March 23, 1996 – Phil Hartman / Gin Blossoms (S21 E16)

Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars

DOLE HEADQUARTERS
Bob Dole (NOM) gets advice on his image from Charlton Heston (PHH)

— Words cannot express how great it feels to see Phil Hartman on SNL again after a few seasons.
— I like Phil-as-Charlton-Heston’s whole line about how often women leave his bed a satisfied customer.
— I got a huge laugh from Norm-as-Dole’s joke about why Bill Clinton crossed the road: “To kill Vince Foster and cheat on his wife.”
— Such a strong performance from Phil, even if the material he’s been given here isn’t the greatest.
— A reference to Matt LeBlanc’s then-new movie Ed, an apparent turkey of a movie that I’m proud to say I have no frame of reference for from my childhood in the mid-90s. I’ve only become aware of the movie in recent years because of jokes I’ve seen about how bad it is.
STARS: ***

OPENING MONTAGE
— After being removed from the opening montage during his hiatus the last few episodes, David Spade has returned and is reinstated back into the montage. I had completely forgotten about him until now. It had already felt like he left SNL for good.

MONOLOGUE
an identity crisis leads PHH to lock himself in his dressing room

— Such a wonderful visual to see Phil making his entrance on that stage as the host. It’s also very heartwarming to see a very extended audience applause for him; so extended, that the camera cuts to the applauding audience TWICE.
— I really like the part with Phil discussing how the monologue can destroy a man. During that, we get another nice little dig at notorious host Steven Seagal.
— A very funny emotional breakdown from Phil as he runs backstage in tears.
— Tim: “You’re one of my idols!” Phil: “Of course I am. I’m so much better than you are.”
— A hilarious response from Phil when Tim tells him he once let Tim stay in his apartment, fed him, and gave him hope: “That wasn’t me, that was Kevin Nealon!”
— A nice little detail of a framed picture of Ronald McDonald being on Phil’s dressing room table in the background (the sixth above screencap for this monologue), which I didn’t notice until after Tim’s mention of Phil being the spokesman for McDonalds.
— Phil: “Tim?!? You’re still on the show?!?” Our first of many jokes these next few seasons about how absurd and surprising it is that Tim managed to stick around so long.
— Yet another great line from Phil, about how he ignored Tim during their years as castmates because of a pre-existing relationship with Chris Rock.
— Tim: “Do it for the rest of us who will never get a chance to host this show: the Anthony Michael Halls, the Nora Dunns… hell, do it for Joe Piscopo!”
— I’ve always wondered if the slow clapping that the cast and writers do as Phil walks past them is supposed to be a reference to the memorable Sarcastic Clapping Family sketch from Phil’s years as a cast member. Probably not, as it seems like too random a sketch to reference in this particular context, even if that was a sketch that Phil had a lead role in.
— For various reasons, it’s a very interesting visual seeing Phil walking past this season’s cast and writers. It’s especially interesting when the camera shows just Phil and Will Ferrell, two now-beloved cast members who are known today as the leader of their respective cast.
— Overall, this has always been one of my absolute favorite monologues of all time.
STARS: *****

BUGOFF
Rerun from 11/11/95

LEG UP
Frank Sinatra (PHH) talks about dalliances of a bygone era

— I had gotten tired of this recurring sketch during the last installment back in December, but at least they waited a few months before bringing this sketch back tonight.
— I love the idea of Phil’s Frank Sinatra being a guest on Leg Up. You just know that, unlike most of the Leg Up guests, Phil’s Sinatra isn’t going to take any crap from Debbie Reynolds and Ann Miller. I’m looking forward to seeing him roast them.
— A very funny line from Phil’s Sinatra about how every day, the grim reaper tries to jam his sickle up Sinatra’s “keister”.
— So many great zingers between Sinatra and Reynolds/Miller. I especially like Sinatra responding to Reynolds and Miller’s self-compliment of their own looks by saying in a frank manner “Slap on all the paint you want, the house still needs renovations.”
— I love the idea of Sinatra replacing the usual Leg Up closing theme with his own number based on the song The Lady Is A Tramp.
— Overall, I’m pleasantly surprised by how highly I enjoyed this Leg Up installment. A nice way for this sketch to go out, considering this (thankfully) ends up being the final installment.
STARS: ****

ACTING WORKSHOP
eager acting students follow Bobby Colsman’s (PHH) oddball instructions

— Very interesting to see Phil debuting a new character during a hosting stint.
— A brilliant and fully-realized characterization from Phil, and a spot-on parody of this type of pretentious acting teacher. I’d like to think that this is a character Phil tried to get on the air during his tenure as a cast member, but it’s a little hard for me to picture Phil doing this character during his cast member days, because so many things about this sketch have a very mid-90s feel to me.
— I love the “This is something… this is nothing… this is something… this is nothing” bit.
— Very good supporting performances from the cast members playing the students. Between the performances from them and Phil, this sketch really has the authentic feel of an acting workshop.
— A good laugh from Phil’s character quickly telling Molly “I don’t like women, they shouldn’t be in the business” right before letting her start her performance piece.
STARS: ****½

THE ROXBURY GUYS
Roxbury Guys Steve (WIF) & Doug (CHK) Butabi seek dance partners at club

— Ladies and gentlemen, we have a major recurring character debut!
— Wow, this sketch is playing a song that’s NOT What Is Love. Feels so odd in retrospect, considering What Is Love would go on to be the signature theme of all the subsequent Roxbury Guys sketches.
— I like the atmosphere to this sketch, and am finding it fun.
— Amusing performances from Will and Chris, selling their characters even with very limited dialogue.
— The bit with a helpless Cheri being bumped back-and-forth between the Roxbury Guys is funny.
— And the sketch is already over. Wow. A very short piece that had an experimental feel. Very out-of-the-ordinary for an SNL sketch from this era. In fact, this had more the feel of a small scene that Will and Chris mostly likely brought with them from The Groundlings (the fact that fellow Groundling Cheri Oteri was the only other performer in this sketch further backs up that theory). Basically, this sketch was an embryonic, primitive version of the more fleshed-out Roxbury Guys sketches that would later come.
STARS: ***

WEEKEND UPDATE
Frankenstein gives his opinion of a possible result of budget cutbacks
Jesse Jackson (DAH) protests the lack of Oscar recognition for blacks

— Tonight’s Update opens with theme music that’s different from the one usually used for Norm’s Updates. I don’t recognize tonight’s theme. Is it the NewsRadio theme song? I’m ashamed to admit that I haven’t seen that show since I was a kid, which is why I can’t remember what its theme song was like.
— Tonight’s Update starts off hot with a solid Menendez Brothers/O.J. joke that gets a great reaction.
— Frankenstein!
— A very funny brevity to Frankenstein’s commentary, especially the way the camera just slowly pans back over to Norm after Frankenstein’s one line.
— Funny in retrospect seeing Norm do a joke about Madonna being announced as the star of an upcoming Evita movie, considering the well-known Evita sketch Norm would star in the following season.
— Darrell’s Jesse Jackson now officially becomes a recurring impression.
— Does SNL not realize the unfortunate irony of a white cast member in blackface complaining about the lack of black representation at the Oscars?
— Though tonight’s Jesse Jackson commentary isn’t quite as funny as the one from earlier this season, I’m still loving Darrell’s performance and am getting good laughs from his lines, especially from his random exclamation of “Jibbity jibbity and rat-a-tat-tat!”
STARS: ****

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Follow You Down”

YOU’RE THE MAN
slow-to-react gunman (CHK) is assured that he’s in control by cop (PHH)

— Interesting tidbit: this sketch got cut after dress rehearsal years earlier in the Kevin Kline episode from season 18, back when Phil was still a cast member. In that version of this sketch, Rob Schneider played the Johnny role that Chris Kattan is playing here, Chris Farley played Jim Breuer’s small role as the diner employee who calls the cops in a panic at the beginning of the sketch, and Melanie Hutsell played the girlfriend role that Nancy Walls eventually shows up as here. I wonder if they brought this sketch back tonight as a favor to Phil. Maybe it was a favorite cut sketch of his. Bringing back a cast member’s favorite old cut sketch when they come back to host is something I wish happened more often. I know former SNL writer John Mulaney did it the first time he hosted (I’m not sure about the second time he hosted, since I haven’t seen that episode, due to me having been on a still-ongoing hiatus from watching new SNL episodes, which won’t end until I reach the modern era in my SNL project), but I can’t think of any other examples.
— This sketch is perfect for an episode hosted by Phil, considering both his knack for nailing 1940s-style performances and the fact that his first season as a cast member often featured black-and-white 1940s sketches (which usually involved Dana Carvey as a supporting character saying “I oughta pound yoouuu!”).
— I love Phil’s “I missed you, Johnny” after he shoots many consecutive shots directly at Johnny.
— Phil: “You must be hopped-up on goofballs, Johnny.”
— I like the passage of time with Phil’s cop leaving the diner for several hours to get more bullets and take shooting lessons.
— Wasn’t crazy about the ending.
STARS: ***½

SPADE IN AMERICA
DAS does a Hollywood Minute on current cinema items

— Feels weird seeing this again after a fairly long hiatus.
— Oh my god, Spade has returned from his hiatus with a freakin’ GOATEE. While I’m used to seeing him with facial hair in more modern times, it looks odd seeing it during his SNL tenure back when he still had the little boy hairstyle. That hairstyle and his goatee make such a strange-looking mix.
— We get another edition of Hollywood Minute.
— A very random but funny brief moment where, right in the middle of his Hollywood Minute jokes, Spade turns to a side camera and slyly says about himself, while stroking his goatee, “Somebody thinks he’s Ethan Hawke this week.”
— A fairly famous part right now, where Spade says that Pamela Anderson found Tommy Lee’s new penis tattoo “hard to swallow”, which gets a huge reaction from the audience while Spade slyly asks into the camera “That come through okay?” The version I’m currently watching of this episode is the original live airing, but it must be the West Coast version, because Spade’s “hard to swallow” punchline is muted out. It would also later be muted out in Comedy Central reruns.
— I love the part right now with Spade quickly going through a succession of celebrity pictures while summing up each of them in a rhythmic three-word statement (e.g. “Dead Man Walkin’, big mouth squawkin’, weird kid Culkin, black guy bitchin’, etc.”). When a picture of himself comes up during this portion, Spade says “Blonde guy quittin’”, which must be his on-air announcement of his soon-to-come departure from the show.
STARS: ***½

UNFROZEN CAVE MAN LAWYER
Cirroc defends a tobacco company executive

— Nice to see the return of this.
— As always for this sketch, we get some great Jack Handey-written fake sponsors. It’s nice to see Koechner in one of the fake sponsor photos (the first above screencap for this sketch).
— Wow, Phil is unusually stumbly with his lines at the beginning of his speech to the jury.
— This is basically just a copy-and-paste of the first two installments of this recurring sketch. In fact, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think this WAS the exact same script from one of the first two installments. I can hardly tell the difference. While it’s nice to see this sketch again, I can’t help but wish they did something more original with this installment, like when they once did a Spanish-themed version of this sketch (even though it paled in comparison to the traditional installments of this sketch).
— Wow, we get EVEN MORE fake sponsors toward the end of this sketch. It’s as if Jack Handey had so many unused fake sponsors in his back pocket during the one-year gap after the last sketch of his that featured fake sponsors (Tales Of Fraud And Malfeasance In Railroad Hiring Practices) that he unleashed all of them in tonight’s sketch. I could watch an entire sketch consisting of nothing but Jack Handey-written fake sponsors.
— At the very beginning of the ending scene with Cirroc in bed with a prostitute played by Molly, a smiling Molly can be heard saying an unscripted, out-of-character “I got the giggles!” before immediately putting on a straight face when realizing she’s on camera. Odd moment there, and feels like an unfortunate precursor to her bad habit of always giggling in sketches during her final two seasons.
— The ending scene fell flat.
STARS: ***

MUSICAL GUEST INTRO

— Awesome that Phil does this intro in character as Cirroc.

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Memphis Time”

TADDLI
pot-smoking talk show panel receives simpleminded reprimand

— Mark is JUST NOW making his first (and only) appearance of the night, in the 10-to-1 sketch.
— Very fun opening title sequence and a VERY catchy theme song. After years of assuming this theme song was a brilliant original SNL creation, I was disappointed to learn from the That Week In SNL podcast that it was just based on a David Bowie song.
— Speaking of the opening title sequence, I remember once searching through the SNL newsgroup (alt.tv.snl) and reading old comments and reviews from back when tonight’s episode originally aired (here’s one review thread), and SNL fans at the time were so sure that this Taddli sketch would definitely become recurring, just because of how much money SNL must’ve spent on that “expensive-looking” opening title sequence. Not only is it amusing in retrospect to see how wrong those SNL fans’ prediction about this becoming a recurring sketch turned out to be (and at the same time, nobody ever would’ve guessed that this episode’s experimental Roxbury Guys piece would go on to be a huge recurring sketch), but it’s funny to see that this sketch’s title sequence was considered “expensive-looking” in 1996. By 2019 standards, this opening title sequence looks very low-budget, though still very fun.
— Sadly, this is Koechner’s only speaking role of the whole night, and it’s just a dull straight man role.
— Such an odd and hard-to-describe character from Mark. This sketch seems to get a bad rap among modern-day SNL reviewers, but I seem to be in the minority in liking this. I’m enjoying this sketch and am happy that Mark is being given a showcase for his brand of oddball humor that we sadly don’t often get to see during his SNL tenure.
— I love Mark asking Tim’s frequent pot-smoking character “Do you even understand me? Do I sound like a dog talking to you?!?”
— A laugh from Phil revealing he’s a librarian, after saying he smokes pot to mellow out after work.
— Will is cracking me up in his very gleeful performance as an audience member giving his opinion to the guests.
STARS: ***½

FUZZY MEMORIES BY JACK HANDEY
(Not included in the copy I’m reviewing of this episode. Not too big a deal, as it’s just a repeated Fuzzy Memories from 12/16/95.)

GOODNIGHTS

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IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A pretty solid episode. Not as classic as I wanted a Phil Hartman-hosted episode to be, but I can’t complain, as every single sketch worked for me and we got one of my all-time favorite monologues. Not only was it a delight to see Phil Hartman back on SNL tonight, getting the spotlight that he deserves, and showing the new cast how it’s done, but it was also interesting to see him working with a different cast than the one from his own tenure as a cast member, which is one of the things I always find fun about seeing former cast members host the show.

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 slight step down

My full set of screencaps for this episode is here

TOMORROW
Steve Forbes / Rage Against The Machine