Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS
George W. Bush (WIF) warns Osama bin Laden of reprisals to come
— Will-as-President-Bush’s opening line to Osama Bin Laden: “Buddy, you screwed up big-time.” A perfect way for this cold opening to immediately start.
— So many funny lines from Will’s Bush here, making his first appearance on SNL since 9/11. When this season began, there was a lot of concern over how SNL would handle their portrayal of Bush in a post-9/11 world. I remember when Will was interviewed on one of those Extra/Access Hollywood/Entertainment Tonight shows about a week before this season began (he was promoting Zoolander for this interview), he was asked about what approach SNL is going to take with Bush now, and Will shamefully admitted that he and SNL have no idea what they’re going to do with their Bush portrayal yet. Well, it would turn out that, in tonight’s cold opening, SNL has ended up taking the absolute right approach, finding the perfect balance between their famous old portrayal of “idiot Bush” and their updated portrayal of “patriotic leader Bush”, and this has been putting the studio audience in a very energetic and patriotic mood. This is truly a morale boost that the nation needed at this time.
STARS: ****½
OPENING MONTAGE
— The updated shot of Ana Gasteyer that was introduced in the preceding episode’s opening montage, in which she smiles really big into the camera (the first below screencap), has ALREADY been replaced by ANOTHER new shot, this time not featuring her smiling at all or even looking into the camera for most of the shot (the second below screencap).
MONOLOGUE
host’s ancestors also starred in movies featuring semen-tainted beer
— A unique entrance from Seann William Scott, in which, upon walking to the front of the stage, he immediately kneels down and kisses the floor (the first above screencap for this monologue), showing how honored he is to stand on the SNL stage.
— A lot of energy from Seann so far.
— During the silent movie clip, I like Seann beginning to clearly mouth an angry “Mother fu–”, only for an innocent “Darn you!” to show up on the subtitles.
— The various clips of Seann’s ancestors performing Stifler-like jizz-drinking actions are providing laughs, despite being a one-joke premise.
STARS: ***
LAW & ORDER: PARKING VIOLATIONS UNIT
spin-off puts focus on meter maids
— A “Parking Violations Unit” theme is a funny idea for a spoof of the many Law & Order spin-offs at the time.
— Some really good laughs from all of the overdramatic treatment of parking violations.
— Tracy steals this commercial at the end, with his way of justifying parking in a handicapped spot.
STARS: ****
JEFFREY’S
at Jeffrey’s, more customers insulted by more-stylish-than-thou attitude
— Jimmy has disparagingly addressed Kattan as “Corky” just now, referencing the then-new movie Corky Romano, Kattan’s attempt at a career as a movie star. The movie would bomb so badly that it would scare Kattan into staying on SNL (he originally claimed to be on his way out when this season began, eyeing a mid-season departure), leading to me having to suffer TWO MORE YEARS of him on SNL.
— What was with Maya’s cartoonishly exaggerated, teeth-gritted, straight-to-camera delivery of “Ooh, I hate this store!”? That didn’t work for me (nor the studio audience) at all, and felt out of place.
— Oh, god, here comes the usual Horatio Sanz walk-on in these Jeffrey’s sketches, a walk-on that’s always just an excuse for tons of hamminess, overacting, self-indulgence, and breaking between him and Jimmy.
— Not even Will has the ability to save this recurring sketch anymore, as his walk-on isn’t anywhere near as funny as usual in tonight’s installment.
— Overall, oof. These Jeffrey’s sketches, which originally started out funny in its debut, have been getting worse and worse with each passing installment. There was almost NOTHING that was redeemable in tonight’s installment. Thankfully, this ends up being the final appearance of this sketch.
STARS: *½
EMMY AWARDS PRE-SHOW
Joan Rivers (ANG) hijacks Emmy Awards Pre-Show to vex dressed-down celebs
— Something about Will’s way of saying “I’m Steve Kmetko” provided a good laugh.
— Hilarious how Ana’s Joan Rivers does away with Will’s Steve Kmetko by shooting a dart into his neck.
— Maya is a dead-ringer for Lisa Kudrow in her impression of her. She’s also doing a spot-on imitation of Kudrow’s facial mannerisms.
— Very funny line from Joan Rivers about Calista Flockhart looking like a broomstick with nipples.
— We get our very first display of newbie Jeff Richards’ great knack for celebrity impressions, doing a dead-on and funny Garry Shandling here. We’re going to be seeing a lot of strong impressions from Jeff throughout his somewhat-short SNL tenure.
— Great visual of Tracy’s Della Reese wearing a Hefty bag.
— A lot of fun celebrity impressions throughout this sketch.
— Kattan as Kid Rock is somewhat fitting casting.
— I love the “Is your forehead crying?” “No, that’s where my tear ducts are now” bit between Horatio’s Camryn Manheim and Ana’s Rivers.
STARS: ****
JARRET’S ROOM
winners of Freshman Facebook Awards announced
— Right out of the gate, Jimmy’s Jarret mentions that there’s been some big changes made to the show, which gives me some hope, as this recurring sketch has been very unimpressive in its previous installments.
— Good addition of Seth Meyers as the show’s new house D.J. I remember when this episode originally aired, I was so unfamiliar with the then-newbie Seth that I initially couldn’t tell if it was him or Kattan playing the D.J. in this sketch, as strange as that mix-up now sounds.
— Horatio’s Gobi makes his entrance tonight singing Afroman’s “Because I Got High”. Ha, remember that song? This really takes me back to how big and controversial that song was around this time.
— Horatio’s usual goatee as Gobi looks like it was mistakenly put on a little crooked tonight, which is probably a result of Horatio not having much time to get his costume changed in between the Emmy Awards sketch and this. This has been a rare busy night for Horatio, who’s been appearing in every single sketch so far.
— Seann’s performance in this is reminding me so much of one of my closest high school friends that I had around this time. Also, whenever Seann yells something into the camera throughout this sketch, his voice strangely sounds very Chris Farley-esque.
— A good immature laugh from the Jill Butt bit.
— What’s with so many sketches lately showing photos of Kattan as nerdy characters with braces? We get such a photo in this sketch, and we also got such a photo in that sketch from the homestretch of the preceding season in which Kattan played a teen obsessed with imitating the Golden Girls.
— A funny segment making fun of school yearbook pictures.
— Tonight’s Jarret’s Room installment has been surprisingly fun so far. Even Horatio’s typically over-the-top Gobi performance is coming off tolerable to me tonight.
— Another nice new addition to this sketch with Jeff Richards playing Jarret’s new next door neighbor, appropriately named… Jeff.
— An overall surprisingly good installment of this sketch. All of the much-needed tweaks made to the Jarret’s Room format definitely worked for the better. It remains to be seen, though, if these positive changes will work out in the long run for this recurring sketch.
STARS: ***½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Fat Lip”
WEEKEND UPDATE
threat of terrorism has convinced TRM of the wisdom of racial profiling
Weekend Update Joke Off- JIF & TIF riff on penis found in fruit juice
in midst of shark attack epidemic, TIF falls victim to Land Shark
— Jimmy’s hairstyle at least looks a little better than how horrible it looked in the last episode, but that’s still not saying much.
— Tina’s Visceral Editorial didn’t really work for me, but it was brief enough.
— A pretty solid commentary from Tracy regarding racial profiling in the wake of 9/11, made funny in the way that only Tracy Morgan could make it. I like his various “Shake ’em down!” examples.
— A fun “Weekend Update Joke Off” segment between Jimmy and Tina, regarding a news story about a severed penis being found in a bottle of fruit juice.
— We get the debut of the Weekend Update Door, which would go on to be a recurring bit in this era of Update whenever a guest shows up “unexpectedly”.
— It’s the return of the Land Shark routine! A random but very welcome return of a classic recurring bit from the original SNL era. Tina’s even doing a spot-on imitation of the typical demeanor that Laraine Newman et. al. had during the original Land Shark sketches.
— Land Shark: “Candygram.” Tina: “They don’t even have those anymore!”
— The unpleasant, unlikable vibe that Chevy Chase’s cameos typically bring is thankfully non-existent in his onscreen appearance at the end of tonight’s Land Shark bit.
STARS: ***½
SHOW YOUR PATRIOTISM
(WIF) disrupts meeting by showing patriotism via flag-themed short shorts
— Holy hell. An absolutely priceless entrance from Will wearing… THAT.
— I’ve always had a theory that Will wearing a full-out thong was GENUINELY not expected by Will’s scene partners. You see, shortly before the original airing of this episode, NBC advertised this episode with a quickly-made promo comprised of clips from that night’s dress rehearsal, which had just finished taping. (SNL dress rehearsal promos like that were a regular practice on NBC back in these days. When did they stop doing that? Or do they still do it, and I just wasn’t aware?) One of those dress rehearsal clips showed Will from the back in this Show Your Patriotism sketch, but he wasn’t wearing a thong like he wears in the live version; he was just wearing short shorts that didn’t reveal much of his butt. It must’ve been a last-minute decision to change Will’s attire from short shorts to a full-out ass-revealing thong for the live version, as an attempt to make the sketch funnier and to also surprise Will’s scene partners on the air (the latter of which would explain why his scene partners have so much difficulty in keeping a straight face throughout this, particularly Rachel when she first gets a sight of Will’s buttcheeks). I’d love to get full confirmation on this. If my theory is correct, then this proves even further what a ballsy legend Will is.
— Something else that supports my above theory that Will’s thong wasn’t planned is that, as he’s casually speaking right after he makes his entrance, he suddenly starts smiling uncontrollably mid-line and has to hide it by turning his head away from the camera and putting his hand over his mouth (screencap below).
That uncontrollable smile of Will’s seems like he’s thinking two things: 1) “My scene partners aren’t going to believe what I’m springing on them as a surprise”, and 2) “I cannot believe I’m getting away with this on live TV.”
— We get the debut of Vazquez Gomez-Vazquez, an obscure and bizarre recurring character of Horatio’s. In retrospect, he’s coming off quite out of place as a supporting character in this particular sketch.
— This is a perfectly Will Ferrell-y sketch that was tailor-made for Will. I admit that the concept and writing itself is actually pretty thin, but who else but Will Ferrell could make a classic out of this? I can already picture some people making a case that I’m overrating this thin sketch, but I will defend this sketch to the grave.
— A noteworthy thing about the greatness of this 9/11-related sketch is that it was another one of those crucial post-9/11 moments that showed the nation “We can now laugh again.”
— Right now, all of Will’s scene partners are uncontrollably breaking in unison, except for Seann and Amy. Amy’s ability to keep a straight face here is admirable, considering how new she is at SNL.
— Will, during his “inspirational” speech, complete with background music: “The angle of my dangle is inversely proportional to the heat of my meat.”
— The part with Will’s thong loudly ripping just as he was about to make his triumphant exit has me HOWLING.
— Amy continues to show what a stone-faced pro she is, perfectly keeping a straight face while Will tries his damnedest to make her crack up by patting her on the shoulders while comically resting his thonged crotch against the back of her head.
STARS: *****
THE HOW DO YOU SAY? AH YES, SHOW
Paula Zahn (AMP) encounters sexiness
— Oh, god. Why are we getting the unnecessary return of this recurring sketch after THREE SEASONS? I see Kattan is once again showing that he’s overstayed his welcome as a cast member. There’s no real reason for him to still be on SNL this season, especially if he’s going to be dragging tired, old, seemingly-retired recurring sketches like this out of the mothballs.
— Tonight’s “How Do You Say? Ah Yes, Show” installment somberly opening without any theme music is at least an accurate spoof of how a lot of talk shows at the time made their post-9/11 return by starting their show in an uncharacteristically somber manner.
— When Kattan’s Antonio Banderas is addressing the 9/11 craziness currently going on, I did get a genuine laugh from his misguided mention of America trying to catch “the evil, evil Dalai Lama”.
— For a new featured player in only her second episode, Amy has refreshingly been getting tons of airtime tonight, which certainly makes up for her almost non-existent airtime in her first episode.
— This sketch was originally cut after the preceding episode’s dress rehearsal, in which the Paula Zahn role was played by that night’s host, Reese Witherspoon, instead of Amy.
— Banderas suggestively refers to what’s under Amy-as-Paula-Zahn’s skirt as her “Wolf Blitzers”. If he’s using Blitzer’s name as a euphemism for Zahn’s vagina, why did he pluralize it?
— Amy as Paula Zahn: “If I wanted to be treated like a blonde piece of meat, then I would’ve stayed at Fox News!”
STARS: **
MY BIG THICK NOVEL BY JACK HANDEY
tabulating blow darts in chapter 119
— Ah, we get the introduction of a new Jack Handey segment! It’s welcome to see a new recurring segment from him in the vein of Deep Thoughts and Fuzzy Memories.
— Very nice illustrations.
— Ehhh, can’t say I’m too crazy about that punchline. Hope this isn’t already a sign of how inferior this recurring My Big Thick Novel segment may regularly come off compared to Deep Thoughts or Fuzzy Memories.
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “In Too Deep”
THE APPROVAL CENTER
losers testify to the nebulous joy of being approved
— Horatio’s rare busy night continues. This is probably the most appearances he’s ever made in a single episode up to this point of his SNL tenure.
— On an opposite note, it feels like Ana is appearing a lot less than usual this season so far. In retrospect, this seems to be an early sign that she’s on her way out. Also, it may just be me, but she feels a little out of place in this sketch.
— A great redneck look for Seann, and he’s getting really good laughs from his fast-paced quoting of a simplistic back-and-forth phone conversation he had with the Approval Center.
— Tracy once again kills it by just kicking back and being his natural self. I also love the detail of how he’s casually chomping on a slice of pizza throughout his entire testimonial.
STARS: ***½
PORN STAR
on a dinner date, (AMP) reveals her porn actress career to (host)
— Wow, Amy in yet ANOTHER sketch tonight. And she gets the comedic lead role in this one too. Great to see things going well for her so early in her tenure.
— Amy’s porn star reveal is a great turn in the sketch.
— Very funny bit with Seth as a waiter recognizing Amy from her porn movies.
— Amy: “I am not a porn star!… (*crosses fingers while gritting her teeth and shifting her eyes upwards*) yet!”
— Amy’s performance is strong in this, and you can see the huge potential that she has as a new cast member.
— Tracy in yet another great walk-on role. Much like Amy, it’s nice to see Tracy getting so much airtime tonight after having next-to-nothing to do in the preceding week’s season premiere.
— A very funny ending photo of Amy and Tracy.
STARS: ****
GOODNIGHTS
— Much like in the Lara Flynn Boyle episode from the homestretch of the preceding season, tonight’s goodnights get cut off VERY fast before Seann has even finished his goodnights speech.
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A solid and refreshing episode. After the first post-9/11 episode the preceding week consisted of SNL walking on eggshells and trying to find their way back, SNL seems to be back in full force this week. It may be a little too soon to say that, though, considering a certain other unforeseen 9/11-related hardship the show will face the very next week, which will be mentioned in a little more detail at the very end of this review.
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Reese Witherspoon)
N/A, because, as I said in the last review, it’s hard to judge the Witherspoon episode on the same level of a normal episode
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
Drew Barrymore hosts during a week that an anthrax attack happens to occur at 30 Rock, an incident that leads to a huge panic for SNL
“Show Your Patriotism” was another sketch we all talked about Monday on the bus. It’s funny on a few levels: a, who on Earth could have anticipated this, and b, for whatever reason, when the sketch began (like right before Will entered), I was expected some wardrobe twist involving Seann.
I CANNOT believe Kattan was on two more years. I guess he really did get scared by Corky Romano bombing. I’m one of the more generous defenders of the guy out there, but he was really played out by this point.
There were a few guys in the mid 90s that hung on the show a while (Tim most notably, but he was barely doing anything the first half of his tenure), but I wonder if this is when we start to get “par for the course” that cast members stay on for a super long time, especially if they’re anxious about future endeavors (Kenan most notably, but certainly a number of his fellow current cast).
Tim was the first long tenure to be noticed on-air (as early as his fifth season no less), and Darrell’s was the first to really stretch the norms (Tim’s was only a half-season longer than Kevin Nealon’s tenure), but I sometimes wonder if Fred is the one who made the current long stints more fashionable. Kattan had the “you’re still here?” type last years, and Darrell’s time mostly petered off in a very sad way (I wonder how many viewers even knew he was still in the cast up to 2009), but Fred stayed on for 11 seasons while having success (Portlandia) elsewhere. There was no career stigma for his time at the show. From then on you’ve had Kenan, Kate and Aidy all staying in spite of being busy elsewhere. And with the entertainment industry grinding to a halt, if SNL comes back next season you never know if Kate, Aidy, Cecily, etc. will end up staying one more year…
Though I always thought this season paled in comparison to the previous one, the Law and Order sketch is a favorite of mine and is very underrated.
I was pretty excited about Amy joining SNL since this was when she was right off doing the UCB show on Comedy Central. Admittedly I ended up finding a lot of her later SNL work not really my thing (RickRickRick!, Bronx Beat and anchoring WU with Tina immediately jump to mind) but I do remember thinking her first season and this episodes 10-to-1 sketch in particular feeling the most like the crazier type of stuff she did on the old UCB show.
Another interesting case was the hiring of Jeff Richards, which seemed odd at the time that SNL would poach someone off SNL’s rival show MAD TV just months after he was on it. If my timing is accurate, it seemed like they brought in Jeff for a half season as their potential new impressions guy before dumping him in favor of Frank Caliendo and SNL must’ve scooped him up right after.
And yep, looks like already no Dean Edwards in this one after getting decent airtime in his first episode. I remember realizing pretty quickly how it definitely felt like a mistake for Jerry Minor to get the boot as the “other black guy”.
This was definitely a fun episode, its too bad Seann William Scott didn’t have a bigger career after his “Stifler” fame died down, guy was always naturally funny and elevated all the dumb movies he was in. He was in that similar class of guys like Steve Zahn from that era I felt didn’t get enough credit as solid comedic actors because they had a lot of crap on their filmography. I think Scott even admitted at one point he was depressed about the state of his career and being stuck doing such trash like “Mr. Woodcock”. Definitely someone I would’ve loved to see take another chance at hosting again even though it’s a longshot he’ll ever be famous enough to return.
Scott has a lot of energy here, if not a ton of range – I can’t imagine a lot of hosts managing to make that cheap monologue work as well as he did. I think he was one of many early ’00s actors who were discarded by many because of how bad a lot of the material at that time was, even though he was just reading scripts. I wish he’d been able to host again later in the decade, under different circumstances. Funnily enough his showbiz comeback came with an SNL alum, but that Lethal Weapon show was such a disaster behind the scenes he never had much chance.
I think, overall, Amy had a good tenure at SNL, but I do feel like she settled into playing a lot of cutesy roles, lots of audience-approval-seeking moments (especially on Update). She also did this with Parks and Rec, which is one of the reasons the show feels so dated to me now. Her work in the date sketch is the type of physical, more mature and confident work that reminded me more of legends like Jan Hooks,
I agree with your assessment of Amy’s SNL tenure, but I think that worked fine for Parks and Rec–I liked how that show maintained a cute, more whimsical style to its proceedings.
I think that would have worked if the show had ended around season 4 or so, but as time passed I just found many of the characters to be stunted and unpleasant even as we were told how wonderful they were.
Sorry, I know this is off topic.
100% agree on your assessment of Parks & Rec. Seasons 2-4 were really wonderful, but then the “everyone becomes a cartoon character” element kicked. I didn’t even watch the final season.
And yeah this is when we reach the point where you know every sketch involving Jimmy and Horatio together is just going to turn into 5 minutes of them giggling at each other. It was funny for a while but just became ridiculous how many seasons Lorne let it go on for.
I’m sure there were previous examples, but Seann being involved in the lengthy pre-tape is one of the first times I can remember a host in that role – for many years the pre-tapes seemed to just have cast (or extras).
When Horatio comes out to ham it up in the Jeffrey’s sketch, you can hear some guy in the audience saying “oh God, oh God.” I assume he meant it in an appreciative way, but I was still amused.
At least now I know why they kept saying “shorts” in the American flag sketch. Thanks. I go back and forth about some of Will’s material in these last years, but this episode did a good job of using him in just the right way to comfort viewers at such an uneasy time. The American flag sketch is one that I remember so clearly as being such a moment in time for post 9/11 SNL (Kandahar being the other). The Bush sketch is right on the nose, very well-written – more than I probably gave it credit for at the time.
I loved hearing “One More Time” in the Jarrett’s Room piece. Those sketches often seem so dead, just an excuse for a tired double act, but for a minute the idea clicked into place.
Oddly enough I enjoyed this “sexy” Kattan sketch a fair amount more than the first two from a few years earlier, even if the stuff with Zahn felt gross.
I think Tracy’s Update commentary is one of his best moments on the show. The joke-off with Tina and Jimmy is the type of fun and less contrived material I wish they’d done more often.
Was this the only time SNL spoofed Law & Order?
I remember they did a sketch in season 32, Jake Gyllenhaal episode and it used Law and Order transition stings.
Matt Piedmont wrote “Show Your Patriotism”.
I always low-key rooted for Seann’s career to do better than it ended up doing. He was clearly one of the best things about the American Pie series, along with Alyson Hannigan and Eugene Levy. I assumed that Hollywood would realize he obviously wasn’t LITERALLY Stifler in real life and develop him into a Bill Paxton-y career trajectory but it never happened. I think a huge blow to his career was that movie Evolution which was supposed to be a blockbuster but ended up being a total mess through no fault of the cast (executive meddling, etc). I’ve heard the movie Goon is supposed to be a pretty good cult film and will try to check it out when I can.