December 7, 2002 – Robert DeNiro / Norah Jones (S28 E7)

Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars

HOMELAND SECURITY BRIEFING
Craig Fenson (host) reads naughty-sounding names of suspected terrorists

— Darrell’s Tom Ridge bit at the beginning of this is just continuing the joke of his appearance from the preceding season, using odd color choices for terror alerts.
— A huge laugh from the first terrorist name: M’Balz Es-Hari.
— This plethora of immature terrorist names has me practically on the floor. I cannot stop laughing. This is an example of SNL pulling off sophomoric humor the right way.
— The pictures of the cast members as terrorists are cracking me up and are making some of these dirty names even funnier.
— Some good wordplay about some of these dirty-named terrorists, such as Robert DeNiro telling us that I-Zheet M’Drurz “left skidmarks when fleeing the scene of his last attack”.
— I remember at the time, it was a novelty seeing someone of Robert DeNiro’s stature doing dick and fart jokes in this cold opening. Unfortunately, that novelty is LONG gone nowadays, with DeNiro semi-regularly doing low-brow horseshit like Dirty Grandpa. However, this cold opening still holds up as very funny.
— I’m glad this cold opening ended at the right time, before the joke got too old.
STARS: ****

MONOLOGUE
(no synopsis available)

— Very stilted and awkward delivery from DeNiro, and he looks like it’s a chore for him to be hosting.
— Boy, that “punchline” at the end was awful, and received very light and uncomfortable chuckles from the audience.
— And that’s the end??? This monologue was NOTHING. Normally, I’d give credit to SNL for doing a real monologue in an era where real monologues were becoming increasingly rare. But… again, this monologue was NOTHING. All it did was set the tone for the rough episode we’re in for tonight.
— Reminiscent of another terrible SNL host, Steven Seagal, DeNiro begins walking offstage before he’s even completely finished with his “Norah Jones is here, so stick around, we’ll be right back” tagline.
STARS: *

BIG’N TASTY
disclaimers give potential risks associated with McDonald’s Big N’ Tasty

— The Jim Downey-read sardonic disclaimers about the Big N’ Tasty are very funny, made even funnier by Downey’s reliable dry voice-over.
— Great disclaimer about children and morons being valued McDonald’s customers.
— I’m getting a slight bit of a Happy Fun Ball vibe from some of these disclaimers, though this commercial has much more of a sneering tone, as opposed to Happy Fun Ball’s more absurdist tone.
— I absolutely love the “The Big N’ Tasty is not God” disclaimer, which is pretty much to this commercial what “Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball” is to Happy Fun Ball.
STARS: ****

JEFFERSON’S SLAVE
Thomas Jefferson (host) puts the moves on his slave Sally Hemings (MAR)

— (*sigh*) Right out of the gate at the beginning of this, the lead off-sketch of the night, DeNiro IMMEDIATELY fucks up his first line, a line that was supposed to be a big laugh-getter. Boy, this is gonna be a LONG episode, isn’t it?
— Some good reality subtext in this sketch, digging at DeNiro’s real-life reputation for having a preference for black women.
— I got a good laugh from DeNiro’s Thomas Jefferson asking Maya’s Sally Hemmings to call him “T.J.”.
— A lot of pretty funny exchanges between Jefferson and Hemmings. One particularly strong one is “Have you ever thought about being a singer?” “Um, it’s really not an option for me.”
— Funny turn at the end with Tracy as the narrator.
STARS: ***½

PETER PAN REHEARSAL
gruff theater veteran (host) assumes titular role in Peter Pan production

— Yawn. DeNiro playing a tough New Yorker in tights. I can already tell THIS is gonna be a thin sketch.
— It’s now about a minute-and-a-half later, and yep, so much tired, cliched, lazy humor here.
— Okay, I actually got a big laugh just now from DeNiro’s dirty line towards Amy about “going downtown so long, you won’t ever need to wax again.”
— Horrible delivery from DeNiro on his line about having a three-way with an IHOP waitress and her mom.
STARS: *½

MALL SANTA
frustrated mall Santa (host) argues with his helper elf girlfriend (MAR)

— Yawn. DeNiro playing a tough New Yorker in a Santa costume. And, again, so much tired, cliched, lazy humor throughout this sketch.
— Maya and DeNiro being coupled together in a second sketch tonight makes me remember that some online SNL fans at the time tried to start a rumor that DeNiro and Maya had something going on behind the scenes, given DeNiro’s aforementioned preference for black women.
— I think the little boy in this sketch is one of the twins who appeared a year earlier in another Christmas-related mall sketch: the Sears Photographers sketch from the Hugh Jackman episode (a side-by-side comparison below).

— DeNiro is extremely glued to those cue cards, which reminds me that SNL would later show the dress rehearsal version of this sketch in reruns, in which, at one point, DeNiro has SO MUCH trouble reading one particular word off of the cue card that he just gives up and literally says “Whatever that is” and waves off the cue card. Jesus Christ.
— I finally got a laugh from this sketch, with Rachel panickedly telling the little boy “Run, Zach, run!”
— A second laugh, this time from Parnell’s delivery of “Your loss. Nice meeting you” to Maya and DeNiro right before walking away from them, after offering them a great deal. It’s a shame that my only two laughs in this entire sketch are from two cast members who are only playing a side role here.
STARS: *½

U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTORS
U.N. Weapons Inspectors’ (JIF) & (host) cursory search comes up empty

— (After a lengthy set-up) Weapons Inspector: “You got weapons?” Iraqi: “……..No.” Weapons Inspector: “Okay.” (*END OF SKETCH*) Hilarious. Even just the shifty-eyed look on Fred’s face as the Iraqi added to the humor.
— I think whoever wrote this sketch was once quoted somewhere as saying they’re glad this sketch was pre-taped, so DeNiro couldn’t fuck it up.
STARS: ****

JUDGE HORACE
(host) sues girlfriend (HOS) for not losing weight

— The opening intro sequence with Tracy’s Judge Horace is freakin’ hilarious . There are a lot of funny aspects in it, but even just Tracy’s mere delivery alone is killing me.
— A funny line from the voice-over describing Horatio’s female character as “suffering from the Elephant Man disease and having a slight marijuana problem.”
— DeNiro playing a character named Joe Blow? Where’s Colin Quinn when you need him?
— (*sigh*) There goes DeNiro fucking up lines once again.
— A laugh from Tracy’s Judge Horace asking Will as his bailiff to roll him a blunt.
— The premise of Tracy playing a very Tracy Morgan-esque judge is very promising, but ehhh, the actual sketch is turning out to be a bit on the blah side, despite occasional laughs.
— I love Will’s straitlaced delivery of “Sir, your blunt is ready” when returning with Judge Horace’s blunt.
STARS: **½

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Don’t Know Why”

WEEKEND UPDATE
Whitney Houston (MAR) & Bobby Brown (TRM) explain their drug use

Marty (CHK) & Sylvia (RAD) Feinblatt are sick about their vacation cruise

— Some fairly lukewarm laughter from the audience in response to a lot of Jimmy and Tina’s jokes so far tonight.
— The debut of Maya’s Whitney Houston impression.
— The ending of the Whitney/Bobby commentary, with the visual gag of Tracy-as-Bobby-Brown’s hair flop-sweating, was worth a laugh, as was Maya’s Whitney then saying “Bobby needs his weed!” The rest of their commentary was nothing special at all.
— Pretty funny how Jimmy does a joke about Phish the week before they’re musical guests on SNL, which Jimmy lampshades by following his joke with “See ya next week, Trey.”
— Jimmy does another Norm Macdonald-esque joke and subsequent deadpan staredown of the camera this season, this time with his Sopranos joke. What was with Tina’s horrible ad-lib afterwards, though?
— Rachel and Kattan play a convincing stereotypical old Jewish couple, but boy, am I bored during this commentary of theirs. Not a single laugh from me so far.
— A very lame and desperate punchline to Rachel and Kattan’s commentary, with them spitting out fake vomit.
— For the first in quite a long time, Jimmy doesn’t throw his pencil towards the camera at the end of Update after signing off. He instead just carefully places the pencil on the Update desk. This reminds me that we’ll soon be getting a recurring gag at the end of the Updates from the second half of this season, involving Jimmy’s pencil and SNL writer Eric Slovin.
— This is the second consecutive Update in which I disliked all the guest commentaries. Come to think of it, I also disliked the sole guest commentary in the Update before that (Seth Meyers), as well as all the guest commentaries in the Update before THAT (Gene Shalit, Baby K). My God, when was the last Update that had a guest commentary that I actually liked? Was it the Update that had Tim Calhoun’s great debut, way back in the John McCain episode from October? If so, damn, Update has taken such a drop in quality this season that even the guest commentaries are going down the toilet.
STARS: **

A VERY VERSACE CHANUKAH
Siegfried (Harvey Keitel) & Roy (host)

— It feels like Maya’s been getting tons of airtime tonight.
— I keep expecting Maya’s Versace impression to get to the point where it’s become officially played-out and unfunny, but nope, it’s still working for me thus far, even though her impression has gotten toned down these last two appearances, and I prefer the more animated, wackier version of this Versace impression that Maya did in the preceding season’s Hugh Jackman episode.
— A decent appearance from Horatio and Amy’s Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne impressions.
— Maya’s marshmallow didn’t light on fire like it was supposed to, yet she’s acting like it did, which looks just plain silly.
— That’s not Dean playing the buff, shirtless Santa, is it? If so, it’s his only appearance in this entire episode. Until doing this review just now, I had always thought he made no appearances in this episode.
— Okay, I can now see that that’s not Dean as the buff, shirtless Santa. So that makes this the THIRD episode this season that Dean is completely absent in, and we’re not even halfway through the season yet! Jesus Christ. I ask once again, how in the hell did this guy get a second season on SNL? He went from being a glorified extra in his first season to now being someone who’s lucky if he even gets to APPEAR in the show any given week.
— At least DeNiro is finally playing against type, for the first time all night.
— Harvey Keitel cameo. (I remember some online SNL fan at the time mistook Keitel in this sketch for James Caan, which is hilarious to me.) While I’m not exactly laughing much at him playing Siegfried to DeNiro’s Roy, I do like seeing Keitel on SNL again, especially considering how much I love his SNL episode from season 18.
STARS: **½

SLAPPING SALESMAN
car salesman (host) slaps customer (SEM) to get him to buy options

— Yawn. DeNiro playing a tough New Yorker in a car salesman suit.
— This time, the laziness of the writing for these tedious “DeNiro plays a tough New Yorker” sketches has reached a new low, as this is an EXTREMELY weak one-joke premise. Even the audience has stopped laughing at all the slapping pretty early into this sketch. Not a good sign.
— Seth’s delivery of “Stay in the car, Paige!!” ALMOST induced a chuckle from me. I’m just desperate for something to laugh at in this awful sketch by this point.
STARS: *

BEDTIME STORY
divorced dad (host) uses bedtime story to badmouth ex-wife to son (CHK)

— (*sigh*) Right at top of the sketch, DeNiro mistakenly jumps ahead of the script by responding “Me too, buddy” BEFORE Kattan says the line that DeNiro’s supposed to say “Me too, buddy” in response to.
— Some funny dark turns in DeNiro’s bedtime story to Kattan. If only DeNiro could deliver A SINGLE DAMN LINE without tripping over his words.
— This sketch is getting better and better as it goes along. I love the particularly dark turn in the story just now, with DeNiro’s detailing Kattan’s mother running over the magic squirrel in the story, leading to the squirrel screaming things like “She crushed my spine!” and “The only joy she gets is from other people’s pain!” This is great, and has a very “Mr. Mike’s Least-Loved Bedtime Tales” vibe to it. The silly voice DeNiro’s using for the crushed squirrel is also very funny.
STARS: ****

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Come Away With Me”

RADIOACTIVE BEAR
countermeasures aimed at a giant radioactive bear just make things worse

— I’m loving the increasing absurdity in the military’s harebrained ideas of how to stop the first radioactive bear, and how their ideas are just making the bear attacks worse and worse.
— I howled at the reveal of the enlarged hunter (Will Forte) being useless against the giant radioactive bears because his gun still stayed the same size from before he got enlarged. Also a great visual afterwards of the hunter getting his arm yanked off by one of the bears and then getting beaten with it.
— A priceless reaction from Will when realizing the Viagra-induced horny bear is lustfully coming for him.
— This is the second sketch in two years that features a cast member named Will getting sodomized by an animal. Unlike the preceding season’s Christmas Kangaroo sketch, the sodomizing in this Radioactive Bear sketch doesn’t have any homophobic implications that might bother some people.
— During the sodomizing scene, I laughed so much at Parnell’s somewhat-deadpan “Yep, there’s the money shot” line.
— Hilarious bit with the military’s poisoned giant sandwich plan backfiring, when Will eats the poisoned giant sandwich that was intended for the bears. This is made even funnier by DeNiro’s “Not you, dummy! Leave the sandwich alooone! It’s not goooood!” and Parnell’s great delivery of “Well, after the beating and the sex, I guess he was hungry.” Man, this sketch is absolutely slaying me.
— The ending of this sketch gets cut off prematurely, due to the show running long. Is it safe to say that DeNiro’s stilted line deliveries and constant flubs all throughout the show are what caused the show to run long?
— The bears in this sketch were played by Jeff and Fred (the latter making his ONLY live appearance of the night), which you sure couldn’t tell from watching the sketch. I find it odd that SNL would use cast members in a role like that, where you can’t even see their faces, hear their voices, or have any other possible way of identifying them. I guess this is something SNL occasionally does with featured players, though. (For example, did you know that in Amy’s famous Sarah Palin rap on Weekend Update in a season 34 episode, the guy in the moose costume who Amy shoots with her finger is then-new featured player Bobby Moynihan?)
STARS: ****½

GOODNIGHTS

---

IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A disappointing episode. This did have its share of strong highlights, though, especially the nice upswing with the solid last two sketches, the second of which (Radioactive Bear) stands out as probably one of my favorite sketches of this season so far. However, tonight’s strong highlights aren’t enough to make you forget about the truly lazy writing and awfulness that was prevalent in this episode, and they’re certainly not enough to make you forget about how lousy Robert DeNiro was as a host. After being highly anticipated by viewers in his debut as an SNL host, Robert DeNiro showed the world that he and live sketch comedy do not mix. His performances were a mess all night, yet he would go on to inexplicably return in future hosting stints and cameos that also feature THE EXACT SAME stiff acting, stilted delivery, blatant cue card-staring, “I’d rather be anywhere but here” attitude, jumping ahead of the script, and constant line-flubbing from him. Will SNL ever learn?

MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS

HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Brittany Murphy)
a step down

My full set of screencaps for this episode is here

TOMORROW
Al Gore hosts the Christmas episode