Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
A MESSAGE FROM DONALD TRUMP
Donald Trump’s (DAH) running mate is millionaire John Carpenter [real]
— Darrell’s still portraying Donald Trump with the New York mobster wiseguy-type voice that he used earlier this season, which sounds nothing like how his impression would later go on to famously sound.
— In retrospect, it’s quite odd seeing this 1999 sketch having Trump going on about how he’s gonna be president and we might as well not fight it.
— Funny line about a see-through bathtub.
— A cameo from John Carpenter, the winner of the previous night’s episode of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire. By nature, this cameo has aged oddly (then again, so has this entire cold opening).
— The voice of Carpenter’s dad on the phone is played by SNL writer Tim Herlihy. This is his sendoff, as tonight is his last show . He’s funny in this cold opening.
STARS: ***
MONOLOGUE
host gets MOS, ANG, CHO, RAD to join her Catfight Club
— Tina Fey’s voice still sounds so different in her pre-cast member appearances. Kinda hard to believe that tonight’s appearance is less than a year before she starts doing Weekend Update. However, she has been gradually starting to look like how she would in her Update days, as she’s noticeably been losing weight.
— I like Jennifer Aniston’s passing mention of a restraining order she has on Tina.
— I absolutely love this turn with a Fight Club-esque violent fight between Jennifer and the female cast members. Very fun.
— Jennifer’s “Superstar” taunt to Molly was really funny.
— Good line with Jennifer ashamedly admitting that she hasn’t even seen her boyfriend Brad Pitt’s movie Fight Club yet.
— I like the inclusion of Rachel, and how she’s being pushed around by her female castmates because she’s a newbie. It feels odd in retrospect seeing her and Cheri interacting, considering this would be their only season together and I can’t think of many other sketches later this season that we see any onscreen interaction between them (besides the Ugly Models sketch from the Freddie Prinze Jr. episode and the Office Skank sketch from the John Goodman episode).
— I love Rachel’s excited yell of “This is freakin’ awesome!” into the camera.
STARS: ****½
PRETTY LIVING
joyologist Helen & horny self-esteem guru (musical guest)
— Oh, god, here we go. Though I do remember this particular Pretty Living installment being a little more tolerable than usual.
— Kinda interesting having a musical guest appear in a Pretty Living sketch for once, and Sting’s sketch work is always solid.
— Jennifer’s collage is really funny.
— Jennifer’s bitterness throughout this sketch is helping to indeed make this Pretty Living sketch more tolerable than usual.
STARS: **½
NICK BURNS, YOUR COMPANY’S COMPUTER GUY
Nick Burns (JIF) condescends while giving tech support to officeworkers
— Nick Burns makes his debut.
— Between the debut of the Boston Teens in the last episode and now Nick Burns’ debut tonight, Jimmy’s been doing a lot of character work all of a sudden, after previously doing mainly just celebrity impressions and guitar songs on Weekend Update.
— Ah, a character with an opening title sequence and theme song, feeling like a throwback to SNL’s late 80s/early 90s era. A memorable and fairly catchy theme song that Nick Burns has.
— Speaking of SNL’s late 80s/early 90s era, I’ve always thought that Nick Burns kinda feels like a character that Mike Myers would’ve played back in the day.
— Nick Burns’ snarkiness and arrogance throughout this sketch is pretty funny, and a good spoof of the type of computer experts who are exactly like this.
— Good turn with Burns having difficulty for once when trying to fix Jennifer’s computer problems.
STARS: ***½
WAYNE PORTER
castaway Wayne Porter (CHP) wants to be reelected as leader of the island
— A great and very creative premise, and Parnell is perfect in this.
— I love the line from Parnell about how he knows this commercial isn’t airing on TV, as he’s staring into a hole in a coconut.
— A little bit of awkwardness at the end of the live version I’m watching of this, especially the timing issues with Darrell’s ending voice-over.
STARS: ****½
PRIVOLIN
(host) confuses co-workers by breaking fourth wall for genital herpes ad
— A great twist on the cliche of someone in a commercial secretly speaking to the camera while being among a group of people.
— Jennifer is giving a very strong performance here.
— Ana: “She’s talking to the wall about herpes medicine!”
STARS: ****½
BAND SHOT
— I absolutely love how the preceding sketch carries over into this band shot, with Jennifer suddenly blocking the SNL Band by (silently) continuing to plug the Privolin medicine in front of the camera.
SEX AND THE CITY
Carrie (host) recounts her rendezvous with Mr. Peepers
— Our first time in a while seeing a Mr. Peepers sketch. Still not a long enough of a break, in my eyes. Not even crossing him over with a Sex And The City parody seems like it has potential to me.
— The portion of the sketch parodying Eyes Wide Shut is kinda clever, at least.
STARS: **
WEEKEND UPDATE
wired George W. Bush (WIF) plugs his book & fields COQ’s questions
subtitles reveal the truth behind the polite race discussion of COQ & TRM
— Some of Colin’s jokes are getting a really strong audience reaction. Too bad his delivery is still iffy for me.
— Like the first time he played Bush earlier this season, it’s interesting seeing how different Will’s early portrayal of Bush is from the portrayal that we would later become familiar with. Tonight’s particular Bush portrayal is playing up Bush’s coke habits, which Will is pulling off hilariously.
— Bush: “Is it cool if I do a couple of lines?” Colin: “What?!?” Bush: “…of my book!”
— I like how you can already hear audience members chuckling as soon as Colin begins a Michael Jackson joke, long before he’s even gotten to the punchline.
— Good to see Tracy playing himself again after the epic backstage sketch he did with Garth Brooks in the last episode.
— The captions of what Tracy and Colin are really thinking during their discussion are decent. I especially like Tracy’s caption “’Til my sitcom on the WB.”
STARS: **½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Brand New Day”
CHRISTMAS URCHINS
rented street urchins (host) & (RAD) entertain a family by begging
— This has always been a favorite sketch of mine, partly for reasons I’ll mention during the “Immediate Post-Show Thoughts” at the end of this review.
— I love this very random premise of 19th century street urchins being used by a family as Christmas lawn ornaments. Rachel’s portrayal of an urchin is particularly hilarious, and she’s getting great reactions from the audience. I remember when I first saw this episode, this was one of the very first sketches that really endeared me to then-newbie Rachel.
— Darrell’s line about the urchins having lice gave me a laugh.
— The urchins’ increasingly disturbing songs are a riot, particularly their final “I’d (insert unsettling action here) for you” song. Of the final song, I especially love the “I’d decapitate a whore for you” lyric, because hearing it in retrospect, it’s a very Tina Fey-esque line (she wrote this sketch).
STARS: *****
KIM PLUNKETT
Wayne Porter’s rival Kim Plunkett (WIF) counters with an attack ad
— Will’s portrayal of his psychotic character is absolutely priceless, especially him randomly starting to bark as one of his points.
— I love the odd photo of Will’s character wearing some kind of fancy outfit and holding a smoking pipe (the last above screencap for this sketch).
— A perfect ending yell from Will of the line “I’M GONNA EAT YOU!!!”
STARS: *****
POKEMON
parents (DAH) & (host) are worried because their kid isn’t into Pokemon
— Interesting how they’re using a real child in this large role, instead of having a cast member play it. Also interesting seeing Darrell in such a major non-impression role, which is a huge rarity for him.
— A good take-off on the Pokemon craze from this time, which, when watching this in retrospect, serves as a nice time capsule for 1999.
— Jennifer and Darrell’s mean-spirited reactions to their son’s dislike of Pokemon has many great lines, especially Jennifer flat-out telling her son he’s a dumbass and Darrell telling him they’re so disappointed in how he’s turned out. This era is great at doing sketches with kids being berated by adults (e.g. various Will Ferrell sketches, Colin Quinn’s debate with a little girl on Weekend Update earlier this season).
STARS: ****
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest & Cheb Mami [real] perform “Desert Rose”
THANKSGIVING DINNER
Roberta ruins the family Thanksgiving dinner to which she invited herself
— The return of a character, Roberta, who Cheri previously played only once, very early in her SNL tenure. Very odd that they’re bringing this character back FOUR YEARS LATER. That has got to be one of the longest-ever gaps between a recurring character’s first and second appearance when the performer who plays them was in the cast (I’m not counting times when cast members came back to host).
— If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear this is the same family from the Urchins sketch earlier tonight. Like that sketch, we have Parnell as a gray-haired dad, Ana as a mom, and Darrell as a crotchety old grandpa. Speaking of Darrell, he’s surprisingly been playing a lot of noteworthy non-impression roles tonight.
— Roberta’s cat names are pretty funny.
— Cheri’s delivery as this character sounds different from how I remember it sounding the last time she played her. I guess going four years without playing this character will do that.
— A big laugh at the end from Cheri’s disturbing story regarding unwashed sheets at a hotel.
— Overall, while I remember being disappointed by the first Roberta sketch, I actually kinda enjoyed this one. It wasn’t anything particularly great and had kind of a generic “Cheri Oteri plays yet another weirdo” feel, but I got enough laughs from this.
STARS: ***
GOODNIGHTS
— With this being SNL writer Tim Herlihy’s last show, Tim Meadows can be heard repeatedly shouting “HERLIHY!”, and Will holds up a card saying “Thank you, Tim Herlihy!”
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— (***LONG STORY ALERT***) This episode plays a HUGE importance in my SNL fandom. I first saw this episode when NBC reran it during summer reruns in the year 2000, back when I was still a casual SNL viewer who usually only tuned into bits and pieces of the show. During that viewing of this episode, I fell in love with the episode so much that I ended up watching it constantly the next few weeks on the VHS tape that I just happened to record the episode on. That, in turn, heightened my interest in SNL and led to me watching and recording the entire episodes on a regular basis on NBC every Saturday night, and also finding online SNL sites and message boards, which all quickly turned me from a casual SNL viewer to a diehard SNL nerd. Getting back to my first viewing of this episode, shortly after that viewing, I, as mentioned in my review of the Sabra Price is Right sketch from season 17’s Tom Hanks episode, recorded audio from Jennifer Aniston’s Fight Club monologue and the Christmas Urchins sketch onto a cassette tape (which also contained audio I recorded from a few other SNL sketches, which are mentioned in the Sabra Price is Right review I linked to) that I ended up listening to on a VERY frequent basis. Because of that, and because of how much I fell in love with this episode in general during my first viewing, the Fight Club monologue and (especially) Urchins sketch will forever be significant to me. All in all, this episode holds a very special place in my heart for all of the reasons I’ve just mentioned, and thus, I may be biased when saying right now that this is one of my personal all-time favorite episodes. Even judging this episode on the same level of other SNL episodes, I still feel that this episode is strong. There was a good number of standout great sketches, and even Pretty Living managed to be less insufferable than usual. Jennifer Aniston was also a very solid host and did a great job in every sketch.
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Garth Brooks)
technically about the same, but on a personal level for reasons I mentioned earlier, a mild step up
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
Christina Ricci
This was one of the very first episodes I actually saw “live,” although I only watched until I think about Weekend Update.
Jennifer was a solid host. She should have at least one more go at it.
She did host during Season 29.
Sorry, I should have phrased that better. I’d like her to host for a third time.
With a few obvious exceptions, this era is an extremely strong one for hosts–they really picked up the ball after the desultory 1993-1995 era in which the show was clearly having trouble finding the right talent to host at times. Not only are the hosts good, but a lot of times they are better than the material.
Also, I’m wondering if the Peepers sketch was cut from Heather Graham’s show, when the Eyes Wide Shut reference would have had a bit more relevance. If it was between that and the Blair Witch parody, though, the show made the right choice.
This is a solid episode that I remember watching live. 13 year old me especially enjoyed the monologue.
Kim Plunkett was removed in the CC edit, but Wayne Porter remained.
From this article, it sounds like Rachel co-wrote the Urchins sketch (“I’ve co-written the Boston scenes and the street urchin scenes I did with Tina [Fey].”) : https://www.salon.com/2000/10/30/rachel_dratch/.
I posted this a few seasons back but it’s pretty amazing that Tina gained so much power in such a quick amount of time. This is her third season and her handprints are all over the show. From what I’ve read she was pretty fearless in fighting for her material and cast members she believed in (Dratch is featured prominently almost immediately). Def could see Lorne appreciating that
You never really forget your first sketch. Mine outside of the Nick at Nite repeats was probably the Chris Evert vs Martina sketch in her episode. I’m glad you got to have a pretty decent episode as your intro to SNL.
Aniston is a good host, managing well with the pretty heavy amount of material she had compared to many in these years. The only tripup she had for me was the Pokemon sketch as I think they gave her too much dialogue and the sketch ran about a minute too long, but even that wasn’t a big deal.
The monologue made me nostalgic for Nancy Walls, who pioneered (for this era) that comedy violence among female cast members. She would’ve absolutely killed. As it is, I enjoyed seeing a showcase for the women of the cast – it’s one of those moments where you can see how much respect the show now has for their female cast members, without expressing this in a clunky, pandering way. And seeing Rachel thrown in there even though she was just a few episodes in (look how nervous she seems in the goodnights) was also great – a true vote of confidence in her.
The only real weak spots in this episode for me are the recurring or soon to recur features. Going from a potential SATC parody (which could have been fun) to Mr. Peepers was pretty much DOA, and the Nick Burns sketch is too much for Jimmy – even in this first one he struggles to play the character and keep his lines on track. I know Roberta is also recurring, but only barely, and overall it works.
Pretty good night for Darrell getting to play character roles and not the same old impressions.
Nice to see them mention Donna Mills, who would have been a great host in the ’80s.
That Plunkett ad is peak Will Ferrell. Good stuff.
I was never that into Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? so I didn’t even remember John Carpenter cameoing. At first when you mentioned his name I thought you meant the director.
Here’s an interview with him from about ten years ago where he says they gave him the option of not going on, but when he saw Jimmy’s impression of him he decided to go for it (you can tell how nervous he was onscreen but it’s kind of endearing).
https://www.nhregister.com/news/article/Nothing-has-changed-for-guy-who-won-all-that-11621380.php
A quote from Mark Polishuk’s review from 1999!:
“If Donald Trump were to win the presidential election, that would be the
end of the world. Seriously.”
Two things really stick out to me now that I’ve read this review:
1. The live broadcast of this show more-or-less coincided with my having been at my first “grown-up” job for six months. The IT department at my office had two guys who regularly came to our department to fix our issues, and Nick Burns was practically an amalgam 50/50 of the two of them. I spent the rest of my time working there (I departed by “mutual agreement” in early 2006) scared to death I’d slip and call one of them “Nick” to their face, and that they would subsequently infect my computer with something and blame me for it.
2. I thought very much about the desert island campaign ads several months later in the run-up press that Survivor was getting (hoping the actual show would end up being similar), and then completely forgot about that until now.