Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
DOLE & RODMAN IN ’96
Bob Dole (NOM) declares Dennis Rodman [real] as his running mate
— Feels odd in retrospect to see Darrell as Tom Brokaw. He’s doing fine (despite a flubbed line and the fact that he looks NOTHING like Brokaw), but I prefer Chris Parnell’s later Brokaw impression.
— An amusingly random concept of Dennis Rodman as Bob Dole’s running mate.
— I like Norm’s Dole telling Rodman “Get a hold of yourself, you damn freak!”
— An unintentional laugh from Rodman badly flubbing his “What’s up with that eye?” line.
STARS: ***
MONOLOGUE
host takes offense at Polish jokes masquerading as audience questions
— Interesting bowing-down from Christine upon making her entrance.
— Geez, now she’s doing the bowing-down thing EVERY time the audience applauds.
— Oh, she’s now addressing why she keeps bowing down at applause: she has a background in theater.
— The audience members’ polish stereotype questions are giving me pretty good laughs.
— This monologue ended a bit oddly.
STARS: ***
A.M. ALE
Rerun from 9/30/95. So I guess we’re just going to go through practically the entire second half of this season without having ANY new fake ads?
THE COURTNEY LOVE SHOW
Marge Schott (DAH) & Julie Andrews (host)
— Nice to see Molly’s Courtney Love impression back, but I’m not too crazy about it falling victim to SNL’s lazy habit of putting celebrity impressions in their own talk show sketch. Then again, this is the only time we’ll be seeing this Courtney Love Show sketch. It surprisingly never ends up becoming recurring.
— Long-time SNL stage manager Joe Dicso is leaving after the following week’s season finale (as we’ll see in the goodnights of that episode). Is getting kissed and climbed-on by a wild Molly Shannon during this sketch part of his send-off?
— I like the “Top 10 Bruises on My Body” segment.
— Pretty random casting of Darrell as Marge Schott.
— Overall, just an okay sketch, though Molly did provide pretty good laughs with her performance. No big loss that this sketch never ends up becoming recurring.
STARS: ***
GET OFF THE SHED!
Frank & his wife (host) issue more harsh “get off the shed” orders
— I loved the first installment of this sketch, but yeah, not too sure this needed to be recurring. I don’t mind the variation they’d do of this sketch a few seasons later, in which they change the setting by placing Will’s character in the bleachers at a little league baseball game.
— Now we get Will’s wife, played by Christine (I guess we’re supposed to ignore the fact that she looks NOTHING like the wife that Mariel Hemingway played in the first installment of this sketch?), joining in on the yelling. Unfortunately, Christine doesn’t have Will’s knack for yelling in an amusing manner. Her yelling is just coming off screechy and kinda grating (then again, I’m sure people who don’t like Will Ferrell probably feel the same about his yelling).
— I did love Christine’s threat to shove her kids back into her womb.
— Another funny threat, this time with Will’s “I will take you into a dark alley and fight you!”, which is such a perfectly Will Ferrell-esque line. Even though I feel this sketch is paling in comparison to its first installment, the funny and creatively-written threats from Will and Christine are making this work. In fact, the threats may even be funnier than the ones from the first installment. I guess the only reasons I feel a bit lukewarm on this installment is Christine’s grating yelling voice and the lazy reprisal of the same-old backyard gathering setting.
— Weak ending with it being revealed that the kids weren’t on the shed after all.
STARS: ***
20 YEARS AND ONE WEEK
a Barbara Walters (CHO) special looks back at interviews from the past
— Koechner’s attempt at a Burt Reynolds impression (and a pretty poor attempt at that) feels odd in retrospect, knowing that Norm is in the cast and would soon start regularly doing THE definitive Burt Reynolds impression.
— Pretty fun format to this sketch, and I like how the look of Cheri’s Barbara Walters keeps changing to correlate with the various years the interviews are taking place in.
— I like the ridiculousness of there now being a Barbara Walters interview from 1862, with her interviewing Abraham Lincoln.
— I love Darrell-as-Richard-Dreyfuss’ angry ranting.
STARS: ***½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Mint Car”
WEEKEND UPDATE
for Mother’s Day, Gary MacDonald tries to do Weekend Update by himself
nude Dennis Rodman [real] reviews his new book & makes NOM uncomfortable
— Very interesting how Gary Macdonald gets to “anchor” his own version of Weekend Update, complete with his own opening title sequence.
— I loved Gary Macdonald’s Janet Reno/Dude Looks Like a Lady joke.
— An overall expectedly funny commentary for what sadly ends up being Gary Macdonald’s final appearance.
— Between the cold opening and tonight’s Update, are Norm and Dennis Rodman trying to form a comedy team together?
— I loved Rodman’s delivery of “God, that is beautiful” when looking down at his own erection.
— An odd and random ending to the Rodman commentary, with him headbutting Norm, sending him flying backwards out of his chair. That didn’t come off anywhere near as funny as my description may sound.
STARS: ***½
NIGHTCLUB SINGER
a nightclub audience reacts to a terminally-ill amateur singer (host)
— I like Chris suddenly yelling “You suck!” during Christine’s song.
— A fairly interesting mid-sketch twist with Christine revealing she’s terminally ill.
— The ending with Christine alienating the crowd again after having won them over was kinda funny, but I wanted more from the ending. Something about this overall sketch felt kinda lacking to me.
STARS: **½
SPADE IN AMERICA
Lucien & Fagin spend a day out on the town with DAS
— The overused Fops surprisingly haven’t appeared in quite a while. Having them on Spade In America is a decent change of pace. And considering how detached Spade has mostly been from the new cast onscreen, it’s interesting seeing him interacting with The Fops.
— Fun idea for a pre-tape with Spade and the Fops out in the city.
— Spade throws in a half-assed Gap Girls reference, which fell really flat.
— The whole dressing room segment isn’t working.
— Fairly weak ending to the pre-taped video.
— Overall, meh. A disappointment. This didn’t turn out to be anywhere near as fun as I wanted it to be.
STARS: **
DEATH ROW
Rolf (COQ) & fellow death row inmates gossip about chair-bound comrades
— The debut of a now-forgotten Colin Quinn character. We’ll be seeing him a few times in the upcoming season 22.
— I love that we’ve been seeing tons of Koechner tonight, especially given his decreasing amount of airtime the last few preceding episodes. Sadly, there’s also a bittersweet air to his heavy usage tonight, considering tonight’s episode basically ends up being his last hurrah. The following week’s season finale is his ACTUAL final episode, but he practically gets shut out of the show that night. (Notice I said “practically”. There’s a common misconception that Koechner doesn’t appear in the season finale at all, but he actually does, albeit in a VERY small non-speaking role that might as well have been played by an extra. I’ll point out this appearance in tomorrow’s review.)
— I like Tim whining “As soon as you take me out of the room, these guys are gonna talk about me!”
— Pretty short sketch, but decent, and I like the relatable feel of the prisoners’ conversations.
STARS: ***
GOAT BOY SINGS POPULAR SONGS OF THE 80’S
freak-of-nature Goat Boy’s (JMB) album features popular songs of the ’80s
— Ladies and gentlemen, we have a major recurring character debut!
— Such a humorously absurd and random concept of this character, and a good premise for his debut, having him sing 80s hits.
— I particularly like the part with Goat Boy “singing” the lyric-less theme song from Taxi.
STARS: ***½
NEW TRAITS
(JMB) alters his personality to suit the whims of his corporate employers
— Wow, Jim is having his biggest night of the season, with a noteworthy lead role in TWO back-to-back sketches. He’s coming a long way from the first half of this season, where he rarely got any lead roles and spent multiple episodes not appearing in anything.
— I love Will’s deadpan threat of “There’s muscles in this suit, and I’ll use them if I have to.”
— Another funny line from Will: “If you leave, we’ll sue you, take away your children, and burn all your possessions.”
— Jim repeating his “This is ridiculous, you can’t do this to me!” line in a British accent by request provided a pretty good laugh.
— Funny scene with Jim returning to the office with all the personality traits that he was told to take on.
— A great increasing absurdity to this sketch, especially the memorable turn with Jim being forced to say “Oh, bippity boppity!” whenever he enters and leaves an office.
STARS: ****½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Inbetween Days”
1-600-LANSING
Lansing-area residents can receive phone sex from operators like (NAW)
— A variation of the 1-600-555-AUSSIE sketch, only with Michigan accents replacing the Australian accents. IIRC, we later get another variation of this in the Alec Baldwin episode from the upcoming season 22, though I can’t quite remember what the accent in that one is (New York perhaps).
— Very funny how the display we see of “girl-on-girl action” just turns out to be a housewife and a phone sex operator having a friendly conversation about food and sales.
— An amusing Boston mix-up bit with Will.
— Nancy’s hamming it up quite a bit with her facial expressions during this sketch, but I’m still enjoying her performance, especially for what I think ends up being her final big role on SNL (I don’t recall her having any lead roles in the following week’s season finale).
STARS: ***½
FUZZY MEMORIES BY JACK HANDEY
learning the truth about a haunted house
— Random cameo from a young Jim Gaffigan! (the last screencap above)
GOODNIGHTS
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— An average episode for this season’s standards, and ends the streak of really solid episodes that we’ve had starting all the way back in the John Goodman episode from March. Still not a bad episode or anything. While there were a few weak sketches and the overall show had a bit of a forgettable feel, I found a lot of the sketches to be okay and there were some interesting pieces towards the end of the show, especially the two Jim Breuer-starring sketches, both of which I feel are representative of some of the things I love about season 21 and symbolize how much more willing this season is at doing absurdist humor than the troubled preceding season was.
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Teri Hatcher)
a step down
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
Season 21 comes to an end, with host Jim Carrey. It’s also the end of the road for veteran David Spade and rookies David Koechner and Nancy Walls.
I think Goat Boy is what saves the season for Breuer. Joe Pesci is his first major recurring character, but that’s still not enough for a man on the bubble to stick around.
That typed, I can’t stand the character, most likely due to SNL attaching the crutch of a talk show format – and its central “boy, that nostalgia” conceit – for him next season. As a one-off, it’s a good concept. Goat Boy doesn’t grate for me until the formula of “Goat Boy has origin story inexplicably repeated, introduces guest, lapses into feral state, gets prodded” sets.
Would SNL had been better off if Brewer was let go and Koechner stayed instead?
I also thought Walls should have stayed, but they still could have added Tracy Morgan and Ana Gasteyer to the cast.
I’m ok with them letting go of Walls, but firing Koechner (and keeping Breuer) was a HUGE mistake. Sorry, never cared for Breuer. The only thing I like that he did was Joe Pesci Show, and we get enough of those this season.
Goat Boy…ugh…
I’m not sure how I’ll feel when we get into 96-98, but I thought he added something unique to this season. Ferrell, Koechner and Breuer all represented variations of bro-ish humor, but Koechner and Breuer were both earthier and more natural. There’s much less of the look-at-me persona that would tip the balance and quality of the cast over the edge after Kattan joined and Koechner was phased out. The office sketch in this episode is the type of bit that was perfectly suited to him, and was a nice break from the recurring, one-note rut that many in the cast (including Breuer himself) were getting stuck in.
Living in Kansas for much of my life, I have an especially deep appreciation for Norm’s hilarious and VERY mean-spirited Bob Dole! We always knew the Bobster was that way — he would try and try to be more kind and relatable, but that inherent bitterness and snarky nature would eventually pop out sooner or later. I well recall one of his Kansas Senate campaigns back in 1974 when his Democratic opponent was a doctor (Bill Roy) who had stated he supported a woman’s right to an abortion in extreme cases. I was terrified as a child to see a billboard stating in large letters, “Dr. Bill Roy kills babies!” Seriously. Dole claimed he had nothing to do with it…
There is a very obvious cut in the NBC.com clip of The Courtney Love Show (I’m assuming it’s in the reruns.) I consulted SNL transcripts and found that the cut lines started after Molly Shannon says she’s feeling dizzy and Christine starts to sing “A Spoonful of Sugar”. Molly then says, “Yeah.. and Vodka helps it go down, also!” It’s a very quick cut – wonder if Disney objected. Does anyone know?
Thanks for keeping up this great work, Stooge!
I always felt Walls relied too much on the “feigned sincerity” type characters. She basically played that character on the Daily Show as well.
In all honesty other than a few sketches she didn’t show much range
Robert Smith ad-libbing an “Oh, bippity boppity” at the end of The Cure’s second performance was a nice touch.
I’m fairly certain I’d never heard of Christine Baranski prior to this episode. I was a few months shy of turning 16 at the time. Should I have?
Christine was the costar on Cybill Shepherd’s sitcom, where eventually the backstage shenanigans — revolving door of writers and producers, jealousy among actors — was more interesting than the episodes. I’m guessing Christine’s booking coincided with a point where she and/or Cybill were prominent in the tabloids.
Well, to be fair, she had also just won the Emmy for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series the year prior.
I had never seen or heard of Baranski until I saw her in The Birdcage with Robin Williams and Nathan Lane, which had opened six or seven weeks before this episode aired. She was the eighth lead, so it’s not like it got Baranski the host booking, but it might have heightened her visibility/star momentum around that time.
Christine was one of the more odder host choices back then.. guess they had no one interested that week lol. Of course they hit a grand slam the next week with Jim, can’t be perfect all the time. Same with the Cure, how they managed to get an SNL gig over far better bands like Collective Soul or Filter I’ll never get, both not getting to do SNL in their prime runs is a joke.
Honestly I agree that they shoulda kept Walls and Kochener over Brewer.. and I love Jim. David was just better on SNL than Jim was, they coulda cut a medium and cut Kattan but of course not.. Nancy was a great alternative to the hammyness of O’Teri which got old quite fast. She coulda been a nice girly girl alternative they coulda used more in that era. Shannon kinda had it but she disappeared into characters too much.
Calling Collective Soul and Filter better than Rock and Roll Hall of Famers the Cure is probably the funniest thing I’ve read on this site. Good one.
If McKay and Ferrell weren’t brand new at the time too I think they probably would’ve fought more for Koechner to stay, but they didn’t have any pull back then. Glad the guys career ended up fine, I still remember not long after his SNL firing the first thing I started seeing him in was a string of Wendy’s commercials!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2F5zhU15NE
Actually watching this particularly one again, I also spotted Pat Kilbane from Mad Tv in this one as well!
Will had some good instincts about SNL performers, given he was instrumental in Chris Parnell (one of the most underrated and misused cast members ever) being rehired.
As this is likely the last time we’ll be seeing A.M. Ale, I will finally manage to point out how bizarre it is that they didn’t catch the big continuity goof (Cheri’s hair is pulled back in one shot and is loose in the next).
Christine Baranski is a very talented lady, one I had a lot of respect for even at the time, but she is, indeed, a somewhat odd choice for host, especially the money slots of late season, to the point where I wonder if someone else dropped out. She does not fit into this cast at all, as shown most in that very strange terminally ill singer sketch that feels like something imported from a cable sketch show and I’m surprised got past dress rehearsal. She probably would have been a better host in in the last decade (and a few years ago she said she wished SNL would have her cameo as Betsy DeVos). Anyway, I did think she was fun in the monologue (a very dumb bit salvaged by the terrific work of the writers…er…audience members), and she improved as the night went along, putting in good work in the office sketch.
Aside from the office sketch, the Baba Wawa sketch was my favorite of the night – the various wigs and costume changes contrasted to the usual vapidity (and Wawa truly WAS that vapid) were great fun. I also enjoyed the Fops a bit more than you did, mainly seeing them wearing so many equally cheesy outfits. Everything with the sex club was unnecessary, and I’m not sure how that got on the air if the censors didn’t even accept “hard to swallow.” You know, even after watching 19 of these episodes, I still get surprised to realize Spade was still on the show, every time.
Goat Boy is a guilty pleasure of mine, but it really pales in comparison with Breuer’s much stronger work in other parts of this episode. So many in this would be slowly strangled by recurring characters that never knew when to leave.
I guess this was the debut of Kattan’s Christiane Amanpour, which was good for some smiles.
Dennis Rodman’s appearances are a great example of the pitfalls of cameos, even if I imagine SNL was happy enough with the publicity they got and very much needed at this point. He’s mostly dull, as “look at how different and edgy and sexy he is” is not much of a comedy point – and frankly, wasn’t that interesting when the media tried to make him a big icon. The Update piece with Norm felt very out of step with most of Norm’s style and just mostly made me cringe.
Anyway, at least Norm avoided any OJ jokes this week, so that’s nice.
These reviews have made me appreciate Breuer a bit more – for all of his one-note stuff there’s some good work like in “New Traits”. And he was definitely a solid live performer, like in that dinner date sketch with Elle where he basically had to carry the entire thing.
Honestly, I would have been happy with him and Koechner both staying, I don’t really think one had to go. Thankfully he ended up having a great career.
The funny thing about Kattan is that he was the first performer in that particular Groundlings main company to get SNL’s attention in the summer of 1995. When Lorne came to see him live, Kattan asked Will and Cheri to be in one of his audition scenes, so it was somewhat ironic that Will and Cheri were hired right away and Kattan had to wait until midseason to join the show.
Anyway, it’s disappointing that Koechner was let go at the end of this season – I would have kept him (and Breuer) on for s22 and have Kattan reaudition for the following season (he most likely would have lost out to Stephen Colbert(!) had it come down to the two of them for the last open male cast slot.)
The office sketch is a lost gem from this era – lots of classic Adam McKay-ish lines in this one
There’s been a lot of lamenting that Koechner was dumped and Breuer stayed on. And I think we can trace all of that back to Don Ohlmeyer. All I knew of him for years was that he was the guy who fired Norm for OJ jokes. Over the years, I’ve learned more about what he did to NBC.
Warren Littlefield (in his book, “Top of the Rock”) made an even stronger case for Ohlmeyer being terrible for the network. At least, quality-wise. NBC’s bottom line was mostly fine during the 90s.
SO, in the interest of giving a fuller picture of this guy, here’s a few nuggets I’ve collected over the years about Don…
In ’75, Lorne apparently wanted to hire Ohlmeyer as SNL’s director. Can you imagine that? Because DO is a sports guy. If you remember the Billy Joel performances in season 7 (from a nearby studio), they had all sorts of ersatz MTV style graphics and camera angles. Those were directed by Don. Probably not the best match for SNL.
Also, earlier that season, they would do a weird vertical blind wipe and put an “SNL ’81” CG (or something like it) underneath when going to commercial — like it’s college basketball??! I assume this was Ebersol’s idea. And Ebersol is a sports guy, just like his buddy Ohlmeyer. So I have to think we would have been in for a LOT of that kind of thing right from episode 1 if Ohlmeyer had gotten the director’s job.
Ohlmeyer — as mentioned in other posts — had Norm and Koechner fired at various times. He insisted on keeping Jim Breuer around, and I have to wonder if he also ordered the firings of Farley and Sandler. Is he the one who came up with the onerous contracts that allowed NBC to arbitrarily move castmembers to a sitcom pilot on a whim?
Ohlmeyer was obsessed with beating Letterman. Just thought I would throw that in there. And wasn’t he hostile toward Conan as the new host of Late Night?
In 1997, he publicly stated that he wanted the World Series to be a 4-game sweep. Not because he was a big Miami or Cleveland fan, but because he felt those teams weren’t interesting enough to generate ratings. He also didn’t want to pre-empt Thursday’s “Must See TV.”
Lastly, the whole “Norm was fired for OJ jokes” seems like only part of the reason. DO has said it’s also because “the audience wasn’t laughing” at Norm. Well, I vividly remember Norm and WU killing it every week for 3.5 years. And if you watch his final WU (which I did a few months back), it is a classic. I do hope Stooge gives that edition 5 stars when we get there. It’s the one that ends with the classic women drivers pie chart.
My main memory of Ohlmeyer was the controversy which happened several months after Norm was taken off WU – where there were claims that he was the reason Charles Keating, a fan favorite, was fired from daytime soap Another World.
http://peachtreecottage.tripod.com/CKVWnew13.htm
I forgot about that! Also, there was the controversy around this time where he refused to allow NBC to run ads for Dirty Work, and also reportedly called NBC affiliates around the country to ask them to cancel Norm’s promotional appearances on their morning shows. Insane.
Found this a while back, Koechner on Larry King Now (guest-hosted by Tom Green!) talking about his theory on why he maybe wasn’t invited back. He went into a lot more detail about it on Norm’s old podcast a while back. One of the big things he’s mentioned that might’ve peeved some of the NBC producers was his willingness to turn down a lot of ideas he didn’t like. They kept trying to get him do to a “T-Bones Talk Show” sketch all season but he kept nixing it because he thought the show already did too much talk show stuff. He wasn’t wrong.
If you look in the screencaps there’s a great band shot showing ONLY the three women in the band. Yoshiko, Cheryl and Valerie. Until Yoshiko is replaced by Dr. Luke, this will continue to be the case. Valerie is celebrating her 25th year with the band this season!
As for Joe Dicso, he didn’t leave TV entirely. He was a stage manager on the earliest episodes of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire, in 1999. (He was gone by the time I was on the show as a contestant in 2006.) What a career, though, going all the way back to the days of Howdy Doody.