November 11, 2000 – Calista Flockhart / Ricky Martin (S26 E5)

Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars

THE PRESIDENTIAL COUPLE
odd couple George W. Bush (WIF) & Al Gore (DAH) will share the presidency

— SNL does their very first parody of the historic Florida recounts fiasco that prevented us that week from finding out the winner of the 2000 presidential election. SNL will be making comedy gold out of these recounts during these next two months.
— I remember when this cold opening originally aired, I didn’t understand why Will’s Bush was wearing a small band-aid on his face, especially since it’s never addressed here. I wondered if maybe something happened to Will himself, until I saw him in later sketches tonight without a band-aid. I didn’t find out until the Weekend Update from later in this episode that the real Bush sported a small band-aid on his face that week.
— Bush: “We don’t want to be dividers. We want to be unificators.”
— Fantastic turn with Bush and Gore mutually deciding that they’ll both be president.
— An absolutely hilarious Odd Couple-esque opening credits sequence for this dual presidency. Classic.
— I love Bush and Gore demonstrating the use of rock-paper-scissors to settle their disputes.
— We get our very first instance of Darrell’s Gore famously complaining about someone being “snippy”, which was based on a complaint from the real Gore at the time.
STARS: *****

MONOLOGUE
host gives constructive criticism to Ally McBeal (RAD)

— Good sudden entrance from Rachel’s Ally McBeal impression.
— There is a somewhat uncanny resemblance between Calista Flockhart and Rachel whenever Rachel makes those Ally McBeal facial expressions. This reminds me of Rachel playing Christina Ricci’s twin in Ricci’s monologue from the preceding season.
— Calista makes a self-deprecating dig at all of the criticisms of her own thinness, by telling Rachel’s McBeal “For god’s sake, eat a burger!”
— Solid part with Rachel and Calista both saying the same rant in unison. Perfect timing there on both Rachel and Calista’s parts, so much so, that I remember it kinda creeped out then-teenage me at the time, but then again, teenage me also always found it creepy when twins speak in unison.
STARS: ***½

CRACKLIN’ OAT FLAKES
(WIF) raves after eating MDMA-containing Cracklin’ Oat Flakes

 

— Hilarious turn with Crackin’ Oat Flakes containing ecstasy of all things. Great image of the Cat In The Hat-dressed raver on the cereal box too.
— All of the crazy actions from Will on ecstasy are absolutely priceless. This is such a perfect Will Ferrell-y commercial that it’s hard to imagine anyone else selling this as well as he is.
— A great rave-type commercial jingle, and lots of great screen effects all throughout this commercial.
— Ha, what in the world is that stuff that Will can be seen insanely smearing all over his face during one brief part?
STARS: *****

GORE RALLY
at a Democratic rally, Marty & Bobbi perform a political medley

— A good topical setting for The Culps.
— Calista’s intro is quite longer than the usual intros that hosts give to The Culps, but Calista’s entire bit is solid.
— Good energetic applause from the audience when The Culps make their entrance tonight.
— Some great laughs from Marty Culp describing his after-effects of being blasted back by an amplifier earlier in the day.
— Tonight’s Culps song medley is coming off even more fun than usual, with how it’s relating to the elections. I particularly love the Culps’ take on the song “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet”, a take which has really stuck in my memory over the years.
— Overall, one of the best Culps sketches.
STARS: ****

NICK BURNS, YOUR COMPANY’S COMPUTER GUY
a fellow tech support worker (host) gives Nick Burns his first kiss

— Ah, a good change of pace for a Nick Burns sketch.
— This ends up being the ONLY Nick Burns sketch that appears in this entire season, which I suppose is good news for those of you who don’t like these sketches. I think I’m in the minority, but I personally have never had much of a problem with these sketches, except that some installments of them can feel a little too same-y, though that’s certainly not the case in tonight’s installment.
— Some pretty good laughs from the nerdy insider tech jokes between Nick and his friends.
— I like Kattan doing a variation of his usual “I don’t like that guy” line from the beginning of each of these Nick Burns sketches, by telling Nick and his friends “I don’t like you guys” before dashing out of the office.
— Parnell’s screenname being Sexyman48 is pretty funny.
— Jimmy’s been making quite a lot of PlayStation 2 mentions on SNL lately.
— I like how we’re actually getting some character development with Nick Burns in this sketch, which feels rare for recurring characters in recent decades like this.
— Nice twist at the end with having Calista say Nick Burns’ usual ending line “And by the way… you’re welcoooome!” after their kiss.
STARS: ***½

VICE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS
Al Gore (DAH) wants his constituency to be able to revote

— Great to see another Gore sketch tonight addressing the Florida recounts.
— I love Darrell’s Gore going on about how “complicated” and “confusing” the ballots are.
— Plenty of laughs from Gore’s examples of the difficult time that some old people had in figuring out the ballots, especially the mention of one old couple eating their ballots.
— A hilarious line mentioning that the African-American and elderly Jewish residents will be given ballots printed in English, Hebrew, and Ebonics.
— Overall, a fantastic political piece, with perfect writing and an excellent Darrell Hammond performance. Tonight’s episode is on an absolute roll with all of this election-related satire.
STARS: *****

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “She Bangs”

WEEKEND UPDATE
Bill Clinton (DAH) & Janet Reno (WIF) react to presidential uncertainty
in a terrible re-enactment, the Queen Mother (CHK) breaks her collarbone
Cameron Diaz (host), Drew Barrymore (RAD), Lucy Liu (MAR) excite JIF

— Ah, you KNOW there’s gonna be lots of good riffing on the Florida recounts here.
— Great to see yet another Darrell-as-Bill-Clinton commentary on Update, which usually always kill.
— I love Darrell’s Clinton questioning “Do we really need a president?”
— Great turn in the Clinton commentary, with Will’s always-hilarious Janet Reno impression suddenly interrupting. Will plays her so rarely by this point.
— Janet Reno: “I’ve held barbecues in Texas before, and I’ll be more than happy to go there and spark up another!” A fantastic reference to the whole Branch Davidians/Waco incident from 1993.
— Some unintentional laughs from Will’s real-life difficulty in saying the word “outsmart”.
— We get our very first edition of Kattan’s “Terrible Re-Enactments”, a silly quick gag that worked for me tonight. Goofy bits like this show how much fun SNL has been having with this new era of Weekend Update. I can never in a million years imagine something like “Terrible Re-Enactments” appearing in the Colin Quinn era of Update.
— I like the cutaway to an unhappy Tina telling Jimmy to focus when he’s being too distracted by the Charlie’s Angels actresses’ lovey-dovey interactions with each other.
— After the Charlie’s Angels commentary, the camera mistakenly cuts to Tina while displaying a graphic of a news picture next to her, as if it’s her turn to tell the next joke, but Tina then humorously tells the cameraman “The other dude”, which is followed by the camera cutting to a taken-aback Jimmy, who then does the next joke.
STARS: ****

THE CROCODILE HUNTER
Steve (CHK) & Terri (host) Irwin are attacked

— Yeah, not sure we needed to see this sketch return, as I wasn’t crazy about it when I reviewed the first installment in the preceding season. I do remember finding these sketches pretty hilarious when I was a teenager, though. My original review of tonight’s episode that I wrote back in 2000 is unfortunately lost, but I’m assuming that then-teenage me gave this sketch a fairly high rating back then in my review.
— Back when this episode originally aired, I remember someone on an online SNL board pointing out that Calista, in this sketch, looked strangely like Amanda Bynes, who, at the time, was still just a teenager and appearing in Nickelodeon shows. Calista could almost pass for a teenager herself in tonight’s episode, by the way. She has a very youthful face.
— I see that unlike the first Crocodile Hunter sketch, the bloody injuries are happening to Steve Irwin’s wife Terri instead of Steve himself. Still not very funny, though.
— In an interview years later, Jerry Minor shared a story about how the African characters that he and Tracy play in this sketch were originally written to look like very stereotypical, spear-carrying jungle natives, complete with a bone sticking through their respective nose. Jesus Christ, this really shows how bad SNL’s white writers typically are at writing for black performers. (Damon Wayans has a similar story about how he once refused to perform in a “Master Thespian in Africa” sketch in season 11, because they wanted him to dress in a similarly offensive way that Jerry and Tracy were originally written to be dressed in this Crocodile Hunter sketch.) During the table read, when seeing the ridiculousness of how his and Tracy’s characters were written to look, Jerry spoke up and suggested that his and Tracy’s African characters instead be dressed as military officials, to make their characters really come off threatening. SNL ended up going with that idea.
STARS: **

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
after ejecting a faux Ricky Martin (CHK), musical guest performs “Loaded”

— An interesting out-of-the-ordinary fake-out at the beginning of this musical performance, with it being revealed that the Ricky Martin we’re seeing is actually just Kattan impersonating him, before the real Ricky shows up. I love when SNL breaks format like this, especially in more recent decades like the one that this episode comes from, as format-breaking has become such a rarity on SNL in recent decades (then again, the very next episode, hosted by a certain unique someone who I will name at the very end of this review, will be having A LOT of format-breaking, for better or worse).
— Interesting how tonight’s host and musical guest have BOTH been impersonated by a cast member while standing right next to them, at separate parts of this episode.

LADIES & COCKTAILS
middle-aged barflies’ (MOS) & (host) advances creep out (JEM) & (JIF)

— Geez, is this the first time we’re seeing Molly ALL NIGHT??? I’m telling you people, as this season progresses, Molly has gradually been coming off more and more out of place as a veteran in this cast. Again, I ask, why couldn’t she have left with Cheri?
— I can already tell I’m not going to care much for this “new” character of Molly’s. It’s feeling like Molly is just treading old territory here.
— A pretty good laugh from Will’s sleazy character saying he’s gonna go and shake the dew off of his “lily”.
— I do admit that some of Molly and Calista’s dirty, gross one-liners to Jimmy and Jerry are making me laugh, but I’m still not crazy about some of this sketch.
— I’m still waiting for SNL to start letting Jerry show his strengths as a performer. So far in his tenure, aside from the old-school rappers bit in the season premiere, SNL has been wasting him in nothing but generic, dull roles, including this sketch.
— Spit-takes tend to come off hacky at times, but I’m not gonna lie – Jimmy and Jerry’s double spit-take just now made me laugh out loud.
— Will is stealing this sketch in his occasional walk-ons.
— The very funny visual of Will pouring powder down the front of his pants results in Molly breaking as usual. It seems to be almost impossible for Molly by this late stage of her SNL tenure to make it through a single sketch without cracking up out of character.
STARS: **½

CBS SPORTS
Dan Rather (DAH) uses loony expressions while projecting NBA winners

— This sketch is already starting off hilarious with some priceless analogies from Darrell’s Dan Rather.
— A great way of making fun of CBS jumping the gun with that year’s election results.
— This election season in general has been giving Darrell what has got to be his best airtime of his entire SNL tenure, and tonight’s episode in particular just may be his single greatest night on SNL.
— Dan Rather, on Utah’s excitement over the Jazz being the next NBA champions: “It’s gotta be New Years Eve, 4th of July, and your first handjob all rolled into one.”
— Even Darrell-as-Rather’s ending sign-off was hilarious, with his Soul Train reference.
STARS: ****½

GOODNIGHTS

— Horatio, who wasn’t in ANY sketches at all tonight, can be seen in these goodnights dressed as Babar The Elephant. The reason he’s in this costume is because a sketch was going to air in which, IIRC, Babar The Elephant tried to vote in the presidential elections (my memory of the description for this cut sketch is fuzzy, as I last read it way back in the early 2000s from, I believe, an online SNL fan who went to this episode’s dress rehearsal), which would’ve made this yet ANOTHER election-related sketch in tonight’s episode. This sketch was going to be Horatio’s first and only appearance all night, but the show ran long and the sketch had to get cut at the last minute. Man, so far this season, Horatio has been having a rough go in terms of airtime. The show has barely been doing anything with him.

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IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A very strong episode. Lots of highly-rated sketches, THREE of which received a perfect five star-rating, and lots of fantastic material centered on the historic Florida recounts. I remember feeling that this episode’s very topical nature with the heavy focus on the Florida recounts was really fun at the time, but it’s also fun in retrospect, twenty years later, as it provides a fascinating time capsule of what a confusing, crazy time this was for the nation.

MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS

HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Charlize Theron)
a step up

My full set of screencaps for this episode is here

TOMORROW
Tom Green. Hoo, boy. Needless to say, this is going to be quite an odd episode to review.