April 13, 2002 – The Rock / Andrew W.K. (S27 E17)

Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS
George W. Bush (WIF) tries to trump suicide bombers’ martyrdom rewards

— Pretty funny turn with Will-as-President-Bush’s sex chatline infomercial-esque offer to suicide bombers.
— Funny detail of how the naughty photos of American women that Bush is offering have censor bars over their eyes.
— A laugh from Bush naming his deal offering the “Bush/Cheney/Guccione Peace Plan”.
STARS: ***

MONOLOGUE
host takes two punches in the face from CHK

— The Rock already gets a good laugh very early on in this monologue, with the fake-out of him plugging his alleged new movie, Gosford Park 2.
— Pretty funny visual of The Rock manhandling “Little Chris Kattan” while giving him a friendly greeting.
— Not much to this monologue, and this is pretty thinly-written, but The Rock is making this work with his reactions after getting punched by Kattan. This is the kind of monologue that would easily fall flat if it were performed by a host who doesn’t have The Rock’s talent and charisma.
STARS: ***

BRIAN FELLOW’S SAFARI PLANET
parrot spurs fears of identity theft

— Brian Fellow’s angry reactions when the parrot keeps saying “I’m Brian Fellow” are very funny and memorable.
— Tracy managed to get a great, extended laugh from the audience with his delivery of the line “Hopefully, we will fix this in editing.”
— The whole bit with Brian Fellow constantly bringing up the parrot during his interview of The Rock’s character is hilarious, especially Rock’s very funny uncomfortable facial expressions. I particularly like the silent, obedient way Rock nods his head when Brian Fellow asks him if he saw that “loudmouth bird”.
— When Brian Fellow is looking at a thought bubble of the parrot trying to buy something over the phone with Brian’s credit card, I absolutely howled at the way Brian screamed “HANG UP THAT PHONE!” Man, Tracy’s delivery as this character (and Tracy’s delivery in general) is pure gold.
— The Rock is a great straight man here.
— Priceless ending with Brian Fellow growling “I’m gonna kill that motherf–” when getting up to run after the parrot.
— Overall, this has long been my absolute favorite Brian Fellow’s Safari Planet installment.
STARS: ****½

THE SCORPION PRINCE
Scorpion King (host) doesn’t want to take whiny son (SEM) into battle

— (*groan*) As soon as he enters the sketch, Jimmy IMMEDIATELY breaks, for NO APPARENT REASON. Jesus Christ.
— Seth’s exaggerated performance as an angsty teen is not working for me. I know the point is that this character is supposed to be whiny and irritating to his father, but he’s coming off far more annoying than funny to me. I can officially pinpoint this as Seth’s very first performance that bothered me during this SNL project of mine… and if my recollection of season 30 is correct, this will be far from the last Seth Meyers performance that I’ll be complaining about.
— The funniest and most memorable moment of this entire sketch is one that’s not even in the script: during his rant to Seth about how he’s taken him places in the past, The Rock accidentally pronounces “tomb” as “tome”, and then, without breaking character at all (hear that, Jimmy?), smoothly saves himself with a funny ad-lib: “I didn’t take you to the tome, I took you to the tomb”, which gets a good audience reaction. He then milks some more audience laughter out of this by turning around and saying “It was a tomb!” to a still-trying-not-to-laugh Jimmy, who then repeats “It was a tomb!”
— Something about the combo of Seth’s whiny facial expressions and that wig he’s wearing make him strongly resemble Ben Stiller at certain points of this sketch. And now that I say that, I’ve just remembered that Stiller also once did a sketch in his season 24 hosting stint in which he played a whiny, irritating son similar to Seth in this sketch, though that Stiller sketch was much better than this.
— Another text crawl ending, though this one is an improvement over the one the show had then-recently used in the Bass-Off sketch from the Jack Black episode.
STARS: **

ARTHUR ANDERSEN
Arthur Andersen now offers shady accounting to individual taxpayers

— A good laugh from Rachel’s foreign cleaning lady asking “Que?” with a clueless big smile on her face.
— A solid little Ferrell moment with him following up his line about “getting huge credit for drilling an exploration” by informing us “…and that’s NOT a sex joke.”
— A decent spoof of the Arthur Andersen/Enron scandal. I particularly like spokesperson Parnell’s pride in Arthur Andersen’s criminal deceit.
— Steve Higgins can be heard stifling laughter during his ending voice-over. Is that part of the script?
STARS: ***

HARDBALL WITH CHRIS MATTHEWS
Dick Armey (WIF), Pat Caddell (JIF), Paul Begala (CHK)

— Surprisingly, this is the first Hardball sketch to air all season, which is particularly a shock when you consider how frequently these sketches appeared in the second half of the preceding season. There was a Hardball installment cut after dress rehearsal from the Gwyneth Paltrow episode earlier this season.
— Jimmy looks hilarious Pat Cadell.
— After his line about how only 50 people watch this show, Darrell starts laughing out of character, for no apparent reason. Seems to be quite a lot of unexplained breaking throughout tonight’s episode.
— A big laugh from the viewer letter complaining about how they had the TV on mute and Chris Matthews’ loud voice still woke up their kid.
— Very funny line from Will’s Dick Armey about taking over West Bank and naming it “America 2” and using it for storage.
— Chris Matthews’ various misnomers for the name Dick Armey are freakin’ priceless. I remember there being some controversy online from some people accusing SNL of stealing the “Vagina Coast Guard” misnomer from Family Guy. I personally say there’s a 50/50 chance between SNL having stolen the joke and it just being a coincidence. I’m leaning towards the latter. After all, I don’t think it takes THAT much creativity to come up with “Vagina Coast Guard” when trying to think of similar names to Dick Armey.
— In my review of the last Hardball sketch, I complained that the constant Paul Begala insults from Darrell’s Chris Matthews were getting old. Well, the long absence of Hardball sketches this season seems to have done some good, as Matthews’ constant Begala insults tonight seem more fresh and are making me laugh a lot. Even better, this ends up being the final appearance of Begala in a Hardball sketch, and thus, I don’t have to worry about Matthews’ insults to him ever getting old again (especially considering how frequently we’ll be seeing Hardball sketches in the upcoming season 28).
— Kinda disappointing that Parnell wasn’t in this overall Hardball installment, as he usually was always given the funniest comments in previous Hardball installments.
STARS: ****

DRUNK GIRLS
backstage, Drunk Girl & her equally-sloshed friend Pamm (host) accost SEM

— A good new setting for Drunk Girl.
— Seth: “How did you get in here?” Drunk Girl: “Tracy Morgan.” Seth: “Yeah, it figures.”
— Much like the first episode hosted by the Rock, we get another excuse to throw The Rock in drag. However, I’m finding him very funny here as a Drunk Girl-type character. His drunk, slurred female voice is making me laugh out loud.
— Tonight’s breaking-filled episode continues, as Seth cracks up after unexpectedly getting his nipple pinched by The Rock.
STARS: ***

ON THE SUBWAY
on the subway, (MAR) musically disses loudmouth know-it-all Fred (TRM)

— The very first of a series of semi-dramatic Tracy/Maya pieces, in which both performers deliver a theatrical-type reading, as different characters in each sketch. As a teenager when these sketches originally aired, I absolutely HATED these, would wonder where the hell the comedy was, and would always trash these sketches in my reviews back then. (I also used to always refer to them as “Subway Fred sketches”, named after Tracy’s character in tonight’s sketch.) As I got older, I’ve developed a huge appreciation for SNL’s semi-dramatic slice-of-life sketches, and I now find myself far more game and curious to revisit these Tracy/Maya pieces, especially since these pieces are in an SNL era where semi-dramatic slice-of-life sketches were a thing of the far, far past.
— I like the 70s look to Maya’s character.
— The combination of Maya delivering her lines musically and Tracy delivering his lines in a spoken manner is quite interesting.
— Overall, nothing particularly memorable here, but I found this to be an interesting, entertaining, and well-performed experimental piece. I wonder which writer is behind this and the subsequent semi-dramatic Tracy/Maya sketches. I’d figure it has to be a black writer, as these sketches accurately capture a very urban atmosphere, but did SNL even have any black writers during the seasons that these sketches span (seasons 27 and 28)?
STARS: ***½

SHE’S THE GIRL WITH NO GAYDAR!!!
Nicole, The Girl With No Gaydar misreads patrons at a gay piano bar

— I can understand the appeal of the first installment of this sketch from earlier this season (and I now admit I was a little too dismissive of that first installment in my recent review of it), but yeah, this will not work as a recurring sketch.
— Feels odd seeing Darrell with his natural look while playing an effeminate character like this.
— The novelty of seeing The Rock playing a lispy, microphone-stroking gay guy doesn’t hold up much nowadays, but his performance is still coming off fairly fun, which is one of the few positive things I can find in tonight’s Girl With No Gaydar installment.
STARS: **

WEEKEND UPDATE
having bears rampage through his home inspires Gene Shalit (HOS) to pun

— Oh, god, a Horatio Sanz commentary with him seated next to Jimmy. As if tonight’s episode didn’t feature enough breaking…
— I got a laugh from one of Horatio-as-Gene-Shalit’s alleged puns being a simple, pun-less “Those bears made me poop in my pants.”
— I’m a little torn on the overall Gene Shalit commentary. I can see the “So bad, it’s good” appeal to this, but at the same time, I didn’t find myself laughing all that much. At least this commentary was thankfully not derailed by too much Fallon/Sanz giggling, which is more than I can say for a later Gene Shalit Update commentary I recall Horatio doing the following season.
— A solid vampire rapist bit between Jimmy and Tina. That’s always been one of my favorite side bits that Jimmy and Tina ever did together on Update.
— Oh, god, I spoke too soon about the Gene Shalit commentary ending and not being derailed by Fallon/Sanz giggling. Horato’s Shalit has suddenly returned to deliver more puns. I knew his commentary from earlier tonight ended awfully abruptly.
— Update’s over ALREADY? This Update only felt about 5-6 minutes long. Kinda odd how, in the span of just two episodes, SNL has gone from what was possibly one of the all-time longest Updates to one of the shortest Updates in a good while.
STARS: ***

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Party Hard”

ALL ABOARD THE FREEDOM TRAIN: THE DUETS OF NEIL DIAMOND AND BIGFOOT
duets album by Bigfoot (host) & stoned Neil Diamond (WIF) may not be real

— Hilarious initial visual of The Rock as a casually-acting Bigfoot.
— Ha, now Bigfoot is singing beautifully. The Rock has been singing in quite a lot of sketches tonight, by the way.
— Yes! Will’s Neil Diamond! I absolutely LOVE this absurd, random setting of Neil Diamond and Bigfoot advertising a duet album of theirs.
— Neil Diamond, on Bigfoot: “This kid’s got pipes so sweet, it almost makes you forget the truly astounding amounts of feces matted into his hair.”
— I absolutely love Neil Diamond’s line about someone he once met who looks like a black version of Richard Mulligan.
— A very funny message to us from Diamond about how he’s not even sure if any of this is real because he’s stoned out of his gourd and is pretty sure he’s in his basement talking to his water heater.
— A classic little moment with Diamond throwing in the lyric “I sold a human foot to some Chinese dudes in a van” during the duet of the song “Fire And Rain”.
— The little gestures and actions that The Rock is adding in as Bigfoot throughout this sketch are hilarious, especially him randomly rubbing his own ape nipple at one point.
— Overall, what a blast this sketch was. Of all the Neil Diamond follow-up appearances that Will has done after the classic Storytellers sketch that his Neil Diamond impression made its debut in, tonight’s sketch is the closest SNL has come to equaling the greatness of that Storytellers sketch. I really, really want to give this sketch a five-star rating, but I’m a bit torn, as I feel this sketch still doesn’t quite measure up to the classic-ness of Storytellers, despite coming very close.
STARS: ****½ for now. I might eventually change my mind to a five-star rating, but I don’t want to screw up the rating averages and five-star tallies that are graciously provided by some of the commenters on this site.

AMERICA UNDERCOVER
trashy white couple wreaks havoc in an emergency room

 

— The final appearance of these America Undercover redneck characters of Kattan and Amy’s.
— A good laugh from Amy handing The Rock a tree branch as a “stick” that she peed on to see if she’s pregnant or not.
— Overall, nothing new here, but the incoherent madness in these America Undercover sketches always amuses me, even though this installment didn’t make me laugh quite as much as the first two installments. However, at least the hospital room setting provided a bit of a change of pace to the usual antics of Kattan and Amy’s characters. Also, after I’ve been particularly salty towards Kattan in my last few episode reviews (and rightfully so, as I’m sure quite a number of you readers feel), I’d like to say something positive about him for a change by pointing out that he made me laugh throughout tonight’s America Undercover installment. Even though Kattan has been doing absolutely nothing new in any of the various sketches he’s appeared in tonight (which is par for the course for him this season, sadly), at least he’s showing he still has the ability to get some laughs from me every now and then.
STARS: ***

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “I Get Wet”

A MESSAGE FROM SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE
new ditty by HOS, CHK, TRM, JIF encourages everybody to cool out

— Ah, a variation of the traditional “I Wish It Was Christmas Today” song, with this being a new song that has a completely different melody, different lyrics, and a different central theme. Tracy’s even doing a new dance.
— Very catchy melody to this new song. I love it.
— So far, this isn’t as strong as the “I Wish It Was Christmas Today” bits, but it’s still fun.
— Horatio’s lyrics calling for peace remind me of a cut-after-dress-rehearsal piece from around this time (I can’t remember which episode) that I once read about, in which Horatio, as himself, stood alone on the home base stage and sang the song “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” while a TV monitor next to him accompanied the “don’t worry” parts of the song with images of tragic things currently in the news at the time (e.g. 9/11-related stuff) and then accompanied the “be happy” parts of the song with images of heartwarming, sweet things like cute puppies. A nice, heartfelt message that Horatio was sending out, and a side of Horatio that we don’t see anywhere near as often as we should. He would later get a heartfelt piece like that on the air in which he, again standing alone on the home base stage as himself, does a sentimental tribute to Mister Rogers, who had recently passed away.
— Right as Tracy steps to the front of the stage during the song and begins a straight-to-camera monologue about peace, the screen abruptly crossfades to an SNL bumper photo of The Rock while audio of Tracy’s peace monologue is still heard, which is an obvious sign that the show is running long and this sketch is about to get cut off prematurely. The odd thing, though, is that in the copy I’m currently watching of this episode, both the bumper photo of The Rock and the audio of Tracy’s peace monologue go on for a very long time before the sketch gets cut off by a commercial break. (At one point during the audio of Tracy’s peace monologue, we hear him say, in regards to infighting among the SNL cast, “Sometimes things get a little out of hand and someone gets cut. I’m sorry, Parnell”, referencing Parnell’s temporary firing.) Whichever affiliate that the copy I’m watching of this episode was recorded from (I don’t know where, as it’s not my personal copy) is clearly not the same affiliate I watched this episode on when it originally aired back when I lived in Illinois, as the Chicago affiliate I watched cut to commercial very shortly after the bumper photo of The Rock prematurely showed up during Tracy’s peace monologue.
— When NBC would rerun this episode a few months later, the ending of this sketch would still get cut off prematurely (though it lasts a little longer than it does in the live airing), but that may be because right before the goodnights, that rerun inserts a tribute to former SNL director Dave Wilson, who had recently passed away. (For anyone curious, the tribute showed behind-the-scenes footage of Wilson in the SNL control room getting things ready for the X-Files cold opening of the about-to-go-on-the-air David Duchovny-hosted season 20 finale, which was Wilson’s final episode as SNL’s director.)
STARS: ***½

GOODNIGHTS
(Not included in the copy I’m reviewing of this episode. My copy just abruptly ends after the preceding sketch gets cut off prematurely. I guess this episode ran so long that the affiliate the copy I’m watching of this episode was recorded from had no time to air the goodnights. Again, this shows how differently each of the affiliates handled this episode running long, because the Chicago affiliate I watched this episode on when it originally aired actually showed the goodnights, though it got cut off VERY early, I think before The Rock even finished speaking.
This is only the second (and hopefully last) time during this SNL project of mine that a copy I reviewed of an episode was missing the existing goodnights. The first time that happened was the Christopher Walken episode from season 21 (as seen towards the end of my review here). As you can imagine, it feels very odd and quite empty to watch an SNL episode end without ANY goodnights or any variation of goodnights.)

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IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A decent episode, though felt a little on the forgettable side compared to The Rock’s memorable first episode and most of his later episodes. There were still a few strong highlights tonight, though. The very abrupt, premature ending to this episode (as mentioned above) kinda left a bad taste in my mouth, but SNL can’t be blamed for that. As good as The Rock did in his first hosting stint, he was even better tonight in his second stint, and has officially entered the status of “potential future five-timer”.

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

HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Cameron Diaz)
a mild step up

My full set of screencaps for this episode is here

TOMORROW
Alec Baldwin. An odd coincidence I realized just now: prior to the episode I just reviewed above, the only episode I reviewed that was missing its existing goodnights in the copy I watched, the aforementioned season 21 Christopher Walken episode, was also followed by an Alec Baldwin episode.