Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
ACADEMY AWARDS PRE-SHOW
Joan Rivers (ANG) turns demonic during Academy Awards Pre-Show coverage
— After previously doing the voice-over for Joan Rivers being portrayed by a skeleton, Ana plays Joan Rivers in the flesh here for the first time.
— Parnell’s Tom Hanks impression isn’t quite working for me, though I see what he’s going for. I love Parnell, but aside from Tom Brokaw, I never found him to be much of an impressionist.
— Oh, no, not the return of Darrell’s inexplicable impression of John Travolta. Blah.
— Great concept with Ana’s Joan Rivers gradually turning into some kind of demon each time the camera cuts back to her. Boy, between the aforementioned skeleton sketch from the preceding season and now this sketch, I see this SNL era’s not holding back any punches in regards to Rivers.
— Ana is great at pulling this sketch off, especially when letting out one long demonic scream before casually interviewing Tracy’s Cuba Gooding Jr.
— Joan Rivers to Cuba Gooding Jr.: “Your shirt looks like a clown raped Nelson Mandela and they made a baby and it was a shirt.”
— Fun ending with Ana’s Rivers being raised up in the air.
STARS: ****
MONOLOGUE
host sings about the path her life took between her SNL appearances
— Feels like just yesterday, I was reviewing 7-year-old Drew Barrymore in the last episode she hosted way back in season 8, and now I’m already reviewing her as an adult. This shows how far and quickly I’ve come along in this SNL project of mine.
— A lot of excitement from Drew early in this monologue.
— I love that Drew is now mentioning her season 8 hosting gig and how she was the youngest person to ever host SNL, and we’re even shown a clip of her season 8 monologue. It’s also a nice sight to see the underrated Tim Kazurinsky in that clip.
— Fun song about what crazy stuff Drew has been through in the years since her last hosting gig. I often forget about her “wild child” phase.
— Kattan in a whiskey bottle costume reminds me of Gabriel Byrne’s monologue from season 21. Kattan’s whiskey bottle costume isn’t the same one that Fred Wolf wore in the Byrne monologue, though. (side-by-side comparison below)
— Good to see Jimmy’s Adam Sandler impression back.
STARS: ***½
CELEBRITY JEOPARDY
Calista Flockhart (host) & other celebrities perform poorly
— Of all the Celebrity Jeopardy sketches, this is the only one I’m not all that familiar with. I’ve only seen it once or twice, due to Comedy Central strangely NEVER airing this Drew Barrymore episode back in the day when they aired SNL reruns. What was up with that anyway? After all, Comedy Central aired other episodes from this season ad nauseam back in the day, so where was this episode? Was it randomly not included in the package of episodes that Comedy Central received for this season? Or is this another case of Comedy Central somehow losing the tape of an SNL episode (like what supposedly happened with their copy of the Dennis Hopper episode from season 16)?
— Jimmy does it again with yet another spot-on and funny celebrity impression, this time doing a Nicolas Cage.
— Great part with Darrell’s Sean Connery guessing “Febtober” as a month that starts with “Feb”.
— Celebrity Jeopardy gives us another classic category mix-up, with Connery reading “The pen is mightier” as “The penis mightier”, and asking if it will really work on his penis.
— They’re up to Final Jeopardy already? Is it just me, or is this Celebrity Jeopardy installment shorter than usual?
— Hilarious gag with Nicolas Cage somehow losing his podium.
— I love that Drew-as-Calista-Flockhart’s explanation for not writing anything for her Final Jeopardy answer is that “the pen was too heavy”.
— Classic bit with Connery’s written Final Jeopardy answer being “Buck futter”.
STARS: *****
BANANA REPUBLIC
(HOS)’s non-reply to “How’re you doing?” panics Banana Republic employees
— Some pretty good laughs from the employees’ over-dramatic reactions to Horatio being the one customer who doesn’t answer their “How are you doing?” question, getting to the point where the employees press an alarm to clear customers out of the store.
— Will is great as the manager who the employees bring out as an emergency. His rough manhandling of Horatio to get him to finally answer the “How are you doing?” question is funny.
— Will: “They don’t pay me $6.15 an hour for doing nothing.”
STARS: ***½
VH1
Behind The Music- The Captain (Edward Norton) & Tennille (host) reminisce
— Random pre-taped Edward Norton cameo. I wonder if some viewers during the original airing of this episode had a hard time telling that was Norton, considering the sunglasses he’s wearing.
— An overall pretty good segment. Most of this season’s VH1 Behind The Music mini-sketches are pretty enjoyable, though not memorable.
STARS: ***½
THE HOW DO YOU SAY? AH YES, SHOW
Melanie Griffith (host) is obedient
— I like how Kattan’s Antonio Banderas stops Drew-as-Melanie-Griffith’s talking by telling her “Like the doors on Star Trek: shhh.”
— Funny visual of Banderas’ exaggerated amount of pubic hair when showing off his Zorro underwear. That fake pubic hair was actually a last-minute addition on Kattan’s part, who did it without geting Lorne’s approval first. When arriving backstage after this sketch ended, the first words out of Kattan’s mouth were reportedly “Is he pissed?”
— Nothing else noteworthy about this sketch.
— Thankfully, this is the last time we’ll be seeing this sketch for a long while. It surprisingly doesn’t get brought back until THREE SEASONS LATER, where they randomly resurrect it in an early post-9/11 episode (then-newbie Amy Poehler plays the guest in the sketch, which just goes to show you how far in SNL’s future the sketch is).
STARS: **½
TV FUNHOUSE
“Fun With Real Audio” by RBS- Walter Mirisch accepts award & battles cat
— During one of the audience cutaway shots, I love the visual of Burt Reynolds eating a hoagie.
— Ehh, this hasn’t been one of Smigel’s funnier cartoons. It’s still providing some laughs, with the violent antics between Walter Mirisch and the cat, but this cartoon feels a little reaching, as if Smigel had a hard time coming up with material this week.
STARS: ***
WEEKEND UPDATE
eyeing time alone, Bill (DAH) encourages a Hillary Clinton run for Senate
CHK’s running commentary reveals meaning he derives from Cher’s “Believe”
— Darrell playing President Clinton on Update AGAIN? Didn’t he just appear on Update two episodes ago?
— Funny little bit with Clinton’s secret tie signal when talking about always finding things to do when Hillary’s not around.
— This Clinton commentary feels drawn-out for something with little material (even if that’s the intention), but I’ve been getting some laughs. This isn’t one of my favorite appearances of Darrell’s Clinton, though.
— Wow, very rare to see Kattan appearing on Update as himself. By the way, he’s been getting quite a lot of airtime tonight, after suffering a diminished amount of airtime in the second half of this season.
— Not quite sure what to think of this whole Kattan bit. It’s pretty unusual for an Update commentary, though he’s certainly putting his all into this. His interpretation of Cher’s “Believe” has some shades of his DeMarco Brothers character.
— Now we get some shades of Mr. Peepers with the way Kattan is climbing on Colin at the end of his commentary.
STARS: **½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Special”
DOG SHOW
David Larry, Miss Colleen, shemale (host) attend canine wedding
— There’s what I believe is the very first Dog Show utterance of the phrase “Maybe I am, and maybe I am”. Meh. Never found that line all that funny, and we’re going to be hearing it ad nauseam for the remainder of Dog Show’s run.
— WTF? Drew as a “shemale” guest?
— Good ad-lib from Will when he has a hard time saying the name of Drew’s character.
— Now we get a questionable walk-on from Tim.
— SNL writer Scott Wainio makes his very first Dog Show appearance, playing a character named…. Scott Wainio.
— The dog playing Rocky Balboa looks drugged and half-asleep during tonight’s Dog Show installment (the second above screencap for this sketch). That dog is nowhere near as peppy as it usually is, which is a shame, as I adore its peppiness. I wonder if that dog was too hyper at this episode’s dress rehearsal, causing SNL to heavily sedate it for the live show.
— Overall, this Dog Show installment didn’t work for me. I usually enjoy Dog Show’s silliness, but they lost me with this one, and the quality had kind of an off feeling.
STARS: **
VH1
Behind The Music- fake Rick Allen (CHP) poorly hides that he has two arms
— Funny bit with the supposedly one-armed Rick Allen being seen casually using his hidden second arm to do things.
— Hilarious visual of Parnell panickedly bolting out of the room when his scheme is foiled.
STARS: ****
ART CLASS
during a sitting, Terence Maddox recalls meeting his wife (host)
— Will makes yet another good ad-lib tonight, this time when he has trouble untying his robe.
— Molly can be seen blatantly and loudly cracking up out of character right now. That’s basically an early glimpse into the annoying corpsing we’ll unfortunately be frequently seeing from her the following two seasons.
— At least they’re changing things up for this funny-but-repetitive recurring sketch, by having Terrence Maddox’s girlfriend appear.
— Good visual of the excessive armpit hair of Drew’s hippie character.
— I like Maddox telling his girlfriend “Don’t be a Yoko.”
— Interesting flashback to Terrence Maddox when he was young.
— A very skeevy but funny gleeful reaction from Maddox in the flashback when he finds out that Drew’s hooker character is 13 years old.
— When being told that he and his girlfriend can’t make love in this classroom, I love Maddox asking if an “HJ” is okay.
STARS: ***½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “When I Grow Up”
VH1
Behind The Music- Fred Schneider (WIF) song titles comprise random words
— Funny performance from Will.
— The little touches with the frequent camera zoom-ins and zoom-outs on Will are somehow adding to the humor.
STARS: ***½
GOODNIGHTS
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A decent episode. Nothing was particularly memorable tonight, aside from Celebrity Jeopardy and the Joan Rivers cold opening, but the overall show was pretty enjoyable. This episode had a bit of a particularly silly and weird vibe that goes on to become somewhat of a tradition for most of the subsequent episodes that Drew Barrymore hosts (especially her 2007 episode). I always admire that silliness/weirdness in Drew’s episodes (even the times it doesn’t work, like tonight’s Dog Show sketch), as it gives her episodes a fun and unique vibe.
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Ray Romano)
a step down
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
Our annual John Goodman episode, after he’s made a cameo on an almost monthly basis this season