October 6, 1990 – Susan Lucci / Hothouse Flowers (S16 E2)

Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars

COLD OPENING
Victor Kiam (PHH) introduces Classic Bitch & Lezbo electric shavers

— A freaking hilarious reveal of Phil’s Victor Kiam advertising a Classic Bitch Shaver.
— I also like how he’s making a passing mention of the controversy he was in the news for (offensive remarks he made about a female reporter who was sexually harassed in the New England Patriots locker room), which gives context to viewers like me watching this very topical cold opening decades later. Though I feel that this cold opening is funny even if you have no knowledge of what it’s parodying.
— Phil’s delivery in this is priceless.
— Another funny advertised product, with the Lezbo Electric Shaver.
STARS: ****

MONOLOGUE
Emmy-less host sees the statuettes everywhere in a nightmarish flashback

 

— I liked the bit with Susan talking about All My Children’s unsuccessful attempt at a live audience.
— Very funny casual reveals of various cast and crew members at SNL having an Emmy. A great way to parody Susan’s famous long Emmy-less streak at the time.
— I’m loving the increasingly-inappropriate uses of Emmys, especially the one handyman having a toolbelt full of them, writer/pre-castmember David Spade using them to eat corn on the cob, and various people partaking in an “Emmy Fight”.
STARS: ****½

LIVE WITH REGIS & KATHIE LEE
host & martial artist (MIM)

— Dana and Jan are fun and dead-on in their imitation of Regis and Kathie Lee’s chemistry and banter.
— Funny clip of Regis’ cameo on All My Children.
— Amusing how Susan’s interview ends with her barely having said a word while Regis did all of the talking.
— Dana as Regis: “I’m outta CONTROL!”
— I like the little touch with Phil-as-Frank-Gifford’s smiley stare into the camera during his entire appearance at the end.
STARS: ***

ALL MY LUGGAGE
at the airport, (host) gets bad news about her baggage

 

— Hilarious idea for an All My Children parody.
— I’m loving the soap opera-esque overdramatic treatment of lost luggage.
— Susan is selling this PERFECTLY. Excellent supporting work from Kevin and Phil as well.
— This sketch has one of the biggest audience reactions I’ve ever heard on SNL. The audience is practically SCREAMING throughout this, especially during the sudden reveal of Susan now being in a church.
STARS: *****

GREAT LOVE STORIES
unconventional couples describe how they met

— Jan’s battery acid-burned face is a funny visual.
— Interesting structure to this sketch.
— Chris Farley’s facial expressions in this are hilarious.
— Chris Rock: “I dropped my towel and said ‘Step up to the mike’.”
— I’ve always found Rock’s oversized suit in this to be odd. My guess is that since he’s supposed to be a football player in this, they put him into such a big suit to make him look buff, considering his natural build is way too skinny to be convincing as a football player.
— Mike’s jovial delivery of “They murdered my girlfriend in her sleeping bag and abducted me!” is funny.
STARS: ***

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Give It Up”

WEEKEND UPDATE
Mr. Subliminal explains the MPAA’s new NC-17 rating
CSR explains the differences between crimes committed by blacks & whites
Grumpy Old Man complains about hair dryers, Minoxidil, condoms

     

— Strange moment where Dennis pauses for a while in between jokes and then says to the off-camera cue card guy “That joke’s odd” and then says to the camera “A little behind-the-scenes editing there.” I wonder what the “odd” joke was that we apparently never got to hear.
— Mr. Subliminal’s commentary explaining movie ratings was short and sweet.
— Ah, our very first Chris Rock Weekend Update commentary, something that will end up becoming a nice go-to for him throughout his SNL tenure.
— I’m loving Rock’s various examples of how the crazy, outlandish murders you see on the news is always committed a white guy, while blacks commit more generic crimes.
— Rock’s overall segment was another short and sweet commentary in tonight’s Update.
— I loved the meta joke with Dennis comparing a hood-wearing Ku Klux Klan member to Beldar Conehead.
— A rare Dennis Miller Update with THREE guest commentaries. Maybe that’s why Mr. Subliminal and Chris Rock’s commentaries were each fairly short.
— A particularly classic Grumpy Old Man story about how condoms in his days were just rabbit’s skin wrapped around privates, tied off with a bungee cord. Probably my favorite Grumpy Old Man “In my day…” story ever.
STARS: ***½

GAME BREAKERS
manipulative Erica Kane (host) wins; Gene Rayburn cameo

 

— Jan is basically playing her Marge Keister character (who we haven’t seen in a long time), but she has different hair and was introduced under the suspiciously-similar name Margaret Fletcher.
— Some good laughs from Phil’s various ways of helping Susan cheat, much to Jan’s frustration.
— Great escalation to this out-of-the-ordinary gameshow sketch, with Phil and Susan’s rapidly growing relationship getting to the point where they’re now naked under bed covers with each other on the gameshow set.
— The fake gameshow sponsors are KINDA funny, but nothing special. This is where Jack Handey’s skills for creating memorably bizarre fake sponsors would’ve been welcome.
— A rare onscreen Don Pardo appearance!
— Good sudden cameo from Gene Rayburn, and his angry delivery here is making me laugh.
— The last two minutes of this come off a bit sloppy, including an accidental early camera-switch to Siegfried & Roy (played by Dana and writer/pre-castmember David Spade) before they’ve even been introduced. All of this would later be fixed in reruns, by using tighter editing.
STARS: ****½

WOMANHOOD
(host) is proud when her 12 year-old daughter (VIJ) gets her first period

— Writer/pre-castmember Rob Schneider makes his first appearance of the season, after appearing in lots of bit roles in the homestretch of the previous season. Both he and fellow writer/pre-castmember David Spade’s promotion to featured player is coming VERY soon.
— I used to think the lack of eye contact between Jan and Victoria during their conversation in this sketch was a sign of the infamous real-life negative tension between them, but after having just reviewed all of the preceding seasons of Jan and Victoria’s SNL tenure, I now realize that their “tension” in this sketch is just part of their characters. I’ve come across a good number of sketches in the past few seasons where Jan and Victoria (and for that matter, Nora Dunn and Victoria) have no problem having friendly interactions with each other while in character. They’re very professional at hiding their behind-the-scenes clashes. I’ve even seen some instances during the goodnights where Victoria and Jan/Nora happily hug each other.
— Susan inappropriately telling everyone that Victoria is currently having her period is providing some good laughs.
— Susan’s supposedly touching speech to Victoria at the end had some very funny subtly cruel lines.
— Well-done piece overall.
STARS: ***½

I WILL NOT CRY
(MIM) vows not to cry when his office holds a going-away party for him

— Mike’s about-to-cry voice sounds like his future Linda Richman character’s voice whenever she gets “verklempt”.
— Mike’s character has an Eisenhower mug? Did Conan O’Brien write this sketch?
— The sudden gunshot off-camera was funny, and further makes me think Conan wrote this. The “a character walks off-camera into another room and then a gunshot is suddenly heard, implying that they’ve committed suicide” gag would later be used in a “Nanny Greenwood” sketch that Conan would co-write as a guest writer in the Catherine O’Hara episode from season 18 (this was two seasons after Conan left the writing staff). The gag was also later used regularly in those recurring “Cloppy”(?) sketches (starring a talking horse) that used to appear on Conan’s Late Night show on NBC.
— I liked Mike telling Phil’s Jesus “As, well, YOU are my witness, I will not cry.”
— Not sure how to feel about this overall sketch. I used to kinda hate this sketch, but I found myself being more tolerant of it during tonight’s viewing. However, I still didn’t laugh all that much and the sketch had a very oddly-quiet feel (the unresponsive audience didn’t help).
STARS: **½

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “I Can See Clearly Now”

THE SOUND OF MUSIC
M.C. Hammer’s (CSR) version of The Sound of Music is Broadway-bound

— Very funny concept.
— Of the critic reviews, I loved the one saying “So bad, I walked out twice”. I also like how Ebony Magazine provided the only positive review.
— Hmm, something seemed to go wrong. After the critic reviews are shown, we strangely get half a minute of Chris Rock just silently continuing to dance onstage to the same repetitive “Can’t Touch This” beat, and then he eventually walks offstage and the sketch just… ends. Very awkward. I wonder what went wrong.
— This sketch would later be removed from reruns (further proving that something DEFINITELY went awry during this sketch), though I forget what it’s replaced with. Perhaps a “Deep Thoughts”, a segment that actually doesn’t debut until the second half of this season, but gets added into some of the reruns from the first half of this season.
STARS: **½

GOODNIGHTS

— Susan points out the amazing crowd we had tonight by saying “What an audience!”
— We’re only two episodes into this season so far, and Chris Rock has already gotten a lead role in two sketches (2 Live Crew Party and The Sound Of Music), has gotten his own Update commentary, AND gets to stand front-and-center next to the host during both goodnights. Meanwhile, the other new guy, Chris Farley, has only been in two sketches total so far (Twin Peaks and Great Love Stories) – both of them only being supporting roles, and spends both goodnights being hidden somewhere in the back of the stage where you could barely see him. All of this probably made SNL fans back in 1990 think that out of Rock and Farley, Rock was going to be the breakout SNL star and the far more successful cast member. As we know now, the EXACT OPPOSITE ended up happening.

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IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— Solid episode. While the quality trailed off towards the end with the last two sketches, everything before that worked, and there were some particularly strong and memorable segments, especially the monologue and All My Luggage. Things were also helped by the audience’s wild energy throughout the show.

HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Kyle MacLachlan)
a slight step down

My full set of screencaps for this episode is here

TOMORROW
George Steinbrenner