Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
SPECIAL REPORT WITH BRIT HUME
George W. Bush (WLF) is defensive during a press conference in China
— Did Darrell just screw up a line when throwing to Will’s President Bush? Darrell’s been developing a bad habit of stumbling through his lines these past few episodes.
— This Bush press conference is very light on laughs so far.
— This is starting to feel way too similar to the Bush press conference cold opening from this season’s premiere (though THAT cold opening was actually funny). Both cold openings even have Chris’ Wolf Blitzer, Amy’s Norah O’Donnell, and Jason’s Terry Moran as reporters each asking Bush a question.
— I did get a laugh just now from Will’s Bush asking, in regards to democrats, “If they’re so smart, why’d they listen to me?”
— Now Will is the one getting awfully stumbly with his lines.
— Overall, tepid political humor here.
STARS: **
MONOLOGUE
host matches narrator Mary Alice (KRW) with fellow disembodied voice Don Pardo (DAH)
— I remember when this monologue originally aired, Eva Longoria’s joke about how we know her as “a man-eating super-vixen who seduces teenage gardeners…but I also star on Desperate Housewives” made me wonder if whoever wrote this monologue was ripping off a joke that SNL did before. You see, the preceding Sunday before this episode originally aired, NBC premiered the “SNL in the 80s: Lost and Found” documentary from Kenneth Bowser, and at one point in that documentary, they showed a clip of George Wendt and Francis Ford Coppola’s season 11 monologue, and in the clip, Wendt made a joke about how he’s usually “just sittin’ around drinking beer all day…and when I’m not doing that, I’m working very hard on Cheers.” I, at the time tonight’s Eva Longoria monologue originally aired, assumed that whoever wrote her monologue watched the preceding Sunday’s SNL 80’s documentary and, uh, “got inspired” by George Wendt’s aforementioned Cheers joke in the clip of his monologue, and “borrowed” it for tonight’s monologue, only modifying it to relate to Desperate Housewives. 15 years later, I now feel I may have been pushing it in that assumption, and the similarities between the Cheers/Desperate Housewives joke may possibly have just been a coincidence. After all, a similar joke was used in Katie Holmes’ monologue a few seasons prior to tonight’s episode. Plus, it’s not a difficult joke to come up with.
— Funny bit with Chris as a shirtless gardener in the studio.
— A good laugh from Horatio bolting the hell out of there when he walks on as a Latino stereotype right as Eva mentions her distaste for Latino stereotypes.
— In the whole bit with the unseen voice of Mary Alice (the narrator of Desperate Housewives) being seduced by the unseen voice of Don Pardo, Don is actually voiced by Darrell, because, as I mentioned in my review of the preceding episode, Don has temporarily taken to taping his announcements from home around this time, and SNL apparently didn’t have enough time to have him tape a voice-over for the Mary Alice gag in this monologue before the live show aired (SNL probably wrote this monologue at the last minute, if the legend I’ve heard is true about SNL usually waiting until early Saturday to write monologues), so they had to resort to Darrell imitating him once again (which he had done several times in the past during the opening montage when Don was too sick to do the show).
STARS: ***
FIRE ALERT 3000
Rerun from 10/29/05
THE SPAMMIES
(CHP) & (host) win awards for sending unsolicited e-mail
— Not a bad premise, but I’m wary over how this will turn out, as SNL has such a poor track record with award show sketches.
— Rachel’s Rita Rudner impression is always funny to me.
— Kristen’s very first celebrity impression on SNL, and she knocks it out of the freakin’ park doing a spot-on and funny impression of Megan Mullally’s Will & Grace voice, which gets a good audience reaction.
— I remember some online SNL fans, back when this sketch originally aired, pointed out how physically shaky Kristen looked during this sketch, and those fans assumed that shakiness of hers was a sign of new cast member jitters. However, I’m pretty sure the shakiness was just part of her Mullally impression.
— Eva unintentionally gives away how cheap the award statuette prop she’s holding is, as she mistakenly pulls off of piece of the bottom of it and has an odd reaction.
— Overall, I didn’t find this sketch too bad, and I’m glad it wasn’t overlong like a lot of SNL’s award show sketches are.
STARS: ***
DEEP HOUSE DISH
vocalists (AMP), (host), (FRA) & (BIH) perform on MTV4
— Uh-oh. The debut of a recurring sketch I’ve always despised.
— The details of the story within Eva’s song lyrics are fairly funny.
— There it goes, the very first “Ooh-wee” from Kenan’s DJ Dynasty Handbag character. I hate the running gag with him constantly berating Rachel’s Tiara character for being boring.
— This is the third episode in a row with Fred and Bill paired together as a foreign-accented duo (the last two instances were the gardeners they played in the sketch with Lance Armstrong singing love songs at the piano, and the French government officials they played giving a press conference on Weekend Update). Fred and Bill are starting to develop into a pretty fun SNL duo.
— Overall, didn’t care for this, but aside from the “Ooh-wee, Tiara” stuff, I didn’t hate it as much as I recall hating these Deep House Dish sketches when they originally aired. My prediction is that, in these reviews of mine, I’ll gradually start hating these sketches the more and more I have to review them, especially when I cover season 32, as I recall this sketch appearing A LOT that season.
STARS: **
MORGAN STANLEY
— TWO repeated commercials before Update tonight?
THE NEEDLERS
Sally & Dan bicker & have make-up sex at their 10-year college reunion
— This is the third time the Couple That Should Be Divorced have appeared, and in every single one of their appearances so far, the theme song in their opening title sequence has been COMPLETELY different. I find that very odd.
— After Seth claims he has a very good memory, I like the following exchange between Amy and him: “Oh, really? When’s our anniversary?” “The…spring.”
— Ugh, there goes the same-old, same-old twist with the Needlers having sex off-camera when going to a room to argue. So tired by this point.
— Overall, some laughs, but these Needlers sketches are slowly starting to wear a little thin on me. I seem to have more tolerance for these sketches than a lot of other people do, though. I find these sketches harmless and a good display of Seth and Amy’s always-fun chemistry, but ultimately, these sketches become pretty redundant after a few installments. Luckily, there’s only one installment remaining.
STARS: **½
VINCENT PRICE’S THANKSGIVING SPECIAL 1958
in 1958, stars irk Vincent Price (BIH) on his gothic Thanksgiving Special
a box of Chesterfield cigarettes (AMP) boasts of doctors’ approval
— Yes! The debut of these Vincent Prince holiday special sketches, a favorite of mine. Now THIS is a good recurring sketch.
— Despite a line flub early on, Bill is giving a wonderful performance here as Vincent Price.
— Newbie Kristen Wiig steals the show again tonight with her very funny take on Judy Garland. Only two episodes into her SNL tenure, and Kristen is definitely having her breakout night tonight. Also, when this Vincent Price sketch originally aired, I remember getting huge Mo Collins (from MADtv) vibes from then-newbie Kristen in this sketch, and not just because of the way Kristen performed, but also the way she looked.
— I absolutely love Bill-as-Price’s angry line when witnessing Kristen-as-Garland’s drunken inability to sit on the couch: “Oh, she’s on the floor now. AM I THE ONLY ONE SEEING THIS?!?”
— Very funny reaction from Bill’s Price when the commercial break he panickedly threw to so he could straighten out the mess on his show ends up being incredibly short. “Who makes 12-second cigarette commercials?!?”
— Odd delayed timing with Eva doing (as Lucille Ball) the trademark “Lucy cry”, though I did like Bill-as-Price’s deadpan response to that cry: “Well, I can’t say I didn’t see THAT one coming.” SNL would later replace this “Lucy cry” portion of the sketch with the dress rehearsal version in reruns, where Eva’s timing isn’t off.
— When Kristen’s Garland is talking to a painting by the fireplace, there’s a very odd gaffe in which the studio lights on this part of the set dim VERY prematurely, as if the sketch has already ended, even though the sketch is CLEARLY still on the air and there’s still about 20 seconds to go until the sketch ends. What the hell?!? However, showing what a true pro she is, Kristen doesn’t let it faze her performance at all. I can’t quite remember if this is another portion of this sketch that would later be fixed by SNL replacing it with the dress rehearsal version in reruns, but I seem to recall them leaving the live version of this portion intact in reruns.
— When Horatio’s Alfred Hitchcock walks in a VERY slow manner to help Kristen’s Garland, I got a big laugh from Bill’s Price sarcastically telling him “Take your time, buddy. No rush.”
— Overall, such a great debut to these Vincent Price sketches.
— I recall Bill later saying in an interview that he was SO nervous performing this first Vincent Price sketch so early in his SNL tenure that when he arrived backstage after the sketch was over, he was so shaken and dizzy-ish from having performed the sketch that somebody had to sit him down on a chair for him to collect himself. His nervousness wasn’t visible during the sketch itself AT ALL, as he performed it expertly.
STARS: ****½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Twisted Transistor”
WEEKEND UPDATE
congresswoman Jean Schmidt (RAD) digs a deeper hole with apology attempt
Steve Jobs (FRA) supplants obsolete iPods with increasingly tiny models
— Oh, I see Update is unfortunately returning to last season’s newfound Daily Show-esque habit of the anchorpersons reacting to a news clip. Blah.
— Tina, in reply to a clip of congresswoman Jean Schmidt being booed: “Wow, I haven’t heard booing like that since I quit stripping.” Ugh, such a hacky line.
— The sequence with Rachel as Jean Schmidt was awful, and ended with painfully awkward silence from SNL’s audience.
— Speaking of hacky, we get a very weak Monica Lewinsky punchline from Amy during an Update joke about Bill Clinton.
— Ah, here comes Fred. Please save me from the laughless hell that is this Weekend Update, Fred!
— Meh, despite Fred’s good performance here, I’m not caring for the escalation of his Steve Jobs displaying increasingly smaller new iPods.
— Amy, to the audience when Fred’s Steve Jobs leaves after displaying his “invisible” iPod: “He wasn’t holding anything.” Oh, gee, thanks for informing us of that extremely obvious fact, Amy! Because we certainly couldn’t have figured out the joke on our own! (*groan*) For fuck’s sake…
— I did at least get a chuckle just now from Amy’s vocal impression of Regis Philbin during her Regis joke.
— Ha, then-new SNL writer Akiva Shaffer is seen in the photo during the punchline of Tina’s vegetarian restaurants joke (the last above screencap for this Weekend Update). As I said before, I’m always a sucker for when SNL uses comedic photos of their writers for the punchline of an Update joke.
STARS: *½
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED AT THE “DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES” VANITY FAIR PHOTO SHOOT
Teri Hatcher (host) & other Desperate Housewives are divas at photo shoot
— Tonight’s another episode in which Andy gets stuck in nothing but very tiny roles, a non-speaking one in this particular sketch’s case. His role in this sketch might as well have been played by an extra. Aside from the preceding episode, in which he got several noteworthy roles, poor Andy’s been stuck in Bit Part Hell the past few episodes. I swear that most of his airtime lately has been in that often-repeated Morgan Stanley commercial than in actual sketches. That, coupled with the fact that Andy’s fellow newbies (Jason, Bill, and Kristen) have been absolutely THRIVING, is part of what made a lot of online SNL fans at the time very incorrectly predict Andy would go on to be a Rob Riggle-esque one-season wonder. I also remember one online SNL fan pointing out how awkward and lonely Andy looked at certain points of this episode’s goodnights (though I might be remembering wrong and that fan might’ve been referring to the goodnights of another episode from around this time), and how Andy had a look on his face during these goodnights that suggests he’s feeling he’s not quite fitting in at SNL and that this gig hasn’t been working out for him so far.
— Rachel as Eva Longoria??? Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve always found Rachel to be adorable, but let’s be honest, her as Eva Longoria HAS to be a tongue-in-cheek casting decision.
— Random casting of Seth as Nicolette Sheridan. Is she only being played by a man because she’s tall? Either way, I can’t say the casting of Seth as her is making me laugh.
— That’s the whole sketch? Uh, wow. This did VERY little for me. Maybe people more interested in this type of gossipy pop culture would enjoy this sketch more than me.
STARS: *½
TRAPPED IN THE CLOSET TWO: STILL TRAPPED IN THE CLOSET
R. Kelly (FIM) adds bizarre cliffhangers in Trapped In The Closet sequel
— Boy, lately, I’ve slowly been starting to forget Finesse is even in the cast.
— Chris doing his announcer voice throughout this sketch in a badass, deep urban voice is strangely amusing to me, without coming off as a hacky “Ha, listen to the un-hip white guy try to sound black!” gag.
— The bizarre turn with Kenan entering as an alien is fairly funny, but maybe I’m just desperate for a big laugh by this point of the sketch.
— Overall, meh. And I’ve never been one of the people who argues that MADtv is/was better than SNL, but I recall MADtv doing a hugely popular Trapped In The Closet parody about a month before tonight’s SNL episode, and it put SNL’s mediocre parody to shame.
STARS: **
HELGA ENGLEHART AND HER THREE LIVING BROTHERS
fratricide influences lyrics but not tone of upbeat German family band
— Has Chris done a voice-over in practically EVERY sketch tonight? It sure feels like it. It kinda bugs me that Chris, a very dependable performer, is being used far more as a voice-over than as an actual onscreen performer. (Unfortunately, the exact same can be said about him in his post-SNL career.)
— Strange sketch, but I’m enjoying the comedic juxtaposition of the gleeful Dutch family band and the dark nature of the death of one of their brothers. I especially like the hints that the text crawl of song titles is giving to how the brother died.
— Ha, much like the badass, deep urban voice-over he did in the preceding Trapped In The Closet sketch, Chris’ gleeful Dutch-accented announcer voice in this commercial is strangely amusing me.
STARS: ***½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Freak On A Leash”
FIRMIUM
host uses sophomoric euphemisms in diarrhea medicine testimonial
— Blah, not caring for the comedic conceit of “Attractive actress promotes a diarrhea medication”.
— This is just a variation of the Butt Cancer Treatment Center commercial from earlier this season, only live instead of pre-taped, and focusing on juvenile euphemisms for pooping instead of juvenile euphemisms for butts. Didn’t care for this routine in the Butt Cancer commercial, and I care for this routine even less in this sketch. I wonder if both of these were penned by the same SNL writer.
— Okay, I do admit to laughing just now at Eva’s “take the Browns to the Super Bowl” euphemism for pooping, just because I had never heard that euphemism anywhere else but here, and it IS kinda creative (though I doubt whoever wrote this sketch originated it). You can tell Eva was fighting back a laugh after saying that line.
STARS: *½
GOODNIGHTS
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A forgettable episode. Aside from the fantastic Vincent Price sketch, no segments in this episode stood out to me as particularly strong, and there was a lot of ho-hum material.
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Jason Lee)
a big step down
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
Dane Cook