Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
A MESSAGE FROM GEORGE BUSH
from Houston, George Bush [real] starts show as a favor to his friend DAC
— A huge deal for SNL to get an appearance from a former president.
— Bush is coming off as a great sport here, and there’s a lot of laughs from his statements, made even funnier by his deadpan delivery.
— I particularly like the line about how if sketches get too long, he’ll flip over to Tales from the Crypt.
— A rare occurrence of a Don Pardo-delivered “Live from New York…”.
STARS: ****
MONOLOGUE
George Bush [real] to DAC- “your impression of me is too exaggerated”
— Great how Dana is entering as Bush. I’m a sucker for hosts doing their monologue in character as someone.
— As expected, Dana’s Bush is doing lots of fun things here.
— Solid exchanges between Dana and the real Bush. Even though this is featuring the cliched “celebrity talks like their impersonator while complaining that they sound nothing like their impersonator” trope, there’s enough goodwill towards this Bush appearance that the trope is coming off charming, and it’s helped by Bush’s aforementioned deadpan delivery.
— Dana briefly breaks out into his Church Lady voice, which reminds me that there would be no Church Chat sketch tonight, I’m assuming because Church Lady was still retired after the Misery II sketch from the season 16 Roseanne Barr-hosted episode. It appears that Dana would end up officially un-retiring Church Lady sometime after tonight’s episode, as all of his future hosting stints feature a Church Chat sketch.
— Speaking of recurring Dana Carvey characters we surprisingly won’t be seeing tonight, there’s also no Wayne’s World sketch, despite the fact that Mike is still in the cast. I wonder if the reason for Wayne’s World’s absence is because of the alleged feud going on at the time between Dana and Mike, which started sometime during the filming of Wayne’s World 2.
STARS: ****
VIRTUAL REALITY BOOKS
Virtual Reality Books are a poor use of technology, but (MMK) loves them
— I got a big laugh from “Call me Ishmael” being divided into two pages.
— Michael’s overexcitement over such a useless product is funny.
— Overall, this was better than I had remembered it, though I wish they went further with the downsides of the cheapness of mid-90s technology.
STARS: ***
THE SIMPSON TRIAL
Johnny Carson (DAC) cross-examines witnesses in the O.J. Simpson trial
— Fun topical use of Dana’s Johnny Carson impression.
— I can’t help but grit my teeth a bit seeing Michael do an Ed McMahon/Robert Shapiro hybrid. The only thing his attempt at a McMahon impression is succeeding in doing is making me miss Phil Hartman even more than I already have this season.
— “LAPD detective Rick Fuhrman”? Isn’t it Mark Fuhrman?
STARS: ***½
HALLOWEEN IN DALLAS
Ross Perot’s (DAC) Halloween visitors include ADS as Crazy Eggbeater Head
— The Dana Carvey Nostalgia Tour continues tonight with his Ross Perot impression now appearing.
— When one group of kids botch their “trick or treat” greeting, I loved Dana ad-libbing in character “Now that is a pitiful trick-or-treat. You couldn’t even get together on that.”
— A lot of laughs from Perot’s berating of the trick-or-treaters.
— I love the way they’re working in Adam’s traditional Halloween costume routine from Weekend Update.
— There’s Dana-as-Perot’s famous “Can I finish?!”
— The exchanges between Kevin and Perot have some awkward pauses on Kevin’s end.
STARS: ****
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest & Paul Simon [real] perform “Green”
WEEKEND UPDATE
ALF presents some examples of outrageously negative political commercials
Hans & Franz warn other recurring characters to avoid Weekend Update
— Feels weird seeing Al Franken as himself in an Update commentary this late in his SNL tenure, especially knowing how upset he reportedly was that he lost a potential anchorperson spot to Norm.
— The “Kennedy: He’s a big fat drunk” attack ad shown by Al is hilarious.
— More funny attack ads, such as the “She’s a Jew” one and especially the chainsaw-between-the-legs one.
— Norm’s recurring David Hasselhoff theory now finally gets applause, after receiving a mixed, confused audience reaction in Norm’s previous Updates.
— Here’s our latest of The Dana Carvey Nostalgia Tour. Very interesting to see Hans and Franz on Update.
— I absolutely LOVE Hans and Franz calling out then-current recurring characters (Linda Richman, Stuart Smalley, Matt Foley). I’m always a sucker for when different recurring characters collide, even if it’s only by mention in this case.
— Now the Hans and Franz commentary gets even more meta, with Franz (Kevin) telling Norm “The guy who was here before you was much nicer.”
— I love Norm’s running gag throughout this Update with various books having a variation of “O.J. is guilty” in their title.
— The strongest Update of the season so far.
STARS: ****
PEPPER BOYS
master pepper miller (DAC) teaches apprentice (ADS) nuances of the craft
— Very funny characterization from Dana, and even Adam’s goofy voice shtick, which I had previously stated officially ran out of steam during the homestretch of the preceding season, has some new spark here.
— I love the way Dana is presenting the art of pepper grinding. His seductive actions towards Tim are especially hilarious.
— Such a great sketch so far. Feels like something that would’ve aired a few seasons earlier. In fact, I used to feel this was, in some ways, a sister sketch to the Italian Restaurant sketch from Kirstie Alley’s season 17 episode. Maybe because both sketches use the same restaurant set, both star Dana doing an Italian accent, and both have a raunchy sexual theme.
— When showing off a new pepper dispenser, I love Michael’s delivery of “How about that, huh? Ha ha! You’re both fired.”
STARS: ****½
64TH ANNUAL NOBEL PRIZE AWARDS
Nobel Prizes are awarded in a star-studded, televised extravaganza
— As I often say, SNL usually has a bad track record with award show sketches. The dull subject matter of this particular sketch isn’t making me any more excited for it.
— Is this opening song with Michael’s Tom Skerritt ever going to end? It’s going on way too long for something that contains no apparent humor.
— Dana’s Garry Shandling impression is a hoot.
— No comment about Jay’s brownface Indian routine.
— Michael in two different live roles? Fast costume change. Then again, this insufferable sketch is certainly long enough for a cast member to have time for a costume change.
— Not sure how I feel about Laura’s Paula Poundstone impression. At least she’s actually being given something comedic to do, though, for the first time since the season premiere.
— Oh, great, more stereotypical middle-eastern accents, with Chris Elliott now being dragged into this.
— The “John Denver is dead” announcement comes off as a case of Harsher in Hindsight, considering Denver’s untimely real-life death just a few years later.
— Finally, this sketch is over. As awful and long as this was, it’s sadly still not the worst nor longest awards show sketch this season would have to offer (hint: Deion Sanders).
STARS: *½
BAND SHOT
going to commercial, G.E. Smith [real] & doppelganger (ADS) play guitar
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Tomorrow Comes”
MADE UP STORIES
(TIM) shamelessly makes up excuses to avoid getting in trouble at work
— A good laugh from the reveal that Tim’s dramatic, tragic drive-by story was just fabricated to get himself out of trouble.
— Ehh, now this is just repeating the same joke over and over. Tim’s performance is good, though.
— Okay, I did get a big laugh just now from Tim’s definition of hypoglycemic: “’Hypo’ means ‘make’, ‘glycemic’ means ‘stuff up’.”
— Didn’t care for the fourth wall-breaking ending with David, and it featured the type of unlikable, aloof, sneering, half-assed performance we would often see from him this season.
— While I’m griping about David, let me just say that I hate his hairstyle this season. It makes him look like a middle-aged man who’s starting to go bald, when in previous seasons, he practically looked like a 13-year-old. He’s aged a lot this season in general, and it’s not just the hair.
STARS: **
OFFICE SPACE
by Mike Judge- Milton’s area gets a roach bomb
— I believe this is the final Office Space cartoon to air in a new SNL episode.
— Wait, is this a rerun? So far, Milton’s opening spiel is pretty much the exact same one from a previous Office Space cartoon.
— Never mind, turns out this is new. Maybe they just repeated Milton’s opening spiel for narrative exposition.
— Milton’s boss always cracks me up. He’s coming off particularly cruel towards Milton in tonight’s cartoon.
— The roach bomb bit is really funny.
STARS: ****
GOODNIGHTS
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A solid episode, even if it started tapering off towards the end. This didn’t feel like a typical season 20 episode at all, but of course, the main reason for that is because a lot of the episode was basically just a throwback to old recurring Dana Carvey favorites from the late 80s/early 90s glory years. No complaints there, though, as I found it welcome seeing Dana and his recurring bits return to the show, especially during trying times for SNL like this season. The best sketch of the night, though, was actually an original non-recurring Dana sketch (Pepper Boys). Also, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the episode’s quality started tapering off when beginning to focus on sketches not centered around Dana.
— Tonight makes the third consecutive good episode of this young season. If I had been watching this season live when it originally aired and didn’t know what the outcome of the season would be, the past three episodes would have me fooled into thinking this was going to be a good year, ignoring the rough season premiere. Then again, season 11 also had a misleading streak of three solid consecutive episodes early on (Pee Wee Herman, John Lithgow, Tom Hanks) before being immediately followed by a terrible point-of-no-return episode that accurately set the tone for the season (Teri Garr). Sadly, that mirrors what ends up happening this season.
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (John Travolta)
a slight step up
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
Sarah Jessica Parker, this season’s equivalent to season 11’s tone-setting, point-of-no-return Teri Garr episode. Get ready for what will probably be one of the most negative reviews you’ll ever see me do.
I think I always confused the pepper boy sketch in this episode from being a sketch from when Dana was still a cast member.
While most of Dana’s episodes are just retro fests, he was always a very solid host (and in fact, there are several former cast members who are lackluster hosts when they show up). I find during rough seasons former cast members as hosts usually do good work.
I do remember thinking this was a pretty solid season as it was airing. The Steve Martin episode sucked but I loved the next three, especially Travolta. So you’re not alone at thinking this seems like a pretty fun season so far.
Adam has a good story about why Farley’s delivery is so over-the-top in Pepper Boy (which I’m surprised didn’t get 5-stars): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-2QtHd33O4
I also find that this season runs parallel to season 11… except 20 seems less erratic to me.
This was the episode that turned me into a full-time viewer of the show for 25 years and counting; Looking back on it, not only does it STILL Hold up (except perhaps for the “Nobel” sketch), but it made me a fan of the show through good times and bad…and I eagerly anticipate the “Bad” in the next episode.
Don’t know if he wrote the “Excuses” sketch but
Spade is hypoglycemic in real life.
As mentioned in the above clip Spade and Farley are barely in this episode because they were flying back and forth from Toronto and New York all week while shooting Tommy Boy.
Not to make an excuse for Spade but maybe his uncaring demeanor/attitude at the beginning of this season is being miserable from being tired due to the insane schedule he and Farley were on
I wish you luck for having to suffer through that horrendous Fortune Cookie sketch. We’re also getting Good Morning Brooklyn so be prepared to suffer through that as well.
I think the Wizard of Oz sketch might be even worse
There are so many to choose from in that episode. The Robert Evans sketch. The “dueling guitarists” sketch (for me one of the worst and most cringeworthy sketches of all time).
“Dueling Guitarists” is the worst.
Oh man, you guys are right. I forgot “dueling guitarists”. I think I blocked it out. One of the worst sketches ever. “Wizard of Oz” is as well
25 years later I’m still trying to figure out the “jokes” in dueling guitars. I still have no idea what was supposed to be funny about that.
Why do I have a feeling tomorrow’s going to be “the biggest step down ever”? XD
(Oh yes, I’ve seen the episode. God help me.)
I don’t know why but Virtual Reality Books kills me, just the absolute uselessness of that entire concept. That early ‘90s CGI is always a fun aesthetic to see, too.
It was a wise decision to turn Dana’s hosting into basically an encore of all his characters. It’s interesting seeing the first person who isn’t from the ‘70s or Ebersol casts to host.
Also, I really don’t like Farley’s performance in Pepper Boy, tbh. The story I heard was that Spade and Farley were still shooting Tommy Boy (?) and Farley got kinda mad that he wasn’t in much in that episode, so he decided to ham it up in that sketch after dress. It’s another example of Farley, Spade, and Sandler being checked out of the show at that point.
If you notice, Dana says to Adam “Now, don’t you a-break-a” when Farley gives his over the top line read.
Farley’s Pepper Boy performance is like something you see in bad church/HS plays when the guy who thinks he’s HILARIOUS performs everything at 200%. I think there’s a time and place for such stuff on SNL, but not that sketch. A better straight man would both support Dana/Adam and possibly still get a laugh on the silliness of the line anyway.
Also McKean’s delivery of the “How about that? Haha, you’re both fired” is UNCANNILY like how Jason Sudeikis talks in many sketches.
Did Nealon ever cameo in future Carvey hosted episodes, or is this the final appearance of Hans and Franz on SNL?
They appeared in a “Where Are They Now?” sketch in Season 25.
He made an appearance at the Update desk in 2001
I guess Dana’s Garry Shandling is a little too on the nose here. That Larry Sanders Show episode where he sees the sketch and tries to hide how offended he was is great.
It’s a bizarrely mean-spirited impression. I assume it wasn’t intended this way (I know some felt his Dennis Miller impression was also mean-spirited and they seem to be friends) – maybe it was an inside joke that doesn’t translate well on-air.
Oh boy, SJP. Can’t wait for that one. To be fair, the ten-to-one sketch is utterly brilliant, though. Of course, someone had to die to make it happen, but o’well…
Janeane’s look in the Nobel sketch reminds me of this unused sketch from The Ben Stiller Show. That smirk she gives.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQGfo3bHJuE
She also did well as Joan Embry, once again the wig looked great on her. As usual, she avoided the cue cards and looked right at the cast members which would be her undoing. It’s a shame that put in a urine joke in there that had been done already.
Long-time lurker here chiming in. I remember seeing a short story about Dana coming back to host on either Entertainment Tonight or the 11:00 news (my memory’s hazy 25 years later), and it showed him and Mike rehearsing a Wayne’s World sketch. At the time, teenaged me was puzzled and a little disappointed to have something teased like that and then not make the final cut!
Keep up the good work, Stooge! I’ve enjoyed your reviews for a long time now.
It was nice to see that Edie Brickell brought her husband along with her to play some music. He’s pretty good.
When I was younger, I would have had a much lower tolerance for a Dana Carvey-hosted episode, as I felt such burnout after the Bush/Perot material. Over the years, I’ve started to appreciate his talent more and see that he never really hogged the show as much as I remembered. He’s a very able host and I’d be happy to see him pop up at least one more time.
I have extremely mixed feelings about the Bush Sr and Carvey material in this, not because of my own feelings about Bush Sr, but because I feel like this time period started the precedent of Lorne pushing for political material to become increasingly toothless in order to get more politicians onto the show. It really starts to grind the show’s voice and identity to a halt by the end of the ’90s, and I don’t even need to go into more recent years. Anyway, the specific material with Bush and Carvey is a great deal of fun. The Perot sketch is also lots of fun (maybe the second best Perot sketch after the car ride with Stockdale). Really Carvey doesn’t put a foot wrong in the sketches that focus on him – Carson and Pepper Boy either. The latter isn’t the type I generally enjoy, but for the most part (minus Farley) it works well here.
The awards show sketch is just AWFUL, whether it be the running time (10 minutes), the many poor impressions (looking at you Mike Myers), the cheap, racist mugging (made even more offputing for me because there are a number of minority extras, some of whom are funnier than anything onstage), or the complete and utter pointlessness of the whole thing. This is another of those awards sketches that spends way too much time trying to make us laugh just by telling us how bad the awards show is. That doesn’t make me laugh. It just means I’m spending time watching you waste time on bad, unfunny material. What gets me the most is the amount of money spent on this sketch – pre-taped material, a room full of extras, multiple costume and makeup changes. And for what?
The best I can say about is that one of the extras (the older lady who won a best recipe) was at this time on a soap I used to love, Guiding Light, as Melina Kanakaredes’ grandmother.
Anyway, I’ve heard people say that Lorne assumed Mike Judge could get these office animations every week, which could not happen. If so, that is, well it’s not surprising with Lorne I suppose, but I’ll be sorry to see them go. On the positive side, it means we’re getting the Bruce McCulloch pieces, which I LOVED and for me represent what season 20 was trying to be.
I forgot to say Al Franken’s piece on vicious political ads is terrific, and is an accurate take on just how ugly the 1994 campaigns often were. The show was losing its touch politically by this time, in a big way, but this moment along with the Chris Elliott cold open coming up next (one of the very few new parts of that episode I liked), fit the tone and have more weight than any of the material based on actual political figures like Gingrich or Clinton.
I wonder if the Tim liar sketch is the last of the “we have no idea how to end this so we’ll have someone tell you it’s a PSA” endings of these two seasons. I sure hope so…
This episode is pretty dang good, and it’s all thanks to Carvey. The first of the “renaissance” cast to come back to host, and he knocks it out of the park.
Pres. Bush surprisingly does a great job here, he actually demonstrates some comedic timing and is obviously a good sport. Carson at the OJ Trial is also pretty entertaining. And it’s great to see Perot back. And Hans & Franz
Pepper Boy is a downright classic. I agree that it is very much a sister sketch of the “Il Cantore restaurant” sketches from the Kristie Alley shows. I’ll admit that Chris Farley’s gag at the end of the sketch is very unprofessional and sophomoric (he’s intentionally trying to derail the sketch by having Adam break)…but dang it…it’s Chris Farley. He’s so endearing and him hamming it up is very memorable…so I’ll give him a pass.
The only dud of the night is the Nobel Awards show, definitely. My word, SNL does these “awards-show” sketches A LOT. Have ANY of them been good? They’re always overlong and just a parade of (usually) sub-par impressions. The only one I can think of that is decent is the Sinead O’Connor awards show with Jan Hooks. Anyway, other than that dud, it’s a solid episode. And it looks like Season 20 is off to an ok start…uh oh… 😉
Beyond the Sinead awards, the only one I can think of is the podcast awards sketch from last season.
Wasn’t there a basketball coach awards show sketch during the Tina Fey era that was also terrible?
Hmm, I think there was a psychic awards show sketch in the last 5 years or so that wasn’t that bad unless I’m confusing it with something else
I remember them doing some awards show sketch about women’s basketball coaches that seemed particularly ill-timed since a women’s basketball coach died like the week before the sketch aired.
There’s also a very long, very unfunny awards sketch (outside of a few bits from Bobby Moynihan and Jason Sudeikis) from the Gabby Sidibe episode, all about how much public employees suck. This was inexplicably put on Youtube.
They also have an awards sketch that I actually do find pretty funny, but it was never even aired. This must have been a fantastic episode if they cut this sequence…
The one I remember was the American Trainwreck Awards, mostly for Amy’s performance as Anna Nicole Smith.
Yeah, as much as I loathe Farley overplaying EVERYTHING this season…. the idea that he countered having a tiny part in that sketch with purposely wearing a ridiculous beard and reading the line as over-the-top as possible is hilarious to me.
Here’s Carvey talking about “Pepper Boy”. He’s right, if you back to when Farley says his line, you can, hear Dana whisper to Adam in character “don’t-a break”.
That video seems dead, but Dana explains that same thing in this interview with Al Franken at 52:19:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DisXU36Q2DY&t=3139s
I think the Pepper Boy sketch loses me when Janeane kisses Dana and then the business at Tim Meadows’ table. I just can’t see the sexualizing of pepper. The funny angle is focusing on the distribution of pepper as an artform, and knowing exactly how much pepper the customers want. Sandler being an idiot who can’t learn the simple rules of pepper distribution is okay, but not the makings of a classic or all-time great sketch. I think it needed Farley’s insane delivery to spice it up, so to speak. His character here is still more realistic than Sandler’s. The epilogue script at the end is so dumb, it sounds like a fifth-grader wrote it.
From the old SNL newsgroup years ago, I remember that Bob Odenkirk was credited for the “Nobel Prize” sketch – apparently he had written it several years earlier, and it had been cut. Carvey must have liked and remembered it, though …
There is a sketch on Mr. Show not too far off this – a bloated awards show piece, I mean. The version in this episode is pretty rotten but then part of that is down to how rotted away SNL was in general around this point.
God, that awards sketch is putrid and totally pointless. And they passed up an obvious opportunity for them to do more crowd-pleasing Carvey recurring characters/impressions — like Wayne’s World or McLaughlan Group or Church Lady or any number of others. It had been working so well up to this point, but SNL overthought it and burned 10 minutes on an awful, tedious sketch like this. That’s on the writers and producers, not the cast.
Okay so apart from the terrible awards sketch I thought this was a strong episode.
Still haven’t watched the 4 or 5 notoriously bad episodes from this season, but have at this point seen most of the others and I’ve gotta say that I think this season was probably an improvement over 93/94 if you remove those handful of really bad episodes. McKean and Garofalo have been surprisingly solid from what I’ve seen, and I’ve really liked Elliott’s work. Those three newcomers, and later McKinney, brought some fresh new perspectives to the show that I think it needed. I’ve liked what I’ve seen from Kightlinger too, but she should have gotten more airtime. I’m also not nearly as put off by Spade this season as Stooge is. Jay Mohr has never been a favorite of mine, but I don’t mind him in small doses and the show hasn’t been too generous with his screen time (much to his chagrin).
I can see how for live viewers at the time it must have been a tough experience to endure those really bad episodes in real time, but for those of us now who can cherry pick the top half of the episodes I would say there’s quite a bit of worthwhile material. The median and especially top 5 episodes of season 20 are quite good and very competitive with a lot of other SNL seasons, IMO. Also, the musical guests have been consistently high quality this season, and I’m planning to review more of them if I can get around to it.
I read something recently that said some people at NBC were trying to force Lorne off the show during this season, or at least provide an excuse for the network to override his creative control. and one of their tactics was to get allies in the media to trash the show. I tend to believe in the conspiracy, and that the bad “buzz” in the media led people to from a negative impression of the season that has still lasted to this day. There were weaknesses there, certainly including the fact that Carvey, Hartman and other popular cast members were gone. But the season doesn’t seem to be as bad as its reputation.
Of course, it may also be that in retrospect this season remains closer to the classic style of the show before the next season’s retooling permanently altered the nature of the show into something far less intellectual and much more “extreme” in the worst sense of the term vis-à-vis the late ’90s.
Edie Brickell’s performance of Green here is one of my all time favorite musical performances from this time period. I think I actually the SNL performance to the studio version, which I also like a lot. Actually one of the more underrated semi-regular musical guests from that era.
Season 20 Episode 04 Dana Carvey
– I agree with the comments, Bush Sr. was very good. Almost a Rod Serlingesque delivery. He seemed very comfortable and had great timing. The cold open with Carvey as Bush was really good as well. Pardo getting the “Live from New York!”
– Virtual Books: Well, I didn’t like it that much. Concept seemed good but poorly executed in my opinion. Now I have read the comments and wondering if I was just being a D.
– Court TV with Carvey as Carson. McKean was fine as McMahon but the sketch was kind of weak and I normally liked Dana’s Carson impression. Just not into this one.
– Halloween with Perot. Hilarious as always and Carvey (Perot) picking on the kids that flubbed their lines was great. Finishing it with Nealon was the only slow spot. I will say that first kid that dressed like the Mummy was quite the overacting ham.
– Weekend Update, I found the OJ book theme to be underwhelming, I wonder if I liked it then…I cannot recall. I score Norm with more misses than hits, but Franken’s commentary was hilarious. Hans and Frans were one of the best, feel-good segments so far this year. Hilarious stuff and they had a history of hit and miss–not this time!
– Pepper Boys. Carvey and Sandler are tip top here. Loved this stuff then and still love it. Thanks for the links above!
– Nobel Prize Show: Goodness, the Tom Skerritt thing is what is being played in Hell’s elevator. I didn’t like much of anything other than JAG as Mary Lou Retton which was just good relative to the rest of the garbage. I forgot how much I didn’t like Paula Poundstone–this brings it back. Another reason maybe I didn’t like Kightlinger? She only plays Marcia Clark, randoms, and now Paula Poundstone.
– Made Up Stories. It was ok.
– Milton. Funny stuff of course.
Best sketch of the Week: Going with Pepper Boys
Worst sketch of the week: Nobel Prize
Best performer of the week: Dana Carvey of course, SNL honors go to Adam Sandler.
Worst performer of the week: My boy Jay Mohr. One sketch and it’s a bad Hank Azaria imitation in the Nobel Prize sketch…I just read Gasping for Airtime again a few minutes ago to see if he mentions this, he does not.
I’ve been morbidly fascinated with season 20 these last couple of weeks, watching some of the more notorious episodes on Archive.org.
This episode and Travolta are a nice one-two punch after a dismal two-fer at the top of the season (I’m not as big on the Tomei episode as others seem to be). Carvey carries the show and shows he hadn’t lost his step in the year and a half since his departure.
I’m glad there was no Wayne’s World in this episode, it would just feel odd seeing it in this particular era. If I recall correctly, Mike and Dana do stand beside each other at one point during the Goodnights, as if to potentially stifle any rumors of bad blood at the time.
Amazingly, while it does have some of the worst indulgences of a typical overlong ‘awards show’ sketch, I don’t think the Nobel Prize Awards is a total disaster the way the ESPY’s sketch is. It does have a few things going for it – despite the writing not being there, Carvey’s Shandling is funny, and I’m a sucker for Franken’s Kissinger (especially him laughing at the Denver announcement). That said, Jay’s scene is atrociously hack-y and had me rolling my eyes. I know he was more than likely trying to just capture Grodin’s deadpan manner, but even Nealon looks genuinely miserable having to endure it with the rest of the us.
Dana’s Gary Shandling impression is funny.