Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
COLD OPENING
Bill Clinton (PHH) tells what the health care plan will & won’t cover
— Funny reference to the infamous then-recent Lorena Bobbitt incident (the first of many references this season).
— Some really good laughs from Phil’s Clinton delivering such a serious rundown of which circus sideshow freaks are covered by his health care plan. (“Japu, the Indian rubber man, you are covered. Lobster Boy, I feel your pain!”)
— Funny part with Clinton’s sly smile before saying breast augmentation is covered by his health care plan.
STARS: ***½
OPENING MONTAGE
— Same montage from the last three seasons, making this the first time in SNL history where an opening montage was used for more than three seasons. I wonder if SNL fans at the time were disappointed to have to see this montage being used for YET ANOTHER season. I find it funny that right before tonight’s montage was cued up, Phil Hartman’s Clinton set up his “Live from New York…” by saying there are certain things they’re too afraid to change. That exact same statement could be made about this opening montage.
— Ellen Cleghorne, Melanie Hutsell, Tim Meadows, Adam Sandler, and David Spade have all been promoted from featured player to repertory player.
— After the 1990-1993 experiment of having two separate categories of featured players, we now go back to the traditional format of only one category of featured players.
— The shot of Julia Sweeney from the last three seasons (first screencap below) has been updated to a new shot (second screencap below).
— There are no new cast members yet. We will eventually get three of them added within the following two months.
MONOLOGUE
host goes one-on-one with Godzilla stand-in Barney
— Considering Charles Barkley’s evident greenness here, it’s probably a good thing he threw to a pre-taped video fairly early.
— Hilarious idea of Charles going one-on-one with Barney the Dinosaur. New writer (and soon-to-be new cast member) Jay Mohr came up with the idea of this monologue.
— This film is priceless, especially when it gets to the point where Barney has an eye hanging loose and stuffing popping out of his head.
— Too bad 9-year-old me at this time in 1993 hadn’t discovered SNL yet, because I would’ve gotten a huge kick out of seeing Barney getting pummeled, considering my seething hatred for him at the time (which was probably typical for boys around my age during Barney’s overexposure in the early 90s).
STARS: ****½
NCI
NCI Long Distance Company will do whatever you want to get your business
— The visual style of this commercial is a dead-on recreation of these types of phone commercials from this era.
— The customers’ increasingly bizarre requests are funny, as are the key words being flashed onscreen in response to every request being accepted (e.g. “Pretty girls”, “Extra long phone numbers”, “Ponies”).
— David’s doing a solid job in this spokesperson role, though the fact that he’s being cast in this role while Phil has a small supporting role as a customer is our very first sign that this season is a changing of the guard, with the new guard (Spade, Farley, Sandler) receiving more and more focus while the old guard (Hartman, Nealon) gets phased out. If this commercial had aired even as then-recently as the preceding season 18, I bet David and Phil would’ve been cast in each other’s roles.
— Speaking of Phil, I’ve always noticed that something about his face looks a lot different in this final season of his. Maybe it’s just sudden aging. His hair looks different this season too.
STARS: ***½
LARRY KING LIVE
divorcee Burt Reynolds (PHH) takes truth serum
— Kevin’s Larry King impression always makes me laugh, as does Phil’s Burt Reynolds.
— I liked Phil-as-Burt-Reynolds line, “She’ll be back; she’s like the clap.”
— Feels odd unexpectedly hearing Sarah Silverman’s now-instantly-recognizable voice as one of the callers. Sarah is one of the new writers this season and, like Jay Mohr, will soon be added to this season’s cast.
— I love King and Reynolds’ simultaneous goofy laughter, which seems to be inspired by the then-newly-popular Beavis and Butthead.
— Some of the truths King blurts out after drinking truth serum are pretty funny.
— Overall, the sketch was fine, but feels unfitting and kinda odd as the lead-off sketch of a season premiere (which is also a gripe I had with the preceding season premiere’s lead-off sketch: Tiny Elvis).
STARS: ***
DAILY AFFIRMATION WITH STUART SMALLEY
Muggsy Bogues [real] lends support to host
— Unless I’m forgetting something, this is the first time a Daily Affirmation sketch has ever appeared in the pre-Weekend Update half of an episode.
— The idea of tonight’s Daily Affirmation sketch was obviously inspired by the success of the one with Michael Jordan from two seasons earlier.
— Charles already has some funny lines early on in this interview.
— Great part where, after Charles brags about being the best basketball player, Stuart innocently says “If you’re the best basketball player in the world, I guess you’ve won a lot of championships”, which Charles then embarrassedly admits he hasn’t.
— A Muggsy Bogues cameo!
— When Charles is supposed to start getting choked up, you can tell he’s stifling his laughter, which comes off looking hilarious.
— Muggsy’s heartfelt “I love you” to Charles is very funny.
— I love Stuart eagerly getting up to hug Muggsy because he finds him adorable.
— Overall, though I feel this doesn’t hold a candle to the Michael Jordan one, this was a strong Daily Affirmation sketch.
STARS: ****
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Heart-Shaped Box”
WEEKEND UPDATE
Hollywood Minute- DAS gives his thoughts on summer showbiz happenings
— We’re seeing the wrong camera angle during Kevin’s joke about the Olympics. Either that, or Kevin’s just delivering the joke into the wrong camera.
— Oof, some of Kevin’s jokes are getting a really tepid audience reaction. This is setting the tone for what a rough season this is going to be for Kevin’s Updates.
— Though he stumbled through the set-up (as usual), Kevin finally had a great joke that got a big reaction tonight, with his joke about how Michael Jackson celebrated his 35th birthday with “a 13 year old…………….bottle of champagne.”
— During David’s Hollywood Minute, I loved his “It gets worse” aside to the audience when some of them are going “Ohhhh” after the Andrew McCarthy slam.
— The usual solid stuff from David’s overall Hollywood Minute tonight, with my favorite parts being his Homer Simpson/Skipper “d’oh/dip” back-and-forths, him riffing on Chevy Chase’s disastrous new talk show, and his comments about Billy Idol.
— Another wrong camera angle during one of Kevin’s Update jokes.
— Two Update commentaries were cut after this episode’s dress rehearsal: one in which Ellen’s Queen Shenequa character talks about taxes and President Clinton (pic here), and one in which Adam as Eddie Vedder (an impression that will make its on-air debut a few episodes later) sings about world events to the melody of the Pearl Jam song “Evenflow” (pic here). The latter sounds like a variation of Adam’s Operaman commentaries.
STARS: **½
THE GAP
Gap girls Kristy & Lucy recall unpleasant experience with Skid Row [real]
— Interesting how they completely changed David’s character’s hairstyle, which has been acknowledged within the sketch.
— The Heidi Fleiss scandal must’ve recently broken out, as we’re getting a lot of mentions of her in tonight’s season premiere.
— And now, much like David’s character, Farley’s character’s hair also looks different from the preceding installments of this sketch.
— Farley’s whispery “You two are terrible!” cracked me up.
— Random pre-taped Skid Row cameo out of nowhere.
— Oh my god at the sight of Charles Barkley dressed like… that.
— Charles is wearing flesh-colored makeup over his mustache to hide it. Also, he keeps holding his head down in this weird way. Is he doing that to make the flesh-colored makeup less noticeable onscreen?
— That’s the end of the sketch? Why was Charles’ appearance so brief? Seemed like a waste of our host.
— Not the best Gap Girls sketch overall. I didn’t care for the Skid Row scene and the sketch as a whole felt too disjointed, like I was watching three Gap Girls sketches in one.
STARS: **½
COFFEE TALK WITH LINDA RICHMAN
Linda takes some calls on Yom Kippur
— The first of what will unfortunately (for me) be an EXCESSIVE amount of Coffee Talk sketches this season.
— As usual, the material is boring me and I’m getting pretty much no laughs, but I did like Linda Richman’s long run of Yiddish during a rant just now, which was impressively delivered.
— Boy, while watching these early 90s episodes during this SNL project, I’ve gotten VERY sick of hearing that “I’m feeling verklempt… tawk amongst yuhselves” catchphrase. It never makes me laugh, and what makes it worse is that it’s always delivered two or three times in each Coffee Talk sketch.
— I’m starting to notice that my absolute least favorite Coffee Talk sketches (which is certainly saying something) are the ones with no guests, like tonight’s installment.
STARS: *½
DEEP THOUGHTS BY JACK HANDEY
CHARLES BARKLEY’S BIG, TALL & BLACK MEN’S STORES
host’s store offers clothes for big tall black males; Muggsy Bogues cameo
— HUGE technical issues as this sketch starts. The soft background music for this sketch instantly cues up, but the screen just stays black for a VERY long time. Then, while the sketch’s background music is still heard playing, an SNL bumper photo of Barkley is shown onscreen for a while, as if this is SNL’s way of telling us “Technical difficulties; please stand by”. Then the sketch FINALLY starts. Wow, what the hell was going on?
— Decent concept for this sketch.
— A few minutes into this, and I haven’t been finding this hilarious, but there IS a charm to it.
— Funny visual of Muggsy Bogues entering in oversized clothes.
STARS: **½
OUT OF AFRICA
tribal art dealer (ROS) touts the weed-holding abilities of artifacts
— OH, NO. Here’s the debut of a soon-to-be recurring sketch that I’ve always despised.
— Only 40 seconds into this sketch, and “You put your weed in there!” has already been said about three times and is clearly going to be the only joke of this whole sketch.
— It’s now a few minutes later, and yep, nothing has changed. “You put your weed in there!” remains the ONLY joke.
— Okay, one part of the scene right now with Barkley’s cop questioning Rob gave me a “so stupid, it’s funny” chuckle.
— Overall, a rare miss at the time for the usually-solid Rob Schneider. Unfortunately, this season ends up having a number of Rob Schneider sketches that don’t land with me. This is only the beginning.
STARS: *½
WHAT’S THAT?
contestants guess the sex of crossdressed men; RuPaul cameo
— What’s with the crossdressing theme in tonight’s episode, between the Gap Girls sketch, Coffee Talk, and now this?
— This is the first time in tonight’s episode where I’ve noticed Chris Rock’s departure. Adam being cast as one of the contestants in this urban gameshow makes it obvious that SNL now only has two black cast members. Adam is cracking me up in this role, though.
— What the…? Charles’ voice has suddenly become very hoarse mid-sketch, making it very hard for him to get through the line he’s currently trying to deliver.
— Not the funniest concept to this sketch, but it has a very goofy, silly atmosphere that’s working for me.
— Bea Arthur being shown as one of the “man or woman?” clips gave me a laugh.
— Another technical error tonight, this time with the opening “It’s time for What’s That” announcement accidentally being played during the ending when they were supposed to play the What’s That ending theme music.
STARS: ***
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Rape Me”
DONKEY BASKETBALL CAMP
host stresses importance of human-ass cooperation in donkey basketball
— Uh… what a concept.
— Big night for David Spade, who’s been very prominent in this episode. Probably the most airtime he’s gotten in a single episode thus far.
— Ha, this sketch has started going off the rails, first with Charles’ donkey starting to move around when it’s not supposed to, and then one of the other guys’ donkey just walking right off the set.
— The “Slipping on donkey urine” bit gave me a good laugh.
— Ha, now Farley’s basketball bouncing has scared the rest of the donkeys, causing them to leave the set with the guys still on top of them.
— Farley looked like he had no idea when to exit the scene. Maybe Charles was supposed to tell him to go, but forgot.
— Overall, there was a weird kind of fun charm to this random sketch, though it pales in comparison to a far-superior and more memorable later sketch that also involves people sitting on donkeys in an unlikely situation: the Ridin’ My Donkey Political Talk Show sketch from the Will Ferrell era.
STARS: ***
OFFICE SPACE
by Mike Judge- disgruntled worker Milton stews
— A lot of Beavis and Butthead connections tonight. First, the SNL Band played the Beavis and Butthead theme music during one of the band shots earlier tonight (and IIRC, they do that again right after this Office Space cartoon), then the Larry King Live sketch had Kevin and Phil’s Larry King and Burt Reynolds constantly laughing simultaneously in a goofy manner, then David did a Beavis and Butthead imitation at one point during Hollywood Minute, and now we get this Mike Judge cartoon. This really takes me back to how Beavis and Butthead took pop culture by storm around this time. I remember my mom didn’t allow me to watch Beavis and Butthead’s show back then because she felt I was too young for it (I was 9 years old, as mentioned earlier in this review), but I would still sneak in viewings of it when she wasn’t around, and I eventually got in a bit of trouble when she caught me watching it.
— Needless to say, this Office Space cartoon is an interesting change of pace for SNL.
— This is already cracking me up early on. This Milton character is hilarious.
— For some reason, it feels weird hearing audience laughter during an indie-type cartoon like this.
— I love the part with Milton’s boss.
STARS: ****
GOODNIGHTS
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— While not a terrible season premiere, this season’s drop in quality from season 18 is already evident. The first half of the episode was fine, but the second half was pretty rough, though there was a bit of an upswing towards the very end. As for Charles Barkley, while I feel his comedic sensibilities are better in more modern times where there’s more of a self-aware quality to his humorous personality, he had his moments tonight and wasn’t too bad for an athlete host.
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING SEASON (1992-93)
a step down
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
Shannen Doherty