October 9, 2004 – Queen Latifah (S30 E2)

Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars

SECOND PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE
undecided voters address debaters George W. Bush (WLF) & John Kerry (SEM)

— Hoo, boy. Welp, here’s SNL’s second attempt at a Bush/Kerry debate spoof, after how much of a colossal failure the one from the last episode was.
— After getting so used to seeing Chris play Jim Lehrer in all the debate sketches from season 26 and in the debate sketch from the first episode of this season, it feels odd now seeing him play a different moderator this time (Charles Gibson). Interesting how Chris has become SNL’s resident impersonator of all presidential debate moderators, to the degree that, even four years later during the 2008 elections, which is a few years after Chris’ second firing, SNL would actually bring Chris back in cameos to play the various moderators of all the presidential debate sketches that year (not including the vice presidential debate). I think he would also cameo to play a moderator in one of SNL’s 2012 debate sketches. I’ve always been very conflicted on SNL’s decision to make Chris their resident impersonator of every single presidential debate moderator in 2004 and 2008. Part of me feels that 1) it’s a lazy, one-note, and dull way to use Chris, 2) it typecasts him in an unfortunate way, and 3) it, among many other things, seems to suggest that SNL foolishly doesn’t value Chris much as a comedic performer and instead looks at him as someone who’s more capable of just playing non-comedic straight roles. On the other hand, it shows A LOT of trust and confidence on SNL’s part for them to always give the pretty important role of presidential debate moderator to Chris, even to the degree that they would go out of their way to BRING THE MAN BACK IN CAMEOS years after his second firing to moderate every single one of their 2008 presidential debate sketches (and keep in mind this is years before it became commonplace for presidential sketches to have many cameos).
— Hopefully, the town hall format will add life into THIS debate sketch, and prevent it from being a dud like the debate sketch from the preceding episode.
— I’m two-and-a-half minutes into this cold opening so far, and Will’s performance ALONE is making me like this better than the preceding episode’s debate cold opening. Will is hilarious in this as a very jumpy and defensive Bush.
— Not caring for anything from Seth’s John Kerry in this cold opening so far, especially not the tiring and weak bit with him naming off an endless number of fellow politicians from the military.
— Okay, I’m getting laughs from the bit right now with Seth’s Kerry making really bad puns over how crooked Bush is.
— I love the camera cutting to SNL writer John Lutz as a puzzled guy in the town hall audience when Seth’s Kerry points towards him and says “Maybe this fat guy right there.” A Lutz sighting on SNL is always a plus.
— Will’s Bush and some of his dialogue continue to crack me up throughout this cold opening.
— I love Will’s delivery of “Heh, need some wood?”, even though it’s just a verbatim quote from Bush in the real debate that this cold opening is spoofing.
— When Will’s Bush asks SNL writer Paula Pell “That answer your question?” after giving her a particularly nonsensical answer, I like Chris’ Charles Gibson saying a very deadpan “No, it doesn’t.”
— Okay, they’re starting to focus WAY too much on Bush’s sarcastic “Apparently, I own a timber company” thing. It’s not getting much laughs anymore. However, it’s still not as annoying as hearing “We’re workin’ haaaaarrrrrrrd” 10,000 fucking times in the last debate sketch.
— The audience loved Seth-as-Kerry’s “I’m going to keep talking. You know why? Because I…can’t…help…myself.” line, but it did nothing for me.
— This overall cold opening clocked in at 10 minutes. Three minutes shorter than the insufferable debate cold opening from the preceding episode, but still quite long. However, this debate cold opening as a whole was a mild improvement over the last one. Some of the Bush stuff was actually pretty good and Will gave a very solid and funny Bush performance here, but, much like the preceding debate spoof, SNL’s Kerry material still leaves A LOT to be desired and this overall debate spoof failed to provide ANY of the type of memorable, legendary moments that all of SNL’s best debate spoofs have.
STARS: **½

MONOLOGUE
host performs “Take The A Train” with Scat Cats HOS, MAR, FRA, WLF

— A random but funny “Clean Yo Teefah” toothpaste endorsement joke from Queen Latifah.
— A rare instance of SNL Band saxophonist Lenny Pickett getting to speak a line, even though he wasn’t shown onscreen during his line in this monologue.
— Horatio’s silly scatting reminds me a lot of the silly scatting he did in Jack Black’s monologue from the preceding season.
— Not caring for this monologue. How SNL went from Latifah’s great monologue from her season 28 episode to THIS monologue is beyond me.
— I did get a chuckle just now when the music stopped to a comically abrupt halt as Latifah bluntly tells the Scat Cats she doesn’t want to be in their group.
STARS: **

SHORT & CURLY
Short & Curly pubic hair shampoo draws groin attention in the locker room

 

— A big laugh from Will’s delivery of the line “Greg, your pubes look FANTASTIC!”
— Good reveal of the Short & Curly pubic hair shampoo product.
— After the initial big laugh from the shampoo product reveal, the appeal of this commercial is wearing off for me, as it’s now just relying on shock value with all the blurred-out groins of the casually-nude male cast members. This shock value isn’t even being executed in a particularly funny way like a stronger SNL era could’ve done. And considering we already had a lame low-brow commercial in the last episode (Dr. Porkenheimer’s Boner Juice), is it too much to ask for an SNL commercial this season that DOESN’T rely on cheap shock humor (not counting Swift Boat Veterans For Truth from the preceding episode, as that was just a topical, one-time commercial, not a traditional SNL commercial)? Another early harbinger of how weak and cheap this season’s writing in general will be.
— Finesse Mitchell makes his very first appearance of this season brazenly removing his towel and exposing his allegedly well-endowed self (blurred out, of course). I guess that certainly counts as making a splash in your first appearance in a new SNL season. (Neither Finesse nor Kenan were anywhere to be seen in the preceding week’s season premiere. Kinda insane that both of SNL’s only two black male cast members would be shut out of a season premiere.)
STARS: **

PRINCE SHOW
Patti LaBelle (host) & Sharon Stone (AMP) claver

— Can’t say I’m excited to see this back for a third time, as this is the type of sketch that’s funny and unique in its debut, then gradually diminishes both in quality and novelty with each passing installment, due to how formulaic it is.
— Yep, just as I was worried, I see that the novelty of these Prince sketches has officially worn off. Feels like if you’ve seen one installment of this sketch, you’ve seen them all.
— Good to see the return of Amy’s pretentiously-wordy Sharon Stone impression, just because of how much I liked it in the preceding season’s Megan Mullally episode.
— Latifah’s Patti LaBelle doing an over-the-top pratfall off of the carousel horse felt too desperate for a laugh. I recall an online SNL fan from back at this time in 2004 saying that portion of this sketch came off so hacky that he almost wondered if he accidentally turned the channel to “All That” on Nickelodeon.
— I like the little detail of Prince’s purple pillows having purple feathers inside of them when he’s tearing the pillows apart during his “tantrum”.
STARS: **½

EXCEDRIN FOR RACIAL TENSION HEADACHES
Excedrin for Racial Tension Headaches curbs (host)’s ignorant co-workers

— Some well-done, pointed racial humor here.
— Great reveal of the Excedrin For Racial Tension Headaches medication.
— Latifah: “Excedrin RT works fast. Takin’ me from ‘Oh, no, you di-n’t’ to ‘I wish the mother(*bleep*) would’.”
— Overall, now THIS was a good commercial, and sure beats the low-brow, shock value Dr. Porkenheimer’s Boner Juice and Short & Curly.
STARS: ****

VICE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE
vice-presidential candidates Dick Cheney (DAH) & John Edwards (WLF) spar

— During this sketch’s opening title sequence, I was about to say “ANOTHER Bush/Kerry debate sketch tonight?!?”, before remembering from my past viewings of this episode that this particular sketch is the vice presidential debate. Still feels redundant to see TWO debate sketches tonight, though, especially considering how shaky and unreliable SNL’s debate writing has been so far this season.
— Latifah and Darrell’s timing feels off so far.
— I just now realized how odd it is that Will is playing a candidate in both debate sketches tonight.
— A cellphone can faintly be heard going off in SNL’s studio just now. If that’s an audience member who’s cellphone is going off, then I assume he or she got kicked out immediately afterwards, as it’s a strict rule at SNL that audience members turn off their cellphones before the show.
— After an off start, Latifah and Darrell’s timing has gotten better.
— A good laugh from Darrell-as-Cheney’s impatient teeth-gritting face (the last above screencap for this sketch) when Will’s John Edwards keeps going on and on about Cheney’s daughter’s lesbianism.
— Wow, this sketch is wrapping up ALREADY?!? I’m very surprised, as this sketch felt only about 3 minutes long. A huge contrast to the very long length of the respective Bush/Kerry debate sketches so far this season. I guess even this season of SNL is self-aware enough to realize that two super-long debate sketches in the same episode would’ve been murder on viewers. Normally, I would praise SNL for managing to do a debate sketch this season that’s actually SHORT, but this sketch just came and went with mostly only mild chuckles from me, and I had been waiting for this to finally start taking off, only for it to abruptly end after what felt like only three minutes.
— The closing line from Latifah’s Gwen Ifill: “I’m going back over to Public Television with Jim Lehrer where you won’t be seeing me for another four years.” Funnily enough, four years later when SNL would do a parody of the Sarah Palin/Joe Biden vice presidential debate, Latifah would actually cameo to reprise her role as Gwen Ifill, given the fact that the real Ifill moderated the real Palin/Biden debate. SNL didn’t have a black female in the cast by that point (this was a year after Maya’s departure, and it wouldn’t be until FIVE LONG YEARS LATER where lots of media outrage forced SNL into holding a special mid-season audition for a new black female cast member), which is most likely why SNL resorted to calling up Latifah to reprise the Gwen Ifill role.
STARS: **½

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
host performs “The Same Love That Made Me Laugh”

WEEKEND UPDATE
new inmate Martha Stewart (RAD) has taken quickly to prison life

FIM favors restrictions on names bestowed by young black mothers

— There’s been a change made to the Update desk tonight, as the desktop now has several transparent things (seen in the screencap below) that resemble item scanners at the check-out counter in stores. Obviously, that’s not what the transparent things on the Update desk are, but I don’t know what they are.

— I see we’re continuing to take a page out of The Daily Show’s playbook in this new Update era, by relying on news clips to punctuate a joke. And didn’t Amy ALREADY do a joke in the last episode that used a clip of President Bush rapidly blinking hard during a Bush/Kerry debate?
— Rachel as Martha Stewart???
— Latifah is cracking me up with her faces in the background during Rachel-as-Martha’s commentary.
— Rachel’s certainly no Ana Gasteyer when it comes to playing Martha Stewart, but I like her Martha a little better than the disappointing one Amy once did the preceding season.
— The side segment with Tina and Amy’s speech to lonely single female voters isn’t too bad. Better than what I remember Tina and Amy’s side segments were typically like during this Update era.
— Amy, on the announcement of a Britney Spears rap album: “’I can’t wait to hear that’, said no one.” This is the very first instance of a “said no one” joke on Update, which would go on to be used quite a lot during the Seth Meyers years of Update. Some SNL fans incorrectly attribute that joke to just Seth, as if he’s the only person who ever delivered it on Update. As we see here, Amy was actually the very first Update anchor to do the joke, long before Seth was even an Update anchor.
— Speaking of Update jokes that’s also used elsewhere on SNL, Tina’s joke just now about guys on Howard Stern throwing baloney at a stripper’s ass was actually previously used as a line by Amy’s one-legged Amber character in the “The Swan” sketch from the preceding season’s finale hosted by the Olsen Twins. I wonder if this means Tina writes those Amber sketches.
— The M.I.A.-in-last-week’s-season-premiere Finesse Mitchell gets his own Update commentary as himself. Meanwhile, the also-M.I.A.-in-last-week’s-season-premiere Kenan Thompson is still M.I.A. tonight. Where the hell has he been this season???
— Hearing Finesse talk about what it was like growing up with the name Finesse doesn’t quite work when you’re aware that his real name isn’t even Finesse. A month or so after tonight’s episode, he would reveal during an interview on John MacEnroe’s short-lived CNBC talk show that his real first name is Alfred, if I recall correctly.
— Considering my mother had me at a very young age (14, believe it or not), I’m really liking Finesse’s comical exaggerations about what it was like for him to grow up with a mother who was still growing up herself. (Finesse says his mother had him when she was 15.) This resonates with me personally.
— Overall, after all of my complaints in the inaugural Fey/Poehler Update from the last episode, tonight’s Update actually wasn’t TOO bad. Still far from great, but this Update had a more streamlined feel, and Tina and (especially) Amy seemed a little more restrained and professional tonight. (I guess Amy’s still experimenting on her Update persona at this point, as, from what I remember of the remainder of the Fey/Poehler Update era, Amy would unfortunately soon go back to the cutesy, silly persona she had in her very first Update, which drove me nuts.) Aside from some minor things here and there, neither Amy nor Tina had any real frustrating moments tonight that made me groan or roll my eyes like in the last episode’s Update.
STARS: **½

BASKETBALL OFFERS
high school basketball phenom (FIM) picks pro spoils over college toil

— There’s Kenan finally making his first appearance of this season.
— Kenan’s voice as the old man is pretty funny.
— This sketch is obviously based on LeBron James going straight from high school to the NBA the previous year. Hell, Finesse’s LeBron-esque character in this sketch is even named LeTron.
— Not only has SNL finally given newbie Rob Riggle his very first comedic role, but wow, he just now did an INSANELY intense little rant that was fantastic. Quite Will Ferrell-esque.
— I like the sequence with Rob and Seth taking turns whispering persuading things in Finesse’s ears.
— Despite the aforementioned highlights, something about this overall sketch as a whole didn’t fully click for me.
STARS: **½

TV FUNHOUSE
“X-Presidents” by RBS- election meddling summons ghostly X-X-Presidents

— (*sigh*) The final X-Presidents cartoon. Feels kinda odd seeing an X-Presidents cartoon appearing as recently as 2004. (Coincidentally, the last time an X-Presidents cartoon appeared before this episode was in Queen Latifah’s previous episode.)
— Hmm, Ron Reagan Jr. is now a member of The X-Presidents? How random.
— Ah, now I see why Ron Jr. is now a member. This is not too long after Ronald Reagan passed away.
— A laugh from Barbara Bush bumping her head on the ceiling and falling down when the X-Presidents fly out of a ceiling exit while Barbara is still sucking on Bush Sr.’s feet.
— Jimmy Carter to John Kerry, right before kicking him in the face: “Feelin’ malaise yet, bitch?”
— Great turn with several dead presidents, including the then-recently-deceased Ronald Reagan, rising out of their respective grave to become the X-X-Presidents.
— Franklin D. Roosevelt: “The only thing you have to fear… is my foot up your ass!”
— Benjamin Harrison to George W. Bush: “Four score and seven years ago, I hung you by your nuts!” George W. Bush: “Hey, that’s not your line!” Benjamin Harrison: “Gimme a break, I’m Benjamin Harrison.”
— When Bush Sr. is about to vomit after eating Ron Jr.’s stem cell-filled cooking, I absolutely HOWLED at the gag with a Japanese leader being hurriedly placed next to Bush just so Bush can vomit into the leader’s lap, referencing Bush’s infamous Japan/vomiting incident from 1992.
— A good variation of the usual musical endings of these X-Presidents cartoons, with the deceased Ronald Reagan singing in heaven with dead rock legends.
STARS: ****

HEAVEN
St. Peter (HOS) feeds straight lines to Rodney Dangerfield (DAH)

— Speaking of SNL portraying deceased celebrities in heaven…
— Darrell’s Rodney Dangerfield impression is always solid.
— Dammit, even in a nice tribute sketch like this, Horatio has to shoehorn in his horrible long-time habit of pausing awkwardly for a few seconds before delivering some of his lines.
— I particularly like the joke from Darrell’s Rodney about his wife being so dumb that she has to reach inside her bra to count to two.
— Boo to the audience for their tepid reactions to these great Rodney jokes. Does the audience just feel tense and hesitant to laugh because of how soon after Rodney’s death this sketch is airing? Can’t they see this sketch is clearly coming from the heart?
— A very classy and touching response from Horatio’s St. Peter when telling Darrell’s Rodney why he asked him all of those questions if it was already decided that he’s allowed into heaven: “I just wanted to hear those jokes one more time.”
— An equally classy “We’ll miss you” In Memoriam card shown at the very end of this sketch.
— Overall, a much better Darrell Hammond-starring deceased celebrity tribute sketch than whatever the hell SNL was going for in that Johnny Cash sketch from the preceding season.
STARS: ****

VOTER REGISTRATION
Starkisha & (host) compete to register voters in a black neighborhood

— Oh, god, Starkisha again.
— After not appearing at all in the preceding episode, Finesse has been all over tonight’s episode, but it’s obviously only because we have a black female host. (Why have we seen so little of Kenan, though?) Finesse immediately goes right back to receiving little-to-no airtime in the next few episodes.
— Is Amy playing the same clueless whitebred character she played in the last Starkisha sketch? I liked her in that sketch.
— Ah, Chris has now appeared as Amy’s husband, like how he played her husband in the last Starkisha sketch, so I guess Amy’s character is the same clueless whitebred one she played last time.
— I’m a few minutes into this sketch, and most of my only laughs have come from Amy. The Starkisha stuff, on the other hand, does nothing for me as usual, even though I actually kinda like this presidential election premise for her, as it’s a more mature change of pace from her previous sketches.
— A laugh from Latifah doing the MC Hammer dance.
STARS: **

MUSICAL GUEST INTRO
CHK introduces host

— WTF? Kattan out of nowhere. Boy, between his countless cameos the preceding season and now this, it’s REALLY hard for him to part ways with SNL since leaving, isn’t it? His post-SNL career clearly hasn’t been going well.

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
host performs “Hard Times”

ZINGER VS. SNAP
Dave ‘Zinger’ Klinger & Dr. Sheila ‘All Snaps’ (host) trade insults

— This was originally cut after dress rehearsal from the preceding season’s Snoop Dogg episode, with Snoop playing Latifah’s role.
— After the tepid reaction I had to Seth’s zinger character in my review of his first sketch, this character grows on me more and more with each passing sketch he appears in.
— Latifah is really fun in this, and I’m enjoying the way she and Seth are playing off of each other, moreso than how Alec Baldwin and Megan Mullally played off of Seth in the previous installments of this sketch.
— I love the “zing pong” miming that Latifah and Seth are doing right now.
— When Chris has a sudden yelling outburst at Rachel, Rachel helplessly cracks up and tries to mask it.
— A good laugh from Latifah punching Seth’s zinger character for his crude face-sitting joke about Latifah’s mama.
— Feels a little weird seeing a Zinger sketch as the final sketch of the night, but this is actually a fun way to end the show.
— This ends up being the final Zinger sketch. At least this series of sketches went out with what I feel has been its best installment.
STARS: ***½

GOODNIGHTS

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IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— Much like the season premiere, this episode showed early signs of this being a bad season, but I still slightly prefer this episode to the season premiere. Despite a lot of weak segments, this had a better overall average than the premiere and not even the weakest segments of the night tanked TOO badly, compared to what we’ll be seeing whenever this season scrapes the bottom of the barrel. It helps that Queen Latifah was a fun host once again, and her energy gave the atmosphere of this episode a boost.

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

HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Ben Affleck)
a very slight step up

My full set of screencaps for this episode is here

TOMORROW
Jude Law, a.k.a. the episode with the infamous Ashlee Simpson incident