Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
SIMPSON JURY FIELD TRIP
O.J. Simpson (TIM) sways jurors during a field trip to his house
— Tim’s O.J. letting Ellen keep his Heisman Trophy is pretty funny.
— Ha, Mark takes over Mike Myers’ Judge Ito impression. Something about that re-casting cracks me up, for some reason.
— Just now, the party music was cued up too early and then quickly stopped.
— Not all that much to laugh at here overall, but I guess this had kind of a charm to it and was harmless enough. Maybe I’m just being somewhat lenient towards this because I know what tonight’s episode has in store for me.
STARS: **½
MONOLOGUE
(no synopsis available)
— My god, Deion’s exaggerated, corny delivery of “About a week ago, Lorne Michaels calls me up!!!” was CRINGEWORTHY.
— Deion equating SNL to a football team is awful.
— Hmm, interesting how during his “SNL is a football team” analogy, he calls SNL “a rebuilding effort”. I see SNL is acknowledging the rough year they’ve been having.
— Overall, not a single laugh to be had here, thus beginning the pure hell that is this episode.
STARS: *
MAJOR LEAGUE PLAYERS ASSOCIATION
other sources of income allow host to promote baseball strike solidarity
— My god, EVERY SINGLE TIME Deion lowers his hand on the podium (which he does at the end of EVERY sentence), his wristwatch makes a loud and distracting “clunk” sound on the podium’s wood. Every single time. The fact that there have been zero laughs in this sketch so far makes the “clunk” sounds even more noticeable.
— Boy, is Deion fumbling through his lines throughout this.
— Enough with the running gag with Deion’s ringing cellphone.
— This sketch is DEAD so far.
— Not even Farley’s John Kruk is doing anything for me here.
— Deion, in one of his many line flubs: “…..do what we can to make men’s ends meet.” Closest I’ve come to laughing at this whole damn sketch.
— Now we get a lousy newspaper headline ending, one of SNL’s laziest go-to sketch-ending tropes.
STARS: *
THE 1995 ESPY AWARDS
sports honors with John Goodman (CHF); Manute Bol cameo
— I love Chris Elliott and I love what he’s been bringing to SNL this season, but he’s no impressionist, as his take on Chris Berman is showing.
— The bit with Elliott’s Berman doing gimmicky variations of athlete’s surnames is just plain stupid, and not in the funny way.
— Speaking of lousy celebrity impressions, Farley as John Goodman.
— The constant cutaways to the same stock footage of a laughing Lou Diamond Phillips sums up season 20’s habit of relying on one joke over and over. Same goes for Farley-as-Goodman’s constant “The Mets suck” jokes.
— Speaking of lousy celebrity impressions, Adam as Bobcat Goldthwait.
— Random casting of Jon Bon Jovi, who looks almost unrecognizable here.
— Speaking of lousy celebrity impressions, EVERYONE ELSE IN THIS SKETCH.
— Oof, Manute Bol should’ve just left his SNL camoes one-and-done with his funny Majestic Caribbean Cruise commercial from the preceding season. He could barely get through his one line in tonight’s sketch without stumbling over practically EVERY SINGLE word.
— This sketch is death personified. How long can this overlong, laughless tripe continue to go on?
— Oh, now we’re getting insulting and sexist, with Jay’s Dick Vitale screaming angrily about how women’s basketball is “not a real sport”. This is another bit in this sketch that sums up some of the problems of season 20. Oh, and even better, we soon end up getting an entire fucking sketch based on the “who cares about women’s basketball?” sentiment, when Paul Reiser hosts a few episodes later.
— The bizarre award show categories are just plain dumb, even if that’s the point. “Biggest stadium”??? WTF? This ain’t funny.
— Janeane’s Susan Sarandon, regarding a list she and Mark’s Tim Robbins are about to read off: “If you think sitting through this list will be excruciating torture…..” No, Janeane, excruciating torture would be sitting through this sketch.
— Overall, a quintessential example of SNL’s poor track record with award show sketches. Probably the all-time worst award show sketch in SNL history.
STARS: *
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Always”
WEEKEND UPDATE
Operaman sings about Colin Ferguson, Demi Moore, Brad Pitt, more
— Here comes Norm to give me my first big laughs of the whole night.
— TONS of O.J. jokes tonight, most of them gold.
— Our first instance of what would go on to be a recurring Norm gag, with the punchline of a joke being Norm flashing a whole bunch of money while greedily saying “Don’t I know it!”
— Operaman makes his first appearance in a year, and his final appearance during Adam’s tenure as a cast member. Feels odd seeing him in a Norm Macdonald Update, as I’m so used to seeing him in Kevin Nealon Updates.
— Operaman is on fire tonight.
— Ha, Norm has a bad habit of often accidentally referring to Adam Sandler Update characters as “Adam Sandler” before correcting himself.
— I love hearing the audience reaction to Norm’s so-wrong-but-priceless “Best retard” joke about Tom Hanks and Jodie Foster.
STARS: ****½
JUGGERNAUT FORCE
mission into UFO leaves macho commandos naked, defensive, emasculated
— A particularly notorious sketch from this already notorious episode.
— Holy hell, there goes the famous blooper with Farley’s accidental mooning when his pants fall off (the sixth above screencap for this sketch). I’m certainly laughing, but it’s a sad day when the sight of Farley’s bare entire ass is one of the very few highlights of an episode.
— Speaking of which, when talking about this Farley mooning incident in his SNL book, Jay Mohr says that as Farley pulled his pants back up, Farley accidentally hit his head on the top of the spaceship’s entrance, resulting in him yelling “SON OF A!”
— Ugh at all the gay panic and typical season 20 homophobia in this sketch.
— My god (have I said that enough in this review?), the tedious, non-stop cutaways to newspaper headlines is driving me INSANE. I understand that SNL is probably showing all of those headlines so the cast can do quick changes, but at least make the headlines HUMOROUS.
— Now Elliott almost has an accidental mooning incident of his own, as his pants almost fall down as he’s running up the spaceship stairs, and you can almost see his crack.
— This sketch feels ENDLESS and just keeps getting worse and worse and worse as it progresses.
— I swear to God, if they show one more newspaper headline…
— Finally, this abomination is over.
STARS: *
RAP CONCERT
rappers (host), (TIM), (ADS) perform short songs with simple lyrics
— Hoo, boy. Every time it seems like a sketch is the lowest that tonight’s episode can sink, SNL manages to keep outdoing themselves by following it with a new worst sketch that would go to live on in infamy.
— Michael introduces himself as “JD Smooth”. I’ll leave it to you to figure out why that name is interesting in retrospect.
— Speaking of Michael, what the bloody hell is he, of all people, doing playing an urban, hip-hop character in a setting like this? Or is it an intentional throwaway joke that such a character is played by the oldest, whitest guy in the cast?
— This sketch was originally cut after dress rehearsal from the preceding season’s Martin Lawrence episode. In that version, I believe Rob Schneider played McKean’s role.
— What’s with the odd, awkward long pause just now before Tim spoke?
— “Peace, we outta here” as the only joke repeated a billion times in a four-minute sketch…… Goddammit, SNL. The only good thing about this is that it gave the That Week In SNL podcast their immortal sign-off line.
— Ladies and gentlemen, I am practically comatose by this point of tonight’s episode. The horribleness of tonight’s episode has officially broken me.
STARS: who gives a fuck anymore?
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Someday I’ll Be Saturday Night”
PERSPECTIVES
Lionel Osbourne & director of boys’ athletic club (host)
— Finally, a silver lining.
— Nice to see this sketch officially become recurring.
— Oh, dear. The awful character voice Deion is speaking in is threatening to derail this sketch. Don’t ruin my precious Perspectives, Deion!
— The whole bit with the five New York boroughs is really funny.
— Great bit at the end regarding an immediate rebroadcast of this episode of Perspectives.
— Overall, a solid sketch in itself, but Deion’s dreadful delivery in this (which I admit I might’ve considered “so bad, it’s good” in a better episode) made this not quite as strong as it otherwise would’ve been.
STARS: ***½
HOT DOG FOR JASON
to help a sick boy (CHF), host hotdogs & taunts opponents during a game
— Unlike many of the other atrocious sketches tonight, there’s nothing all that wrong with this sketch’s premise, but the resulting sketch is still a complete flop and is providing zero laughs. I’m sure an episode with better writing could’ve gotten SOMETHING out of this premise.
— I can’t find anything else to say about this. By this point of tonight’s episode, I’ve completely run out of negative things to say about bad sketches tonight.
STARS: blaaagh
RAPPING DEION
host performs “Must Be The Money” & “It’s On”
— OH. MY. GOD.
— Deion’s blatant lipsyncing, his ridiculous spastic “dancing”, his outfit, the attitude he’s attempting to pull off, the mere idea to even give him a segment like this… all of this is making this the unintentionally funniest segment of tonight’s entire episode.
GOODNIGHTS
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— …………………………………………………………………..Yeah, I got nothin’. I’m pretty much speechless after sitting through this unbelievable trainwreck of an episode. Worst episode ever? It certainly may be.
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Bob Newhart)
the biggest step down imaginable
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
George Clooney hosts. It’s also the abrupt end of the road for a frustrated Janeane Garofalo, as well as the beginning of the road for a certain new female hire.
Comedy Central cut “Juggernaut Force” from the 60 minute version of this episode so I haven’t seen it since the live airing. Sounds even worse than I remember.
I’m sure younger people would question Sanders as a host but he was arguably the most popular athlete in the country at this point (Jordan was just returning to basketball). He had been the first star athlete to take advantage of free agency in the NFL which was instituted a few years prior. He signed with the 49ers this year and they won the Super Bowl. He would sign with Dallas soon after this and they would win the Super Bowl the next year. So yeah an all time abomination of a host but I see why they went with him to a degree.
Always liked the Clooney episode coming up next
And there it is. The bottom. The worst of the worst. I’m catatonic just thinking about this episode. But it could be worse. We could have Brian Doyle Murray doing a 17-minute news segment. Thank God for Norm.
When Bon Jovi is the most consistent part of your show, you know you have problems.
Laura has a new wig for her Marcia Clark impression, I wonder if that was due to the real Marcia’s sudden makeover around this time.
Janeane continues her struggle by only appearing in three sketches as opposed to the two from last week. It’s a shame your copy doesn’t show the full goodnights(I assume), because Janeane is way in the back in her floral shirt swaying to the music seemingly drunk. Although, she was just in a sketch before so maybe just tipsy.
“Best Retard” so wrong, but so funny.
Ehh this show’s enjoyable if you shut your brain off and just enjoy how bad it is.. it had no chance due to an athlete being the host they just tried to make it fun.
The ESPY skit’s awkward as hell but a fun disaster. Sandler as Goldwait is one of the worst impressions i’ve ever seen on the show yet it’s extremely hilarious for some odd reason. “It’s like the fingeernaills of a DEAD PERSON!” Laura and Mark’s Surrandon and Robbins wasn’t bad either.
That Operaman bit on Update I’ve always found kinda bittersweet as it was the last one.. shame it took them so long to do one in between.
I seen the Alien Skit both in the re-run and the live version.. I believe they cut out the butt shot but I 100% can’t remember, I know the part when Farley comes out they left in. It’s funnier for me live.
Besides that yeah it’s pretty bad but again if you have the right POV it’s watchable.
Thankfully up next is the Clooney show which is my favorite from that whole season.. Clooney was very game as the host and there’s some fun skits in the mix, plus Shannon debuts and is miles better off the bat than JG ever was.
Michael Jordan aced his only hosting stint. Barkley was decent too, it had nothing to do with athletes hosting.
Also, that was Janeane playing Sarandon, not Laura.
I’d still put this above Reiser and SJP, as is it at least a trainwreck with some energy, albeit a very coarse kind. I can’t help enjoying the gawdy spectacle of his performance, complete with sheer shirt, pornographic crotch thrusts, and cookie cutter “video vixens.” At first I thought this number was some kind of parody, especially since the man he raps with has a passing resemblance to Mad TV’s Aries Spears. You have to laugh at the memory of Lorne’s high standards from past years when you think of him allowing this performance on the main stage.
Deion’s first song is an…erm…variation of “Must be the Music” by Secret Weapon – a much better song to say the least.
The sketches are almost all terrible. Even Perspectives is nearly ruined by Sanders’ atrocious attempts at comedy – why he didn’t just say his lines, I don’t know. I guess no one was going to tell him how to perform. Beyond that, this cold open is a bit of a guilty pleasure for me, even if it was probably just an excuse for the men of the bad boy era to have lots of babes around. Mark McKinney’s Ito is much more enjoyable for me than Mike’s was, even if they are basically playing the same joke, so seeing him dancing around before declaring OJ a free man was good fun.
The awards show sketch has approximately one moment I enjoyed, even though even in 1995 it was hackneyed – the spoof on Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins being awards show scolds. The bit with FloJo explaining why nails seem long on a corpse was also a good piece of dark humor snuck in. The rest is garbage. As no one was in brownface, I’d still put this above the Dana Carvey awards show. Apparently someone was so amused with the ‘joke’ of Lou Diamond Phillips laughing at every bad line that they would repeat it 15 years later with a Brendan Fraser clip in the dubious “public employee awards” sketch with Gabby Sidibe.
Over these 4 seasons, Opera Man moved more and more into a way for Sandler to have fun with his favorite topics and riff on himself (similar to what we got when he hosted). This was a good final appearance for him, even if it wasn’t intended that way. Considering Lorne had nothing to do with Billy Madison I’m surprised he let him plug the movie.
My final thought is that it’s more than a little sad to see all the black extras in episodes like this and George Foreman (and later, Damon Wayans), knowing how much the show had retreated from an attempt at diversity, and would further retreat over the next few seasons.
Pretty incredible that Billy Madison and Tommy Boy came out within a month of each other. A year later Happy Gilmore and Black Sheep were released with a week of each other
I need an oral history of just this episode. What the hell happened? I don’t think you can use this as an example of the poor quality of this season (Bob Saget fits that mold better). This is a special kind of bad. The show has had plenty of athlete hosts but nobody like Neon Deion. Just this season we had George Foreman but they cast him as himself the whole show. Why did they decide to let Deion act? The final sketch of the night was a perfect way to use him (mock his celebrity persona while limiting his actual screen time) but instead they just let him do whatever he wanted, including rapping in pink pants. What was the feeling during the week and right after dress rehearsal? Good lord, what was cut at dress rehearsal if this is what made it to the show? Was Deion a nice guy? I hope so, it would be terrible if he was a jerk all week and they spent 90 minutes trying desperately to make him look good. Has anyone ever seen if Deion himself has commented on this?
I would also love an oral history for this episode. I looked a bit and couldn’t find any comments.
What’s interesting is if you just came across this episode in a vacuum, you might reach the conclusion that the people worth retaining would be Norm and Tim (for WU and Perspectives), who, of course, did stay.
Promo for this episode.
The MLB strike sketch probably could’ve worked with a more likable host (say if Michael Jordan had made it to the majors in his time away from basketball). Farley actually looks more like John Kruk here than the first time he portrayed him, though I’m not sure why he’d be attending such a meeting in uniform. Guess it was so the audience could more easily recognize who it was.
At the time, the ESPY Awards were seen as a joke as opposed to the big deal they’ve become. I can see what they were going for, but it just didn’t work. I’d forgotten how bad some of those impressions were.
Agree with you on the casting of Michael McKean on the rappers sketch. They could’ve gone with him being a holdover from a prior station format (adding “formerly Soft Rock 97” or whatever the hell station number it was), but it was what it was.
I wonder how Deion Sanders himself feels about this episode. He’s quite a bit more humble now than he was back then. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard him address it one way or another.
I’m so glad Janeane Garofalo’s last episode is up next. I can’t stand that woman.
Yeah same here.. she was a waste of a cast spot and added nothing the whole year. The whole toxic stuff she started in the media helped the season 0%..
Shannon comes in and helps right off the bat, she shoulda had her spot to begin with.
How dare you sir.
This is a mess of an episode, but I still think SJP and Paul Reiser are worse when it comes to actual enjoyment. Some parts of this episode are so mindblowingly awful that their awfulness becomes funny (Must Be the Money) but that kinda makes it worse in terms of principle.
I always wonder what Lorne was thinking while watching this week unfold. Did *he* think these episodes were funny?
Deion Sanders is MC Hammer’s friend, and was a client of his Roll Wit It Entertainment & Sports Management. That’s why Sanders’ “Prime Time” alter ego features heavily in the MTV-friendly version of Hammer’s “Pumps and a Bump” video, and also why Hammer wears an Atlanta Falcons jersey in it…though when this aired, Sanders was a San Francisco 49er and MC Hammer’s career as a musical superstar was in its death spiral.
Sanders’ display in pink pants promoted his “Prime Time” album, which was on MC Hammer’s record label (Bust It Records). I must repeat this for emphasis: THIS. PROMOTED. HIS. ALBUM. At least with “Straight To My Feet” from the Street Fighter soundtrack, Sanders isn’t the main focus. Here, Sanders gets secondary musical guest treatment on Saturday Night Live for that drawl-singing and talking about how li-bary cards change into credit cards. It’s the piss topping on this episode’s shit sundae.
At the end of Billy Madison after his speech he ends it with “PEACE, IM OUTTA HERE!” in a similar way, making me think thats gotta be a sketch Sandler wrote. Has his “so stupid its funny” trademark, but its one of his rare SNL misfires. Maybe it could’ve worked with a funnier host, though I dont know if Martin Lawrence mugging up a storm would’ve made it any better hah
Norm’s Weekend Updates are the savior of this season, its just a shame he stopped doing sketches this season, they really could’ve used him since he has the ability to save even the weakest sketches just by bringing his Normness to anything.
Sandler also says “Peace, I’m outta here!” in Funny People after his character finishes a stand up set
“Juggernaut Force” is basically something that a couple of junior high kids would write in the back of a study hall goofing off on a Friday afternoon.
How in the world did Lorne let that air?!?!?!?
“Juggernaut Force” is so bad that Elliott & Garofalo both specifically single it out in the LFNY book as an example of the type of humor they hated that was so prominent this season. I still would have to call it the better of SNL’s 2 disastrous ‘gay alien rape’ sketches (God, why did they go BACK to that well?) since the Knoxville one has NOTHING going for it, and this at least that Farley blooper (and, though I’m certainly not proud, I did get a minor chuckle from Spade’s “I was kicking ass and taking names, they weren’t probing ass and taking turns.”)
Also interesting to note RE: Garofalo and the LFNY book is how Fred Wolf (who likely wrote “Juggernaut Force”) talks about her. Others sound like they had issues with her but come off far more diplomatic (like Jim Downey) but Wolf just goes off on her and unintentionally makes himself look like an ass in the process. By the end of his rant he’s talking about how women aren’t as successful on the show because of “genetic makeup”. Ugh.
“Juggernaut Force”, even as a young adult who loved South Park, was the one SNL sketch that will forever be etched in my memory as the worst ever. I just remember watching it and thinking that SNL had hit its nadir. I couldn’t even muster a laugh. Resorting to male rape and emasculation as humor was the red flag of desperation. And Deion’s ego just made it 10 times worse. It made Dice Clay’s SNL appearance look like comedy gold.
I remember my 12 year old self thinking the “Peace! We outta here!” gag was really funny…but then I watched it again knowing you were reviewing this episode (somehow this sketch is on NBC.com) 🙂 and…wow, it was bad! Terrible. This was a tough episode, I hated Deion even back then (I hated both the Niners and the Cowboys) and he comes across way too arrogant and unlikable here.
Agree on all of his except the comment about Elliot not being an impressionist. Check him on Late Night imitating Paul Shaffer, Leno or Morton Downey Jr
Kind of a random thought, but I’m wondering if Deion was originally slated to play Tim’s role in Juggernaut Force. In the end, nothing would improve it, but at least there’s the idea of the host being on the same level of most of the men, rather than as the straight man.
Wow I always thought the ESPY award show and Juggernaut Force sketches were some of the funniest. My brother and I still reference them all the time even over 27 years later. Farley’s constant bad mets jokes followed by the same cut of Lou Diamond Phillips, Manute Bol telling everyone he wasn’t actually the tallest player, the soldiers being terrified to admit they enjoyed gay sex, hilarious.
Juggernaut Force is to gay humor what Commie Hunting Season is to racial humor.
“Hurr durr n-word funny” becomes “Hurr durr male rape funny.”
Screw You Bon Jovi, According to SNL, Deion Sanders was the musical guest
A bad episode the only way is up eh