Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
VICE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS
Dick Cheney’s (DAH) economy of energy expenditure exemplifies efficiency
— A good number of funny low-key lines from Darrell’s Cheney. Even just the way Darrell is speaking as Cheney is amusing me here, for some reason.
— Funny concept of Cheney making his personality energy efficient.
— A big laugh from Cheney stating Roberto Benigni used 47,000 calories while speaking during his famous Oscars acceptance speech from a few years prior.
— Good bit with Cheney demonstrating “different” monotone emotions.
STARS: ***½
MONOLOGUE
audience member Keith razzes host about her weight & Jack Nicholson
— What the hell is Lara Flynn Boyle wearing (screencap below)?!?
— Another Adam-McKay-interrupts-a-monologue-as-an-obnoxious-audience-member monologue. The last one from the Tobey Maguire episode was pretty funny.
— I cannot picture Lara Flynn Boyle and Jack Nicholson as a couple AT ALL.
— Lara is coming off kinda awkward in the way she’s playing off of Adam McKay. Tobey Maguire played a better straight man to Adam the last time SNL did this type of monologue.
— A good laugh from Adam asking Lara how big Jack Nicholson’s “joker” is.
— Some funny witty retorts from Adam to Lara.
— A very odd and kinda-disgusting gag with Lara showing food outlines sticking out from inside her stomach, but Lara’s at least coming off fairly likable during it.
STARS: ***
CORN CHIP NAIL TIPS
— Rerun, for the BILLIONTH time this season, originally aired on 10/7/00. This season is getting out of hand with the excessive amount of fake ads they’re repeating. If I see Corn Chip Nail Tips or Homocil one more time before this season ends…
— Even the studio audience sounds tired of seeing this commercial, especially judging from their VERY hesitant applause at the end.
PHYSICAL
(CHP) coughs during faux hernia test administered by (WIF), (host), (RAD)
— Some pretty good laughs from Will CONSTANTLY asking Parnell to cough while he feels Parnell’s testicles.
— I like how this is now getting to the point where Will brings in more and more fellow doctors and nurses to feel Parnell’s testicles while asking him to cough. I particularly love Rachel’s eager “My turn!”
— Good turn with Darrell entering as a doctor and asking Will and his co-workers “Who the hell are you people?”, resulting in them dashing out of the room, making Parnell realize that they weren’t even doctors.
— A funny “I’m a butt man” ending with Darrell.
STARS: ***
AUDITION
Kyle & Sean DeMarco don ’80s hair while auditioning for musical guest
— Not sure if Horatio’s intentional overacting at the beginning (“WHY, GOD, WHY?!?! WHY’D YOU MAKE ME A DANCER?!?!”) worked for me. He seems to be giving more and more over-the-top performances lately (especially when he’s sharing a scene with Jimmy), an unfortunate sign of things to come.
— Oh, god, another DeMarco Brothers sketch.
— I did laugh for a while at Parnell’s comically intense facial expressions when miming playing the keyboard, until it went on too long.
— Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora both bust out laughing HARD out of character when seeing Kattan and Parnell in 80s Bon Jovi wigs, as if that was unplanned. This seems completely genuine… until you see the dress rehearsal version of this sketch that would later be aired in reruns, which contains the EXACT SAME “genuine” laughing from Jovi and Sambora when seeing Kattan and Parnell in the wigs. So what’s the story here? Was the wig bit genuinely unexpected by Jovi and Sambora at dress rehearsal, and SNL liked their laughing reaction so much that they told them to “re-create” their laughing for the live show, fooling us viewers into thinking their laughing was genuine? If so, boo to SNL for that move. I’m docking half a star from my already-low rating of this sketch just for that alone.
— The “Get out” / “Come back” bit at the end is going on WAY too long.
STARS: *
MTV CRIBS
Robert Downey, Jr. (CHK) gives a very quick tour of his jail cell
— A funny quick in-and-out parody of Cribs, with an imprisoned Robert Downey Jr. giving us an incredibly brief tour of his jail cell.
STARS: ***½
SAVE THE STARVING ACTRESSES
host makes an appeal on behalf of Save The Starving Actresses Foundation
— A pretty good self-deprecating way for Lara to spoof her known extreme skinniness, as well as a way to spoof the unsettling then-current trend of skinniness among actresses in general.
— Lara: “For just the price of a cup of coffee, you can buy Courteney Cox… a cup of coffee.”
— Why are they mentioning Sarah Jessica Parker? I don’t recall her being freakishly skinny around this time.
— Lara’s voice keeps occasionally getting hoarse and phlegmy-sounding throughout this.
STARS: ***
PREMIERE PLAYHOUSE
town elders welcome (host)’s Scarlet Letters B & J
— The men’s sleazy reaction to seeing that Lara’s scarlet letter is “BJ” is okay, if a cheap premise.
— A hilarious walk-on from Will, even if he’s playing a broad gay stereotype. Will just manages to always make funny walk-ons like this work.
— Will’s overly prissy way of saying “No!” when Parnell is ordering him to leave make both Horatio and Lara break.
— Interestingly, Parnell exclaims “Sweet sassy molassey!” when seeing Rachel and Maya’s scarlet letters. A kinda random way for SNL to self-reference a legendary Ray Romano sketch.
— Funny ending reveal of this airing on the Spice Channel.
STARS: ***
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “It’s My Life”
WEEKEND UPDATE
Lou Reed [real] addresses rumors of his death circulating on the Internet
— A nice fast pacing to Jimmy and Tina’s jokes so far tonight.
— Jimmy and Lou Reed’s serious interview about how “dead” Reed is is fairly funny.
— Wow, Update’s over ALREADY? This was a very short Update that rivals the string of short Updates from around February-March of this season.
STARS: ***½
MOULIN ROUGE!
anachronistic Moulin Rouge pairs 1890s setting with 1970s music
— Moulin Rouge focusing on 70s music is fairly funny.
— Will is instantly cracking me up with his facial expressions when he begins singing.
— A huge laugh from Will breaking out into “Kung Fu Fighting”.
— An overall pretty fun sketch, even if I wasn’t laughing all that much during several portions.
STARS: ***
MSNBC INVESTIGATES
teen boys’ Golden Girls copycat syndrome is worrisome
— A hilarious way of spoofing the bad trend at the time of teens injuring themselves when attempting to imitate stunts from Jackass.
— A big laugh from the “How was that? Did I look sexy?” aside that Will as a reporter asks someone off-camera after doing his intro.
— Very funny visual of Jimmy casually doing an interview acting like a typical young guy while dressed as Rue McClanahan’s Golden Girls character.
— Interesting seeing a childhood picture of Kattan (screencap below).
As I said a few times in earlier reviews, I’m always a sucker for seeing what cast members looked like as kids.
— A very funny home video of four teens imitating the Golden Girls. Interesting how those four teens are played by the exact same group of cast members who do the traditional Season’s Greetings song in this era (Jimmy, Horatio, Tracy, and Kattan).
— An interesting tidbit is that the part with Kattan throwing himself backwards out of his chair during the choking bit actually resulted in a serious real-life back injury for Kattan. [ADDENDUM: According to commenter Strummer, it was actually Kattan’s neck that got injured.] To this day, all these years later, Kattan reportedly claims that that injury still affects him.
— Ana’s Bea Arthur impression is surprisingly weak.
— I like Parnell and Maya as the melodramatic, upset parents.
— Very funny ending scene of a large group performing “Thank You For Being A Friend” as a tribute to Kattan’s character.
STARS: ****½
WAKE UP WAKEFIELD!
phys ed teacher (host) prepares Sheldon for the prom
— This sketch has officially become recurring.
— A good laugh from the mustache on Lara’s female gym teacher character.
— Horatio’s teacher character in this recurring sketch always works for me, because, as I said in my review of the first installment of this sketch, I had a teacher at the time who acted and looked eerily like Horatio’s character.
— Decent bit with Lara using Rachel’s Sheldon to demonstrate a dance.
STARS: ***
A MESSAGE FROM SHAQUILLE O’NEAL
voice-immodulant Shaquille O’Neal (TRM) was joking about his sex life
— Already a laugh right from the start of this, with the opening visual of Tracy’s Shaq sitting on a small chair in a room with small furniture to emphasize Shaq’s huge size.
— Tracy’s monotone voice as Shaq is cracking me up, even if this is far from the most dead-on Shaq impression I’ve seen.
— Between Will’s Jacob Silj character, Darrell’s Chris Matthews impression, and now Tracy’s Shaq impression, SNL’s been doing a lot of characters and celebrity impressions lately who seem to lack the ability to modulate the volume or tone their voice.
— Tracy’s Shaq: “When I said that Tyra Banks gets sexually aroused when I put on a huge diaper and dance for her, that was not true….. she did not enjoy it at all.”
STARS: ***½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “You Give Love A Bad Name”
SHOOTERS
Bloater brothers overextend themselves while flirting with barmaid (host)
— The Bloater Brothers, one of my biggest SNL guilty pleasures, make their first appearance in a whole year. Also odd how they’re appearing the same night as another pair of brother characters co-starring Parnell (DeMarco Brothers). Not exactly the most revered sets of recurring characters among SNL fans these days.
— Lara, when the Bloater Brothers imply they’d like to sleep with her: “I turned gay the moment you two walked in.” Wayne Bloater: “Call Richard Roundtree, I think we got the shaft!”
— When Lara supposedly flashes the Bloater Brothers while having her back to the camera, you can clearly see that she has a bra on.
— The show must be running long, as the ending of this sketch gets cut off a few seconds too early by an SNL bumper photo of Lara.
— Overall, not one of the better Bloater Brothers sketches, but still tolerable to me.
STARS: ***
GOODNIGHTS
— Yep, the show is indeed running long. These goodnights get cut off FAST, before Lara even finishes her goodnights speech.
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A very average episode, which seems to have become the norm in the back half of this season. Barely anything in tonight’s episode stood out as great or memorable, but there weren’t any real flops either, besides a DeMarco Brothers installment that particularly frustrated me for various reasons.
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Pierce Brosnan)
a step down
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
Season 26 comes to an end, with host Christopher Walken. It’s also the final episode for both Jerry Minor and, temporarily, Chris Parnell. You’d think Jerry had ALREADY left before this point, judging by how absent he’s been from the show lately.