Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
DECISION 2000
Al Gore (DAH) puts George W. Bush’s (WIF) acceptance speech on hold
— Second episode in a row to start with Parnell’s Tom Brokaw, even using the exact same greenscreen background of an electoral map behind him.
— I love the constant fake-outs with the “live” breaking Tom Brokaw reports suddenly being interrupted by supposedly “real” live Brokaw reports.
— A hilarious opening shot of Will’s Bush, just silently staring intensely into the camera for a long time, before realizing that he’s supposed to be speaking into it.
— A big laugh from Bush accidentally reading the wrong speech he pulled out of his pocket, which states “Daddy, help me. I never thought I’d win this thing and I want out.”
— Great audience applause for Darrell’s entrance as Gore, showing how hugely popular his and Will’s Gore and Bush impressions have become during this election season.
— I love Gore revealing that his supreme court justices are also ninjas, which the justices demonstrate by suddenly striking a karate pose, freaking out Bush.
— Ah, just now, the distinctive voice of Tom Davis is heard from off-camera, as Gore’s aide. Tom Davis has returned to SNL this week as a guest writer for tonight’s episode. Hearing his voice again is welcome to the ears.
— Great turn with Bush and Gore breaking out into a duet of “I Got You, Babe”. SNL is having so much fun with these Bush/Gore sketches during this Florida recount fiasco. At this point, SNL can do no wrong with these.
— During the “I Got You, Babe” duet, I particularly love Bush’s lyric that ends with “that ballot confused the Jeeewwwwsss”.
STARS: ****½
MONOLOGUE
host & Drew Barrymore [real] say they’ll wed at the end of the show
— We IMMEDIATELY start off with typical Tom Green antics, with him wandering off into the audience and rubbing the heads and faces of some audience members in the floor seats, one old man in particular. Are those audience members plants?
— Oh, god, now Tom truly goes FULL-ON Tom Green, by exaggeratedly sucking and licking all over his father’s face.
— After a painfully staged “surprise” conversation between Tom and Drew Barrymore, Tom breaks the fourth wall and tells us that this was “just a skit”, but also that he and Drew will be getting married on SNL at the end of this episode. I remember that the prospect of a live genuine wedding happening on SNL felt pretty exciting when I watched this episode live, but knowing now what this supposed live “wedding” ACTUALLY turned out to be, ehhh….
STARS: **
MAGIC MOUTH
Rerun from 10/21/00
BALD EAGLES
bald eagle (WIF) searches for her baby (host) in the Studio 8H balcony
— I remember an SNL review from this time in 2000 pointing out how Jimmy, in this sketch, appeared to be doing an impression of Steve Martin in the famous “What The Hell Is That?” sketch that Steve and Bill Murray did together in 1979. Jimmy’s character in this sketch is even named Steve. I wonder if all of these similarities are intentional or just a coincidence. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re intentional, as Jimmy has always said that he’s a big SNL nerd, and I’ve always heard that he has a Steve Martin impression that he supposedly once did in an interview on, I think, Oprah around 1999. On a similar note, I also remember another SNL review pointing out that in the infamous Gary’s Fish Tanks sketch from a few seasons later (a notoriously bad sketch with Jimmy and Horatio playing fish tank repairman who constantly say wisecracks that end with “ova heah”), Jimmy seemed like he was doing an impression of Christopher Guest’s character voice from the “I Hate When That Happens” recurring sketch that Christopher did with Billy Crystal in season 10.
— Tom and Will walking around in eagle costumes, cawing and screaming endlessly. Boy, this is just plain dumb.
— Now this sketch has carried over into the studio audience. While this is pretty unique for SNL and must be a blast for the studio audience, I can’t say I’m laughing here and this feels like a waste of my time.
— Interesting how the two giggliest members of this season’s cast, Molly and Jimmy, are cast in a role where they have to pretty much keep a straight face while basically providing commentary on the crazy stuff that Tom and Will are doing in the audience. Casting Molly and Jimmy in a role like this seems like a recipe for disaster, but surprisingly, they’re both actually perfectly keeping their composure and are playing it straight during their commentary throughout this sketch.
— Now Tom’s going all Mr. Peepers by spitting chewed food bits at audience members. Blah. It’s tiresome enough when Mr. Peepers does it.
— In true typical juvenile Tom Green fashion, this sketch ends on a shot of Tom and Will tongue-kissing each other. Oh, gosh, how “hilarious”.
STARS: *½
RAP STREET
Grand Master Rap & Kid Shazaam approve of (host)’s rhymes
— These two characters from an Update commentary in the season premiere officially become recurring, now being placed in their own talk show sketch, an always-lazy resort for SNL characters and celebrity impressions.
— Nice to see Jerry actually appearing in a sketch in the first half of an episode for once. Aside from Rob Lowe’s monologue in the season premiere, I’m pretty sure that all of the appearances that Jerry has made on SNL in his tenure so far have been in sketches buried towards the end of the show. Damn.
— Horatio and Jerry continue to make me laugh as these characters.
— (*sigh*) Once again tonight, Tom Green plays a typical Tom Green-ish character. And boy, I’m noticing throughout tonight’s episode that Tom sure loves repeating words and phrases over and over and over and over again, which is literally ALL he’s doing during his song in this sketch (e.g. “I’m a good boy, I’m a good boy, I’m a good boy”, “I’m a nice boy, I’m a nice, nice boy”, “UNDIES! UNDIES! FUNNY UNDIES!”).
— I like Maya’s Dido-esque interlude in Tom’s rap, complete with an intentionally bad English/Australian accent.
— I do like Tom’s legitimate rap with Horatio and Jerry at the end of this sketch. The spastic Running Man dance that Tom does afterwards is something that I remember seeing him once do during a man-on-the-street segment on his MTV show, back when I watched that show religiously as a teenage fan of Tom’s.
STARS: **½
LORNE AND TOM IN A TUB
stonefaced LOM thinks host’s duck hijinks are funny
— The bizarre theme song of this sketch is in the same vein as the theme song of a cut dress rehearsal sketch, Scene On An Airplane, from the preceding season’s Tobey Maguire episode. Scene On An Airplane is a hilarious, dark, and insane Will Ferrell sketch that was later shown in either his second or third “Best Of” special. By the way, the singer of this Lorne And Tom In A Tub theme song strangely sounds kinda like Darrell. Is that him? If so, it’s a very unconventional use of him. I can’t remember if the similar Scene On An Airplane theme song is also sung by the same person.
— Is SNL fucking kidding me with this sketch? And I thought Tom played very Tom Green-ish characters in previous sketches tonight. It’s hard to get a more Tom Green-ish performance than what we’re getting here.
— Lorne’s deadpan throughout this sketch is funny, as is the punchline of him simply telling Tom “That’s funny”, but that does not excuse me having my eardrums abused and my I.Q. lowered by listening to Tom annoyingly scream “ducky” over and over in an obnoxious voice for a full minute. Lorne’s funny punchline was not worth sitting through THAT.
— Two additional Lorne And Tom In A Tub sketches were cut after dress rehearsal, but would later be shown in reruns of this episode. And believe it or not, they’re, in my opinion, somehow even less funny than this first Lorne And Tom In A Tub sketch that I’m currently reviewing. While they thankfully don’t have Tom annoyingly repeating “ducky” endlessly, they’re unfunnily bizarre, pointless, come off as failed attempts at random humor, and don’t have the benefit of containing a visual of a deadpan Lorne sipping on a juicebox.
STARS: *½
HARDBALL
Chris Matthews (DAH) lets Katherine Harris (ANG) gloat
— The debut of both Hardball and Darrell’s Chris Matthews impression.
— Right out of the gate, Darrell’s Chris Matthews impression is spot-on and funny.
— Chris Matthews, in the middle of an already-loud spiel of his: “Excuse me one second, I’m gonna raise the volume of my voice!”
— Chris Matthews, quoting something that we’re told someone has once said to Katherine Harris: “Hey, lady, shut that surgically-altered trap of yours!”
— Ana’s mere look as Katherine Harris is hilarious, and she’s backing it up with a solid performance.
— Parnell constantly getting cut off is pretty funny.
— Overall, a solid Hardball debut, but these sketches would later get even better when the writing for them gets more developed.
STARS: ****
TV FUNHOUSE
“Fun With Real Audio” by RBS- bestiality reigns on Sex & The Country
— This Sex And The Country cartoon was cut after dress rehearsal in the season premiere.
— Boy, as if tonight’s overall episode doesn’t have enough tasteless, low-brow, or questionable humor, most of it performed by Tom Green, and some of which we’ll see later in this episode, we now get a fucking bestiality spoof of Sex And The City. Now, look – I usually always admire how Robert Smigel is never afraid to push the boundaries with his TV Funhouse cartoons, but goddamn. Really, Smigel? We’re doing THIS?
— So far, this cartoon is just plain disturbing and gross, and not in a funny way, either.
— Overall, for the first time ever in this SNL project of mine, I went through an entire TV Funhouse cartoon without laughing a single time. But cringing and groaning? Well, let’s just say I did that plenty of times here.
— After this episode’s original airing, SNL would receive quite a number of complaints about this cartoon, leading to this cartoon being removed from reruns and replaced with the Mr. T cartoon that aired a few episodes earlier when Charlize Theron hosted. The really odd thing about this replacement, at least in the April 2001 NBC rerun, is that they inexplicably left in the Charlize Theron bumper photo that preceded this TV Funhouse! I kid you not, folks. They didn’t bother to replace Charlize’s photo with Tom Green’s. I can only imagine how many viewers that night were confused as hell by that.
STARS: *
DOG SHOW
wizard’s (host) pig squeals & casts a spell of invisibility
— Is it really a wise idea to place a sketch featuring animals IMMEDIATELY after a bestiality cartoon? So many bad decisions in tonight’s episode in general.
— This ends up being the final Dog Show installment. And, boy, what an infamous installment this ends up being.
— Why did Molly drop character and use her normal voice when snarkily telling Will’s character that he’s gay?
— Ugh, and there’s the tired, old “Maybe I am… and maybe I am” joke.
— Jesus Christ at Tom’s pig’s loud and endless squealing. And I thought my eardrums were abused earlier tonight in the Lorne And Tom In A Tub sketch. The pig’s endless squealing is going to haunt my nightmares after this viewing.
— Yet ANOTHER display tonight of Tom Green’s annoying love of repeating the same words over and over and over and over again, with him in this sketch endlessly repeating things lines like “Oooh, I’m a wizaaaarrrrd” and “I’m a doggy”. The man is like a hyperactive 4-year-old.
— Nobody can pay attention to the performers’ dialogue with the pig loudly squealing over everyone. Also, all of the performers keep awkwardly hesitating before talking during the squealing. What a disaster. This sketch has gone off the rails in the worst way.
— Now Tom has taken to holding the squealing pig by Mr. Bojangles’ ears, terrifying the hell out of the dog. Dammit, Tom, leave poor Mr. Bojangles alone.
— And now, tonight’s Dog Show installment mercifully ends. My god. I fucking hated the hell out of this entire thing.
STARS: *
WEEKEND UPDATE
hack stand-up comic Jeannie Darcy (MOS) says “Don’t get me started!”
Gwyneth Paltrow [real] corroborates JIF’s self-centered gossip report
— Molly attempts a new character in this late stage of her SNL tenure, one that refreshingly feels original for a Molly Shannon character.
— I’ve been criticizing Molly a lot in these later seasons of hers, but she’s doing a solid job as this new character, Jeannie Darcy. Darcy’s intentionally bad jokes are providing good amusement. This feels like a precursor to future cast member Fred Armisen’s myriad of intentionally bad stand-up comedian characters on Update.
— I like Tina’s deadpan “Leave me out of this, please” when Jeannie Darcy asks her if she can relate to a certain joke.
— Funny reaction from Jimmy when there’s a delay with the hand movement sound effects during his Hollywood Report segment.
— A Gwyneth Paltrow cameo.
— Not sure what to say about the random lovey-dovey interaction between Jimmy and Gwyneth in Gwyneth’s brief cameo. It didn’t do anything for me, and kinda felt like a waste of Gwyneth, who’s proven to be a solid performer on SNL in the past.
— Much like a few Updates ago, Jimmy botches another joke. I don’t understand why he hesitated in his set-up before the Linda Tripp photo was shown during the punchline. He ruined a decent joke there.
STARS: ***
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Babylon”
OPRAH
Dr. Phil McGraw (WIF) dispenses nonsensical marriage counsel
— Maya’s Oprah impression makes its debut. Her Oprah voice sounds a little different here from how I remember it sounding in later appearances.
— As Maya is speaking straight to the camera while setting up the appearance of Tom and Ana’s characters, why are Tom and Ana making their entrance in the wrong place, by walking RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE CAMERA, completely blocking Maya and forcing her to actually have to lean to the side to get her face onscreen? Man, tonight’s episode is such a mess that even a true pro like Ana Gasteyer is making amateurish gaffes that she usually never would.
— Funny Dr. Phil impression from Will.
— At least we get Tom FINALLY playing a non-Tom Green-ish character tonight.
— I got a pretty good laugh from Tom’s puzzled facial reaction to an absurd analogy that Will’s Dr. Phil has just made to him. You know, Tom Green can certainly be funny when he’s reined in, such as how he is in more recent years, but he has been anything but reined in for most of tonight’s episode.
— Oh, god, right after I give credit to Tom for reining himself in during this sketch, he suddenly resorts to his typical yelling and repeating-the-same-words-over-and-over shtick. Goddammit, he almost made it through a full sketch successfully playing against type.
— Overall, Will’s Dr. Phil had a lot of funny asinine analogies throughout this sketch, but most of the other portions of this sketch didn’t do much for me.
STARS: **½
STORYTELLERS
Air Supply vocalists (CHK) & (WIF) reminisce & make out
— Geez, Kattan is JUST NOW making his first appearance of the night. I didn’t even realize that he had yet to appear tonight until this sketch.
— Will: “As we told you before when you didn’t recognize us, we are Air Supply.”
— The bad Thanksgiving-themed variation of the song “All Out Of Love” that Will and Kattan are singing is pretty funny.
— Aaaaaand this sketch is immediately soured by it ending with Will and Kattan kissing each other for an unnecessary cheap laugh. THAT’S the big gag that this whole sketch was leading up to? Oof.
— Oh, and by the way, this is the THIRD time in these last two seasons alone where Will and Kattan kissed each other in a sketch as a cheap punchline. What’s more, it’s also the third cheap man-kissing-another-man gag in TONIGHT’S EPISODE alone, after the monologue where Tom licked and sucked his father’s face, and the ending of the Bald Eagles sketch where Tom and Will tongue-kissed each other. Could tonight’s episode be any more low-brow?
— If you’ve ever read or will ever read the original review I did of this sketch back in 2000 when I was a reviewer who covered new SNL episodes when they originally aired, there’s something in it that I sincerely apologize for. A few days ago, I was skimming through my original review of this episode to remind myself of what to expect when I had to cover this episode again, and I found myself cringing at how homophobic my original review of this Storytellers sketch comes off, with me dismissing the sketch as “gay crap” and deeming Will and Kattan kissing each other to be “just sick”. I usually cringe nowadays at my old reviews from 2000-2001 in general, as I was a new and young reviewer back then and, understandably, those reviews come off poor and unpolished, plus my opinion of so many sketches that I reviewed back then have changed drastically in more recent years, but it’s the homophobic attitude in my original review of the Storytellers sketch that has me feeling particularly ashamed nowadays. Please understand that I’ve never had anything against gay people; I was just a typical immature 16-year-old when I wrote that review, and like most teenage boys, you say dumb shit, especially back in the days before our more politically correct and socially aware current era. My apologies, everyone. By the way, almost as embarrassing as those homophobic comments of mine was me suggesting in that same sketch review that the only way to “fix” this sketch would’ve been to have Tom Green interrupt Will and Kattan’s song to sing “The Bum Bum Song”, of all things. Jesus Christ. That’s yet another example of my teenage immaturity showing in that review. (For those who don’t know what “The Bum Bum Song” is and are curious, click here).
STARS: **
ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK
(host) & (WIF) rock around the clock, jump, break the clock
— This sketch opens on Tom in the middle of talking to someone who’s off-camera (an audience member, perhaps?), then realizing that the show is back from commercial and asking “Oh, are we on the air?” Something tells me this “gaffe” was something that Tom intentionally slipped into the show. Either way, SNL would alter this in reruns by removing the initial shot of Tom talking to an off-camera person, but inexplicably leaving his “Oh, are we on the air?” comment intact, which makes no sense in the edited context.
— I don’t know if it’s just acting, but man, Will looks MISERABLE at the beginning of his walk-on in this piece. You’d think he was forced at gunpoint to appear in this sketch. And wow, he has appeared in a big role in literally almost EVERY SINGLE SKETCH tonight. Is SNL heavily featuring Will in every Tom Green sketch tonight because they think he’s the cast member who’s comedic style is the closest to Tom’s? Heh, sorry, SNL, but HELL NO. Will Ferrell, even at his most over-the-top and unleashed, is far more nuanced than Tom Green. And it hurts to see Will being dragged down to Tom’s level by participating with him in senseless, unfunny stuff like this and the Bald Eagles sketch.
— What the hell is this sketch going for? What am I watching?!?
— You can see an accidental glimpse of some kind of choreographer directing Tom to knock over the clock (as seen in the second-to-last above screencap for this sketch).
— What the hell happened to the end of this sketch? Tom stops the music to a halt and yells “Stop jumping!”, the screen then suddenly cuts to an SNL bumper photo of Tom while we hear him still going on, yelling “We broke the clock!”, and then the show suddenly cuts to a commercial break, with no audience applause, no punchline, NOTHING. WTF?!? Is the show running long and they had to cut this sketch short? Or was the sketch written this way, as some kind of poor man’s attempt at Andy Kaufman-style mindfuckery? You know, back as a teenager in 2000, I was one of quite a number of people guilty of hailing Tom Green as a new-age Andy Kaufman. Kaufman was a comedy idol of mine at this time in 2000, and I remember really buying into the hype that some people were selling about Tom Green being a Kaufman-type performance art genius. I would come to the realization a little later in life that those people were DEAD WRONG with that comparison. Let’s just say that out of Tom Green and Andy Kaufman, only one of those two still remains my comedy idol today, while the other just has me shaking my head when looking back on how hilarious I used to find his shtick.
STARS: *
WEDDING
host is jilted at the altar as his parents [real] look on
— Well, here we are. The “big wedding” that we were promised earlier tonight.
— Tracy makes his only appearance of the night in this wedding (and is barely even visible, being buried in the back of the stage), meaning he was in no actual sketches tonight. Just when I thought his airtime was finally getting better this season, his airtime has really taken a hit these last two episodes.
— Aaaaaand the bride, Drew Barrymore, fails to show up for the wedding, leading to the cast and guests to slowly start walking off in disappointment, one-by-one.
— Now the ending credits are rolling? Wait, THAT’S the end of the show??? We’re closing tonight’s episode with the credits rolling as Tom is seen alone on the home base stage screaming in “comical” anguish and relying on his favorite habit of repeating the same damn words over and over and over and over again??? Listen, I’m all for SNL breaking format, especially in more recent decades like this where format-breaking is very rare, but this? Ehhh…
— Our final image before the goodnights get cut off prematurely is an overhead shot of Tom Green curling up in the fetal position on the floor while screaming and crying. Something about that visual is a strangely fitting way to end this clusterfuck of an episode.
— Gee, thanks, SNL, for getting viewers’ hopes up for a possible groundbreaking live wedding on your show, only for the payoff to be… THIS. Again, if this was Tom’s attempt at an Andy Kaufman-style way of messing with the audience’s heads, then oof.
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— (*sigh*) Well, I knew this would be an odd one to review. I was reeeaaaaallllly hoping I wouldn’t be so salty towards this episode in my review, as I wanted to appreciate and be fascinated by this episode’s uniqueness, oddness, chance-taking, and format-breaking, but alas, it was not to be. Reviewing this episode just now has unleashed saltiness in me not seen this consistently in a single episode review of mine since I covered the absolute worst episodes of season 20. While I’m not sure yet if I feel that this episode as a whole is as bad as the worst of season 20, I most definitely did not enjoy this episode. Viewing this episode just now made me so goddamn frustrated, caused especially by Tom Green being as Tom Green as Tom Green can possibly be for NINETY MINUTES, the show’s poor attempts at shocking, edgy, and tasteless humor (and not just in Tom Green sketches – I’m lookin’ at YOU, Smigel), and the show’s poor attempts at random humor. Some of the worst sketches of SNL’s late 90s/early 00s era were in tonight’s episode alone. SNL’s experiment of doing an “SNL/The Tom Green Show” hybrid was a failure. I do at least give credit to SNL for trying something completely different, but this particular case was a misguided effort.
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Calista Flockhart)
one of the biggest step downs humanly possible
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
Val Kilmer / U2