Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
WHITE HOUSE APPRENTICE
George W. Bush (WLF) fires Colin Powell (FIM) a la The Apprentice
— An okay and timely premise with Will’s President Bush making his firing decision in the style of The Apprentice.
— The camera cuts are pretty off during the portion of the sketch right now, as the camera keeps cutting to close-ups of performers AFTER they’ve said a line.
— A laugh from Darrell’s Donald Rumsfeld disparagingly referring to Finesse’s Colin Powell as James Earl Jones.
— President Bush to Colin Powell: “You seem to be the only one in this administration who knows anything about fighting a war. Obviously, you don’t fit in.”
— Ending was a little on the weak side.
STARS: ***
MONOLOGUE
HOS uses cellphone photos to refresh host’s memory of their wild night
— A very Horatio Sanz-y entrance from Horatio, on a motor cart.
— Funny to see in retrospect how photos taken on cellphones back in 2004 look so cheap by today’s standards.
— Blah, I am not caring for these photos at all.
— Aaaaaaand there goes season 30’s obligatory and unfunny reliance on a man-on-man kiss for a cheap laugh.
— Overall, oof.
STARS: *½
DEBBIE DOWNER
Debbie Downer spoils Thanksgiving dinner with her depressing digressions
— Oh, no.
— I’m a minute-and-a-half into this sketch, I am freakin’ STONE-FACED during this entire Debbie Downer routine so far. The audience’s hysterical laughter throughout this sketch, and the defending of this character that I’ve seen in the comments section of some of my reviews make me feel so alone in not understanding the appeal of this Debbie Downer character AT ALL.
— This character is almost reaching the same level of annoyance to me as The Whiners from the early 80s. Then again, at least the Whiners sketches usually always had funny straight man performances from the main foil in the sketch. There’s nothing funny about the straight man performances in the Debbie Downer sketches. The straight men in these sketches just blandly look disappointed in reaction to Debbie Downer’s one-liners.
— Okay, I kinda smirked just now when, after a depressing one-liner from Debbie Downer about cooked turkeys, the usual “Wah-wahhhhh” camera zoom-in is subverted a bit by the camera doing a zoom-in on the cooked turkey on the table for the first “Wah” sound effect, then does a zoom-in on Debbie Downer on the second “wahhhhhhh” sound effect.
— Aaaaaaaaand cue the obligatory “It’s the number one killer of domestic cats” line. Ugh. Again, STONE-FACED.
— What was with Rachel’s odd long pause before saying “Guess who’s got eczema”? It hurt the timing of what was supposed to be a big laugh line (not that it would’ve made me laugh anyway).
— What in the world?!? After Debbie Downer’s line to the cooked turkey at the end of this sketch, the cooked turkey gets up and walks out of the shot (presumably via the use of wires from above or some other kind of trickery). Rachel looks GENUINELY surprised and taken-aback by this (first screencap below), as if this wasn’t a planned part of the sketch, and stifles her laughter, then attempts to do her trademark deadpan Debbie Downer look into the camera as the camera zooms in on her, but she keeps helplessly smirking from what had just happened (second screencap below).
What in the world was all that about? Was the walking-away turkey gag a surprise addition to this sketch on SNL’s part to catch Rachel off-guard and get her to crack up ala the first Debbie Downer sketch? If so, I wonder how the sketch was originally supposed to end.
— The sketch-ending audience applause slightly drowned out whatever Debbie Downer’s one-liner was in the bubble shot of her during the closing title sequence, but knowing these sketches, I doubt the ending line would’ve made me laugh anyway.
STARS: *½
THE AMERICAN TRAINWRECK AWARDS
pitiful celebrities fete their peers
— I recall this being a pretty popular sketch among online SNL fans back when this season originally aired, and it being considered one of the better sketches from this weak season.
— I’m already getting a laugh right from the start, with Amy and Maya’s drunken, stumbly, unintelligible entrance as Anna Nicole Smith and Diana Ross. I usually don’t care for sketches or Update commentaries focused around Maya’s Diana Ross impression, but it’s working in this particular sketch.
— SNL makes yet another meta reference to the Ashlee Simpson SNL incident, a reference that actually receives applause from SNL’s audience during this sketch.
— Seth is cracking me up in his performance as Mickey Rourke.
— In the announcements of the nominees for Male Trainwreck, I got a laugh from President Bush being nominated “for Iraq”.
— Fred’s Tony Danza voice is very funny.
— I like Fred’s Danza mentioning in passing the title to Toby Keith’s song: “It Ain’t Rape If You Know Her”.
— Rob Riggle is always perfect at playing rednecks. He’s both very believable and funny in those roles.
— The ending of this sketch, which spoofs the notorious Ron Artest-involved wild fight from the previous night’s Pacers/Pistons NBA game, was obviously a last-minute addition to this sketch, and was the perfect way to end this.
— Overall, this sketch still works for me and it was definitely fun. It also, in retrospect, provides an interesting time capsule of the year 2004. However, I’m not quite sure I would call this one of the best sketches of this season anymore, but we’ll see when we reach the end of the season.
STARS: ****
TV FUNHOUSE
by RBS- George W. Bush fudges heterosexuality by swapping gays’ minds
— What’s with the odd animation style? Doesn’t look like the usual animation of Smigel’s TV Funhouses AT ALL. Is Smigel using a different animation company tonight?
— This cartoon is doing nothing for me so far, not even the wild, raunchy make-out session between a now-heterosexual Rosie O’Donnell and Richard Simmons.
— Okay, I got a laugh just now from a now-heterosexual Ellen DeGeneres’ deep-voiced delivery to a now-heterosexual Ryan Seacrest of the line “I want you inside me”, even if it was a cheap line.
— This cartoon is getting out of hand, and not in the good way.
— What the holy fuck was with that lame-ass “Bush switches brains with a dog” ending?
— Overall, a rare miss from Smigel around this time period. Between the bad humor and the different-looking animation that I wasn’t digging, this felt so off for Smigel’s standards.
STARS: *½
BEST BUDS
intimacy between old pals (host) & (ROR) creeps out wives (MAR) & (AMP)
— Rob Riggle finally gets his first real lead role in a sketch… and unfortunately, it has to be THIS. A typical bad season 30 homoerotic sketch, where we’re basically told “Haw haw, look at the two guys acting gay-ish with each other!” It also feels redundant seeing this immediately after a bad gay-themed TV Funhouse. Man, what is with season 30’s obsession with hacky gay humor?
— Making this sketch even worse for me is the constant cutaways to a silent Maya and Amy’s put-off facial reactions to Rob and Luke’s homoerotic ways of feeding each other.
— I recall an online SNL fan back at this time saying this sketch felt like a rip-off of a (far superior) season 17 sketch with Dana Carvey and Linda Hamilton romantically feeding each other in a baby-ish manner at a restaurant, only with a homoerotic theme this time. I can see some similarities between the sketches, but I think calling tonight’s sketch a rip-off is a stretch. However, we will be getting a sketch in the very next episode that has always kinda reminded me of a certain OTHER season 17 sketch (one involving Sharon Stone), only with the genders reversed, though I’m not calling that a rip-off either. We’ll see when we get there, though.
— Overall, this was absolutely awful. Not a single laugh from me. What a waste of Rob.
STARS: *
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Vertigo”
WEEKEND UPDATE
Arnold Schwarzenegger (DAH) supports amendments to the Constitution
TIF & AMP ignore janitor (MAR) as she empties their wastepaper baskets
kids’ toy Bump-It seems to want AMP to give it a hand job
— Meh, I continue to not care much for Darrell’s weak Arnold Schwarzenegger impression.
— Darrell’s overall Schwarzenegger commentary tonight just came and went with no real laughs from me. Felt like typical snoozeworthy political writing from 2000s-era Jim Downey. At least it wasn’t a cold opening this time.
— Another reference to the previous night’s Pacers/Pistons fight, this time with the use of actual footage of it (with a bizarre, unfunny, and unnecessary voice-over by Amy). This reminds me that, IIRC, there was an Update commentary cut after this episode’s dress rehearsal, which had Finesse as Ron Artest and Kenan as Artest’s publicist both addressing the previous night’s Pacers/Pistons fight. Jason Sudeikis, still just an SNL writer at this point and not yet a cast member, had a brief walk-on during this commentary as a passerby, who then gets pummeled by Finesse’s Artest.
— Ugh, why did Amy feel the need to explain the joke of the doctored photo of David Lee Roth as an EMT, as if we couldn’t see for ourselves what was going on in the picture? A comedian explaining their own joke is always a comedy sin.
— The whole raunchy bit with the Forte-voiced “Bump It” toy is absolutely priceless.
— This is the third episode in a row with a solid Fred Armisen commentary on Update (even if this one tonight is barely a Fred commentary, given the fact that it focuses far more on Amy and the “Bump It” toy). Fred has been on fire lately. Of this season’s cast, Fred and Will were who I considered at the time this season originally aired to be the only two consistently-reliable saving graces in this weak season, especially when it came to Update commentaries.
STARS: **½
COOLEST TEACHER AT BENTON TOWNSHIP HIGH SCHOOL
(host) threatens (SEM)’s claim as Coolest Teacher At Benton Township H.S.
— An amusing separate opening title sequence and theme song for Seth and Luke’s cool teacher characters respectively.
— Horatio rebelliously throwing his desk out the window made me laugh out loud.
— Aaaaaaaand there goes Horatio’s obligatory cracking up at himself, even causing Seth in turn to crack up.
— Funny reveal of Horatio’s high school student character being old enough to drink.
— What’s with Seth’s terrible acting when he starts getting emotional and teary-eyed after the students have turned on him?
— Another pre-cast member Sudeikis walk-on! And J.B. Smoove! Together! (the last two above screencaps for this sketch)
— Great twist with Luke’s character turning out to be an old, mean teacher in disguise.
— I like the ending exchange between Amy and Seth’s characters, with Amy asking Seth “Are you still gonna take me to get my abortion?” and Seth responding, while smiling into the camera, “With a smile on my face.”
— An overall very solid sketch for this season’s standards, despite a few minor flaws.
STARS: ****
THE FALCONER
Donald & dog attend state fair while The Falconer & (host) are trapped
— This sketch makes its first appearance in an entire year.
— I like the opening bit with The Falconer unintentionally making rock star puns when talking about the rocks he’s buried in.
— I love The Falconer’s stretched-out yell of “NOOOOOO!!! MOOOOOOORE ROOOOCCCKS!!!” during stock footage of a rock avalanche, which seems to be Will comically vamping for time while SNL crew members cover Luke in rocks off-camera.
— A good twist on the usual “Donald the Falcon flies off and has fun somewhere when he’s supposed to be getting The Falconer some help” aspect of these sketches, with Donald being accompanied by a dog this time.
— Solid bit with Donald and the dog communicating with each other in animal sounds, translated by text on the bottom of the screen.
— Very entertaining montage of Donald and the dog’s wild adventures together at the state fair.
— A good laugh from the part with the dog licking up Donald’s vomit.
— This sketch has now hilariously gone off the rails, when the dog doesn’t follow his cue to hand Luke the dynamite stick he’s holding in his mouth, and instead aimlessly wanders around the sketch’s set (at one point even stopping briefly to sniff the falcon puppet that Will is holding) while Luke desperately keeps trying to get the dog to hand him the dynamite stick, all the while Will unsuccessfully tries to keep the sketch going by delivering the mock-dramatic speech his Falconer character is supposed to deliver, which can’t even be heard due to the audience’s laughter at the dog’s antics. A hilarious mess. Probably one of my all-time favorite animal bloopers on SNL.
STARS: ****½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own”
BUSINESS TRIP
as (host), (SEM), (KET) get sozzled, their patter recurs & escalates
— I absolutely love the progression to this, with a drunk Luke, Seth, and Kenan repeating the exact same conversation over and over as they get increasingly drunker, only the wording in their repeated conversation each time gets increasingly brash and inappropriate. A creative and very fun structure to this sketch, and it comes off especially refreshing in a weak season like this.
— A great loud outburst from Seth of the random line “WE PLAYED SPORTS!!!!”
— I’m six episodes into this season, and I gotta say, I’m not finding Seth to be quite the irksomely bland performer we got shoved down our throats that I recall him being this season. Even though I still don’t feel he was ever meant to carry SNL on his back as the show’s star like the show seemingly tries to get him to do this season in light of Jimmy Fallon’s departure, I’ve been finding myself enjoying quite a number of Seth’s performances so far this season, including this sketch.
STARS: ****½
GOODNIGHTS
musical guest performs “I Will Follow”
— Right out of the gate, we see an interesting deviation from the usual goodnights, with the out-of-the-ordinary set up of the cast standing behind Luke and Bono both seated on the floor at the front of the home base stage.
— Now Bono has gone over to the musical guest stage, leading to a third U2 performance tonight. Awesome.
— Ah, halfway through the performance, there goes Bono up to his old tricks from U2’s last SNL appearance in season 26, in which he freely wanders off the stage and around the studio while still singing. This is always a blast to see.
— Wow. Now we get a still-singing Bono practically giving a random female audience member in the front row a lapdance. Judging from the woman’s very emotional joy during this, you can tell this is truly a moment she’ll cherish for the rest of her life. This is touching to watch.
— Now a still-singing Bono has gone over to the SNL cast on the home base stage, and you can tell the cast is absolutely loving this performance. It’s great to see their genuine reactions here. Bono then hugs an absolutely hysterical Amy Poehler, bringing her to tears. These goodnights cannot get any more epic.
— Just now, at the end of the song U2’s performing, Bono adds in a poignant utterance of “Saturday Night Live, live, live, live.” I’ve seen some online SNL fans back at this time theorize that Bono’s very heavy emphasis of the word “live” is his way of referencing the then-recent Ashlee Simpson SNL incident and telling us that, unlike her, HE’S actually performing live.
— While the audience is applauding after U2’s performance has finished, Bono exclaims “One more! One more!”, and the audience goes WILD. You can then hear music for the next song start up right as the show-ending Broadway Video and SNL Studios production logos appear, meaning we home viewers don’t get to see this impromptu fourth U2 performance.
— Overall, absolutely freakin’ amazing goodnights.
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— It’s easy to let the epic U2 goodnights cloud my judgment and give this episode more credit than it deserves. In fact, it’s easy to let the entire post-Weekend Update half of the show cloud my judgment and give this episode more credit than it deserves. As strong as all of the sketches in the post-Update half were, and as amazing as those goodnights were, I can’t ignore the fact that the pre-Update half of the show had A LOT of duds. Aside from the fun American Trainwreck Awards sketch and the okay-but-a-little-forgettable cold opening, I didn’t like ANYTHING in the pre-Update half of the show. And I wasn’t crazy about Update itself either (minus the great “Bump It” segment), as usual in the Fey/Poehler era. A very bipolar episode, in which almost everything was either really great or really terrible; no middle ground. (Kinda reminiscent of the Brittany Murphy episode from season 28.) Still, the combo of the American Trainwreck Awards, the great “Bump It” Update segment, the post-Update streak of strong sketches, and those epic goodnights all add up to an overall enjoyable-though-extremely-uneven episode, making this the first episode all season that I actually liked. Sad that it took THIS long for season 30 to have their first good episode, and even sadder that their first good episode is still as spotty as this.
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Liam Neeson)
a step up
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
Colin Farrell
To give credit where credit is due, from ASCAP and BMI:
— Tina and Emily Spivey wrote “American Trainwreck Awards.”
— Erik Kenward wrote the “Bump It” Update segment.
— Seth and Matt Murray wrote “Coolest Teacher…”
I remember when U2 started performing their first song, Bono kept saying “Live” over and over. I guess it was to prove there wasn’t going to be any lip-syncing whatsoever.
My favorite Merv the Perv sketch is in the next episode.
Unfortunately, that awful Pat and Patti’s sketch comes back (thankfully for the last time), and we also get the debut of a certain Horatio Sanz character whose name I’m not going to mention….
While I too hate Carol, I enjoy the Key Party sketch a lot next week.
As for this week, I remember unfairly dismissing the Coolest Teacher sketch at the time (I’ve never really enjoyed the SNL sketch trope of _ _, the ___ in the world), but it has a fun mix of surrealism and some bite.
I dislike Seth in general, especially when he became an Update anchor, but I recall thinking he turned in a very good effort this season. He certainly can’t carry a show, but I think he showed he could turn in a lot of solid performances.
I should probably save it more for when that sketch finally airs, but Carol is one of my true guilty pleasure characters for SNL. It is just so incredibly horrible and Horatio Sanz doubles down so much into the horrible-ness that it becomes some high level of anti-comedy.
Yeah, I agree that Carol was pretty funny in the Key Party sketch, but they definitely shouldn’t have given her any more appearances.
Oh man, after the day’s Jimmy Fallon blackface “controversy”, your review’s likely to get Bono #metooed for that lapdance before long!
Onadime has a credit for “live animation” (i.e., real-time lip sync):
http://www.onadime.com/cgi-bin/wiki/SNL_2004
Wachtenheim/Marianetti works with Turner Studios on Stroker and Hoop around this time. The credits list TS as the Flash animation studio, so my guess is Smigel rushes this out after extensive script changes, and/or it’s an experiment to produce a Saturday TV Funhouse segment on a faster turnaround time. The aborted “Bees” animatic has a similar thick-line style and it doesn’t look good there, either. I don’t mind Saturday TV Funhouse trying different styles and/or saving money, but sometimes there’s no point in committing to the sunk cost fallacy.
Do any other TV Funhouse sketches use this technique?
The only other TV Funhouse with this style to make it to air is from October 2006, with Bush showing spooky midterm attack ads. The Bush portions are very simple, with him just sitting and addressing the camera. The ads are in a different cut-out-type style.
All three performers nail the cadence of business trip drunks, great sketch, one of my favorite of the season.
The Pacers-Pistons brawl was the night before so SNL had first crack at it, just like the Don Zimmer joke in the Boston Teens sketch from last season’s Timberlake episode.
The other Alison Jackson film piece about Britney Spears got cut from this episode. Darrell’s Schwarzenegger piece was a stand-alone sketch at dress. This TV Funhouse cartoon was previously cut from the Jude Law and Liam Neeson episodes.
Luke Wilson missed the Wiig/Hader/Sudeikis/Samberg era by about a year, but he would go on to play Wiig’s husband in Skeleton Twins. He’s pretty good (Hader and Wiig are also excellent – Wiig is much better than she ever was on SNL).
I never would have thought Luke but not Owen would host the show (Owen recently said he never hosted because of anxiety).
Yeah, there’s some good stuff in the back half, but that first half completely kills the energy. A lot of sketches this season are better viewed in a bubble (through YouTube clips or the NBC site) rather than in the context of a full viewing. I’m with you on Debbie Downer. I don’t understand the appeal of that character at all beyond the breaking the first one caused. The weird turkey ending was SUCH a desperate move at trying to recapture the vibes of Disney one.
The gay humor in this season is insane. It’s such a dumb, tired, and very “point and laugh”-y conceit yet they hit it hard in nearly every episode. This season definitely has at least 5x more hacky gay punchlines than 1994-95. It doesn’t fully go away until whatever year it was that they finally quit doing the Vogelchecks. I don’t know if the gay jokes were Tina’s influence or what, but it’s awful.
Also, it’s definitely interesting to go back to a time when Will and Fred were keeping the show afloat. Will’s sketches in this period feel like he’s existing in his own little weird bubble, because they were so much better and so much more interesting than at least 80% of what the show was doing. In later seasons when Wiig/Hader/Samberg come along, he feels more like a part of the ensemble. And it’s also just funny to go back to a time when people weren’t annoyed with Fred and instead saw him as a breath of fresh air.
This is actually a weirdly special episode to me because it contains the first bits of SNL that I ever saw, before I even knew what the show was (and long before I began regularly following the show in 2012): Fred and Will’s Bump-It correspondent on Weekend Update and the Falconer sketch. I loved both so much that they were immediately etched in my mind despite how young I would’ve been. Perhaps I should be grateful, honestly, that I tuned in at JUST the right bright spot in the show’s weakest season in recent memory.
Like I said before, I’m not quite as down on Year 30 as you are, but this is still a mediocre season as a whole. “The American Trainwreck Awards” was the high point of the first half, though I wouldn’t call it a season highlight. Anything ridiculing Anna Nicole Smith hasn’t aged well, but everything else about the sketch was aces. I didn’t mind the homoerotica of “Feeding Buddies” so much as it had this Year 20 shock value element that still turned me off. Update was just fine, and there isn’t a single bad sketch after. Bipolar, indeed.
What can be said about U2? They’ve always been a dynamic live act, and their performance in this show is a Year 30 high point. Incidentally, I think this is when the SNL forum at TV Tome first got acquainted with the late mp34mp, who couldn’t hide his disdain of Bono et al. But I digress.
I cannot say thank you enough for your tireless effort on this project, Stooge. I read my old review before this, and its clear I rushed this. No typos, but I failed to articulate any real opinions on some of the sketches.
Ah, yes, mp34mp, who seemed to hate Tina Fey so much…
I mainly remember Debbie Downer with her laughing with that turkey moving.
In retrospect, what this season reminds me of so far isn’t seasons six, eleven, or twenty, but post-O’Donaghue season seven (early ’82). Unlike the infamous three it isn’t bad so much as dull and there’s the sense that if you just stick with it, you might see something funny. Although, come to think of it, that kinda sounds like season eleven. Hmm.
Who can forget the annual “this season will be as bad as season 20” posts on the old forum?
I just checked and U2’s opening act for their Vertigo tour (around this time) was next week’s musical guest, Scissor Sisters.
I wonder why the Scissor Sisters never got the success they had in other countries. (This could also apply in the next episode, but this is in response to Kubelsky’s post)
This installment of Debbie Downer is included in the annual SNL Thanksgiving Special. The inclusion isn’t a surprise but why it regularly airs as the special’s cold open is a head scratcher.
Well tonight, it’s Owen’s turn to host.