December 15, 2001 – Ellen DeGeneres / No Doubt (S27 E9)

Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars

CBS NEWS SPECIAL REPORT
Osama bin Laden (WIF) tape reveals that terrorists were reluctant martyrs

— Some pretty funny dialogue in the translated text on the bottom of the screen.
— Boy, this is dragging on for what feels like forever. I stopped laughing consistently about a minute and a half ago. This material has become very hit-and-miss, with more misses than hits. I can certainly enjoy Jim Downey’s dry humor (assuming it was him who wrote this, considering both the fact that he’s doing the voice of the translator and that the humor of this cold opening fits his trademark style), but this cold opening needed some serious editing before going on the air.
— The fat jokes about Horatio’s character made me laugh at first, but even that aspect of this sketch has eventually gone on too long and is getting run into the ground.
— In retrospect, this cold opening feels like a precursor to two bad things: the Jim Downey-written dull and overly-wordy political cold openings from Downey’s later years on SNL in the late 2000s/early 2010s, and the tedious amount of translator cold openings that would appear in the upcoming season 28.
STARS: **

MONOLOGUE
host admits that her declaration of homosexuality was a publicity stunt

— Already starting off funny with Ellen DeGeneres’ whole “I love New York” bit.
— Very funny reveal from Ellen of how she’s not actually gay; she just made it up to top other celebrities at a party, then decided to run with it to further her career.
— A fantastic line from Ellen about how she decided she might as well stick with the whole gay thing for a while “…as opposed to other people”, a great dig at her ex, Anne Heche.
— Overall, a perfect stand-up monologue. I laughed pretty much non-stop for this entire thing.
STARS: *****

NATIVITY SCENE
Marty & Bobbi perform a medley at a shopping mall Nativity scene

— Funny beginning with Ellen, and she’s getting laughs with her usual solid delivery.
— Great visual of Ellen returning with an elaborate Three Wise Men costume.
— I like the “Jason Crisp” bit when The Culps aren’t allowed to say the name Jesus Christ.
— Kinda surprised to see Ellen joining in on The Culps song medley.
— An overall decent Culps song medley, but not quite as solid as usual. No parts of tonight’s medley stood out to me.
STARS: ***

KITTY SINGLETON
federal agent Kitty Singleton (host) is terrible at hand-to-hand combat

— A huge laugh from how unexpectedly fast Will’s villain character knocks down Ellen during her initial confrontation of him and his henchmen.
— A good angry “Son of a bitch!” delivery from Maya (making her only appearance of the night, in a small walk-on role).
— Ellen: “I think I can take the one-armed fat guy”
— Would it have killed them to give Dean ANY lines? He appeared during this entire sketch, but his only “contribution” besides just silently standing there the entire time was silently handing Horatio a club to beat Ellen with. This is the second episode in a row that Dean has no lines in. After an okay-if-unmemorable first handful of episodes on the show, things have really gone south for him these past few episodes.
STARS: ***½

TV FUNHOUSE
“The Narrator That Ruined Christmas” by RBS- snowman visits Ground Zero

 

— A very out-of-the-ordinary prelude to the usual TV Funhouse opening sequence, with a “Sponsored by” segment promoting “TV Funhouse 100 Proof Tequila” (screencap below).

This is presumably a reference to hard liquor TV sponsorships that NBC has recently gotten permission to do, something that SNL themselves would soon take advantage of, with something they’ll begin regularly doing at the end of each musical guest’s first performance starting in the very next episode, as we’ll see when I review it.
— Hilarious turn with the snowman narrator bitterly ranting about how trivial so many things now are compared to the war on terror we’re currently dealing with.
— After the snowman walks off, I love the speechless looks on the faces of the two children watching this on TV.
— My god, the animation is an absolutely fantastic imitation of the classic Rankin/Bass “Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer” special. As always, Robert Smigel is perfect at recreating the animation styles of certain cartoons that he occasionally spoofs.
— A great dark turn with the snowman taking the kids to Ground Zero.
— This cartoon is providing lots of very funny social commentary on a touchy subject.
— Snowman: “My left nut’s more famous than Jerry Stiller!”
— Santa Claus, to the snowman: “It’s not about YOU, douchebag.”
— Holy hell! We get a Chris Parnell voice cameo, doing the voice of Tom Brokaw! Awesome, and just hearing Parnell’s voice really makes me realize how much I miss seeing him this season so far. Perhaps this is Smigel’s way of showing solidarity with Parnell after his undeserved firing. This also, in retrospect, could possibly be looked at as an early hint of Parnell’s re-hiring later this season.
— I love the silly ending with the snowman angrily smashing a banjo over his head, even if it got no audience reaction.
— Overall, a true classic. I loved every moment of this.
STARS: *****

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Hey Baby”

WEEKEND UPDATE
TRM suggests creative romantic holiday gifts for your spouse

JIF, TIF, Rudolph Giuliani [real] sing “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?”

— Tina, during the anthrax portion of her opening long-winded rant: “Good thing we never had any anthrax in this building… oh, wait, we totally did!”
— An overall good opening long-winded rant from Tina, though not as memorable as her usual rants. This one seemed a little more cartoonish than her more serious comedic rants. However, this was a good way for her to comically vent her frustrations over all the craziness in the news this week.
— Tina, on NBC becoming the first broadcast TV network to accept hard liquor commercials in over 50 years: “Not to be outdone, the FOX network is running ads for crack.”
— Funny bit when Tina’s increasingly erotic description of an airport security pat-down suddenly gets cut off by a very amusing “Please Stand By” graphic (the sixth above screencap for this Weekend Update), which is then followed by a visual of Jimmy and Tina acting like they had just finished having sex. Update seems to have a particularly goofy, silly tone tonight. Adding to that, I think (but I’m not 100% sure about this, so don’t quote me on it) that this is the same episode that cut a somewhat well-known Update bit after dress rehearsal in which Jimmy says goodbye to us as he randomly gets beamed up into an off-camera spaceship to be taken back to his home planet. This bit is shown at the end of Jimmy’s “Best Of” special (with a special voice-over introduction by Jimmy himself explaining the bit was cut after dress), and I’ve seen some SNL fans mistakenly(?) claim it comes from the dress rehearsal of Jimmy’s final episode as a cast member (that sure would’ve been one hell of a unique and creative way for an Update anchor to end their Update stint, I’ll admit).
— Tracy’s lust-filled message to “the chubby redheaded girl that works in the NBC store downstairs” is hilarious.
— Yet another solid Update commentary from Tracy as himself.
— An okay random “Nerd alert!” bit between Jimmy and Tina.
— Another Rudy Giuliani cameo this season. You can even hear people in the audience chanting “Ru-dy!”, showing how hugely beloved he was at this time.
— I like how Jimmy’s idea of imitating Giuliani is to just attach a long sole strand of hair to his head, to imitate Rudy’s combover.
— This musical Giuliani tribute will certainly not sit well with quite a number of people in today’s age, but as I said in my review of the cold opening from the Giuliani-hosted episode from season 23, I have no difficulty in separating the Giuliani of the 90s and early 00s from the Giuliani of today.
— Jimmy and Tina’s overall musical tribute to Rudy was sappy (albeit heartfelt), but I did like Tina’s ending spoken message, thanking Rudy for holding New Yorkers together during 9/11.
STARS: ***½

MANGO
host’s Mango obsession creates backlash among lesbian media heavyweights

— (*groan*) Mango.
— I got an unintentional laugh from how the door that Mango slammed shut during his exit IMMEDIATELY opened all the way back up. That seems to happen a lot on SNL whenever a door is slammed shut. I guess SNL’s prop doors are pretty cheap.
— So we’ve gone back to the original simple Mango formula of hosts falling in love with Mango and finding themselves unable to do daily tasks without a fantasy thought bubble of him popping up? Is this really a plotline we needed the return of?
— Jeff displays yet another solid celebrity impression, this time of Charlie Rose. Too bad it has to wasted in a lame Mango sketch. SNL would later give Jeff his own sketch to display his Charlie Rose impression in (in the following season’s Jeff Gordon episode), but unfortunately, I recall that sketch being pretty much a dud.
— Meh at the breaking-the-fourth-wall ending with Mango and Ellen on SNL’s home base stage wishing us a happy holidays. And maybe it’s just me, but Ellen looked and sounded very unenthusiastic during that portion of this sketch, as if even she realizes she’s wasting her time with this sketch.
— Overall, a particularly terrible Mango sketch, even moreso than usual.
STARS: *½

FAMILY VACATION
panic over forgotten household chores causes family to cut its trip short

— This was cut after dress rehearsal from the Gwyneth Paltrow episode earlier this season.
— I like the cutaway visuals whenever a family member realizes they left something on in the house.
— A hilarious sudden angry look on a previously-smiling Will’s face when he slaps Jimmy’s playful hands away from his face. A very brief but classic little Ferrell moment.
— I love the sudden escalating absurdity of the forgotten tasks (“I left the radio in the bathtub!” “I left two cans of gas in the sun under a magnifying glass!”).
— A funny cheap visual of a model toy house on fire, used to represent the family’s actual house.
— I like the ending with the car driving off a cliff, just because of how Toonces-esque it felt.
STARS: ****

MY BIG THICK NOVEL BY JACK HANDEY
“sighing” on Mars in chapter 917

DAD’S NEW GIRLFRIEND
(WIF)’s kids (SEM) & (AMP) don’t meet his new girlfriend (host) halfway

— Interesting how this is the second sketch in a row with Will and Ellen playing a couple. By the way, much like the Drew Barrymore episode earlier this season, this is another episode this season in which Will is even more dominant than usual, appearing in an important lead role in almost EVERY SINGLE SKETCH while most of the rest of the cast makes only 1 or 2 measly appearances. While I don’t like how lopsided this airtime among the cast is, we’d better enjoy all this Ferrell that we’re getting, because the very next episode begins his occasional absence in the second half of this season, in which he takes some episodes off to film the movie Old School. And even in most of the episodes that he does appear in during that half of the season, his airtime is fairly limited for his standards. Seeing Will being utilized to his full potential in tonight’s episode is going to make it that much harder to see SNL without him in the very next episode, especially knowing how lacking in utility power the male side of this cast is without Will. (At least we get Parnell back in March, but SNL rarely knows how to utilize him properly, and I don’t recall that changing much even after his re-hiring.)
— Good to see another sketch pairing Seth and Amy together.
— I love Seth and Amy’s immediate over-the-top, irrational reaction to meeting their father’s new girlfriend.
— Funny bit regarding a very extensive photo album that Ellen had painstakingly put together of Seth and Amy.
— Seth’s comically over-the-top acting in this sketch is actually amusing me. I continue to be surprised by how good Seth has been as a sketch performer so far in his SNL tenure.
— Seth and Amy IMMEDIATELY throwing their Christmas gifts from Ellen into the fireplace is hilarious, as is Ellen’s perfectly Ellen-esque reaction to that.
— I love how Will is now suddenly turning against Ellen’s character.
— Good reveal that the only reason Will and his first wife broke up is merely because he once insulted her cooking.
— Very solid sketch overall.
STARS: ****

SNOW GLOBE
Dick Cheney (DAH) imagines happy Christmas ditty by HOS, CHK, TRM, JIF

— Feels kinda odd seeing a political-themed sketch this late in the show.
— A fantastic unexpected turn with this transitioning into another “I Wish It Was Christmas Today” number. The whole Dick Cheney bit at the beginning was a very clever way of setting this up.
— Unlike the last time this “I Wish It Was Christmas Today” bit appeared two episodes prior, Jimmy and Tracy both seem to be enjoying themselves a lot more. Tracy even has an actual smile on his face this time, a big change from the comically dead-serious look he traditionally has in these “I Wish It Was Christmas Today” bits.
— During Horatio’s VERY extended instrumental solo, I love how Chris’ rhythmic head-shaking in time to Horatio’s fast strumming causes his hat to accidentally fall off, which Tracy catches and puts on top of his own hat.
— Overall, my favorite of these “I Wish It Was Christmas Today” bits so far.
STARS: ****½

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Hella Good”

GOODNIGHTS
Rudolph Giuliani [real] wishes peace from Rockefeller Center skating rink

— Ice skating goodnights!
— I wonder why Ellen stayed in the studio, unlike hosts in other ice skating goodnights. If she was afraid of attempting to skate, she could’ve still gone out there and just stayed safely on the carpet, like Giuliani is doing.
— At one point, we see a wobbly Jeff being held by Will and Ana on the skating rink (the third-to-last above screencap for these goodnights). It feels like such a weird novelty in retrospect to see Jeff interacting with both Will and Ana, since this is the only season that all three of them are castmates with each other.

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IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A pretty solid Christmas episode, though a lot of the better sketches seemed to be in the post-Weekend Update half, minus a particularly awful Mango sketch. Then again, the first half of this episode was no slouch either, as it contained TWO non-sketches with a five-star rating (monologue and TV Funhouse). Ellen DeGeneres was a solid host as expected.

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

 

HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Hugh Jackman)
a slight step up

My full set of screencaps for this episode is here

TOMORROW
We enter the year 2002, with host Josh Hartnett