BEHIND THE MUSIC: FAT ALBERT
fall of Fat Albert (TRM) & The Junkyard Gang chronicled
— An absolutely hilarious premise of doing a VH1 Behind The Music parody of Fat Albert.
— Tracy’s Fat Albert voice is priceless.
— Tim’s interview as Mush Mouth is great.
— Very funny scene with Dumb Donald having a drug-induced mental breakdown.
— I like Beck’s interview about being inspired by Fat Albert’s music, made even funnier by how straight he’s playing this.
— An overall perfect sketch.
STARS: *****
WEEKEND UPDATE
COQ comments on the degeneration of discourse in the Clinton scandal
Elizabeth Dole (ANG) resigned so she & Bob can party like it’s 1999
— Some laughs from the way Ana’s Elizabeth Dole is reading off lyrics from the song “Party Like It’s 1999” by, who she calls, “the group Prince”.
— The pictures that Elizabeth Dole is showing of herself are pretty funny.
— Man, Colin makes such a bad straight man to guest commentators on Update. That’s especially on display in tonight’s Elizabeth Dole commentary.
STARS: **½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Nobody’s Fault But My Own”
NEWSFORCE
MSNBC program is cluttered by on-screen information overload
— I like how out-of-hand the onscreen graphics are gradually getting, as it’s now starting to block the people onscreen. A good parody of the large number of onscreen graphics in typical real-life MSNBC shows like this.
— I especially like Will and Cheri being forced to duck their heads to get their faces seen onscreen underneath all of the graphics.
— Good bit with Tim randomly placing a big picture of the Terminator robot onto the graphics-crowded screen and just responding “That’s cool.”
STARS: ***½
KCF SHREDDERS
Rerun from 10/3/98
WHICH OVERNIGHT DELIVERY SERVICE?
overnight-delivery couriers vie for (ANG)’s business via sexy dance moves
— A funny sudden reveal of the random concept of this sketch.
— I love the look of Will’s host character.
— Always nice when Parnell gets to show off his array of funny dance moves.
STARS: ***
FANTASTIC VOYAGE
tiny scientists like hanging out in president’s penis
— I like the various creative penis euphemisms, especially “rumple foreskin”.
— Okay, they’re starting to get out of hand with the euphemisms, though that is the point.
— Funny bit with the guys holding still in the middle of their high-five, only for Ana to inform them “You guys, it’s not a freeze-frame” (though that joke would later be used in an even better way at the end of a news team sketch from the following season’s Garth Brooks episode).
STARS: ***
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Tropicalia”
EXTREME HUNTING WITH TED NUGENT
Ted Nugent (host) welcomes Prince (CHK), shoots him
— Great casting of Bill as Ted Nugent.
— The debut of Skeeter, who would go on to be an obscure recurring character of Darrell’s that would pop up in random sketches.
— Surprisingly, this 10-to-1 sketch is Kattan’s first and ONLY appearance all night.
— The casting of Kattan as Prince, which initially seems pretty random, actually kinda makes sense, as I can see some facial similarities between Prince and Kattan.
— Kattan’s singing as Prince is cracking me up.
STARS: ***½
GOODNIGHTS
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A consistently good episode. The show flowed very nicely with an endless string of good sketches all night, especially some of the standout strong sketches in the first half of the show. I also enjoyed Bill Paxton as a host and found him to be pretty fun.
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Alec Baldwin)
a mild step down
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
James Van Der Beek
The “He was smokin’ his own pewwwp” line is still burnt in my head 21 years later..
I love that they have Debbie the last laugh, considering how relentless the show was to her and how unceremoniously ABC fired her.
IIRC, Classic SNL (circa 2006) removed Ana’s Elizabeth Dole commentary from WU. Instead, they skipped to Colin’s closing remarks, the camera scrolled out, and they tried to fade away to the opening WU graphic (but you could still see part of Ana’s body). When Comedy Central showed the syndicated episode, they kept Ana’s commentary intact.
The Fat Albert sketch is what I most remember from this episode. I wonder if the meltdown over a giant robot was meant to reference the story about Garrett Morris…
Bill did a good job in the monologue, although it feels very random, like he just told them some stories to work with and they latched onto the one about Sissy Spacek (they actually were friends – I’m not sure if he went to her episode or not). I wish they’d mentioned his Fish Heads video instead.
Debbie was a good sport to come in for the cameo, which is a bit more involved than these cameos can sometimes be. The last few of these sketches hadn’t been the same – I think the addition of Joy was a mistake.
The Culps intro is one of the best recurring fakeouts of this era – the setup goes on so long you don’t get what it’s going to end in.
Bill was such a talent.
(Sadly) the MSNBC sketch is still somewhat relevant today as a lot of networks have upped the ante when it comes unnecessary pop-ups. Between oversized rating bugs, hashtags taking up the bottom part of the screen, and in some cases, 24 hour countdowns leading up a program nobody cares about, is it any wonder that people are cutting the cord?
RIP Bill 6 years this year and still missed.
Paxton was such an entertaining and likable talent in everything he did.
Seeing Kattan as Prince brings to the mind the somewhat unfortunate note that he was never actually portrayed by a black man whenever he was lampooned on the show.