Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
COLD OPENING
Bill Clinton (PHH) & Jerry Brown (DAC) agree on off-limit debate topics
— Right out of the gate, as soon as this cold opening starts, Victoria stumbles through her only line. SNL would later replace that portion of this cold opening with the dress rehearsal version in reruns.
— Phil and Dana’s Clinton and Brown impressions from the recent Star Trek Convention cold opening are again coming off very funny here.
— A lot of laughs from the many scandalous things Brown and Clinton agree to not bring up about each other during the democratic candidates debate that’s about to start.
— Now this has gotten even funnier with Brown and Clinton confessing to being responsible for infamous disasters, such as crashing the Exxon Valdez and coming up with the idea for the movie Ishtar.
— Clinton: “You wanna swap wives?” Brown: “I’m not married, Bill.” Clinton: “……..Do you have anything you wanna swap?”
— Great ending with Al Franken’s Paul Tsongas.
STARS: ****
MONOLOGUE
host does stand-up about airplane issues, crime, cab drivers
— Jerry’s stand-up here is already starting off with big laughs right out of the gate.
— Unsurprisingly, all of the observational humor here is fantastic, and becomes classic once he starts his whole spiel about cab drivers.
STARS: *****
STAND-UP AND WIN
hack comics compete on observational humor game show
— For some reason, I like the name of Jerry’s gameshow host character, Bobby Wheat.
— I’m loving this sketch, with all of the contestants’ Seinfeld-esque voices and observational humor. This is like a spiritual successor to those Stand-Ups sketches from season 11.
— I loved Adam’s delivery of “Somebody went to Super Cuts and fell asleep in the chair!”
— This sketch is endlessly funny. Some of the particularly great parts are the “Why don’t they build the whole plane out of the black box?” bit and all the riffing on Gilligan’s Island.
— Adam: “Who are the ad wizards who came up with this one?”
STARS: *****
HISTORY CLASS
high school history teacher (host) struggles to teach class about WWII
— Another example of this season using their gigantic cast to their advantage. This sketch is a great use of the huge group of newer cast members from these last two seasons. It feels like all of them are in this, but there are actually still some missing (Julia, Tim, and Rob, off the top of my head), which I guess goes to show you just how enormous the newer cast is.
— I like Melanie pointing out to Jerry that “I thought you said we didn’t have to know dates.”
— For the first time in two months, David Spade actually gets more than one line in a sketch.
— Excellent part with the students beginning to slowly and sheepishly raise their hand in unison when being asked “Is this Europe?”, only to immediately raise their hand all the way up after being told they’re correct (last two screencaps above).
— I love Adam always claiming he was going to say the correct answer every time someone else has already gotten it correct.
— So many funny things throughout this. Much like the two segments that preceded this (the monologue and Stand-Up And Win), there’s an endless amount of laughs here. A lot of humor here from the students’ responses and Jerry’s calm-but-slowly-growing frustration.
— Great ending with a given-up Jerry taking one of the students up on their offer to bring in a copy of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
STARS: *****
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Why”
WEEKEND UPDATE
Operaman (ADS) sings about John Gotti, Donald & Ivana Trump, others
KEN conducts a test of the Emergency Broadcast System by himself
— Ladies and gentlemen, we have a major recurring character debut (Operaman)!
— Adam’s been having a big night so far, which is rare for him at this early stage in his SNL tenure.
— For some reason, the first few Operaman news stories here, while funny, aren’t getting ANY responses from the audience. That, combined with how Adam is immediately moving on from one story to the next, oddly gives this more of an authentic opera feel that I’m kinda liking. I guess the audience’s lack of response shows they don’t know what to make of this new character yet, which feels odd in hindsight when you’re aware of what a huge crowd-pleaser this character would later go on to become.
— Operaman’s “sotto voce” part regarding Bill Clinton is hilarious and has finally won the audience over.
— Some more solid bits with Operaman, especially him proudly bidding adieu to a recently-arrested Leona Helmsley.
— Unlike future Operaman appearances, he doesn’t get a whole bunch of roses thrown at him from off-camera at the end of tonight’s commentary. Kevin simply gives him a standing ovation (which results in a blooper where Kevin’s clip-on mic accidentally falls off and he takes an extended amount of time reapplying it to his tie).
— Kevin’s random Emergency Broadcast Test bit where he poorly makes the long beep sound with his own voice is very good.
— Surprise, surprise – according to GettyImages, the perpetually neglected David Spade had YET ANOTHER Update commentary cut after dress rehearsal (pic here). Heh, at this point, it’s almost starting to become a joke to see how they kept cutting the poor guy’s Update commentaries on an almost weekly basis this season.
— Also according to GettyImages, Beth Cahill had an Update commentary cut after this episode’s dress rehearsal (pic here), where she did a reprise of her Denise Swerski commentary from a few episodes ago. Recently, there was a mention in the comments section of my blog that Beth revealed in an interview that SNL writers suggested she make her Denise Swerski Update commentary into a recurring bit, but she declined. I guess Beth’s memory was a little faulty during that interview, because it looks like she did attempt to make the Swerski Update bit recurring.
STARS: ***½
PASSOVER SEDER
obnoxious Elijah the Prophet (host) shows up at a Passover Seder
— Some pretty funny tension between the family at the beginning.
— Mike’s old Jewish male voice is the exact same as his Linda Richman voice, right down to the feminine lispiness when pronouncing the ‘s’ in his words, which comes off out of place for this heterosexual male character.
— Hilarious concept with an obnoxious Elijah the Prophet randomly crashing a family’s Passover Seder.
— A big laugh from Elijah letting Mike’s old man character know a secret: “September 24, in your sleep!”
— Jerry is fantastic in this role and his Borscht Belt comedian-esque one-liners are all hilarious.
— Perfect ending with Phil entering as a casual, laid-back Jesus.
STARS: ****½
LANK THOMPSON: I’M A HANDSOME BLACK MAN
TIM is a product of Lank Thompson’s “I’m A Handsome Black Man” course
— I like how Lank Thompson is making callbacks to his previous sketches, including the memorable “I’m A Handsome Actor” one with Alec Baldwin.
— A great rare showcase for the usually-invisible Tim Meadows, and I like the decision to let him play himself here.
— Much like the Coldcock commercial from earlier this season, Tim works in a smooth delivery of “Faaaan-tas-tic”, which is a precursor to a catchphrase of his in the recurring Perspectives sketches from later in his tenure.
— Rock’s mock-cheesy delivery of “That’s a handsome black man!” was great.
— Fun scenes with Tim demonstrating all of Lank Thompson’s handsome black man tips.
— Some good laughs from Phil as a mestizo Indian audience member asking a question at the end.
STARS: ****
PERMANENT POSITIONS
office workers maintain their body postures while performing their jobs
— I absolutely love the format of this sketch. This season has been really good at doing this type of unique format sketch where characters perform their actions or dialogue in the same out-of-the-ordinary manner as each other (e.g. the Teenage Insults sketch from the Rob Morrow episode, the Money For Booze sketch from the Mary Stuart Masterson episode), which is a type of sketch I’m always a sucker for.
— It’s fun seeing how the frozen body posture that each character enters with pertains to their place in the office.
— Great part with a passing-by Mike asking for the bathroom while being in a frozen crouching-down posture with a newspaper in his hand.
— Excellent ending with Phil who, unlike everyone else, walks into the office with a normal upright posture, but then, while reading a report, stiffly falls back onto a couch without changing his normal upright posture. A difficult action that Phil pulled off seamlessly.
STARS: *****
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Legend in My Living Room”
DEEP THOUGHTS BY JACK HANDEY
on hoping that nude operas exist {rerun}
— Rerun from the preceding season’s Steven Seagal episode
I’M CHILLIN’
Onski plugs Bullet Hole Tampons & delivers a mother joke
— As usual in these sketches, Rock has a great very wordy intro to Farley’s character.
— A good laugh from tonight’s sponsor being Bullet Hole Tampons.
— Funny little part during the discussion of Silence of the Lambs, where Rock and Farley contemplate how the process of eating people goes.
— Very good part with the prize the “Mother Joke of the Day” winner receives being an O cap that one can use to play Tic-Tac-Toe with your friends who have an X cap (the latter of which was popular among black people at the time, due to the Malcolm X movie that had recently come out).
STARS: ***½
THE LENNY WISE SHOW
(PHH) explores Superman’s (host) faculties & foibles in a radio interview
— This is automatically a fantastic sketch, right from the concept alone. I love the very casual treatment of Superman being a radio show guest. And Jerry is, of course, perfect for the Superman role, and I love his characterization of Superman as an average joe.
— Phil’s questions to Superman are great, made even better by Phil’s spot-on imitation of the delivery that typical radio show hosts use.
— The Scrabble bit was really funny.
— I like the phone call from Julia as an irate citizen.
— Great ending with Superman “revealing” his identity to Phil.
STARS: *****
GOODNIGHTS
— Among his many thanks, Jerry thanks Superman for making a special appearance.
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— An absolutely fantastic episode, and has always been one of my personal favorites of this entire era. In fact, after having reviewed the episode just now, I’ve come to realize that it’s actually one of my personal favorite episodes of all-time. It’s not often I hand out so many four or five-star ratings in a single episode review. In fact, aside from Weekend Update and I’m Chillin’ (which were both still pretty solid in their own right), there wasn’t a single segment in this episode that received a rating under four stars; that’s how strong this episode was. Jerry Seinfeld was also a great and very fun host who added to the high quality of this episode. This was also a strong night for the cast, with even some of the typically underused newer cast members getting more chances (Tim Meadows, Adam Sandler, even David Spade a little).
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Sharon Stone)
a big step up
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
Tom Hanks