Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
BUSH’S ADDRESS
shell-shocked George W. Bush (WLF) & Dick Cheney (DAH) make apologies
— This is a very minor thing to complain about, but just let me vent for a sec: I’ve been noticing that it’s become a regular habit somewhere around this season (maybe a bit prior to it) for every cold opening to have the audience pointlessly applaud after a cast member at the very beginning of it begins speaking. I’m surprised, because I thought that didn’t become a regular trend on SNL until much later, like around 2013. Either way, it’s such an annoying and stupid trend, and it especially bugs me when that pointless applause causes the cast member speaking at the beginning of the cold opening to abruptly stop mid-sentence. Almost makes me wish every cold opening was pre-taped like the then-recent Scarlett Johansson and Steve Martin episodes’ respective opening, just so we can avoid this pointless applauding stuff.
— Believe it or not, this ends up being the ONLY time during Will’s three-year stint as George W. Bush that he does a direct-to-camera “And now, a message from the president of the United States” address-to-the-nation piece from behind the Oval Office desk.
— Some decent laughs so far, but nothing noteworthy.
— SNL gets in their obligatory spoof of the then-recent incident of Dick Cheney shooting his friend in the face.
— Overall, the epitome of an average cold opening.
STARS: ***
MONOLOGUE
host handles audience members’ questions on Star Wars & The Professional
— Some microphone issues as soon as Natalie Portman has started speaking.
— Jason’s mere facial expression as a geek is hilarious and is getting a great audience reaction.
— A lazy and weak joke with Finesse as a black audience member not knowing what Star Wars is.
— Natalie is very solid here, immediately giving me confidence in her as a host.
— There goes Chris playing his obligatory perv role.
STARS: ***
NELSON’S BABY TOUPEES
Rerun from 1/21/06
JAMBA JUICE
hyper Jamba Juice employees (host), (HOS), (SEM) boost smoothies
— Natalie keeps the solid performances going, as she’s really good as the lead here.
— Funny rapidly-delivered stories from Seth.
— Ugh, a hacky gag with Chris making a walk-on as a very stereotypical gay guy ordering a fem boost. Why’d this turn into a season 30 sketch all of a sudden?
— A rare example of me actually being amused by breaking from Horatio. The way he struggled to mutter “Boooooooooost” during that breaking made it particularly funny to me. And showing how solid Natalie is, she’s the only one out of herself, Seth, and Horatio who’s still staying in character during Horatio’s breaking right now.
— I like the running bit with the three Jamba Juice clerks singing a jingle in unison that starts with rapidly-sung foreign gibberish and ends with “Heeeyyyy, Jamba-Jamba!” I’ve heard that jingle is spoofing an old Lionel Richie song.
STARS: ***½
LARRY KING LIVE
transsexuals (AMP), (WLF), (host) engender mix-ups from Larry King (FRA)
— Fred’s Larry King impression makes its debut.
— What the hell is with Kristen’s Felicity Huffman impression? Why is she mugging so oddly like that, doing that bizarre twitchy thing with her left eye? Is she spoofing a mannerism of Huffman’s that I’m not aware of? Kristen didn’t do this last time she played Huffman in the Eva Longoria episode.
— Speaking of Kristen doing that bizarre twitchy thing with her left eye, during one point when she’s doing that, you can hear what sounds like a pipe loudly dropping onto the floor off-camera. Did NBC just drop another show? (A reference to a joke from Milton Berle’s notorious season 4 monologue, a joke that’s detailed in my review here, though my background info on the pipe-dropping being an off-camera Bill Murray trolling Berle has turned out to just be a common misconception, as cleared up by a generous commenter in the comments section of that review.)
— Hoo, boy. Larry King interviewing transsexuals? Well, let’s see how poorly THIS holds up.
— Oof. A really weakly-written sketch so far, and yeah, this material about transsexuals probably won’t go over well with viewers nowadays, even if the point of all these unflattering lines about transsexuals is just to show how out-of-touch Larry King is. It’s not being pulled off particularly well, even by 2006 standards, plus knowing these SNL years, the writers were about as out-of-touch towards transsexualism as Larry King would be.
STARS: *½
THE NEEDLERS
fertility doctor (host) interviews prospective parents Sally & Dan
— The final appearance of these characters, due to Seth officially stepping down as a sketch performer the following season to concentrate on just being a head writer and a Weekend Update co-anchor. I remember during the summer of 2006 when it was first announced in an online article that Seth would be Amy’s new Update co-anchor for the then-upcoming season 32, the article included a short interview with Seth and Amy regarding their new Update pairing, and, when asked at one point what’s going to happen to their Needlers characters now that Seth will no longer appear in sketches, Seth and Amy waved it off by responding point-blank, “The Needlers finally got a divorce.”
— Once again, SNL has changed the theme song in the Needlers’ opening title sequence. I really don’t understand why they’ve made it a regular thing to change the theme song every time.
— A particularly funny exchange between the Needlers: Amy: “You ruin every Fourth of July!” Seth: “You ruin the Fourth of Everything!”
— Some good barbs between the Needlers here.
— Funny hint of a certain bad genital incident that once happened between the Needlers during sex.
— I love Seth’s delivery of the line “That dog wanted OUT!”
— Good part with Seth “standing up” for Amy by saying “This woman may not be the most loving person you’ll ever meet……..”, then when Amy tells him to finish his sentence, Seth smugly responds “Oh, no, I’m done.”
— Ugh, there goes the beyond-tired “The Needlers are having sex in the other room” gag that’s unnecessarily ALWAYS in these sketches. And why is it ALWAYS Jason who gets stuck delivering the “The Needlers are having sex in the other room” line (excluding the first sketch with these characters, where it was Johnny Knoxville who delivered the line)?
— I did kinda like the bit about a sperm sample after the aforementioned “The Needlers are having sex in the other room” gag.
STARS: ***½
TV FUNHOUSE
Belated Black History Moment- Dennis Haysbert [real] presents cartoons
— A huge rarity, as we not only get live-action scenes in a TV Funhouse, but the live-action scenes in tonight’s TV Funhouse are actually being performed live, for, I believe, the ONLY time in TV Funhouse history. Making this even more special, the live scenes feature Dennis Haysbert.
— Great idea of Token Power, starring Valerie from Josie And The Pussycats, Winston from Ghostbusters, and Franklin from Peanuts.
— Ha, a hilarious random voice cameo from Tracy Morgan, spouting off a whole bunch of Tracy Morgan-isms.
— Once again, Smigel does such a spot-on and solid spoof of Saturday morning cartoons.
— Dennis Haysbert’s delivery seems a little off, and he flat-out botched a line early on and had to take a second to pause before repeating the whole line, but I’m getting laughs from his one-liners about how bad each animated series was, one-liners that are made even funnier when delivered in Haysbert’s trademark baritone, professional voice.
— The whole Ladysmith Black Mambazo In Outer Space segment is freakin’ HILARIOUS.
STARS: ****
ART DEALERS
Nunni (host) & boyfriend (JAS) visit home of her parents Nuni & Nuni
— Our first Nuni sketch of the season. Given how tired I’ve gotten of these sketches by the end of the preceding season, I’m at least glad we’ve gotten a long hiatus from them. We thankfully get only one more appearance from them after this, a year later.
— Ughhhhh, I am so goddamn sick of the copy-and-past portion of these sketches with the Nunis clarifying to their guest how to differentiate the pronunciation of their names. Give it a fucking REST.
— Ughhhhh again, now we get the beyond-tired copy-and-paste portion of these sketches with the Nunis having difficulty in pronouncing the simple name of their guest.
— The nasty sequence with Chris blowing ice cream from his mouth into the others’ mouths through a tube feels like a variation of the famous Bird Family sketch with Julianna Margulies, only nowhere near as funny.
— Jason is a great straight man here, and is the only strong thing in this entire sketch so far.
STARS: *½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Dance, Dance”
WEEKEND UPDATE
Donald Trump (DAH) disparages Martha Stewart by pretending to be her
Sasha Cohen (host) nails her short joke program with a peanut witticism
LadyFat is KET’s line of women’s clothing for big male comedians of color
Oscar winner AMP fails to thank TIF during her acceptance speech
Sasha Cohen (host) flubs The Aristocrats during her long joke program
— Two minutes into this Update, and I have yet to crack so much as a half-smirk at any of these lame-ass jokes from Tina and Amy.
— An okay-ish gag with Darrell’s Trump initially entering as Martha Stewart, but the commentary died a sad death after he took off his Martha wig and did the rest of the commentary as himself.
— An interesting change of pace with Natalie as Sasha Cohen, with her in front of the Update desk performing in an Olympics-esque “joke-telling competition”. Very clever and inspired, especially for something from the dire Fey/Poehler Update era. And Natalie gives yet another strong performance in tonight’s episode.
— They are absolutely loading this Update with frequent guest commentaries while having a shorter-than-usual number of Update jokes from Tina and Amy, which is possibly SNL acknowledging how bad tonight’s Update jokes are. (It also may be SNL trying to “make up” for the lack of any guests in the preceding episode’s Update.)
— While the format of Kenan’s commentary is fun, his pride in selling his own line of women’s clothing for black men, and the way he’s embracing the tired “black men dressing in drag” comedy trope, certainly feels odd to see in hindsight, given the complete 180 he would (rightfully) do years later by publicly taking a stand against the “black men dressing in drag” comedy trope, and refusing to play any more women on SNL.
— Finesse In A Dress alert.
— We get a very meta line from Finesse acknowledging how horrible his airtime has been this season, with him saying a very earnest “I can honestly say, I would rather wear a dress made by Kenan than not be on the show at all.”
— Blah, I could’ve done without Finesse shoehorning in a Starkisha bit at the very end of his appearance, though it at least made me realize that we thankfully haven’t seen any actual Starkisha sketches this season.
— Random bit with Amy winning an award for an Update joke of hers, but I’m actually enjoying this. I really like Amy’s constant fake-outs on the non-Tina-Fey famous Tinas that she thanks during her acceptance speech, and how Fey is getting gradually frustrated by this. Easily one of the better Tina/Amy interaction pieces during this Update era.
— Great to see a continuation of the very inspired segment with Natalie’s Sasha Cohen.
STARS: **½
BAR MITZVAH
Sheldon fails to reunite with ex-girlfriend (host) at his bar mitzvah
— Wow, we haven’t seen Wake Up Wakefield in ages. This also ends up being this sketch’s final appearance.
— This bar mitzvah setting is a very nice change of pace for this sketch.
— The surname of Natalie’s character, Hershlag, is an inside reference, as Hershlag is actually Natalie’s real-life birth surname.
— Charming interactions between Natalie’s character and Sheldon.
— The audience sounds really subdued during some parts of this sketch.
STARS: ***
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF NATALIE PORTMAN
interviewer (CHP) elicits vulgar rap from (host) about her hardcore life
— A very famous Digital Short.
— A hilarious sudden cutaway from the calm interview to black-and-white footage of Natalie angrily rapping.
— Fantastic intense, vulgar, and committed rapping from Natalie, and the lyrics are priceless and memorable. Some great visuals in the well-shot black-and-white rap footage as well.
— Funny interlude from a viking outfit-wearing Andy.
— Solid ending to the interview portion, with Natalie smashing a chair on Chris.
— I love the memorable ending shot, consisting of a brief, extreme close-up of Natalie yelling “Whaaaat?” into the camera.
STARS: *****
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Sugar We’re Going Down”
FIRE ALERT 3000
Another rerun tonight, this time from 10/29/05
GOODNIGHTS
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A decent episode, and most of the biggest highlights were particularly strong. Natalie Portman was a very solid host, which really impressed and surprised me at the time this episode originally aired. It’s also surprising that SNL wouldn’t have her back as a host until 12 years later.
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Steve Martin)
about the same
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
Matt Dillon