Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
COLD OPENING
during a George Bush (DAC) speech, Dan Quayle (host) mistimes his claps
— Some good lines during Al Franken’s opening voice-over.
— The frequent standing ovations everybody’s giving to every little thing Bush says are funny.
— Loved the part with Michael J. Fox’s Dan Quayle foolishly getting up to give a standing ovation to Bush saying “Our country had lost its way”, only to realize nobody else is doing the same.
— Some more laughs from Quayle’s various miscues throughout this, including Phil’s Speaker of the House holding him back from applauding Bush’s simple “Operation Desert Storm” statement.
— Funny ending with Quayle continuing to chant “Powell!” long after everyone else has stopped.
— Overall, for a cold opening that was so long (about 8 minutes!) and had thin material, this somehow managed to turn out strong and memorable.
STARS: ****
OPENING MONTAGE
— This is the only time this season where every single featured player is credited. You really see from tonight’s montage how extremely big this season’s cast is (and it only gets bigger next season!).
MONOLOGUE
host meets two versions of himself (DAC) & (DAS) Back From The Future
— A good laugh from Michael’s intentionally terrible “Hard Way” pun.
— Great to see Dana’s great Michael J. Fox impression again, and this is a great concept with him coming from 90 minutes in the future to warn the real Michael that the show turns out to be a dud.
— I love Dana pronouncing “It bombed!” as “It baaahhhmbed!”
— Now this is getting even better as we get David’s also-great MJF impression as Michael in the past. Truth be told, I’ve always slightly preferred David’s impression to Dana’s. Dana’s great with the voice, but David nails both the voice AND the mannerisms.
— Fun seeing all three MJFs together in Lorne’s office.
— Great part with Lorne bribing the three MJFs with a gigantic bag of money.
STARS: ****½
CHIA HEAD
— Rerun
JASPER THE CLOWN
circus owner (PHH) tells clown (host) that his stinging act isn’t working
— Some pretty good laughs from Michael’s description of what he does.
— A clown makeup-wearing Farley briefly barging in just to say “It’s a GREAT act!” made me laugh for some reason.
— This sketch is too slow-moving and quiet for the lead-off sketch of the night.
— A big laugh at the end from Farley’s clown name being revealed as Exposo.
— Overall, the sketch itself wasn’t bad, but it had no business being in such an early timeslot. This came off fairly dull as a lead-off sketch. This would’ve come off much better had it aired towards the end of the show, where the quieter, slower-paced pieces usually air.
STARS: **½
DEEP THOUGHTS BY JACK HANDEY
on taking a dog on the Space Shuttle
HIGH SCHOOL REUNION
at his high school reunion, hitman (KEN) is quick to volunteer services
— Good characterization from Kevin here.
— Eh, a one-joke sketch so far. Not too exciting.
— Okay, I finally got a laugh, from Kevin saying his usual “I’ll take care of it” response when hearing that Michael was let down by Daryl Strawberry leaving the Mets for the Dodgers.
— As if this sketch weren’t already bad enough, now we get a VERY awkward ending. After the big “joke” with Kevin promising Adam he’ll “take care” of a girl who supposedly broke Adam’s heart, there’s absolute DEAD SILENCE from the audience, and then an off-camera G.E. Smith is heard yelling “One, two!” followed by the SNL Band playing the show to commercial. So the sketch abruptly ends very emptily with no actual conclusion, no laughter, and no applause. What the hell???
STARS: *½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Thick & Thin”
WEEKEND UPDATE
AWB says easy post-Vietnam wars were good preparation for domestic strife
— Right off the bat, Dennis’ delivery sounds VERY off. He sounds like he’s literally half-asleep. Even his hair has a depressed, haggard look to it.
— Good opening jokes about the infamous L.A.P.D./Rodney King incident that had just recently happened.
— Dennis’ delivery is so off tonight that even his intro to A. Whitney Brown’s commentary sounded weird.
— Here’s what turns out to be A. Whitney’s final Weekend Update commentary ever, as well as his final SNL appearance ever.
— A. Whitney’s Grenada joke about how “it didn’t take a lot of military strategy to knock over a fruit stand with two aircraft carriers” was already used in one of his earlier Big Picture commentaries.
— Tonight’s overall A. Whitney commentary was too average. Between the lack of any standout lines and the fact that he recycled the aforementioned Grenada joke, this was a fairly disappointing final edition of The Big Picture. His Big Picture commentaries in general had a good run, though, and often provided witty one-liners and a nice cerebral change of pace from SNL’s usual tone.
— Ugh, Dennis has been doing TONS of bad “misinterpreting a photo” jokes tonight.
— Okay, we finally get a good joke from Dennis, with the Richard Grieco “If Looks Could Kill” bit.
— As if Dennis’ performance in tonight’s Update hadn’t been lethargic enough, he ends this by COMPLETELY half-assing his usual arm swipe when doing his trademark scribble-wildly-on-a-sheet-of-paper move after saying his “I… am… outta here” tagline.
— Overall, yikes, a pretty brutal Update. In retrospect, this begins a turning point and signals that the end of the Dennis Miller era is approaching. I recall that most of the remainder of Dennis’ Updates sadly feature him practically sleepwalking his way through the broadcasts, similar to tonight. You can tell Dennis was done with SNL by this point and was counting down the days until the season ended.
STARS: **
AMERICA’S MOST WANTED
former child actors plan their latest crime
— Finally, here comes something that’s actually GOOD, after the string of duds that preceded this.
— Such a fantastic concept for this sketch, which appears to be based on Dana Plato’s infamous then-recent video store robbery.
— I’m loving the intro of each child star who’s in the crime ring.
— An absolutely priceless visual of Adam portraying Barry Williams as what Phil’s John Walsh describes as a cross-dressing cannibal.
— Drew Barrymore’s “bad girl” phase from around this time feels weird to be reminded of, considering how much she turned her life around since then.
— Farley is a riot as Mindy Cohn, especially his angry outburst of “JUST DO IT, RIPPY!”
— Very funny performance from Dana.
— Ha, I love that we’re getting a reprise of David’s Michael J. Fox impression from earlier tonight.
— The glare on Michael’s face while watching David’s impression of him is CLASSIC (second-to-last screencap above).
STARS: *****
DAILY AFFIRMATION WITH STUART SMALLEY
Stuart Smalley is upset with his new time slot
— Good to see this sketch officially become recurring.
— A good laugh from Stuart revealing his show is moving from a convenient afternoon timeslot to 2:35 A.M.
— I like Stuart gradually saying inappropriate things about the station manager responsible for changing his show’s timeslot.
STARS: ***
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “She Talks to Angels”
NOT GETTIN’ ANY
losers ponder the source of their sexual inactivity
— I absolutely love how this is showcasing the group of new male cast members who would go on to collectively be known as the Bad Boys. Well, minus Rob Schneider, who not only is missing from this sketch, but is nowhere to be seen tonight in general, despite being credited in the opening montage.
— Farley’s sudden tender singing of the lyric “Lay you down in the tall grass, let me do my stuuuuuff” cracked me up so much.
— Farley is hilarious in this in general.
— It took Rock about FIVE MINUTES into this sketch to finally speak. I point this out because, according to what I’ve heard, this ENTIRE sketch would later be included in Rock’s “Best Of” special. So let me get this straight: in a compilation special celebrating Chris Rock’s supposedly greatest SNL moments, we have to sit through a sketch in which the first four minutes feature the man of the hour, Chris Rock, saying and doing absolutely NOTHING while other performers get the laughs, and THEN Rock finally gets his time to speak, only to go back to being silent for the rest of the sketch? That is ridiculous, and shows how hard-pressed they were in trying to find 90 minutes worth of material to put in a “Best Of” for a cast member who was only on for three seasons and was extremely underused. I remember somebody at the SNL newsgroup (alt.tv.snl) once joking that at the rate Rock’s “Best Of” was going, they might as well have thrown in the famous “Clinton at McDonalds” sketch in which Rock’s only contribution was appearing as a cashier at the beginning, where his only line was “Okay, so that’s a quarter-pounder with cheese and…”
— All that being said about Rock, his whole “I wanna be THAT GUY” mini-rant in this sketch is really good. So much so, that I wanted his part of the sketch to go on longer.
— I don’t like how they wasted Adam in this. He didn’t get to speak until the very end, where he was relegated to basically telling the other guys that there are people in the world who are worse off than them. He didn’t even get anything comedic to say, which isn’t fair, as all the other cast members got their share of laughs here.
STARS: ***
DEEP THOUGHTS BY JACK HANDEY
on the end of the age of the Vikings
ELEVATOR
Sting’s elevator fans give host a similar song treatment
— The return of a classic sketch from the Sting episode earlier this season.
— I got a good laugh from Kevin breaking out into a quiet, high-pitched singing of the lyric “Gonna go back in tiiiiiime”, or as he pronounces it, “Gonna go back in tyyyyeeeeem” (Dana pronounces it even funnier later in the sketch).
— Okay, Kevin’s endless repetitions of “Gonna go back in tyyyyeeeeem” aren’t so funny anymore. The increasingly dead audience apparently agrees with me.
— Dana finally got me laughing again by breaking out into the “Family Ties” theme song, eventually being joined by Kevin.
— Overall, despite some laughs and the usual funny performances from Kevin and Dana, this was nowhere NEAR as good as the one with Sting, and was an unnecessary follow-up to a sketch that should’ve been left as a classic one-off. On its own, tonight’s installment probably comes off fine, but after having just watched and reviewed the Sting installment a mere few days ago, tonight’s installment paled fairly badly to me. The worst of these installments has yet to come, though. Wait till we get to the Michael Jordan episode next season.
STARS: **½
DEEP THOUGHTS BY JACK HANDEY
on the similarity between boxing & ballet
GOODNIGHTS
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A mixed episode. What was great in this episode was fantastic and very memorable, such as the cold opening, monologue, and America’s Most Wanted; so fantastic and memorable, in fact, that they probably make people remember this overall episode as being really strong. But if you take off the nostalgia goggles and look past those great highlights, you’ll find this episode had more weak material than usual for this season, including a very lethargic Weekend Update. The show also suffered from odd sketch placements, such as a fantastic huge piece like America’s Most Wanted being buried after Update while the two sketches in the pre-Update half consisted of the sluggishly-paced Jasper The Clown and the poor one-joke High School Reunion.
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Alec Baldwin)
a step down
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
Jeremy Irons
Is this the one where Dennis ends update with a comment like “Rest easy, Jules”? That was a tribute to a former SNL staffer (Julian Ford, who I think was one of the talent bookers) who died of AIDS that morning.
Ben-
Yeah, this is that Update.
The band shot out of the Chia Head commercial was one of the best. That’s former regular bass player Tom Barney coming back for a visit, BTW.
Your comment about nostalgia goggles is spot-on because I vividly remember watching this live and loving the post-WU sketches… but I actually have zero memory of Jasper the Clown or High School Reunion. I think I even remember some Update jokes (“let’s get Grieco a mirror”) but I was too young to notice Dennis was off.
Based on the description, wasn’t there a sketch similar to High School Reunion with, I think, Steven Seagal? And he offers to kill the woman Adam Sandler is singing about (Lucille), not realizing it’s just a country song. And I seem to remember that one ending just as awkwardly as you described here.
Oh I just re-read your description and looked at the screen grab… it must have been THIS sketch, actually.
If I remember right the 60 min Comedy Central version didn’t even include the the sketches that were between the monologue and Update, but included all the post Update sketches. Jasper I thought was pretty funny. The Hitman sketch should have been buried later in the show and the classic America’s Most Wanted sketch should have been earlier. The Not Getting Any sketch was written by David Spade and was the first sketch he got on the air.
Spade was recently on Dana Carvey’s podcast and they talk about imitating Michael J. Fox and the child-star bank robbery sketch. The overall conversation is very funny and entertaining, as you would expect.
The way that the camera suddenly swings across the whole audience to the SNL Band (a very unusual shot that seems out of place) and then seconds before the show cuts to commercial, G.E. Smith shrugs his shoulders and makes a very slight grimace to someone offscreen makes me suspect that the High School Sketch had a couple more lines and he accidently cued up the band too early causing the bizarre ending/
So I first enjoyed watching Dana Carvey imitate fox on the Justine Bateman episode, that was the highlight of its me. And I know I have many sketches to get thru this episode, but also commented in a later episode where David spade imitates him via weekend update and it’s just uncanny how much he looks and sounds like him.
I really loved the monologue and thought it was one of the best ones I’ve seen so far. But that being said, and I love Dana Carvey with all my heart, he seemed extremely HIGH! Like he had just done an 8 ball or two of coke before going on. At first I thought he was trying to imitate foxes mannerisms but hardly saw him touch his face, let alone his nose.
I agree that spade does a slightly better imitation of spade, and did notice when they were all in lornes office him touching his face once or so but very subtle. At this point I still notice Dana touching his nose, but it starts to calm and it’s not there when they are on stage again.
I know all these cast members are supposed to play different characters and such, but I’ve never picked up on any cocaine vibes from the original golden cast (Carvey, Hartman, Hooks, Miller, Lovitz, Dunn, Nealon, & Jackson). But I especially never noticed Carvey to be on cocaine…but this monologue screams to me, I just did a huge amount of blow backstage, as NOBODY touches their NOSE every other 3 seconds unless it’s bleeding, been punched, or have snorted something which I suspect, and possibly something that didn’t come from a good batch, as maybe it stung, but it really looked like he was quite wired and jumpy and I felt like I might have seen slight perspiration on his head, but it could have been the lighting.
I know that’s completely random. But I couldn’t get over how off Carvey seemed (the amount of times he kept touching his face/nose took away towards his stellar imitation that I saw in the bateman episode. So all I could think about was How much cocaine did he just do?!
Also I’m on the update now and I really can’t stand a. Whitney brown. He is soooo incredibly dull, I don’t understand his humor it’s so dry, and its always way too long (sometimes it’s longer than millers screen time I feel like). And I do notice Miller seems kinda dull and serious, maybe he’s really tired but agree this is a dreadful weekend update for Miller. The last 30 seconds are good but that’s it.
I did watch the black crowes performances and think they did a great job, especially with the song I know, “she talks to angels” – had a lot of heart and soul in it. Was very impressed.
There has been no evidence that Dana Carvey was a drug user and, given his later heart issues, doing that much blow probably would have killed him, even in 1991.
Does the Not Getting Any sketch seem prescient of the incel subculture?
Who is playing Drew Barrymore in that sketch?
Jan, who’s 18 years older
That cold open went on way too long and wasn’t very funny. The clown sketch had great potential and was totally wasted. The high school reunion sketch was the same. But Adam Sandler as a crappy band singer is brilliant. He’ll be doing this bit for years to come.
I’m so old I get those two LAPD references by Dennis Miller. They have no idea what’s about to happen in a few months.
I remember when Dana Plato got arrested. News said her bail was posted by Wayne Newton of all people. Man the 90’s were freakin WILD. Its weird they’re already dumping on Drew Barrymore. She was the host just a few years ago. I don’t think in 1991 she had a reputation as a bad girl yet. OH DAMN! I had forgotten Steve Urkel was already famous by now. He wasn’t with Family Matters at the beginning. He came by a little later and stole the show.
I do not find Stuart Smalley to be amusing. The single guys sketch isn’t so funny either. They come across and lame and desperate, not humorous. The elevator sketch was saved for the end of the night cuz it stinks. They need to not continue this. I think the writers and actors have not yet figured out Saturday Night Live is not slow. Saturday Night Live is fast and vibrant and energetic. It moves. It screams. Its fun and exciting. That’s the only time its funny and they should never make a deliberately slow sketch. They’re not fun to watch.
That “America’s Most Wanted Child Actors” sketch proves that sometimes what makes a sketch great isn’t always maximal laughs, though there are plenty of humorous moments in that sketch. Sometimes a sketch having an epic, cinematic feel to it is just as good: i.e. large cast, long run time, deeper story and characterization, maybe some dramatic suspenseful music…that’s also how I feel about the Twin Peaks sketch from this season’s opener.