February 7, 2004 – Megan Mullally / Clay Aiken (S29 E11)

Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars

NIGHTLINE
Ted Koppel (DAH) keeps the focus on Janet Jackson’s boob

— They’re still using Will Ferrell’s old voice-over intro originally used in Nightline sketches from way back in the mid-late 90s.
— I was about to say we haven’t seen Darrell’s Ted Koppel in ages, but I forgot he last did the impression just two seasons prior in the News Media sketch from season 27’s Jon Stewart episode.
— Funny turn with the serious political discussion becoming a conversation about the infamous Janet Jackson “wardrobe malfunction” that had recently happened.
— Good laughs from how overly serious Darrell’s Koppel is taking the discussion about Janet Jackson’s boob. I also love how he keeps pronouncing “boob” as “beeewwwb” in that trademark voice of his.
STARS: ***½

OPENING MONTAGE
— When Chris Parnell’s shot comes up, Don Pardo mistakenly announces him as “Chris Katta–” before abruptly cutting himself off and correctly saying “Chris Parnell”. Given Pardo’s old age by this point, I feel bad for laughing at this gaffe.

MONOLOGUE
host displays her talents to a gay chorus composed of male castmembers

— Interesting seeing the entire male cast together in this, though it kinda emphasizes the lack of the no-longer-on-the-show Jeff Richards.
— Ehh, this turns out to be yet another excuse for this male cast to play gay stereotypes.
— Jimmy with his hair like that makes him look like his character from the Jeffrey’s sketches.
— Despite the gay stereotypes premise, Megan is making this pretty fun and likable with her performance.
STARS: ***

CELEBRITY POKER SHOWDOWN
Gene Shalit (HOS) & Carrot Top (SEM) play cards

— At the beginning, Darrell can be seen casually arriving late for this sketch, much like Jimmy in the Democratic National Committee sketch from two episodes prior.
— Speaking of Darrell, so far tonight, he’s been getting the most airtime he’s had in quite a long time.
— I find it kinda hard to buy Megan as Tammy Faye Messner (formerly Tammy Faye Bakker), as SNL went strangely light on the eye makeup. Besides, Jan Hooks will always be SNL’s definitive Tammy Faye.
— Jimmy’s Kevin Pollak is a decent excuse for Jimmy to break out a whole bunch of celebrity vocal impressions. I also like Chris’ growing anger towards Jimmy-as-Pollak’s impressions.
— This sketch is fun enough that even Horatio’s Gene Shalit is coming off more tolerable to me than usual.
— Chris has a lot of great lines here.
— The Darrell-as-Geraldo stuff is getting old in this sketch. Then again, I never cared for Darrell’s Geraldo. The impression itself is spot-on, but SNL’s material for him always bores me to death. Even the audience has stopped laughing at his lines halfway through this sketch.
STARS: ***

HUGGIES THONG
Rerun from 10/4/03, for the third time this season. I’m starting to become reminded of why I used to hate this commercial back when this season originally aired.

MAMA’S BOY
(host) babies her regressive son (SEM) to drive off his fiancee (AMP)

— Megan is solid as the babying mother, and I like her sudden negative mood changes whenever she directs something at Amy.
— A fitting coincidence that I happen to be reviewing this sketch on Mother’s Day, as this sketch is perfect for this day.
— Some good laughs from how overly serious Seth is taking the hide-and-seek game, and how upset he gets at Amy for giving away his hiding spot.
— The ending came off kinda abrupt.
STARS: ***½

GOLDEN GLOBE AWARDS
insipid Sharon Stone (AMP) exhausts host’s patience at Golden Globes

— A laugh from Sharon Stone being introduced as “the greatest actress in the history of film”.
— Amy’s take on Sharon Stone is very funny and spot-on to how Stone acted around this era.
— Actor and Megan Mullally’s husband Nick Offerman can be seen seated next to Megan during this entire sketch. Also, it’s funny in retrospect seeing him and his future Parks and Rec co-star Amy in the same sketch, though they’re never onscreen together in this sketch.
— Lots of hilarious cutaways to Megan doing increasingly embarrassing and ridiculous things during Amy-as-Sharon-Stone’s long, pretentious speech.
STARS: ****

OPRAH’S FAVORITE THINGS
favors at Oprah’s (MAR) 50th birthday party induce studio audience bedlam

— Oh, here comes a famous sketch.
— Maya’s doing such a dead-on imitation of Oprah’s famous “excited voice”.
— The increasingly over-the-top, insane reactions from Oprah’s audience are freakin’ priceless. Way too many funny parts for me to single out individual highlights.
— Overall, such a strong and perfectly executed sketch.
STARS: *****

BLACK HISTORY CAB
cabbie’s (host) attempts to relate to black passenger (KET) are offensive

— Kenan is overacting badly as the straight man in this sketch. Yet another example of how much growing Kenan needed to do in these early SNL years of his, and how much better he would eventually become years later. If he did this same sketch nowadays, he’d be such a perfect straight man.
— A touchy racial premise in this sketch, and SNL could easily cross a line, but I feel they’re handling it the right way. Megan’s solid and fun performance also helps.
STARS: ***

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Invisible”

WEEKEND UPDATE
allusions of Native American stand-up Billy Smith are lost on audience

on American Idol, JIF performs “She Bangs” a la William Hung

20/20 retiree Barbara Walters (RAD) elicits tears during self-interview

— Jimmy finally ditched the awful Dudley Moore-esque hairstyle from the last two episodes, and has gone back to his original hairstyle from way back in his first three seasons on SNL.
— SNL makes their first of a few mentions within this and the following week’s episode of Howard Dean’s notorious “YEEEEAAAHHHH!” moment (which is another reminder that Jeff Richards is no longer on the show).
— Jimmy and Tina are rebounding pretty nicely from their dreadful Update in the last episode. Tina in particular is having a better night than she’s usually been having this season, though she still has some occasional groaners tonight.
— Like the last time Fred played his Billy Smith character, I’m enjoying the Andy Kaufman-esque anti-comedy here, and Fred is a master at playing comedians who bomb with audiences. However, Fred’s kinda upping the mugging factor of this character, which feels unnecessary. The mugging would get even worse in a future appearance this character makes many years later.
— A particularly strong joke from Jimmy regarding both Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction and Groundhog Day: “Janet Jackson’s breast popped out of its hole, saw its shadow, and now we’ll have 6 more weeks of overreaction.”
— Jimmy’s doing a spot-on imitation of William Hung’s infamous then-recent American Idol audition. However, there’s no twist in this imitation. He just does a straight recreation of the William Hung audition, as if that’s supposed to be enough. In other words, he pulls a Family Guy.
— Meh, there goes Tina resorting to her irritating habit of openly congratulating herself after an Update joke, this time after her slam on Meg Ryan’s looks.
— When the camera first cuts to a shot of both Jimmy and Tina when Jimmy “buzzes in” to answer Tina’s Jeopardy question, a crew member’s hand can be seen touching Jimmy’s tie for a quick second before it exits the shot, while Jimmy is looking towards the camera with a bit of a panicked look (screencap below).

According to an online SNL fan who was in the audience for this episode, there’s a story behind this gaffe. After Jimmy performed the William Hung bit, he quickly put back on his Update suit and returned to his usual spot on the Update set while Tina was delivering a joke. However, he put back on his suit in such a hurry that his tie was very crooked, unbeknownst to him. As Tina was setting up the aforementioned Jeopardy question that the camera was about to cut to Jimmy “buzzing in” to answer, a crew member kept signaling over and over to Jimmy to fix his crooked tie. Jimmy had a very hard time understanding the signal, so the crew member was forced to come over there herself and quickly fix Jimmy’s tie, but wasn’t able to exit before the camera cut to Jimmy.
— Pretty fun concept of Rachel’s Barbara Walters interviewing herself, complete with a soft focus screen filter being used.
— Not caring for Rachel’s Barbara Walters breaking out into song. Feels unnecessary.
STARS: ***

THE WIZARD OF OZ
Munchkinland sues Dorothy (AMP) for collateral damage caused by her house

— In my last few episode reviews, I’ve been pointing out some unfortunate season 20 parallels that I’ve been noticing in this season (though this season definitely isn’t as bad). Now we get a Wizard Of Oz sketch that’s set by the yellow brick road, which immediately brings back unwanted memories of a certain very notorious season 20 sketch.
— Why does Fred always get stuck as characters who say “Awkwaaaaaaard!”?
— This sketch definitely isn’t as dreadful as the season 20 Wizard Of Oz sketch, and this seems to have some promise.
— Yikes, maybe I spoke too soon. Now we get blood-covered severed limbs and vomiting, bringing back those unfortunate season 20 parallels.
— Speaking of season 20 (which I’m doing way too much here), Megan in that get-up strangely looks like season 20-era Roseanne dressed as a man. More specifically, Megan in that get-up looks like what season 20-era Roseanne would look like if she played Rip Taylor, which is a funny coincidence, as Rip Taylor actually cameoed in Roseanne’s season 20 episode.
— Amy-as-Dorothy’s failed attempt to transport herself back home was very funny.
— Some laughs here and there, but I’m not finding myself being all that crazy about this sketch.
— An actual strong ending, with Darrell as Robert Osborne (from Turner Classic Movies) slyly suggesting we re-watch this sketch while smoking a joint and listening to Dark Side of the Moon.
— Speaking of Darrell, he’s often mistaken by a lot of SNL fans as playing himself in this sketch (even SNL Archives makes this mistake, as seen here), which is an understandable mistake, given that 1) this sketch never says who Darrell is playing, and 2) Darrell’s talking in his normal voice and isn’t wearing a wig, due to him already having a lot of vocal and physical similarities to Robert Osborne. If you’re still not convinced that Darrell isn’t playing himself in this sketch, here’s a dead giveaway that he isn’t: he’s not wearing that all-black outfit he always wears whenever he’s seen as himself.
STARS: **½

ZINGER VS. SLAM
Dave ‘Zinger’ Klinger spars with old flame Debbie ‘Slam’ Slamowski (host)

— Not too crazy about the idea of this sketch being brought back, as Alec Baldwin’s performance was one of the only things that worked for me in the first installment. I seem to be in the minority in not caring much for this character of Seth’s.
— Some good slams from Megan.
— Seth’s zinger routine is slowly starting to grow on me, even if I always find that the hosts’ performances outdo him in these sketches.
— As usual, Chris proves to be a strong secret weapon in these Zinger sketches. I particularly love his outburst at Rachel, “WOULD YOU SHUT UP, WOMAN?!? CAN’T YOU SEE THE DOMINOES ARE FALLING?!?”
STARS: ***

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “The Way”

GRAMMYS
at Grammys, Leon Warwick (KET) & Connie Raitt (host) trade on aunts’ fame

— An okay concept of similar-named relatives of celebrities.
— No idea what to say about this sketch so far. All I know is I ain’t laughing much. A pure 10-to-1 throwaway piece.
— I hated the ending with Amy being charmed by Clay Aiken. Much like one of the many gripes I had with that god-awful Swiffer Sleepers commercial from the preceding season, I find it cringeworthy seeing Amy resort to saccharine cutesiness. It feels wrong for her. Stuff like this feels like it’s undoing everything Amy was known for doing on the Upright Citizens Brigade series on Comedy Central.
STARS: **

GOODNIGHTS

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IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A good episode, making this the first episode I felt this positive about since all the way back in the FOURTH episode of the season (Kelly Ripa). Until the post-Weekend Update half of the show, this episode was consistently good. Even the occasional misfires in the post-Update half were nothing particularly terrible. I’d like to think the good quality of this episode is a direct result of Lorne cracking the whip behind the scenes after the preceding episode (which I went into a little detail about in my last episode review). I also partly attribute the good quality of this episode to Megan Mullally, who was as solid a host as expected due to her comedy background and likability, and was a breath of fresh air in a season that frustratingly relies less and less on comically-skilled hosts.

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

HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey)
a big step up

My full set of screencaps for this episode is here

TOMORROW
Drew Barrymore