Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
HILLARY MOVES OUT
Bill (DAH) pays little attention as Hillary (ANG) Clinton moves out
— This cold opening immediately starts off with a funny line, with Ana’s Hillary Clinton asking Darrell’s Bill to get off his fat ass and help her.
— Some funny barbs between Bill and Hillary.
— After Will’s Vladmir Putin says he’s getting rid of Boris Yeltsin’s things, we get a funny reveal of Yeltsin’s things just being a whole bunch of empty liquor bottles.
— Vladmir Putin, on Mikhail Gorbachev’s son, Mikhail W. Gorbachev: “The Russian people aren’t stupid enough to vote for someone just because he has his dad’s name.” Bill Clinton: “The American people are.”
— I like the cutaway to Hillary’s “Oh, really?” facial expression after Bill says on the phone “I don’t think people should do something that’s wrong just because it makes them feel good.”
STARS: ***½
MONOLOGUE
Oliver Stone (WIF) repeatedly interrupts host with extraneous directions
— A lot of energetic Jamie Foxx fans in the audience tonight.
— Will is funny as Oliver Stone.
— The stand-up portions of this monologue with Jamie are strong enough on their own without the constant interruptions from Will, even if Will is funny here. Jamie’s certainly funny enough to carry his own stand-up monologue.
— Kattan’s Al Pacino is having me in stitches. Jamie seems genuinely amused by him too, as he’s noticeably trying to hide his laughter. Crazy make-up on Kattan’s Pacino, by the way. I recall an SNL fan once saying that Kattan’s Pacino in this monologue resembled a caveman more than it resembled Pacino.
STARS: ***½
HAMBURGER HELPER ANTIBACTERIAL
blue goo restores old meat to edibility
— It can never be said enough how great Parnell always is at playing commercial spokesmen.
— A pretty funny disgusting visual of some kind of blue antibacterial goo being mixed into the hamburger meat.
— Ana, on how Hamburger Helper Antibacterial tastes: “It stings a little at first… but then it’s good!”
STARS: ***
COUPLES COUNSELING
Jennifer Lopez (CHO) & armed Puff Daddy (host) seek relationship advice
— After playing Mariah Carey several times in the past, I guess it makes sense that Cheri would now be cast as Jennifer Lopez.
— The aforementioned Jamie Foxx fans in the audience are particularly loud during this sketch.
— Jamie’s Puff Daddy impression is cracking me up.
— Very funny line from Cheri’s J.Lo, about how she won the MTV video award for “Best new ass”.
— Good part with Tim responding to Puff Daddy throwing money at him by saying “That is not going to solve your problem, but I do like it.”
— When Cheri’s J.Lo breathes with her butt, Jamie cracks up out of character and tries to hide it, for the second time tonight.
— Hilarious part with Puff Daddy playing the background music from, I think, Sting’s “Every Step You Take” on a radio while dancing around the room and trying to give J.Lo heartfelt words.
STARS: ***½
PILLOW TALK
(WIF) engages cellmate (host) in pillow talk- “Am I still your bitch?”
— A good laugh from the turn early in this sketch with Will asking Jamie “Am I still your bitch?”
— After Tim’s deep-voiced character first speaks, Jamie tells him “Love your voice, man”, which is an ad-lib. SNL would later replace this sketch with the dress rehearsal version in reruns, which doesn’t contain that ad-lib of Jamie’s.
— After a funny start, this sketch has been pretty much just washing right over me these last few minutes. I haven’t laughed in this for a while. This sketch kinda feels like an excuse to say “bitch” a whole bunch of times, which lost its novelty early on in this sketch.
— Okay, I finally got a laugh again, from Jamie’s delivery of “…till I kill yo ass” while having a sinister smile on his face.
STARS: **
A MESSAGE FROM JOHN GOODMAN
plastic surgery won’t affect how John Goodman [real] portrays Linda Tripp
— John Goodman! I’m surprised that this is his first cameo all season, after his plethora of cameos in the preceding season.
— Funny bit with Don Pardo introducing John as “former cast member John Goodman”. When John then corrects Don, Don humorously responds “Good lord, you sure do hang out a lot for a guy who doesn’t work here.”
— Good fake-out with John claiming he’s retiring his Linda Tripp impression, only to obnoxiously reveal that he’s just kidding.
— John’s goofiness at the end is pretty funny.
STARS: ***
NICK BURNS, YOUR COMPANY’S COMPUTER GUY
during a software upgrade, (host) challenges Nick Burns’ tech preeminence
— Nick Burns officially becomes recurring.
— Nick Burns, on the complicated computer help he’s giving: “They teach this type of stuff on Blues Clues.”
— The Jamie Foxx fans in the audience go “Ohhhhh!” when Nick Burns makes a fat joke about Horatio.
— Jamie one-upping Nick Burns is a pretty solid premise.
— Ha, now a Jamie Foxx fan in the audience yells “YEAH, JAMIE!” after one of the times Jamie one-ups Nick.
— I like how western showdown music has now begun playing during Nick and Jamie’s tense confrontation.
STARS: ***½
BACKSTAGE
TRM tells host he’s happy to have another black guy at SNL to hang with
— SNL does a follow-up to a classic piece from the Garth Brooks episode earlier this season.
— Tracy, to Jamie: “We only get one black host a year. It was either gonna be you or Alan Keyes.”
— Tracy going on about how he cracks up every time he sees Lorne is really funny.
— Tracy reprises his great one-liner “Get me a soda…. BITCH!” to Lorne. While I still laughed, this was nowhere near as funny as the first utterance of that one-liner earlier this season. Plus, tonight’s utterance didn’t have the great build-up that the first one had. In tonight’s sketch, Tracy just flat-out said the line practically as soon as Lorne showed up. That’s not as funny.
STARS: ***½
WEEKEND UPDATE
his sight restored, Stevie Wonder (host) is shocked by his own appearance
cartoonist Jasper Hahn’s (HOS) drawings are naughty when half-finished
John Rocker’s (WIF) supposed message of peace turns into a racist tirade
— Boy, did Colin mush-mouth his way through his first joke, even moreso than usual. Only half a season left, folks, until we get a much-needed change of Update anchors.
— It feels like a nice rarity seeing a host doing an Update commentary.
— Rachel makes her only appearance of tonight’s entire episode in a silent bit role as Stevie Wonder’s helper. You’d figure the lack of Molly Shannon tonight would’ve opened up more roles for Rachel. (Molly is completely absent in tonight’s entire episode, and unlike the last time that happened, we don’t get a re-aired season 23 commercial to make up for her absence, either.)
— Jamie is very funny as Stevie Wonder.
— Jamie-as-Stevie’s horrified reactions as soon as he sees what he and his wife (Tracy in drag) look like are a freakin’ riot. He is slaying me in this.
— Some of Colin’s jokes are getting a VERY rowdy, uproarious audience reaction (especially as soon as Linda Tripp’s photo showed up on the Update news screen). The Jamie Foxx fans in the audience strike once again, I take it?
— Horatio’s Jasper Hahn character makes his debut. He looks a lot different in this initial appearance, as Horatio’s not wearing the bushy wig nor the mustache that he would wear in subsequent Jasper Hahn appearances.
— A good laugh from Jasper Hahn initially drawing Floppy The Dog as a naked woman’s body.
— When making a drawing of a moose that initially resembles a penis and testicles, I love Jasper’s unintentional double entendre of how much the moose “likes to go deep in the forest”.
— I like how the audience boos as soon as John Rocker’s picture shows up on the Update news screen.
— Ha, and now Will has shown up as John Rocker. Tonight’s loud, rowdy, energetic audience is perfect for this commentary, which is intended to rile the audience up.
— Will’s characterization of Rocker is freakin’ PRICELESS, and is making Rocker look like the bigoted moron he is. This Update commentary is very daring, so much so that something like it would probably never see the light of day in a modern-day SNL episode, especially not with the various slurs Will’s Rocker is yelling.
— John Rocker: “I eat rat poison cuz I can’t read the box!”
— I like Will’s Rocker ending his commentary with “Help me, Daddy! I’ll suck your peepee!”
— Overall, a bit of a better Update than usual for the Colin Quinn era. I wonder if tonight’s rowdy audience heightened my enjoyment compared to Colin’s usual Updates.
STARS: ***
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “All The Small Things”
SHOWTIME AT THE APOLLO
lame acts compete for audience acclaim
— Cheri’s raunchy song is cracking me up.
— Jamie’s character is odd but funny.
— Not sure what else to say about this overall sketch. It felt a little like it was lacking a point or a real comedic throughline, but it entertained me enough, I guess.
STARS: ***
STEREOTYPICALLY JEFFREY
(HOS) takes heat for pigeonholing stereotypically-black co-worker (TRM)
— A rare big night for Tracy. Kinda sad that the only times he seems to get a significant amount of airtime in these early seasons of his is when SNL has a black host.
— Parnell’s embarrassing mannequin story was a good start to this sketch.
— In addition to Tracy, Horatio has also been having a rare big night. Until tonight’s episode, his airtime seemed to be diminishing lately.
— I love how Jamie’s defense of Tracy slowly turns into him listing off a whole bunch of horribly stereotypical things about him.
— Parnell: “I’m a white guy and I liked to sleep in a Batman costume and expose myself to tollbooth operators. Does that mean all white people do that?”
— Horatio, when being humbled after getting called out on his racism towards Tracy’s character: “We can ride my burro over to my adobe hut and have tacos with Pepe and the other 50 guys who hang out in his hatchback.”
— Tracy coming back to the office to steal a laptop was probably a cheap ending, but made me laugh anyway, just because of how well Tracy sold it.
STARS: ****
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “What’s My Age Again?”
A MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY MOMENT
Martin Luther King Jr.’s (host) initial dream was mundane & recurring
— There goes Tracy once again tonight.
— Jamie even manages to make a Martin Luther King impression funny.
— Jamie’s MLK describing his bizarre, irrelevant dream in his usual powerful voice is fairly funny.
STARS: ***
GOODNIGHTS
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A decent episode, though barely anything stood out as great (which has become a trend these last few episodes). I do kinda like how the focus on racial humor and urban comedy, along with the loud, rowdy audience, gave this episode a different feel from other episodes in this era. Like other former In Living Color cast members who have hosted SNL, Jamie Foxx’s sketch comedy experience came in handy here and played a part in making him a fun host.
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Danny DeVito)
a slight step up
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
Freddie Prinze Jr.
Reading these reviews is really making me realize there’s a lot of stories from this time period that I’d completely forgotten about. Totally forgot about that whole John Rocker thing and how he’d become the #1 enemy of New York Cityfor a while there. Before SNL covered it, I also recall Conan getting a lot of mileage out of that as well for several months, only managed to find one but they did a ton with it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NATG-mNJ5QU
For all his faults, I actually did enjoy Colin on Update more than I originally thought, rewatching his Updates he definitely seemed a bit out of place by the time the Fallon/Sanz/Kattan crew was starting to take over, as he was the one guy on the show who’s humor likely didn’t have much appeal to the under 18 crowd- likely why I didn’t appreciate him as much at the time. It was probably the right time anyway, he was clearly starting to look bored with the gig.
Funny coincidence with Parnell as a Hamberger Helper spokesman, isn’t that him thats been voicing the HH glove in recent years?
I actually liked Colin on WU, too, even though his comedy appealed to the older folks.
Wasn’t this the episode where he joked about the NAACP and NBC to provide more diversity in shows? He mentioned “Jesse” (showed a pic of Jesse Jackson), “Will & Grace” (pics of Will Smith and Grace Jones), and “Just Shoot Me” (pic of Puff Daddy). That joke fit well with the Puffy and J. Lo sketch earlier.
Puff Daddy had sampled “Every Breath You Take” on his Notorious B.I.G. tribute single “I’ll Be Missing You,” which was a massive hit a couple years prior to this episode.
He’d also recently sampled Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” on “Come With Me,” which was a big hit but not without its critics. That’s probably why in this sketch when sharing his feelings with J. Lo, Puffy simply reads the lyrics to “Shout” by Tears For Fears and is called out on it by Tim’s character.
Generally I don’t have a lot of good to say about Hammond’s Clinton, but the cold open ended up being the best of the night for me (imagine saying that today). The interplay with Darrell and Ana is fun, and the conversation with Putin (something else that’s night and day to 2020 – weird seeing the first impression of him) is crisply written and performed.
Most of the episode feels like one of the many attempts to be “edgy” that we got in these years, and like many of those moments, a majority just feels loud and desperate to me. The monologue, with Kattan doing his usual screaming, the Puffy sketch, which is just empty noise, the prison rape sketch that is mostly just made better by Will’s performance, the crass, padded Goodman cameo that doesn’t do much to hide that by this point most people were already happy to move on from Linda Tripp. Things improve toward the end of the night, helped by Jamie getting into the flow instead of just going “know what I’m saying” over and over and over, but other than the MLK sketch none of it does much for me. It doesn’t help that yet another recurring character of this era I can’t really tolerate (Nick Burns) pops up.
Even the level of diversity is improved mostly in a token way – Tim (I wonder if he had already told Lorne he was going as it feels like he’s being phased out) in small roles, Tracy mostly in short roles aside from the quick catchphrase moment with Lorne. Probably the most awkward is the talent show sketch having 3 black women with no speaking roles, there to make faces or to be half-dressed. It’s interesting that within a few months of this we get our first black female cast member for nearly 6 seasons.
Jasper’s first appearance is pretty good. I don’t think he needed to be brought back as the joke doesn’t work as well once you get past the shock of what you think he’s drawing.
The John Rocker Update piece in this episode is one of those man behind the curtain moments for me. Will gives a lot of energy, and there are some lines that are edgy and tough, but as this goes on and on, you notice fairly quickly that the “shocking” things he’s saying are still sanitized for a television audience. That only makes sense, of course, but it also defeats the whole point of trying to do an edgy moment for your show. Past years would have been more clever in how to use the limitations to enhance the concept, but by this point in SNL’s history, the move was toward hoping that hitting the volume button enough times would suffice.
I keep saying Will salvaged this or that, mostly because we’re I’d say officially at the point now, with Tim near the exit door, that Will is the only man in the cast who can carry most material (Parnell is also great but he was always used in a more supporting role and they struggled to write for his talents). That’s going to become more and more of a problem as we head into the next few seasons.
Sorry, that was meant to be 5 seasons.
Random trivia:
Showtime at the Apollo used to air at 1 am after Saturday Night Live in New York.
This will be the vintage SNL repeat tomorrow night.
Oof, that Linda Tripp bit did NOT age well for… reasons. Ouch!!!