Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
A STATEMENT FROM JUDGE ITO
Judge Ito (MAM) reciprocates Alfonse D’Amato’s racial stereotype
— I’m cracking up at Mark-as-Judge-Ito’s constant “I do naaaat (not)…”s (e.g. “I do naaaat speak in a stereotypical Japanese accent”).
— I loved Ito’s passing comment abut Italians: “I’m a judge and I see A LOT of them coming through my courtroom.”
— A funny gag with Ito doing a stereotypical impression of Alfonse D’Amato’s sister making love to a mule.
— I like Ito’s nasal laughing after his stereotypical impression.
— A simple cold opening that was short and sweet.
STARS: ***½
OPENING MONTAGE
— Morwenna Banks has been added to the cast tonight, joining as a repertory player.
The way Morwenna’s picture is displayed epitomizes my problem with how the cast’s pictures are projected onto objects in this season’s opening montage. Morwenna’s picture is projected onto a freakin’ TRASH CAN, for crying out loud. A trash can, people!
— There are so many odd things about the hiring of Morwenna, some of which include: 1) the fact that she’s been hired so late into the season. There are only four episodes left this season, and a much-needed overhaul of the cast and writing staff is obviously around the corner. So why waste time hiring somebody new at this point? I’ve heard that Morwenna previously had fame in the U.K. from being on a sketch comedy show, so I wonder if maybe Lorne felt hiring a U.K. sketch comedy veteran was the shot in the arm that this troubled season needed. 2) This season’s female cast is already underused and disrespected enough. How is adding a FOURTH female to the cast going to change that? 3) The mid-season hirings of Mark McKinney and Molly Shannon made sense, as they were each replacing an about-to-depart cast member (Mike Myers and Janeane Garofalo, respectively). Morwenna, on the other hand, isn’t replacing anyone. 4) Morwenna is one of the very rare U.K. accent-having cast members in SNL history. I believe Pamela Stephenson from season 10 is the only other one, unless I’m forgetting someone.
MONOLOGUE
DAW does stand-up about African-Americans’ undesirable job assignments
— Damon’s imitations of a black reporter in the worst situations to report from are funny, especially the tornado bit.
— Some other really funny imitations of black people in bad occupations. I’m getting a lot of laughs here.
STARS: ****
BATHROOM MONKEY
— Rerun from 10/15/94.
— Oh, and by the way… WHY IN THE WORLD ARE THEY RE-AIRING A JANEANE GAROFALO-STARRING COMMERCIAL?!??! Last time I checked, Janeane hasn’t been in the cast since the George Clooney episode. So why re-air a fake ad where the only person featured is a recently-quit cast member who’s not credited in the opening montage anymore? Makes no sense at all. They must REALLY be hurting for fake ads to rerun. There hasn’t been a new pre-taped fake ad since Amazin’ Laser way back in January, nor do we end up getting any new ones for the remainder of the season. Did SNL just give up on these?
CAMP UJAAMA
African-American day campers’ names come from dictionary & supermarket
— The first camper name Ellen calls out is Akeyla, which is her real-life daughter’s name.
— Some good laughs from the names of the black children so far. I especially love the name Spina Bifida.
— Okay, after you’ve gotten the point of this sketch, the same joke just keeps going on and on with no escalation or variation to the humor.
— Okay, I did get a big laugh from Farley’s delivery of the name Karma Karma Karma Karma Karma Chameleon.
— All-in-all, despite the joke getting one-note after a while, they didn’t keep this sketch going TOO long and the overall sketch was harmless and enjoyable enough.
STARS: ***
MEN ON FILM
Blaine Edwards (DAW), Roger Ebert (CHF), Antoine Merriweather (David Alan Grier)
— Feels odd seeing an In Living Color character being brought to SNL.
— Damon’s character is dressed as an effeminate cop. There’s a theory among some SNL fans that this outfit of Damon’s is intended as a subtle nod to his improvised gay cop routine that got him fired from SNL when he was a cast member in season 11.
— Interesting pairing of Damon’s Blaine Edwards character and Roger Ebert.
— And there’s the famous “Haaated iiiiit!” catchphrase.
— Ha, I like the audience going “Awww” when Farley’s Roger Ebert looks depressed after Blaine calls him out on his weight problem.
— Not sure if the concept of Blaine “turning” Ebert gay has aged well, but judging it by 1995 standards, there’s a fun enough chemistry between Blaine and gay Ebert.
— David Alan Grier cameo!
STARS: ***½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “I Know”
WEEKEND UPDATE
Jeff Foxworthy (DAS) tells you how to know if you’re the Ebola virus
ADS tries to get recently-released Mike Tyson to beat up people for him
— Oh, god, the return of David’s tepid Jeff Foxworthy bit after only TWO EPISODES?!?
— Boy, David has pretty much given up in the middle of this weak commentary, not even finishing some of his punchlines. I don’t even know why I’m surprised; David’s been half-assing performances pretty much all season long.
— There’s Norm’s famous joke about the winner of the category for worst job being “…………crackwhore.”
— We’ve reached the late stage of Adam’s tenure where he starts wearing glasses as himself all the time.
— Adam’s commentary has some good laughs.
— Great ending to Adam’s commentary, with him informing Mike Tyson about the mean jokes that Norm has told about him on Update, only for Norm to panickedly deny being Norm Macdonald and then signing off with “I’m Kevin Nealon, and that’s news to me.”
STARS: ****
STILES MONROE
(KEN) & (MOS) get drenched by excess saliva of jazz trumpeter (DAW)
— As I’ve seen pointed out once, it’s absolutely surreal in retrospect to see Kevin Nealon and Molly Shannon paired together, two cast members who are now heavily associated with two very different eras that are far separated from each other (the late 80s era for Kevin, and the late 90s era for Molly).
— (*groan*) This lousy premise is pure season 20. The type of weak, juvenile, gross-out, fluid-spurting humor this season has a reputation for over-relying on.
— This sketch has been going on and on with little-to-no laughs from me.
STARS: *½
THE SIMPSON TRIAL
homeless Anton Jackson (DAW) testifies at the O.J. Simpson trial
— Our second In Living Color character of the night. It’s particularly fun seeing this character on SNL.
— Ha, they have an extra playing O.J. (since Tim is busy playing a different role in this sketch). I don’t know why I find that hilarious.
— As expected, Damon is getting some big laughs in this.
— Tim’s Johnny Cochran impression is completely different here from the famous one he would later do in the first cold opening of the upcoming season 21.
— I liked Kevin’s ending line about Homey the Clown.
— This ends up being the final of many season 20 O.J. Trial sketches.
STARS: ***½
PERSPECTIVES
the logistics of a black militant’s (DAW) upcoming march
— Glad to see this sketch being done with an actual competent SNL host playing a guest, after Deion Sanders almost completely derailed the last installment of this sketch.
— Good characterization from Damon.
— As always, lots of funny foolish questions and statements from Tim’s Lionel Osborne. I especially love the whole bit regarding the rain date.
STARS: ****
CIRQUE DU SOLEIL
Cirque du Soleil performers (MAM), (CSE), (MWB) offer animal-free acts
— Great makeup on Mark.
— Well, I can already tell early on that THIS is certainly going to be an out-of-the-ordinary piece. I’m interested.
— Morwenna Banks is just now making her first SNL appearance (and only appearance of the entire night) pretty late in tonight’s episode. That’s already a sign of how invisible she’ll be in her insanely short-lived SNL tenure.
— A few minutes into this, and Mark has been providing my ONLY laughs of this sketch, with his straight-to-camera interjections. I really WANT to like this sketch, as not only is it Morwenna’s first big showcase, but it features both absurd humor and Chris Elliott, two things that usually mix together beautifully. But almost NOTHING is working for me in this sketch.
— Put this on the list of many season 20 sketches where SNL uses a fancy and impressive-looking setting but forgot to write any actual funny material for it.
— I kinda felt embarrassed for Damon imitating the Cirque du Soleil members at the end.
STARS: *½
DEEP THOUGHTS BY JACK HANDEY
CHRISTOPHER WALKEN FOR SKITTLES
Christopher Walken (JAM) endorses Skittles
— Here’s a famous sketch from this season.
— Hilarious concept for Jay’s Christopher Walken impression.
— I love how he occasionally keeps saying random Skittles flavors in between his statements.
— Haha, the exaggerated long pauses from Jay’s Walken throughout this are slaying me. I recall Jay saying in his SNL book that when he arrived backstage after this sketch was finished, he was met by Lorne, who, instead of congratulating Jay on the laughs he got in the sketch, complained to him about how overlong he dragged the sketch out with his lengthy pauses. Just one of many stories that fits the “Woe is me” / “I just can’t catch a break at SNL” narrative that Jay was pushing hard in his book.
STARS: ****
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Blackbird”
TOM JONES BRIEFS
Tony Bennett (JAM) offers Tom Jones’ (ADS) used underwear for sale
— Two lead roles in a row for Jay Mohr, a huge rarity for him.
— Adam doing a typically Adam Sandler-esque “impression” of Tom Jones.
— Speaking of Jay’s Christopher Walken impression a little earlier in this review, the way Jay’s Tony Bennett is getting “angered” over the lack of phone calls reminds me way too much of the running bit in the Celebrity Psychic Friends sketches where his Christopher Walken complains in a deadpan manner over how “upset” he is over the lack of phone calls.
— A tepid sketch, and I’m not getting many laughs so far.
— All of the underwear stains being displayed seems like typical season 20 lowbrow, juvenile humor (and also reminds me a bit of Elliott Gould’s season 6 monologue… which is definitely not a pleasant thing to be compared to, in my opinion).
STARS: *½
GOODNIGHTS
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— An episode with a pretty good first half, but a very mixed second half where there was an equal amount of really solid things and really lousy things. Damon Wayans was a pretty fun host, and it was nice to see SNL using him more to his full potential after often wasting his talents during his cast member days in season 11.
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (John Goodman)
a mild step down
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
Courteney Cox, our first female host in what feels like ages
Aside from Skittles, the best parts of this episode are when Damon brought back ILC characters. The “turning Ebert gay” bit in Men on Film made me kinda uncomfortable, but whatever. Pretty okay show by this season’s standards.
The Jeff Foxworthy bit is bizarre because I can’t think of another time where someone just full on gave up mid-performance like that. Really surprising that Spade was one of the holdovers into S21, as much as I like him.
Morwenna is another bizarre thing. I would have liked to see more of her, but I don’t understand the rationale behind her hiring either. The only explanation is maybe Lorne didn’t know NBC would make him fire everyone for S21? Awful decision on his part of he was really gonna hire someone for four episodes and then barely use her.
I think they brought back Spade to ease the audience into the transition to the new cast
Yeah, Spade was just a safety valve. A little bit of continuity and star power to hold things down while the new crew found their footing.
Somebody asked why he was brought back for s 21 the other day but I’ll bet Fred Wolf returned in part to appease Spade. A favor for Spade staying on to help the new cast.
Iirc, Wolf only lasted a handful of eps. in Season 22 before leaving the show
It was so weird that they kept Spade around for continuity and to help bolster the new cast…and then he proceeded to only appear in Spade In America sketches, by himself mostly and never interact with the other cast members…bizarre.
Tomorrow’s episode has my pick for one of the absolute lowest sketches in SNL history.
After reading in that New York article about a table leg propping up Mark McKinney’s picture, I’m not surprised to see Banks’ photo projected onto a garbage can. It’s what I’d expect SNL to do after its critical ravaging at this point. “You like ‘smarter’ humour? You want more diversity and less ‘boys’ club’? HERE YOU GO, GUV’NAH! *loud fart*”
The British SNL variant Banks was on, Saturday Live/Friday Night Live, isn’t an exact equivalent to SNL. She was a regular on Absolutely (Channel 4, 1989-91 and 1993) – she’ll debut her Little Girl character from that show for SNL in the Saget/TLC episode. Beyond that, she’s the invisible repertory player this season. I assume someone saw her guest on Red Dwarf or something.
Ah…Morwenna Banks…one of the most baffling hires and mysterious and short-lived repertory cast members in the show’s history.
Season 20, you amaze me once again! 😉
I don’t have much to say about this episode. Like Stooge, I agree that it is pretty mixed (first half good…second half bad). I do love Perspectives though. Tim always did a good job with it (I don’t think it do it many more times). The skit here that stood out to me the most as a kid was the calling all the absurd names at the field trip. I liked it. It is pretty one-note, but the performances are good, and it is *just* the right length.
Perspectives appears four more times, Dec. 95 (David Alan Grier), Nov 96 (Chris Rock), April 97 (Rob Lowe but Tim and Tracy Morgan), and Nov 97 (Rudy Giuliani).
I must have seen this episode at the time, though I wasn’t watching the show at this point, as I remember laughing out loud at the CAMP UJAAMA skit. If I remember correctly, one of the kids was named “Ibuprofen”…lol.
Like I said on John’s show it’s a shame Damon only hosted once.. he shoulda been a multiple host even a 5 timer. It coulda restored some goodwill plus it wouldn’t have put SNL and ILC neck and neck. Guess Lorne still had some ill will.
Still this one ended up being not too bad.. this was the first late night SNL re-run I’ve ever watched so I’m kinda nostalgic over it. First half was the best, but 2nd half has some intresting moments. This was the test point for Mohr to see if he had it.. the Walken scene was fun but the other not so much.. this lead to his plagiarism saga sadly.
The plagiarism incident occurred in the Reiser show, two episodes before this.
Morwenna was on a few episodes of HBO’s “Dream On” around this same time, which also starred Michael McKean – I wonder if he suggested her for SNL (or if they met here and he helped her get the Dream On part).
This is one of those episodes I enjoyed more on second viewing. I think the first time my expectations were too high – and I was also hoping he might mention his stint on the show.
The cold open is very Myers-esque on paper, but McKinney’s performance is much more to the point.
The monologue feels a bit warmed-over to me, with the audience at times seemingly laughing more because they’re meant to than from genuine amusement, but his delivery makes the material work most of the time. The part about the black astronauts left behind made me remember a “moments in black history” piece about a decade later with, I think, Finesse Mitchell?
The names sketch is one of those that makes me squirm a bit, as it’s mostly just “lol black children have funny names,” although by most season 20 standards this was restrained, and at least it was mostly performed (and presumably written) by black comedians. On the other hand, I wasn’t bothered by the Men on Film sketch, even though maybe I should have been – the tone was mostly light and the performances were very good (Farley being pleasantly restrained). David Alan Grier steals the show in his brief cameo – you can see why Lorne had him host the very next season. He’s a natural. I will say I was a bit surprised they got the comment about Travolta in.
I have to defend the Cirque sketch a little. I have no idea how it even got on the air, honestly, but the commitment from everyone involved, especially Morwenna Banks with her first (and as it turns out one of her last) pieces on the show being this bizarre blend of pretention and pratfall that is so unlike 98% of anything on SNL before or since. It’s another glimpse of just what a different flavor Elliott and McKinney would have brought to the show if they’d been given the chance.
This Perspectives is great. Initially I was a little disappointed when I realized Damon was not playing his ILC character (the prisoner who thinks he’s a genius but constantly gets all the words wrong), but the rewatch made me appreciate his performance, and of course, the wonderful work from Tim. The writing is also sharper here than in the last two installments.
I would have rather seen Homey the Clown (imagine him let loose on the bad boys), but the OJ sketch is still pretty fun. An entire season of these sketches, with a doubling down probably unequalled until the Lewinsky seasons, yet other than the episodes fronted by famous comedians, did any of them ever really work?
I would actually agree with Lorne about the pauses being too long in the Walken sketch. I probably enjoyed Jay’s Tony Bennett more in this episode, even if the makeup looked nothing like him.
Dionne Ferris’ cover of “Blackbird” was just perfection. Always nice to see this type of calming performance on the show.
Interesting thing about Lorne scolding Jay Mohr for the long pauses. Jay claimed in his book that his dress rehearsal version of the Christopher Walken Skittles sketch was about 45 seconds long. But he also claims that the reason why Lorne scolded Jay was because the live sketch was almost 90 seconds long, when he told Jay to keep it under a full minute. I watched the sketch recently out of curiosity, the sketch is 2 minutes and 6 seconds long. So Jay Mohr is obviously a huge liar who can’t tell the time difference between the live and dress rehearsal versions. The sketch was funny though, and it’s one of the better Walken impressions out there. But my goodness, he didn’t do himself any favors. No wonder he was extremely underused in his two years on SNL.
Here’s my review of the musical performances.
I Know What You’re Doing
— Fantastic slide guitar work on this song.
— Excellent drumming and percussion as well.
— I like this more intricate live version better than the (IMO) overproduced studio version.
— Ooh, some really complex interplay between Farris and her backing vocalist just before the end of the song, with them singing parallel lead vocals for a few bars. Difficult and impressive maneuver.
STARS: ***1/2
Blackbird
— Very creative jazz and blues influenced arrangement for this cover. Definitely putting a different spin on it without compromising the basic integrity and gist of the song.
— Love these gorgeous vocal harmonies, and the nifty percussion flourishes.
— This has to be one of the better Beatles covers in existence.
STARS: ****
I’ve been re-watching 90s SNL and got to this episode, which is definitely one of the best of the season. Just wanted say something about Spade’s Foxworthy in this one, which I thought was very good. I noticed a couple people say Spade gave up on it in the middle – I assume that’s in reference to him trailing off on the “you might be…” punchlines, right? If so, I think that was 100% part of the bit. He’s going on these long, meandering paths (“there’s a good chance that the people will vote for you to be elected…”) to get to the punchline that we all know is coming, to the point that finishing the punchline is unnecessary. The trailing off was part of the joke, and for me it totally worked.
Also, when I first saw the Cirque du Soleil sketch, I was very confused, but upon this rewatch, it completely worked for me. Not sure why, but it did.
I was thinking the same thing about how weird it was to see Nealon and Shannon as partners in a sketch, but then I realized that they actually played husband and wife in “Good Boy”, which is a kids movie from the early 200s about talking dogs from outer space or something, and as a kid born in the early 90s, was one of my first exposures to Kevin and Molly (outside of The Santa Claus 2, where Molly plays an amazing bit role, and Daddy Day Care, where Kevin is just a random dad along with Siobhan Fallon as a random mom.