Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
BACKSTAGE
Vince McMahon [real] warns wrestlers not to mess with host during show
— I like the opening visual of Tim casually having champagne with Lorne, showing what a long-time SNL veteran Tim is by this point, as well as the great relationship he has with Lorne.
— This whole backstage conversation between Vince McMahon and the wrestlers is a nice way to set up tonight’s episode.
— Very funny gag with Big Show meekly revealing that he has a folding chair hidden behind him.
— Good bit with Big Show and Mango, even if that makes this Mango’s 1,000th appearance this season. (Thankfully, it ends up being his last appearance for almost an entire year.)
— Great “Live From New York…” delivery from McMahon.
STARS: ***½
MONOLOGUE
Mick Foley, Triple H, Paul ‘Big Show’ Wight [real] wish host luck
— A huge audience reception for The Rock at the beginning of this, including a group of people being heard chanting “Rocky!”
— I love the bit about how Tracy won’t be in tonight’s show (it’s not like he would’ve appeared much tonight anyway, given how the show seems to be content with giving him only one appearance per episode lately) due to The Rock accidentally giving him two broken legs earlier in the week.
— Funny visual of SNL writer Hugh Fink getting manhandled out of his seat by the wrestlers. Fink always seems to play hapless audience members getting disrespected in SNL monologues.
— Good line from The Rock about how he looks like a sexy Rob Schneider. I definitely see the resemblance.
— The Rock, when seeing Triple H: “Ah, Triple H. I thought I smelled dandruff shampoo and monkey turds.”
— An overall very fun monologue.
STARS: ****
UNCLE JEMIMA’S PURE MASH LIQUOR
Rerun from 2/5/00
THE LADIES’ MAN
Leon is in love with crossdressed undercover cop (host)
— Funny performance from The Rock in drag, who Leon Phelps is convinced is a real woman. I like how The Rock’s not even attempting to change his voice for his drag role.
— Good reveal of The Rock being an undercover police office and Leon initially still not getting it.
— Interesting line flub from The Rock, accidentally saying “drug queens” instead of “drag queens”, which is almost funny in itself.
STARS: ***½
PAPA PEEPERS
paleontologist (WIF) reunites Mr. Peepers with his father (host)
— I see SNL’s breaking out some of their biggest recurring characters for tonight’s big episode.
— A solid turn with The Rock entering as Mr. Peepers’ similarly-traited father. The Rock is spot-on and funny in his imitation of Mr. Peepers.
— Ha, one of The Rock’s fake monkey ears has become unglued and is hanging off of his head, flopping around.
— The out-of-control nature of this sketch is making it fun.
— Overall, one of the better Mr. Peepers sketches.
STARS: ***½
MORNING LATTE
Tom & Cass can’t separate host from his in-ring persona
— The usual funny opening banter between Will and Cheri.
— I love Will exclaiming to The Rock “You are a HORSE!” after greeting him at the beginning of the interview.
— Cheri and Will constantly flinching from The Rock is pretty funny.
— Will, after The Rock says he likes board games: “I’d let you win… cuz I’d like to see my kids grow up.”
— Good turn with Mick Foley and Big Show humorously backing up The Rock during his tender singing.
STARS: ***½
WEEKEND UPDATE
Jasper Hahn’s presidential candidate caricatures start out dirty
JIF plays guitar & sings Spring Break-themed songs based on pop hits
— Ha, another Update this season where the audience boos as soon as John Rocker’s photo shows up on the Update news screen.
— I love the updated look of Horatio’s Jasper Hahn, with bushy hair and a mustache. Horatio seems to be playing him in a goofier manner tonight too.
— It’s always interesting seeing how Jasper Hahn’s initially dirty drawings turn into innocent animal drawings.
— A good laugh from Jasper’s deadpan “No” when asked by Colin if he’s going to change his naked-woman-bending-over drawing into some kind of animal.
— Holy hell. Eerie in retrospect how immediately after a joke of Colin’s that is accompanied by the Update news screen showing a photo of the New York City skyline with the World Trade Center being very visible, we get an unrelated joke about Osama Bin Laden.
— Now shortly after the Osama Bin Laden joke, we get an unrelated joke about a plane hijacker. Geez, this Update’s getting way too prescient for my likes.
— I’m kinda surprised this is the first (and ONLY) appearance this season for Jimmy’s Update guitar songs, considering they were more common in the preceding season.
— Great vocal impression of Dave Matthews from Jimmy during one portion of his guitar song medley.
— Jimmy’s overall guitar song medley tonight was decently fun, even if barely anything stood out to me here.
STARS: **½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Stiff Upper Lip”
CLARK KENT
Daily Planet employees toy with Superman’s (host) not-so-secret identity
— Very funny detail of The Rock’s Clark Kent clearly having his Superman costume poorly hidden under his suit.
— I love the line about how when Clark Kent first got this job, he used the fake name Supe R. Man.
— Hilarious bit with Clark Kent’s co-workers reading an article he wrote in which he didn’t even edit out all the mistakes in which he caught himself accidentally referring to himself as Superman and tried to backtrack.
— Parnell: “You get Superman in a truckstop men’s room, you won’t need Kryptonite to bring him to his knees.”
— A very humorous article photo of Superman just haplessly shrugging.
STARS: ****½
THE GOOMBAHS
(host) & (ANG) star in Showtime’s rip-off of The Sopranos
— I’m getting some good laughs from The Rock’s bad, goofy Italian accent while just saying dumb things like “meats-a balls-a!”
— Overall, short and dumb, but it worked for me, mostly just due to the charming goofiness that The Rock brought.
STARS: ***
NICOTREL
Nicotrel (host) uses physical violence to help (CHP) stop smoking
Mick Foley, Triple H, Paul ‘Big Show’ Wight [real], host beat up on CHP
— Great concept of The Rock as the human embodiment of a way to quit smoking.
— Very funny visual of The Rock throwing a dummy of Parnell out the window.
— After Parnell tells Nicotrel to get his hands off Parnell’s wife, I love Nicotrel getting up from the couch while bellowing “YOU DON’T TALK TO NICOTREL LIKE THAT!”
— Hilarious how Nicotrel tosses a cigarette over to Parnell just as an excuse to beat him up again.
— Parnell is so damn good at taking fake beatings in a sketch. His whimpering throughout this is also very funny.
— Pretty good turn with the other wrestlers crashing the sketch to show The Rock how to give Parnell a realistic beatdown.
STARS: ****½
TODAY’S LADY
(RAD), (CHO), (MOS) throw themselves at stud (host)
— What was with Rachel’s coughing fit right before saying the odd name of her character, Gwyneth Paltrownian? Was that coughing some kind of intentional joke, or was Rachel going through a genuine coughing fit?
— Random running gag throughout this sketch with every character having a strange last name.
— Not sure I care for where this sketch is going.
— Yeah, so far, this sketch isn’t doing much for me.
— Great sleazy line from The Rock offering the ladies a “meating”.
STARS: **
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Shook Me All Night Long”
COLONEL BELMONT’S OLD FASHIONED HORSE GLUE
Another rerun tonight, this time from 1/15/00
GOODNIGHTS
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A fun and pretty solid episode that had a special feel, due to the WWF theme and, to a lesser extent, having a legendary rock band as the musical guest. Regarding the WWF theme, this semi-departure from a typical SNL episode was a definite success. I also like how, due to the WWF fans in the building tonight, the audience was particularly loud and energetic throughout the show, rivaling this season’s Jamie Foxx episode as the season 25 episode with the rowdiest audience. The Rock did a great job for his first hosting stint, especially considering the fact that this was before he became an actor, though he would come off even more polished in his later hosting stints.
— After going through a somewhat-slump of unmemorable episodes from December to early February, this season has really picked up steam these last few episodes. And it’s nice to know that that winning streak will continue, considering what the very next episode is (as you’ll see at the very end of this review).
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Joshua Jackson)
a slight step down
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
Christopher Walken, a.k.a. the episode with the legendary More Cowbell sketch
Isn’t that Michael Schur being manhandled in the monologue?
I also had the same eerie feeling re-watching the succession of Bin Laden/plane jokes 18 months before 9/11.
No, Michael Schur is in a different portion of the monologue, as the guy sitting next to Tracy who gets punched by Triple H. Hugh Fink is the one who the wrestlers violently force out of his seat in the balcony so they’ll have someplace to sit. He’s in the third screencap in the monologue review.
My bad, you’re absolutely right. Got my segments wrong LOL.
Schur is the guy Triple H punches out near the end; I thought Fink is the guy being manhandled out of his seat
A lot of WWE fans thought the real winner of the episode was The Big Show, who did not have the reputation as being particularly funny before this episode, impressed a lot of viewers, and from that point forward, actually got some funny material in the WWE for a while.
I remember reading an interview with Triple H about this episode and him noting that Lorne and Vince McMahon were VERY similar personality wise (not in terms of actual interests and beliefs, but in the sense of control of the show), which probably explains much about the WWE and SNL.
As a wrestling and SNL fan, this was HEAVEN for me, rivaled only by the 2007 episode of Project Runway when the challenge was to design an outfit for the WWF Divas.
The Rock and the other three were in the main event at WrestleMania that year, so them appearing was good synergy. Vince McMahon’s relationship with Lorne Michaels would sour a year later when we get to the Jennifer Lopez episode!
If only that main event was as entertaining as this episode…WHY was Triple H allowed to retain???
Because then we wouldn’t have had Backlash 2000 when The Rock won, which was way better than WrestleMania!
I always thought it was a shame Mick Foley never hosted an episode.
And thankfully, this episode went much, MUCH better than “Mad TV” attempting to work in wrestling. XD (This was a year after the incident where Bret Hart derailed a sketch and beat up Will Sasso – which folks on the show have apparently insisted was 100% real.)
One of my all time favorite shows.. couldn’t have picked a better time to let a wrestler host. As much as I love Hulk’s show from 1985 that one always felt kinda weird compared to most shows, this one felt like a normal show but better. Everyone went for their A game here and tried to have fun, it worked well.
Rock showed off the bat that he could do well live and have fun, the wrestlers were great too. Shame none of the other guys hosted, Mick or Big Show coulda been fun around then as well. Even Vince could have.. he and Lorne are a way lot alike. Bummer they don’t like each other much now.
Also good that AC/DC got to do the show.. they did better than a lot of legendary rock acts have done. SNL’s always been against heavy rock, glad they did a 180 on that here.
The Rock is a pretty good host, very charismatic right off the bat, only to get better in future appearances. The sketches which use his physicality are probably his best, but he’s also very good in Morning Latte and the talk show sketch at the end. Beyond those, this is by far the most enjoyable Mr. Peepers for me.
Ladies Man’ was pretty much on fumes by this point (and yet still had a movie coming out…). It was a custom for a while to put the tough guys/athletes in drag, although they were smart to just have him playing a guy. Along with the Superman sketch these both pretty much used up the prerequisite gay jokes/trans jokes/rape jokes and left the rest of the night free. (the best part of the Superman sketch for me was his dead-on George Reeves homage at the end; and it was kind of fun seeing Molly Shannon playing in a superhero sketch on what looked like the same set of the Paul Reiser superhero sketch).
The WWE material is entertaining, and doesn’t distract from the rest of the episode.
I appreciate how they were able to shift away from various aspects of Morning Latte while still keeping the same core energy of the sketch. Of any Cheri recurring characters I think this is the one I’m going to truly miss.
Jimmy’s decent at capturing the vocal inflections but he doesn’t have the same fun (if annoying) spirit Sandler did in this Update role.