Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
WHITE HOUSE
Bill Clinton (DAH) is honored to welcome Larry Flynt (HOS) to Oval Office
— I always find Horatio’s Larry Flynt impression to be pretty funny.
— Hillary Clinton, when seeing Bill with Larry Flynt: “What are you doing here with that whore-monger?!?” Bill Clinton: “You talkin’ to him or me?”
— Horatio gets his very first “Live from New York…”. We’re only halfway through this season, and two of this season’s three new featured players have already said LFNY (Horatio and Parnell, the latter having said LFNY twice already). On the other hand, Jimmy, the most popular of the three featured players, ironically wouldn’t get his first LFNY until his fourth season, believe it or not.
STARS: ***½
OPENING MONTAGE
— After sounding sick in the last episode, Don Pardo is out tonight with laryngitis. Darrell Hammond fills in for him and, unlike some of the other times he’s temporarily filled in for a sick Pardo, where he basically just uses a generic announcer’s voice similar to the one he does as SNL’s regular announcer nowadays, he does an actual Pardo impression tonight. There’s a reason for that, as the following monologue will show.
— Speaking of foreshadowing the following monologue, I love the comically over-the-top, emotional, tearful way Darrell’s Pardo announces “Ladies and gentlemen, JAMES VAN DER BE-HEE-HEE-HEEK!!!” I recall hearing that some people who watched this episode live, who weren’t aware that wasn’t the voice of the real Don Pardo and didn’t know why he was saying Van Der Beek’s name so bizarrely and tearfully, wondered if Pardo was having a stroke on the air.
MONOLOGUE
disembodied voice of Don Pardo (DAH) expresses obsession with host
— A lot of laughs from the way Darrell’s Pardo is creepily hitting on James Van Der Beek.
— Good gag with Pardo’s gift for James being a pair of briefs.
— Don Pardo to James Van Der Beek: “You have something extra that makes me feel…. I don’t know…. HOT!”
— Lorne to Don Pardo: “Do you remember what happened with Scott Wolf?” Don Pardo: “(shamefully) Yes.”
STARS: ****
TEENY WEENIES!
fertility drug kit abets reckless attitude to motherhood
— A solid execution of a comically disturbing concept. I especially like the lyrics in the commercial jingle.
— A very funny visual of Ana’s particularly tiny baby being held in a spoon.
STARS: ****
NATIONAL SPELLING BEE CHAMPIONSHIP
spelling bee emcee (WIF) tries to improvise after losing the words
— A perfect premise for Will, who’s pulling this off very well.
— I love how it’s now gotten to the point where Will is awkwardly making up complete gibberish words for the contestants to spell.
— Will’s definition of the “word” Kevin McHale is great.
— Usually, I dislike text crawl sketch endings, but this one worked. There’s another one I like later this season, in that “Quit judging my dreams!” sketch from the Ray Romano episode.
STARS: ****
CATS HOME VIDEO
weary Cats castmember (CHP) narrates video marking 11,000th performance
— Funny voice from Darrell’s Andrew Lloyd Webber.
— Parnell’s thinly-veiled disdain during the straight-to-camera Cats tour he’s giving us is fantastic. Parnell is perfect at selling the destroyed soul of his character.
— I love the funny contrast between everybody’s bitter attitudes and James’ upbeat demeanor.
— It’s kinda hard to tell which cast member is which under all of that face paint. Until Will spoke, I honestly thought he was Colin Quinn making a rare non-Update appearance (which wouldn’t be the first time I made that mistake; remember the Will/Colin mix-up I said I made the first time I ever saw the Jingleheimer Junction sketch as a brand-new SNL viewer?).
— A great line from Parnell about Will’s skin issue possibly being due to him rotting from the inside.
— Very strong bit overall.
STARS: ****½
PROMO
LOM steps in when Don Pardo’s (DAH) voiceover lapses into host worship
— I love how the Don Pardo storyline from the monologue carries over into SNL’s “Next show” promo right now, with Darrell’s Pardo pretending that the next episode’s host is James Van Der Beek again instead of Gwyneth Paltrow, and Lorne dryly correcting him.
TEEN PULSE
sassy musical group 7 Degrees Celsius causes girls to swoon
— Oh, I had forgotten all about these 7 Degrees Celsius sketches until now. This is the debut of a sketch that SNL would do in this era whenever a male teen heartthtrob would host.
— I love the little detail with Parnell’s name being spelled “Jeph” and Kattan’s name being spelled “Samm”. Also a great detail with Parnell’s ridiculous wig.
— All the guys are funny in their respective intro, especially Horatio.
— This is such a spot-on and well-done parody of boy bands from this era.
— Will’s pervy producer character has always been my favorite part of these 7 Degrees Celsius sketches.
— Great reveal of a big, intimidating security guard sternly standing next to Will, after it’s revealed what Will was recently in prison for.
— Some really good laughs from the straight-to-camera mid-song speech that each band member delivers one-by-one while resting on a bouncy ball.
STARS: ****
DOG SHOW
David Larry & Miss Colleen preside over a canine slumber party
— This sketch officially becomes recurring.
— Like last time, the silliness of this sketch is pretty amusing, though nothing great.
— The dog playing Rocky Balboa is always particularly adorable (the second above screencap for this sketch).
— A noteworthy mistake where, at one point when he’s supposed to say “Captain Gingersnap”, James unintentionally says “Captain Gingershit…snap”, which the audience seems to catch, though they don’t make too big a deal out of.
STARS: ***
WEEKEND UPDATE
COQ fingers senators trying to make names for themselves via impeachment
foppish sports journalist Brian Fellow (TRM) uses tabloid-style reportage
— I’m not sure, but I think this ends up being the final Weekend Update to precede Update’s opening title sequence with Colin doing a straight-to-camera rant.
— Tonight’s overall opening straight-to-camera rant from Colin felt a little dead, though I got a few chuckles here and there.
— SNL sure loves passing off that picture of an average joe as different random people in this season’s Updates (the fourth above screencap for this Weekend Update). Kinda reminds me of a running gag in season 5’s Weekend Updates, where anchorpersons Jane Curtin and Bill Murray would pass off a comically bad photo of then-current SNL writer Alan Zweibel as different random people.
— Ladies and gentlemen, we have a major recurring character debut!
— Wow, not only is it odd seeing Brian Fellow appearing in something that’s NOT a Brian Fellow’s Safari Planet sketch, but in his debut here, he is almost NOTHING like the Brian Fellow that we would later go on to be familiar with. His look here is completely different (as you can see in the above screencaps), as is the main comedic concept of this character. The only similarities this version of Brian Fellow has to the later version are the effeminate voice and the fact that he opened this commentary by blurting out “I’m Brian Fellow!” (though regarding the latter, he doesn’t repeat it throughout this commentary like he later would in the subsequent Safari Planet sketches).
— To imply that Michael Jordan is a closeted gay man, Brian Fellow sassily says “Air Jordan is a friend of Dorothy”, which the audience goes “Ooooh” at. What exactly does “friend of Dorothy” mean? Is that just a reference to the “Gay men love Judy Garland” stereotype?
— The turn with Brian Fellow getting emotional when defending himself and complaining about constantly being disrespected is quite odd. Is this even being played for laughs?
— When telling off Colin, I got a kick out of Brian Fellow referring to him as “Mr. Update: Brooklyn Version” and telling him to “get those marbles out your mouth” (though regarding the latter, Tracy’s one to talk, as he sometimes has a habit of sounding marble-mouthed himself, including some points of this very Update commentary).
STARS: **½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “What It’s Like”
LASER POINTERS
laser pointers of (host) & (TRM) ruin a Harry Connick, Jr. (JIF) concert
— Jimmy’s Harry Connick Jr.: “Tonight, I wanna get back to my roots: the songs that made Frank Sinatra famous.”
— This sketch is giving me such a throwback to how prevalent those annoying laser pointers were back in this era. Takes me back to my high school days from these late 90s/early 00s years.
— The joke of this sketch is starting to get old, though Jimmy’s anger is kinda amusing me, and there’s a bit of a silly charm to this sketch, though it still could be better.
STARS: **½
THE WAR ABROAD AND AT HOME
community college fumbles a WWII documentary
— Some good laughs from the bad, vague detailing of WWII from alleged professionals such as the two narrators and the professor played by James.
— I love how they’re using a Hogan’s Heroes clip as alleged WWII footage.
— A big laugh from the narrator pronouncing “Nazis” as “Nazzys” and explaining that “they were called that because they were nasty”.
— Ha, now we get a Small Soldiers clip, though that sadly just reminds me of Phil Hartman’s death.
— A Daffy Duck wartime cartoon clip! I’m always a sucker for Looney Tunes clips, especially from rarely-aired WWII-related Looney Tunes cartoons.
STARS: ***½
FRANKENTEEN
NBC exec (TIM) has created Frankenteen (host) to fill a programming niche
— Surprisingly, Tim is JUST NOW making his first (and only) appearance all night.
— A fairly promising concept of creating a Frankenstein-esque teen idol.
— I love Parnell’s sly, drawn-out delivery of “Pshaw!” Parnell’s been having a strong night tonight in general. It can’t be said enough how well he’s been fitting into the show in just his first season as a featured player.
— Frankenteen’s way of “attacking” people is pretty funny.
— A funny unscripted gaffe with Tim responding to Parnell’s “He’s a monster!” line by saying “But he’s a MONSTER! I mean… he’s OUR monster!” That’s the type of line flub that only Tim Meadows could make work.
STARS: ***
TV REPAIRMAN
Lou’s lovely daughter Maria tries to corral a TV repairman (host)
— The third and final appearance of Cheri’s unibrowed Maria character.
— Are we supposed to ignore the fact that Maria’s dad was played by Sylvester Stallone in Maria’s first sketch and is now being played by Horatio, who is made to look NOTHING like the dad that Stallone played? Also, where are Maria’s two sisters (usually played by Molly and Ana) in this sketch?
— Odd wig on James, which makes his forehead look HUGE.
— I’m getting a good laugh from the part with Maria showing the repairman how she can crack her back in three places.
STARS: ***
GOODNIGHTS
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— An overall good episode. The first half of the show contained an impressive long string of strong segments at one point, but the second half of the show was just average. Nothing too bad in tonight’s show; even the sketch that I found to be the weakest (Laser Pointers) had a few merits.
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Bill Paxton)
a slight step up
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
Gwyneth Paltrow makes her hosting debut
Yep, that’s what “friend of Dorothy” means. John Lennon had a song called “She’s A Friend Of Dorothy’s” about this, I believe.
It originates from Stonewall. Asking another man if he was a friend of Dorothy was a safe way to ask if someone was gay or not (because the gay community loved Judy and she loved them back). It didn’t come back into the vernacular commonly until CLUELESS, I think.
Ironically, they would later make a movie about a teen Frankenstein, called “Big Monster on Campus”, though you also may know it as “Boltneck”, which was a masterpiece (as a certain Merc with a Mouth will attest).
When this aired, I wondered if Don Pardo objected to the monologue, and that was the reason for Hammond’s impersonation. In retrospect, I don’t know why I thought that, given how often Pardo appeared in SNL sketches.
Also, as part of Vulture’s 25 Days of Cats retrospective in December 2019, Parnell, Van Der Beek and sketch writer Mike Schur was interviewed for an oral history of the Cats home video sketch. Granted, the article promotes a Hollywood fiasco but one rarely sees a deep dive on one of SNL’s more obscure sketches:
https://www.vulture.com/2019/12/snls-cats-sketch-oral-history.html
Why don’t we ask Don himself via archive footage?
I never realized until going over this era again how much Colin liked to reference the Wu-Tang Clan, particularly ODB. I think that carried over onto Tough Crowd and his stand-up come to think of it. Of course Colin has more street cred in the 90s hip-hop community than you might think, he was in “Who’s The Man?” afterall!
Oh man, I forgot about the lazer pointer craze in the late 90s, every classroom attention-whore had to one to drive the teacher nuts, good times! I’m surprised they haven’t turned that into an iPhone app by now… and for the hell of it I just googled it and that is a thing that exists, go figure!
I always laugh at the part of the WWII doc where they say that Hitler went on to play the dad on Mork and Mindy.
This episode is a big harbinger for the neverending gay-related humor that would take over much of the ’00s. An extended joke about Don Pardo obsessing over an attractive young man bleeds into sketch after sketch with mentions or jibes, ending in that weird, unfunny Update piece with Brian Fellow (in name only…). This type of writing just helped to slowly disconnect me from the show for a long time. That overly long MTV sketch is another start of what we’ll be seeing quite a bit of, and always felt to me like an attempt to replicate Mad TV’s dive into MTV parodies. The main difference is they were often crisper and funnier.
Apparently Woody Harrelson was originally meant to host this episode. As a pinch hitter, James did a more than decent job, although I wish he’d been able to host in later years when he was more confident.
Didn’t Darrell play Cheri’s father in the last version of this sketch? I wish they’d just used him again.
John, Darrell played Cheri’s uncle in that version of this sketch.
Thanks. That was my favorite version of this sketch so I wouldn’t have minded seeing them continue that approach, but I guess Darrell had a busy night as it was.
Where did you find a copy of this episode? I cant find it anywhere!