Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
CHI-CHI’S
at Chi-Chi’s, George W. Bush (WIF) & Al Gore (DAH) attempt reconciliation
— This is SNL’s first Bush/Gore sketch after a winner of this insane, drawn-out election was finally announced earlier that week: Bush.
— I like how this Bush/Gore sketch is set in a Chi-Chi’s, of all places. This shows how fun and loose SNL’s Bush/Gore sketches this election season have become. I remember saying in my old review that I originally did of this episode back in 2000, “Next thing you’ll know, they’ll put these two at Chuck E. Cheese’s.” Even all these years later, I can still picture a sketch like that.
— Bush: “Hey, maybe I’ll start a war. Wars are like executions, supersized!” Uh, hoo, boy.
— A lot of laughs during Bush and Gore’s entire conversation.
— Bush’s hot peppers prank on Gore is very funny.
— Funny ending with Bush faking Gore out after agreeing to say “Live from New York…” in unison with him.
— Overall, a solid end to the Bush/Gore sketches of this election season.
STARS: ****
MONOLOGUE
host embraced female Asian stereotypes during her week at SNL
— Lucy Liu is coming off likable early on in this monologue.
— Tracy’s getting some good laughs from the bit with Lucy giving him a back massage.
— They’re going through just about every Asian stereotype imaginable, but this seems to be all in good fun, and I’m finding that this monologue is coming off funny enough in its execution, even if it’s something that might be considered problematic by today’s standards.
— A particularly funny bit with Lucy presenting a cooked cocker spaniel. I especially like Horatio’s “Mmm! That’s good dog!” line.
STARS: ***
PRICELINE.COM
the tech stock plunge hurt priceline.com spokesman William Shatner (DAH)
— Oh, no. Did we need the return of this mediocre bit from the preceding season’s Julianna Margulies episode?
— Same problems as last time. Darrell’s William Shatner impression is surprisingly weak, and the idea of spoofing Shatner’s Priceline ads is flawed, as those Priceline ads themselves are tongue-in-cheek.
— Tonight’s Priceline sketch is even worse than the last one. I’m not even sure where the laughs in this one are supposed to be coming from. I’d argue that the real Priceline commercials are actually funnier than this so-called spoof.
STARS: *
TRL
Gemini’s Twin added (host) because she has a minivan
— Gemini’s Twin officially become recurring.
— Like last time, I’m getting some good laughs from the music video shown tonight.
— Lucy is very funny in this sketch, even more so than Charlize Theron was in the first installment of this sketch.
— Overall, not bad, but I can tell I’m gonna eventually get tired of these Gemini’s Twin sketches, especially since they seem to be following the same formula.
STARS: ***
CELEBRITY JEOPARDY
Robin Williams (JIF) & Catherine Zeta-Jones (host) fail
— I love Will-as-Alex-Trebek’s failed attempt to speed past his intro of Darrell’s Sean Connery so he can quickly move on to the reading of the categories without Connery getting in his usual wisecracks at him.
— Jimmy displays another spot-on and hilarious impression in a Celebrity Jeopardy sketch, this time doing Robin Williams. He’s slaying me throughout this sketch, and so is Will-as-Trebek’s reactions to him.
— There’s our obligatory classic category mix-up of tonight’s Celebrity Jeopardy edition, this time with Connery reading “An album cover” as “Anal bum cover”.
— Very funny how for Final Jeopardy, Trebek tells the contestants to each ask their own question and then answer it. SNL keeps topping themselves with the ridiculous lengths they’ll have Will’s Trebek go to give the contestants an easy-to-answer Final Jeopardy question.
— We can see an unintentional glimpse of Jimmy’s real hand hidden in his sleeve when he’s holding a fake hand that has a pen sticking through it.
— Priceless Final Jeopardy answer from Connery, with us seeing half of a drawing of Trebek and a horse having sex with each other.
— Interestingly, this is the second sketch tonight to end with Darrell playfully slapping the side of Will’s head. The cold opening was the first sketch that happened in, when Will was saying “Live From New York…”.
STARS: *****
PRETTY LIVING
joyologist Helen’s new fling is a female lumberjack (host)
— WHY, GOD, WHY?!? And this is the second damn time that SNL has immediately followed my absolute favorite recurring sketch of this era, Celebrity Jeopardy, with my absolute least favorite recurring sketch of this era, Pretty Living. Season 24’s Ben Stiller episode is the first time this happened.
— On an up note, this mercifully ends up being the final Pretty Living sketch. Hallelujah!
— A change of pace with Helen Madden’s love interest being a female this time, but that’s still not making this sketch any more interesting.
— Helen Madden’s self-love mistletoe is kinda funny, I admit.
— Overall, good fucking riddance to this unbearable recurring sketch. It was rough reviewing these when covering these last few seasons, but, like a trouper, I made it through.
STARS: *½
JARRET’S ROOM
dorm-based webcast is a window into youth culture
— This soon-to-be-recurring sketch makes its debut.
— Horatio’s stoner character, Gobi, is pretty funny so far. Time will tell if I’ll eventually get tired of this character when reviewing this series of Jarret’s Room sketches.
— When Lucy points out that Jarret’s Room’s only fan is in Iceland, I got a good laugh from Jarret saying “Aw, yeah! Shoutout to Yaorg!”
— Pretty funny walk-on from Parnell.
— This sketch has taken kind of a dull turn in the second half.
— Overall, a fairly meh debut for this sketch. While there was kind of a charm to this sketch’s accurate portrayal of late 90s/early 2000s youth culture (and as a teen of that era myself, this sketch kinda brought me back), nothing was too noteworthy in this, and as I said earlier, portions of this came off kinda dull. IIRC, there would be some fun installments of this sketch to later come in the following season when they do some much-needed tweaking to the sketch and also add in new characters played by some of that season’s new featured players (Seth Meyers, Jeff Richards).
STARS: **½
WEEKEND UPDATE
modern trappings sidetrack James Madison’s (RAD) electoral college spiel
JIF & TIF change Baby New Year’s (CHK) diaper
JIF plays guitar & sings pop-inspired songs about Christmas presents
— A very Jimmy Fallon-dominated episode so far tonight. He’s been all over this show.
— Odd casting of Rachel as James Madison, but it’s working in the silly nature of this general commentary.
— I love the goofy mesmerized facial expression that Rachel’s James Madison makes when repeatedly clicking a pen in fascination (the fifth above screencap for this Weekend Update).
— Some of Jimmy and Tina’s jokes are receiving a somewhat tepid audience reaction tonight.
— Another silly and odd bit in tonight’s Update, with Kattan as Baby New Year. A fairly fun and goofy segment. Lots of silliness in tonight’s Update in general, once again showing how much things have changed in this new Update era compared to the stiffness and straightforwardness of the Colin Quinn era of Update.
— A piece of confetti from the Baby New Year segment has gotten stuck in Jimmy’s hair, and humorously remains there for the remainder of this Update, unbeknownst to him.
— Hmm, Jimmy has found a way to continue doing his traditional Update guitar songs even after becoming an Update anchor.
— Didn’t care for first few songs in Jimmy’s song medley tonight, but I like him now doing a parody of U2’s performances from the last episode, right down to running around the audience and repeatedly shoving his open mouth at the camera, ala Bono.
STARS: ***
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “I Just Wanna Love U (Give It 2 Me)”
TRIMMING THE TREE
angel (MOS) & other Christmas ornaments worry about making it to the tree
— A cutesy sketch that feels a little unusual for SNL, but I’m kinda enjoying this.
— Sad that this is the only big thing Parnell is getting to do in this entire episode, and it’s just a boring dad role where he doesn’t get anything comedic to do or say. After Parnell dominated the last episode with probably the most airtime of his entire SNL tenure, I see SNL has gone back to their usual habit of underusing Parnell and typecasting him in thankless small-ish roles.
— I love Horatio as the California Raisin.
— Funny bit with Maya as a space heater instruction manual.
— Some awkward timing issues throughout this sketch from the use of two child actors and a dog, but it’s forgivable.
— Overall, a pretty charming sketch.
STARS: ***
MURDER IN THE MAKE BELIEVE BALLROOM
more rap from Robert Goulet (WIF)
— Nice to see Will’s Robert Goulet impression become recurring, though as far as sketches with him advertising a rap album of his while sitting in a convertible out in the woods go, they’ll never top the first installment.
— Goulet’s rapport with Jay-Z and the other rappers is pretty funny.
— Are Jay-Z and the other rappers genuinely stoned out of their minds during this sketch? They are so out of it during this sketch, and I’m fairly sure that’s not acting.
— I remember when this originally aired, I was very thrown off by Will’s singing of the lyric “Who the fluck want one, babyyyyyy”, as I seriously wondered if he used the actual f-word or just “fluck”. I couldn’t tell. I would soon find out that it was “fluck”, but even listening to it now, 20 years later, I still think it sounds VERY close to the f-word.
— Speaking of expletives not allowed on SNL, Jay-Z actually does utter one shortly after Will’s f-bomb fake-out. Jay-Z pretends(?) to accidentally spill some ashes from his joint onto himself, and then deliberately(?) mutters an audible “shit” in response. I didn’t even catch that when this episode originally aired (I was probably too busy STILL asking myself in shock “Did Will just say the f-word on live TV?!?!?!”), but Will certainly caught it, as he briefly turns his head towards Jay-Z and laughs out of character while delivering the next line. I’m currently watching the rerun version of this episode, however, which mutes out Jay-Z’s s-bomb.
— Ha, the big-horned sheep returns!
— I love Goulet saying “Hey, fellas, you curled his horns” when the one of the rappers lets the big-horned sheep have a toke from a joint.
— Overall, this was funny, but doesn’t come close to holding a candle to the classic first Goulet sketch.
STARS: ***½
SEASON’S GREETINGS
interloper interrupts message of season’s greetings by JIF & TIF
— Uh, okay. A very brief segment overall, but I got a pretty good laugh from the random guy joining in on Jimmy and Tina’s holiday message, only for Jimmy to respond “Who the (bleep) are you?!?”
STARS: not even sure if this very brief segment warrants a rating, but if it does, I’ll give it ***
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Is That Your Chick”
SEASON’S GREETINGS (not to be confused with the earlier sketch tonight of the exact same title)
HOS, CHK, TRM, JIF once again perform a happy Christmas ditty
— Jimmy continues to absolutely dominate tonight’s episode. You’d think he was tonight’s host instead of Lucy Liu, especially since Lucy has strangely been M.I.A. since the Trimming The Tree sketch from almost 20 minutes ago (not counting her intro to Jay-Z’s second musical performance).
— The Sanz/Fallon/Kattan/Morgan Christmas song routine officially becomes recurring after debuting only ONE EPISODE AGO. It’s a good thing I love these songs, and thus, I can’t complain nowadays about seeing this back so insanely soon. I certainly do remember complaining about the very early return of this sketch in my original 2000 review of this episode, though, and I said stuff like “SNL is running out of ideas”.
— Nothing else to say here, but overall, this was fun as always. I’ll always be a sucker for these sketches, even if I prefer some of the later versions where there are interesting set-ups to the song or there are variations of the holiday theme.
STARS: ****
GOODNIGHTS
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A very average episode. There were enough highlights to make this a passable episode, but this is the most forgettable episode of the season so far. There was also an awful lot of reliance on recurring sketches. I think Jarret’s Room (not yet recurring at this point) and Trimming The Tree were the ONLY original sketches all night.
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Val Kilmer)
a step down
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
We enter the year 2001, with host Charlie Sheen