Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
WEAPON DISCOVERIES
George W. Bush’s (DAH) Iraq initiatives would’ve been welcome in the USA
— OH FUCKING NO. We get the debut of Darrell’s notoriously bad George W. Bush impression, after SNL has abruptly yanked the impression away from Chris. Tonight’s episode is already starting off on shaky ground.
— Okay, I can kinda see what Darrell is intending with the Bush voice, but MY GOD, is his attempt not coming off well at all. His impression just sounds like Darrell Hammond speaking out of a small mouth. He’s not even trying.
— Why does Darrell look like he’s about to bust out laughing during this entire cold opening? Why does he have that awkward smirk on his face? It’s almost like he’s fully aware of how bad his Bush impression is.
— Was Darrell’s mild trouble in pronouncing the word “Tikrit” a genuine mistake or just a scripted Bush-ism? If it was a scripted Bush-ism, Darrell didn’t do anywhere near enough to make it comical. He just mildly stumbled over the word, paused awkwardly, and then went on with the remainder of the dialogue. Ugh, what an unfunny mess his performance is.
— Oh, so now we’re relying on a whole bunch of lame props to “save” this D.O.A. mess? (*groan*)
— This cold opening is PAINFUL. I have not laughed a single damn time. As horrid as Darrell’s Bush impression is, the material is also at fault here. I don’t think even Will Ferrell could’ve made this material funny back when he was regularly playing Bush. Looks like Jim Downey’s poor writing of political cold openings in the second half of the preceding season has carried over into this season. It’s hard to believe this is the same Jim Downey who wrote so much strong and reliable political material for the show in the preceding three decades, and even very early in this 2000s decade.
— Overall, this may be the most unintentionally laughless cold opening since… God, I don’t know when. When was the last time I gave a cold opening a one-star rating? (One-and-a-half-star ratings don’t count in this case.) Season 20?
STARS: *
MONOLOGUE
host answers questions of Terrell (J.B. Smoove) & other audience members
— Wow, a bit of a change from usual questions-from-the-audience monologues, with Kelly Ripa actually going into the studio audience to take her first few questions (before taking the rest of her questions from the home base stage like hosts usually do).
— Steve Higgins works his way into another monologue, just two episodes after having a fun showcase in Justin Timberlake’s monologue. Always a treat to see Higgins appearing onscreen on SNL.
— Then-new SNL writer J.B. Smoove makes his first of quite a number of memorable onscreen SNL appearances. Glad to see this.
— J.B. is freakin’ HILARIOUS in this. He is slaying me.
— The idea of J.B. Smoove and Paula Pell being a married couple is hilarious in itself.
— Jim Downey (right after I bashed his writing in the cold opening) is good as the creepy audience member inappropriately obsessing over Kelly’s teenage days on Dance Party USA, even though the humor feels kinda cliched today. The same bit that Downey is doing here would later be done by Chris Parnell in Natalie Portman’s questions-from-the-audience monologue two seasons later.
— Seeing J.B. Smoove’s first onscreen SNL appearance was exciting enough, but now we get the very first onscreen appearance of another then-new SNL writer as well as a future cast member: Jason Sudeikis!
— It feels so odd and jarring to see Jason at this point of SNL’s run, and makes me eager to reach his tenure as a cast member. And, ha, look at the hairstyle he had back at this time.
— Wow, even in his first onscreen SNL appearance, Jason absolutely kills with his first string of dialogue: “I’m a big fan of your new sitcom, Hope & Faith.” Kelly: “Oh, thank you!” Jason: “Nah, I was just kidding.” Very promising sign of things to later come from Jason.
STARS: ****
TRESSANT SUPRÊME
crack cocaine in Tressant Supreme hair color enables host’s busy schedule
— Very funny concept of the busy Kelly Ripa using hair shampoo that contains “just a liiiiiiittle bit of crack cocaine”.
— An absolutely priceless very brief and unexpected cutaway to Kelly dancing wildly while making “Ooh-a ooh-a!” sounds.
— Kelly is giving a very solid performance here, and is executing this premise well.
— Hmm, I’m kinda disappointed this has ended already. This commercial was good, but it had potential to go much further with the crack-induced craziness, which it initially seemed like it was going to do.
STARS: ***½
LIVE WITH REGIS & KELLY
Angelina Jolie (host) is weird
— Nice to see Darrell’s Regis impression, just because I want to see Darrell redeem himself from his horrid Bush impression earlier tonight.
— A too-soon Chris Kattan cameo, reprising his role as a flamboyant, stereotypically gay Gelman. Blah. Is this really necessary?
— Here comes Kelly in her “cast member plays the host while the host plays someone else” role, as Angelina Jolie.
— Ugh, the usual bits with Kattan’s Gelman, which was never funny to me to begin with, are coming off soooo tired tonight.
— A laugh from Kelly’s Jolie kicking Amy’s Kelly in the face because “I find your perkiness disgusting.”
STARS: ***
ACCESS HOLLYWOOD
Renee Zellweger (host) praises her obesity coach (HOS)
— Quite a lot of celebrity impressions from Kelly so far tonight.
— Blah, this just seems to be an excuse for Horatio to ham it up with a goofy, exaggerated, slow voice, and potentially crack up both himself and Jimmy.
— Yep, there goes Horatio’s obligatory laughing at his own performance. (*sigh*) Jimmy’s at least not breaking quite as badly as I expected.
— I can see some people finding Horatio’s performance in this sketch to be hilarious, but he’s just annoying the hell out of me. And the lazy, cheap fat jokes all throughout this sketch aren’t making this any better.
— During Jimmy-as-Pat O’Brien’s sign-off at the end, what the holy fuck was with his VEEEERRRRRY long, awkward pauses after saying things like “Wait’ll you see what my good friend Keanu Reeves is up to”? Those long pauses were seemingly intentional, but I don’t understand what the hell they were going for, and apparently, neither does the audience, judging from their painfully uncomfortable silence.
STARS: *½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Hey Ya!”
WEEKEND UPDATE
at the NYC Marathon, Sean Combs (FIM) returns fire of starter’s pistol
still in her Catwoman costume, Drunk Girl recalls Halloween
Jimmy Buffett (HOS) recounts Tyco party via “Margaritaville” variants
— In the spirit of tonight’s musical guest, Jimmy and Tina sign on at the beginning of tonight’s Update under the names Andre “Ice Cold” 3000 and Big Boi.
— In an earlier Update from this season, Jimmy did a vocal impression of Arnold Schwarzenegger that was much better than the Schwarzenegger impression that Darrell regularly does. Now we get Tina doing a good Schwarzenegger vocal impression of her own, officially proving that everyone and their mother can do a better Schwarzenegger than Darrell.
— A very Norm Macdonald-esque “crack” joke about Whitney Houston from Jimmy, feeling like a throwback to Norm’s famous running joke about Marion Barry.
— Some really good jokes from Jimmy and Tina so far tonight.
— The brief P. Diddy marathon race bit was funny. There’s a misconception in some episode guides that J.B. Smoove played P. Diddy in this. It was actually Finesse playing P. Diddy. No idea what caused the mix-up. Finesse and J.B. look nothing alike. Maybe it was the sunglasses that threw some people off. (If you need proof that it was Finesse and not J.B. playing P. Diddy, below is a screencap from the end of the P. Diddy segment, in which his sunglasses unintentionally fly upwards when he’s running away, revealing his eyes.)
This ends up being Finesse’s only appearance all night, and if it had been J.B. Smoove who played P. Diddy here, then not only would that mean Finesse would be completely absent in this episode, but that BOTH of SNL’s black male cast members would be completely absent in tonight’s episode, as Kenan will not be seen tonight. We actually do eventually get an episode in which Kenan and Finesse, SNL’s only two black guys, are both absent in an episode: the following season’s premiere, of all episodes.
— Once again, I share Tina’s usual disdain whenever she introduces a Drunk Girl commentary.
— Two minutes into this Drunk Girl commentary, and I have yet to laugh a single time. Thankfully, this ends up being the final appearance of this character.
— Okay, the M&Ms bit that Drunk Girl does towards the end of this commentary is decent.
— Wow, talk about a Norm-esque joke from Jimmy. He now does a particularly Norm-esque off-color, dark joke about the recently-deceased Rod Roddy being “nestled warmly at the right hand of Satan”. I admire the pure balls it took for Jimmy to do such a harsh joke that randomly implied Rod Roddy went to hell after dying. That joke receives a boo or two from the audience, just like some of Norm’s particularly off-color jokes received back in the day.
— Oh, dear god, help me. Here goes another Fallon & Sanz bit, for the second time tonight, and for the second Update in a row. Jesus Christ, SNL. Wasn’t the Super Fans abomination that Horatio did in the last Update enough?
— God, this painfully unfunny, rambling, and seemingly lightly-scripted Jimmy Buffett commentary of Horatio’s is FUCKING. BRUTAL. TORTURE. End this now, SNL. This feels like an even more unfunny sequel to Horatio’s Elton John commentary from the preceding season’s Adrien Brody episode.
— Oh, great, now Horatio is ad-libbing the then-forbidden-on-NBC word “goddamn” several times while giggling at himself. Just stop, Horatio. You ain’t no Norm when it comes to ad-libbing “goddamn” freely.
— I cannot complain enough about how irksome it is that SNL gives Horatio so much free rein to fuck around on the air during sketches or Update commentaries with half-written material. Honestly, even freakin’ Jimmy looks slightly annoyed by Horatio at a few points of tonight’s Update commentary (though maybe that’s just Jimmy acting in character), and almost seems like he’s only forcibly laughing along with Horatio to humor him, not because he’s genuinely amused by him like he usually is.
— I remember how, right after tonight’s episode originally aired, a lot of people on the online SNL newsgroup (alt.tv.snl) were angrily demanding the firing of Horatio. Yep, it had gotten to that degree. Some people had had ENOUGH of Horatio’s nonsense. Of course, unsurprisingly, these online complaints led to nothing happening to Horatio on SNL, but if SNL had fired him around this time, I personally wouldn’t have had any objections. Sure, Horatio certainly has his moments, but even at his best, he’s always been an expendable cast member to me. And at his worst? Oof. The self-indulgent hamminess and mugging, the painfully awkward long pauses before delivering some of his lines, the self-amused breaking, the constant jackassery with Jimmy, the unearned free rein to do whatever the hell unfunny nonsense he wants to on the air, etc. And we’ve been particularly bombarded with a display of ALL of those things these past two episodes.
STARS: ***
COW FART STUDY
while on the job, cow fart scientist (WLF) reconciles with wife (host)
— Will and Kelly’s individual lines occasionally being punctuated by cow farts is making me laugh in spite of myself.
— A rare example of SNL actually pulling off a fart sketch well. It helps that this fart sketch also happens to be a patented oddball Will Forte sketch.
— The melodramatic argument between Will and Kelly on the subject of cow farts is hilarious.
— A particularly funny part with a silent Will being in deep thought while farts are going off non-stop in the background.
— I had thought for sure this was a Will Forte-written sketch, despite being more juvenile than his usual material, but the use of a toy model of the earth blowing up at the end of this sketch kinda reminds me of the ending of a really wretched and unfunny sketch that I believe I found out was written by James Anderson, in a Miley Cyrus-hosted episode from 10 years later, in which a cheerleading squad is abducted by an alien spaceship one-by-one. Plus, this Cow Fart Study sketch focused a lot on fart humor, which is a bit of a staple of James Anderson sketches. I now find myself wondering if Anderson wrote this Cow Fart Study sketch. If he did, I give him a lot of credit for doing a good job with this solid sketch, which is saying a lot coming from me, as he’s often the writer behind a lot of sketches that I strongly dislike.
STARS: ****
LEILANI BURKE: PET PSYCHIC
animal ESP is secondary to Leilani Burke’s singing career
— A very random return of Maya’s Leilani character from a forgotten-but-well-written 10-to-1 sketch in the Katie Holmes episode from three seasons prior. The character is now placed in a new setting, given a last name (Burke), and given white streaks in her hair that she didn’t have in her previous appearance.
— I recall an online SNL fan at the time saying the new white streaks in Leilani’s curly red hair made her resemble Bonnie Raitt.
— I like the cheesy theme song Maya’s Leilani performs.
— This is the second time SNL has used a “Welcome Back Potter” joke these past two seasons, after a commercial SNL did in the preceding season’s Brittany Murphy episode.
— At least Horatio’s managing to not annoy me here, for once tonight.
— A very odd and random sketch, but it’s coming off amusing enough, though I’m not laughing out loud. Solid performance from Maya, though.
— I like the eventual reveal that Leilani learned to talk to animals after drinking a box of paint thinner.
STARS: ***
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest & Sleepy Brown [real] perform “The Way You Move”
SPY GLASS
Ian (SEM) & Zoe (AMP) dish dirt on British celebrities
— The debut of a short-lived recurring sketch that I remember strongly disliking at the time, but lots of other online SNL fans seemed to love. I recall being perplexed over the love so many people had for these sketches. Maybe I’ll now understand it, as I will now go into these sketches with a more open mind.
— I was about to say how surprising it is that Seth is just now making his first appearance of the night, in the second-to-last sketch of the episode, but then I remembered he was in a small pre-taped scene in the Regis & Kelly sketch. Either way, I had completely forgotten about him until his appearance in this Spy Glass sketch. He’s become such a forgettable cast member to me over the course of these past two seasons.
— Seth’s delivery of his long string of puns during the Elle MacPherson news item was very fun and impressive.
— Ugh, after my praise for Seth above, he annoyed me just now with that ol’ penchant he occasionally has for horrible overacting. Come on, Seth, I’m trying to LIKE you here.
— Rachel’s segment tickled the hell out of me.
— A pretty good laugh from Seth’s character admitting he overdid it with his puns during his Ian McKellen news item.
— A… uh, clever(???) callback to tonight’s earlier Access Hollywood sketch, with Jimmy reprising his Pat O’Brien impression by playing a British version of him in this sketch. Not quite sure this is something I needed, though.
— Oh, geez, Jimmy’s British Pat O’Brien ends his segment by doing VERY long, awkward pauses after each upcoming celebrity news item he teases, just like he did at the end of the Access Hollywood sketch earlier tonight. And just like when he did it in that Access Hollywood sketch, it’s met with uncomfortable silence from the audience during this Spy Glass sketch. Does ANYONE understand why SNL keeps having Jimmy’s Pat O’Brien do those long, awkward pauses after teasing upcoming celebrity news items? I used to watch Access Hollywood regularly back in this era (which is not something I’m proud to admit), and Pat O’Brien NEVER paused awkwardly like that. So what the hell is SNL going for by having Jimmy do it?
— Seth and Amy’s chemistry is fun here, as usual whenever they’re paired together.
— What was the point of going back to Kelly’s Geri Halliwell for a second report, when she had nothing to really say this time? That fell completely flat.
— Overall, a hit-and-miss sketch, but I have enough goodwill towards the hits to give the overall sketch a passing rating. I’m glad to have somewhat come around on this sketch, given how strongly I used to dislike it.
STARS: ***
GREENBRIAR COUNTY ANIMAL RESCUE SHELTER
(CHP) & (host) defame a seemingly-adorable pup that’s up for adoption
— Geez, Chris is JUST NOW making his first appearance of the night, in the 10-to-1 sketch?!? Unlike when I mistakenly thought Seth made his first appearance of the night in the second-to-last sketch of this episode, THIS actually bothers me, as Chris is a far more valuable cast member than Seth, in my opinion. Between Chris getting his Bush impression abruptly yanked away from him against his will earlier this week, and now him having his only appearance of the night be buried at the very end of the show, you’ve got to wonder if poor Chris started worrying about his job security, fearing a potential reprisal of his 2001 firing.
— The setting and framing of this sketch is bringing SNL’s future Whiskers ‘R We sketches to mind.
— Also, it’s odd how this is the second sketch tonight filled with pets, after the Leilani Burke sketch.
— Very funny turn with Chris’ extremely blunt statement of “Pumpkin is a bit of a douchebag.”
— A random but funny slam from Kelly about Craig Kilborn being a soulless creep.
— The dissonant adorable close-ups of Pumpkin the puppy while Kelly and Chris are saying vicious things about him are adding to the humor.
— Some really great slams from Chris about Pumpkin. Kelly has funny ones too, but Chris is really standing out to me. He is fantastic in this sketch, and it’s nice to see him play against type.
STARS: ****
GOODNIGHTS
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A pretty good episode, particularly the post-Weekend Update half of the show, which felt pretty consistent. What was bad in this episode was reeeeaaaalllly brutal, though: Darrell Hammond’s painful Bush cold opening, and Horatio Sanz’s typical self-indulgent jackassery in both the Access Hollywood sketch and (especially) Weekend Update. Luckily, the bad aspects of tonight’s episode were kept to a minimum.
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Halle Berry)
a fairly big step up
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
Andy Roddick