Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
COLD OPENING
Wayne’s World- the top ten bad things about the fall of communism
— Always a fun way to start off the show.
— This is the last Wayne’s World sketch that aired before the release of the first Wayne’s World movie.
— Very funny line about 1991 being the year Garth finally got pubes.
— The Top 10 List has a lot of great lines as usual, especially the one about bogus soviet rock bands.
STARS: ****
MONOLOGUE
CHC lip-syncs “The Greatest Love Of All”
— A minor thing: For some reason, after the opening montage ends, the camera pans down to the home base stage from the left side instead of the usual right side. This is the only time from 1989-1995 that they would do so.
— What’s with Chevy’s obvious toupee? He was openly going bald long before this episode, and now we’re supposed to believe he suddenly has a head full of hair?
— As expected, HUGE extended applause for Chevy at the beginning of this monologue.
— I laughed at the mention of “that bitch Jane” when Chevy lists off his original SNL castmates.
— Chevy’s trademark forgetfulness routine can be tiring sometimes, but it’s coming off merely okay here.
— Good turn with Chevy blatantly lip syncing to “The Greatest Love of All”, especially with the use of a split-screen effect showing a close-up of his comically dramatic facial expressions.
STARS: ***
THE LOVE TOILET
— Rerun from the Macaulay Culkin episode
ADOPT A PET
(CHC) & (VIJ) try to unload some unappealing animals
— Some really funny lines during Chevy and Victoria’s unflattering descriptions of the pets.
— Interesting detail with Chevy’s gloves.
— Very funny part with reveal that the monkey is suffering from syphilis, blindness, and insanity.
STARS: ***½
DANIEL’S DINER
aide (PHH) helps George Bush (DAC) through uncomfortable campaign stop
— Interesting use of Dana’s Bush. This feels like a precursor to the famous Clinton at McDonalds sketch from the following season.
— I like Dana’s Bush just saying “Persian Gulf” at every chance he gets during his greetings to the diner patrons.
— Funny dark part with Phil’s details of the Daniel’s Diner owner committing suicide.
— Siobhan’s stone-faced expression as the speechless diner owner provided a good laugh.
— I really like Julia in this, as an old lady going on to Bush about her disgusting health issues, like a polyp on her colon.
— Good recurring bit throughout this with a ready-to-get-the-hell-out-of-here Bush constantly asking his aide Phil how much time he has left, and having Phil participate in a “Good cop, bad cop” routine to get Bush out of uncomfortable conversations.
— Bush to Julia’s character, while leaving: “Polyp Lady, I think I’ll miss you most of all.”
STARS: ***½
DAHMER’S DEFENSE
Jeffrey Dahmer’s (CHC) lawyers (PHH) & (KEN) know insanity plea will work
— I like the audience’s “Ohh” laughter immediately after hearing the name Jeffrey Dahmer early on in the sketch.
— Pretty funny ad-lib from Chevy after his “money/Monday” line flub, reminding me of how quick he was at saving himself whenever he would flub a joke during his Update anchor days in the original era.
— A hilarious and outrageous part with Chevy’s Dahmer casually chewing his fingers off. Phil and Kevin’s disgusted reactions are cracking me up as well.
STARS: ***½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Go Back to Your Woods”
WEEKEND UPDATE
co-anchor CHC reads outdated Weekend Update items from the ’70s
CSR gives his thoughts on Arizona’s non-observance of the MLK holiday
CHC offers some historical perspective on breast implant problems
CHC repeatedly prompts KEN with nonsense as the latter fumbles for words
— Chevy gets added to the Update opening title sequence, letting us know that he will be returning to his old spot at the Update desk. At least this pairing of him and Kevin makes far more sense than the painfully awkward pairing of him and Dennis Miller when Chevy last hosted in season 12.
— Right off the bat, we get the return of Chevy’s trademark “phone conversation” opening Update gag, this time with a great twist that it’s Kevin on the other line who Chevy’s talking dirty to.
— More callbacks to Chevy’s Update trademarks, such as “I’m Chevy Chase and you’re not”, “Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead”, and the prostitution stamp joke.
— Rock’s rant about Arizona’s refusal to celebrate Martin Luther King Day has so many funny lines, especially him detailing how Arizona would celebrate an Elvis Day, and the whole bit about Columbus discovering a West Indian backyard.
— Chevy’s breast implant commentary had a few funny lines here and there, but I wasn’t crazy about the segment as whole.
— I love the bit with Chevy filling in the blanks of Kevin’s speech with inappropriate words.
— Overall, tonight’s pairing of Kevin and Chevy worked pretty well for the most part.
— According to GettyImages, David Spade had an Update commentary that was cut after this episode’s dress rehearsal (pic here). In the pic, he’s noticeably displaying a judicial scale.
STARS: ***½
BOB SWERSKI’S QUIZ MASTERS
Super Fans on Bears & Bulls trivia game show
I Can’t Believe It’s Not Polish Sausage- for post-heart attack snacking
— Very nice change of pace for the Super Fans sketches.
— I liked the ridiculously brief “meet the contestants” segment.
— Funny “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Polish Sausage” commercial, especially the stilted delivery from the guys.
— The lightning round with Mike was fun, though I wanted it to go on longer.
— I love each contestant’s written answer on their card, especially Farley’s long-winded intelligent answer being written on both sides of the card.
STARS: ****
VAN MORRISON CONCERT
at a Van Morrison concert, (MEH)’s dancing obstructs (JUS)’s view
— What started out as a relatable piece is getting old fast.
— I do like the part with Chevy speaking to Melanie in staccato speech so she can hear him whenever she bops her head in his direction.
— Didn’t care for the ending at all.
STARS: *½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “The Weight”
BACKSTAGE
CHC tries to comfort a crying TIM in the latter’s dressing room
— For some reason, at the beginning of this sketch when Chevy and Victoria are having a conversation, the SNL Band can be heard LOUDLY continuing to play the music they had been playing during the commercial break. It’s distracting, making it hard to pay attention to what Chevy and Victoria are saying. I’m guessing there was some kind of mistiming or something, where the SNL Band wasn’t informed that the show had returned from commercial break. Reruns of this sketch mute out the SNL Band’s music.
— Good to see Tim getting a rare showcase.
— Chevy’s various outlandish guesses on what’s bothering Tim are quite funny.
— Chevy’s actually coming off likable and affable in this, which is rare for him post-70s.
— Tim, when Chevy tells him to get ready for the next sketch: “I’m not in anything, except for this.” Yet another funny dig at Tim’s lack of airtime, after his solo number in the “Not Gonna Phone It In Tonight” cold opening from two episodes ago. Just to show you how right he is regarding his underusage, he didn’t appear in ANY sketches in the episode between Steve Martin’s and tonight’s (Rob Morrow).
STARS: ***
KAUFMAN’S BIG AND TALL, AND SHORT AND SMALL SEPHARDIC JEW MEN’S CLOTHING STORE
Sephardic Jews (CHC) & (ROS) sell big & tall & short & small clothing
— An initial chuckle from the store’s name.
— Aaaaaaaand that initial chuckle mentioned above ended up being the ONLY laugh of this whole thing. What in the world was the point of this overall sketch? Where were the jokes? Why did Chevy’s last line get cut off?
STARS: *
GOODNIGHTS
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A pretty good episode. The quality was mostly consistently good, until we got a few very weak sketches towards the end (Van Morrison Concert and Sephardic Jew Men’s Clothing Store). Chevy was only okay as the host tonight. He’s still a far cry from his reliably funny self from the 70s, but he wasn’t as bad as he’s been in some of his other hosting stints and he didn’t bring down this episode too much for me.
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Rob Morrow)
a slight step down
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
Susan Dey
Bizarrely, the Starmaker VHS edit removes Jeffrey Dahmer, but LEAVES the Van Morrison and Kaufman’s sketches.
I don’t remember any of this episode, although memories did come back at the writeup of the diner sketch. I don’t think I could sit through Dana’s Bush impression (great as it was) to that degree of viewing, but it would be an interesting piece to trail the tone of their Bush commentary. After years of goofier material, they ramped up into sketches around this time that would more openly address his faltering popularity and the feeling that he was out of touch. We are heading into the period of the infamous George Bush supermarket stories (the ones that made people think he was “amazed” at seeing a scanner). I look forward to seeing the next episode writeups to remember if it’s addressed.
Beyond that I remember watching a clip of the Van Morrison sketch not long ago. Someone commented that this was when SNL officially became middle-aged. I actually liked the sketch, and its attempts to try to show a generational divide (only to in the end tell us people really aren’t that different), but they focused too much on the conflict between Sweeney and Hutsell (Sweeney is only nine years older than Hutsell but was already slotted into those ‘older woman’ roles…), and Hutsell was a bit overcooked. To be fair to her though, her overacting was also the most memorable part of the sketch.
So I take it people consider this to be the best of Chevy’s hosting gigs?
I think, upon reflection, the 78 episode is the only Chevy Chase episode where Chevy is actually a positive factor into the show’s overall quality. He’s a disaster for basically all of his 80s shows. His 90s episodes are better, but even here it’s the non-Chevy moments that stand out. Update mostly works though.
My memory of his 95 show is mostly positive. I’ll be interested to revisit it.
This episode had my favorite Wayne’s World Top Ten in it and my favorite Superfans sketch in it. Neither had Chevy so I didn’t realize they came from this episode before now. I watched most weekends back then but I was a 11 in 1991 so I probably didn’t watch as often as often as I thought.
I’ll never cease to be amazed at how effortlessly funny and wonderful Chevy was on SNL, and how that all was never repeated upon his exit.
I mean, the guy had the perfect balance of smugness, ego, charm, wittiness, and self-depreciation on display during the first season and a half of SNL. And even in an episode like this, where he did an “ok” job, it’s nothing compared to his glory days. And of course this kind of decent episode is a rare exception to the rule.
It’s just crazy to me how fast he went downhill.
It feels like he was the funniest person in the world in 1976 and then just immediately dropped off, but then to be fair, his movie career is really strong. People knock him for only having a small handful of decent movies, but his track record is no worse than any other major comedy movie star. He has three classics in(Vacation, Fletch and Caddyshack, the latter of which he is the funniest part of an ensemble. Then he has a host of quite popular movies in Christmas Vacation, Three Amigos and even Fletch Lives, which is pretty solid. Then in the 90s he does a killer job in Dirty Work and in the 00s he has Community. Compare that to the careers of most of SNL’s biggest stars and it’s really not that bad.
It’s never been revealed but I’m almost positive Spade wrote the Van Morrison concert sketch. He’s done a bit about annoying fans at concerts in his act for years. In fact he just did a similar bit on Ellen a year or two ago about people standing in front of him at an Eagles concert. I’ve also seen him do the same bit instead with Skynard as well
I think Hutsell wrote that one herself. I think she said so on her website? (Though I’m not saying it’s impossible Spade had a hand in it as well.)
Didn’t know that. Thanks for the info! I guess if Spade wrote it he would have put himself in the sketch given he was getting little air time
Footage from dress rehearsal involving a callback to something Chevy did his first season (with Chevy, Farley, Julia, Mike, and Chevy impersonator Don Mincey):
https://youtu.be/amDGlZeDI4E?t=165
With Wiig returning to 8H next week, I wondered how often former castmembers will come back to host in the future… which prompted me to go back and look at the earlier seasons. Between Chevy’s second hosting stint (s5) and Bill Murray’s episode in s12, a former castmember returned at least once a season. But then during this second golden age, they went almost 5 years without any alumni hosts… from Murray in late season 12 until this 1992 episode (s17). After this, Murray would return about a year later, then over a year until Dana Carvey in early s20 followed by Damon Wayans… then they started inviting people back more frequently during the s21-22 rebuilding.
“during this second golden age, they went almost 5 years without any alumni hosts… from Murray in late season 12 until this 1992 episode (s17).”
There was technically one during that period. Even though it was ultimately canceled due to a writer’s strike, Gilda Radner was scheduled to host the Season 13 finale.
So weird to think the Soviet Union took 2 whole years to completely dissolve. I’m old enough I remember when Bush took those small town tours and some of them didn’t go so well. In a little while Phil Hartman would be doing pretty much the same sketch as Bill Clinton. Superfans is as funny as its ever been. Overall I thought it was a weak episode. Too many boring unfunny sketches but not a complete disappointment. Chevy episodes are usually much better.