Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
COLD OPENING
The Packwood (PHH) Diaries- the senator recalls females he has harassed
— Phil-as-Packwood’s first sudden “I stuck my tongue down her throat” gave me a pretty good laugh.
— Packwood pointing out that a pro-choice women’s group he spoke in front of were “dogs and dykey-looking… but by then, I was drunk” gave me another laugh, though I feel wrong for it.
— Okay, after about a minute-and-a-half, I’m not caring much for where this has been going, and I can do without all the repetitions of “And then I stuck my tongue down her throat”.
STARS: **½
OPENING MONTAGE
— Writer Sarah Silverman has been added to the cast as a featured player.
MONOLOGUE
Madonna calls; fake audience members confuse host with other actresses
— The first half of this monologue with Rosie talking about movies and Hollywood is only okay, though the phone call to Madonna had a laugh or two.
— The soon-to-be-overused-this-season monologue trope of audience members taking turns asking the host the same idiotic question makes its second appearance of the season.
— Sarah Silverman’s “Now that you’ve left Wilson Phillips…” question to Rosie made me laugh out loud for two reasons: one, because it’s funny in itself obviously, and two, because I got reminded of when they later showed an out-of-context clip of it in Sarah Silverman’s monologue from her hosting stint in season 40, where Sarah answers several questions asked by herself in old clips from various season 19 questions-from-the-audience monologues.
— Love Norm’s delivery of “Yeah, uh, Designing Women? Yeah, it, uhh…. got really bad when you left.”
— Despite the repetitive nature of this season’s increasingly-common questions-from-the-audience monologues, they haven’t reached their breaking point with me yet. In fact, I’m actually liking this one from tonight more than the Jeff Goldblum one from earlier this season.
— Good ending with Rosie having a pleased reaction to being mistaken for Julia Roberts.
STARS: ***½
DUETS
Frank Sinatra (PHH) & pop stars hurriedly record duets; Casey Kasem cameo
— Much like the Clinton Inauguration cold opening from the preceding season, Mike’s Barbra Streisand looks uncanny to me.
— I absolutely loved Sinatra telling Liza Minnelli “Your money’s on the dresser, baby. I’m done with you.”
— I’m loving the format of this sketch with singers coming in one at a time to duet with Sinatra, especially when it gets to the point where the singers are hurriedly sent in two at a time. Very fun, and a nice way to use pretty much the entire cast.
— Hilarious slam from Sinatra about Anita Baker not being a stranger to trios.
— I love the staredown Rob’s K.D. Lang gives Sinatra after Sinatra IMMEDIATELY dismisses her and Wynonna Judd as soon as they enter.
— Funny ending with Sinatra beating the crap out of Bono while singing “Come Fly With Me”.
STARS: ****
MEXICAN STEREOTYPE
Mexican stereotype (ROS) sponsored by anti-NAFTA people tries to scare us
— I like Rob’s goofy laugh throughout this.
— Pretty funny bit with the pinata representing the economy.
— An overall good, silly bit pulled off pretty well by Rob.
STARS: ***
DAILY AFFIRMATION WITH STUART SMALLEY
Stuart counsels John (MIM) & Lorena (host) Bobbitt
— I love the audience’s big laughter as soon as they realize from Stuart’s intro to his guests that he’s referring to Lorena and John Wayne Bobbitt.
— The posture Mike’s John Wayne Bobbit is uncomfortably sitting in throughout this is really funny.
— A big laugh from Stuart’s innocent whole “patch things up” spiel unintentionally correlating to John Wayne Bobbitt’s penis situation.
— Great facial reaction from Stuart when Lorena responds to his “What did you do with that anger?” question by saying “I cut off his penis.”
— A camera has suddenly become visible on the right side of the screen for an extended amount of time (screencap below).
SNL would later fix this camera gaffe in reruns by replacing that portion of this sketch with the dress rehearsal version, a substitution that’s kinda noticeable, as the look of Mike’s wig suddenly changes a bit.
— An absolutely priceless part with Stuart making Lorena recite a wordy apology to John’s penis.
— After the aforementioned penis apology, I love how John’s answer to Stuart’s “How do you feel now?” is just “…….It itches.”
STARS: ****
PHIL HARTMAN’S REAL VIEWS
PHH says “pay no attention to anti-NAFTA ad, let’s stick it to Mexicans”
— There’s something hilarious about hearing lines like “–really stick it to those Mexicans–” and “I can’t wait to see the looks on their smug Mexican faces” being delivered in Phil’s typically professional, straitlaced voice.
— Another funny comment from Phil, this time about Canadians being screwed by NAFTA, a tongue-in-cheek remark considering Phil is actually Canadian himself.
STARS: ***½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Memphis” & “Slap Leather”
WEEKEND UPDATE
new Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien (MIM) doesn’t like NAFTA
Operaman on NAFTA, Fan Man, John Bobbitt, Eddie Vedder, Princess Di
— Wow, Kevin’s voice is absolutely shot tonight. He sounds terrible. I thought I noticed him sounding kinda bad earlier tonight in the Duets sketch, but since he didn’t speak all that frequently there, his hoarse voice wasn’t as noticeable to me as it is in this Weekend Update.
— Mike’s facial imitation of the Canadian Prime Minister is pretty funny (I have no idea what that Canadian Prime Minister looks like, but I’ve seen it mentioned that Mike’s impression is an accurate-if-comically-exaggerated imitation of his mouth shape), but I’m not caring for his commentary at all, and the constant pop culture references he keeps randomly throwing in aren’t doing a thing for me.
— Tonight’s Operaman commentary had a bit of a slow start, but it’s taken off with the bit about the Bobbitts.
— Funny bit with Operaman singing about Pearl Jam in an out-of-character Eddie Vedder voice to the tune of Evenflow, though Operaman would do a much more famous rendition of this bit later this season when Pearl Jam is the musical guest in the Emilio Estevez episode. Also, as I mentioned in my review of this season’s premiere, Adam had an Update commentary cut after the premiere’s dress rehearsal where he played Eddie Vedder singing about world events to the tune of Evenflow. I wonder if that was done in the same style as the Operaman commentaries, right down to showing superimposed photos next to Adam’s Vedder and having the lyrics displayed on the bottom of the screen.
— Tonight’s entire Operaman commentary would later be completely removed from all (or most) reruns. For years, I wondered why, until it hit me during one viewing. At one point during Operaman’s Eddie Vedder imitation, he sings a lyric that states “Nirvana kiss my assa”. I’m guessing the first re-airing of this episode was not too long after Kurt Cobain’s April 1994 suicide, and SNL must’ve thought it would be in poor taste to re-air the anti-Nirvana lyric of Operaman’s. But why remove the ENTIRE Operaman commentary, especially considering the character’s huge popularity? Couldn’t they have found some way to just edit out the Nirvana lyric, even if it would be a sloppy edit? After all, they do something like that in reruns of a Hollywood Minute commentary that’s coming up in two episodes. I’ll go into a little more detail when I review it, but in that Hollywood Minute, David makes a brief crack about John Candy during a joke about another celebrity. Well, Candy ended up dying just a few months later, so all reruns of that Hollywood Minute sloppily remove David’s crack about him.
STARS: ***
WAITERS WITHOUT A PAD
waiter (KEN) overestimates ability to remember order of (PHH) & (host)
— This sketch was originally cut after dress rehearsal from the preceding season’s Jason Alexander episode. In that version, Phil and Rosie’s roles were played by Jason Alexander and Julia.
— I’m getting good laughs from the part with Kevin badly attempting to slowly sound out Phil and Rosie’s orders until they say it for him.
— A very Kevin Nealon-y premise.
— For some reason, when trying to say “seared tuna steak”, Phil pauses oddly and then actually breaks character and cracks up a bit, which is very rare for him.
— I like the absurdity of Kevin phoning Phil from the restaurant kitchen to ask him his order, plus the absurdity of how Kevin’s character would even know a random restaurant patron’s cellphone number in the first place.
— Overall, I found this sketch pretty enjoyable, more than most people seem to, though it’s not one of Kevin’s better sketches that have a quintessential Kevin Nealon-y premise.
STARS: ***½
THE TOMBOY & THE SISSY
odd couple (host) & (DAS) teaches each other skills
— Always nice to see David play against type. He’s doing a solid job here.
— I love the concept of this sketch, and the opening title sequence is pretty fun.
— An overall cute and charming sketch.
STARS: ***½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Secret O’ Life”
MALIBU FIRES
Dick Clark’s receptionist controls the access to the California fires
— Surprisingly, David’s Dick Clark Receptionist character makes his first appearance since season 17. The setting of his appearance tonight is a creative and topical change of pace for him.
— Not too sure about the voice, but Jay is nailing Sean Penn’s facial expression.
— Funny impression from Rosie of her friend Penny Marshall.
— I loved Phil-as-Charlton-Heston’s delivery of “Laverne & Shirley still makes me laugh.”
— Interesting Planet of the Apes-esque ending with Phil’s Heston.
— Overall, this was fine, but doesn’t measure up to the more memorable Dick Clark Productions installments back in season 17.
STARS: ***½
WILL WORK FOR FOOD
by TOS- homeless (NOM) forgoes fruit of his labor
— Very unusual and interesting seeing early-era Norm Macdonald starring in a quiet, slice-of-life Tom Schiller film.
— Norm is doing a great job in this film, which is presenting a side of him that I don’t think we would ever get to see from him again for the remainder of his tenure.
— Very heartwarming ending with Norm giving his hot dog reward to the fellow hobo from the beginning of the film.
— This sadly ends up being the final Schiller’s Reel to ever make it on the air during a live episode. Reruns of the Martin Lawrence episode from later this season add in a cut-after-dress-rehearsal Schiller’s Reel titled “Laura” (a romantic film pairing together Phil Hartman and Melanie Hutsell, quite an odd pairing), presumably to fill in the extra time left over from the huge edit famously made to Martin Lawrence’s notorious monologue.
STARS: ****
HOMEGIRLS
(JUS) invites homegirls (ELC), (MEH), (host) to her birthday party
— Boy, this is awful. Cringeworthy. Where is the humor here supposed to be coming from?
— The fact that a dud like this is immediately following such a touching Schiller’s Reel makes this sketch feel even worse than it already is.
— This is one of quite a number of bad sketches this season that have that uncomfortable dead atmosphere that I mentioned in my review of the History’s Great Over-Thinkers sketch from this season’s Jeff Goldblum episode.
— A shame that this has to be Sarah Silverman’s first big role; the first sign of the huge struggle she’s going to have during her short-lived SNL tenure.
— The homegirls’ constant utterances of “Whoomp, there it is!” are just embarrassing in retrospect. Actually, it was probably embarrassing even at this time in 1993 when the song was still new and hot.
— Overall, definitely a contender for one of the worst sketches of the whole season.
STARS: *
GOODNIGHTS
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A (mostly) consistently good episode, especially for this season’s standards. There were a lot of good pieces throughout the night, and a few really strong pieces in the first half of the show. Even the questions-from-the-audience monologue managed to be pretty solid. Aside from the awful final sketch and the fairly one-note cold opening, I like that tonight didn’t have too much of the feel of a typical season 19 episode.
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Christian Slater)
a big step up
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
Nicole Kidman