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
I mainly remember Jamba Juice, The Needlers, Art Dealers, TV Funhouse (great appearance by Dennis “President on “24” Haysbert), and A Day in the Life of Natalie Portman in which the network airing had to mute a lot of words she’s saying! I think this was the Nuni sketch I remember most of all judging by what was just described. I think I always got some kick out of The Harrisons/Needlers though thank goodness there weren’t too many of them! Yeah, Jamba Juice was enhanced by Horatio’s breaking up this time. I think that’s all I’ll comment on…
This will be our Vintage SNL on June 27th.
Fall Out Boy is a perfect time capsule of 05-06 in music. While not the strongest live performers (the first out of tune chord in Sugar We’re Going Down..ooof) they are at least entertaining. A Chicago band that was big with my classmates (they played their senior prom a few years prior).
Hello, fellow Chicagoan! FOB used to play the west suburbs quite a bit in the early 2000s. I was classmates at Downers North with some guys that opened for Stump & Co.
Per Andy, Natalie was the inspiration for the short:
https://www.vulture.com/2018/02/andy-samberg-on-snl-natalie-portman-rap-sequel.html
“She had seen “Lazy Sunday” and wanted to do a rap. We were skeptical, but then she told us she was a big Lil’ Kim fan and spit an entire verse for us. It was hilarious and convincing, so we said, Great! Her public persona was so squeaky clean that it was fun to rip it apart with her.”
This is a pretty watchable episode, but also one of the shakier S31 episodes for me up to this point – also one that is oddly structured, as we get the third or fourth repeat of a pre-tape to close out the show, followed by a little over a full minute of goodnights. (the best part of that is seeing Bill and Fred in the back jumping up and down like kids)
Natalie’s great, and very committed, but it’s a very early example of the pre-tape material giving a host a chance to stand out when the rest of the night doesn’t. For someone so game, it’s odd to see her playing a generic role in not one, not two, but three recurring sketches that are often used to prop up a mediocre/poor host. It gives me bad flashbacks to when the late ’90s wasted some talented hosts the same way. That Natalie’s Rap got so much more attention than the return of Nuni, the first time a host, not just cast, scored a hit in these, just helped move SNL even further in the direction of pre-tapes taking a higher priority.
It’s nice to see the show turn the tables on women not knowing about sci-fi/fantasy (even if in order to break a stereotype they reinforce one via Andy and Jason – the second time wasn’t really needed), but my favorite part of the monologue was Kristen’s bit about shaving her head.
Funny you mention Jamba Juice and season 30 as the sketch did feel like something originally cut in season 29-30 to me – namely due to Seth returning to playing the hyper hyper hyper role. I do think this sketch is a lot of fun, and I enjoyed seeing Seth and Horatio both cracking up this time around.
The Larry King sketch is pretty tedious going. One could say “the joke’s on Larry,” and I’m always here for sketches that point out how stupid and tone deaf his show was, but there isn’t much here to bother with – and Fred, while competent, just can’t do it the way Norm did.
The structure of this Update does make me wonder if Tina and Amy did know something was off, or maybe Tina just wanted to try a format juggle before she left. Or maybe this was just another regular week, who knows. The Natalie segments were the biggest change, a good way to bring some of the enjoyment that Chris Kattan’s Update reenactment pieces had before they became so overused. Kenan’s piece is mostly valuable as a time capsule – I wonder if they’d gotten some blowback after that absolutely terrible Aretha impression the previous episode. It’s interesting how the entire focus is on what it was like for Kenan and Finesse to have to play these roles, rather than how black women would feel about these portrayals. A glimpse into the mindset that would blow up in SNL’s face, badly, come 2013. The Finesse stuff mostly just made me feel a little sad. This is the third time in S31 they have mocked his status on the show (Lorne in the premiere; Steve Martin lumping him in with Kenan), and now we have the further humiliation of him saying he has to dress in drag so he can keep his job. A job he would end up losing within a few months. The whole thing just feels very grimy. Finesse isn’t a cast member I was ever that enthralled by, then or now, but I’m glad that, even if the show still doesn’t do right by various cast members, they at least no longer openly degrade them this way on air.
I did enjoy the Needlers farewell, which I wasn’t expecting. The “fourth” line you mentioned cracked me, as did her blasting him for interrupting her soap viewing, to which he responds that he doesn’t want to take her away from her friends.
Wake Up Wakefield is mostly more of the same, but the last moment is a sweet closing of a book – better than many recurrers get. It’s a shame Maya had to weigh the whole thing down with the return of her annoying voices, but, not much new there.
I didn’t care for most of TV Funhouse – the old cartoon styles and most of the commentary felt very overly familiar by this point. Haysbert’s nerves didn’t help, although they weren’t a big deal. I did enjoy the Ladysmith Black Mambazo part.
I thought this ‘address’ cold open was better written than many of these years, managing to get across a wide range of scandals, but I could feel Will’s fatigue at playing the role all through this sketch. I’m glad we’re near the end there.
Good episode, but too stuck in repeats and recurring segments to really take off (and while I like the Needlers and Wake Up Wakefield is okay, these are not A-1 recurring sketches, and most of which were on their last legs). If not for a good host and some good original material, this has the vibe of a last season episode on paper–heavy on just okay recurring characters and some hacky gay/trans humor.
Boy, talk about a dispatch from Season 30, featuring some iffy transphobia, dusty Rudolph pieces and the two kinds of Seth Meyers characters – desperate recurring bids that never take off, and the ones the recurred anyway.
Of course it took the new crew to make the episode pop. Though to be honest, I don’t see the Natalie Raps piece as much more than a more disparate version of the typical “white guy rapping” routine. Then again, like most Lonely Island pieces, it is expertly crafted and flawlessly executed, no matter how cliched the concept.
Water in Spanish is agua’
I was wondering what you were going to say about the Larry King Live sketch, since it’s such a product of its’ time. Even though the sketch is based around Larry King’s cluelessness, it really felt more like the main purpose was to get the performers in drag and show off the make-up and wardrobe department’s skills than anything else. BTW, all the people interviewed in the sketch are real people.
I really liked Portman as a host too, even if the material wasn’t the most solid.
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The SportsCenter sketch with Barry Bonds is in the next episode. An underrated gem that I’ve always liked. Even better, it’s the final appearance of those stupid Appalachian guys.
The “jamba-jamba” singing is indeed parodying a Lionel Richie song. Specifically, “All Night Long”.
Don’t know if this is a hot take, but A Day in the Life of Natalie Portman is my favorite digital short. I’m biased because it was the first one I saw, and if memory serves might even be the first SNL sketch I ever saw period (showing my young age here, heh.)
To some, it may be a bit cliché and too derivative of Lazy Sunday, but it’s got a ton of fun moments. I don’t know how unexpected it would’ve been to see Natalie Portman rap, but the conceit is still funny and absurd to me. I love the straight bits with Parnell and Andy’s bit at the end still gets stuck in my head to this day (I feel like catchiness is something that SNL music videos have lost.) When I think of this ‘05-‘09 era, Andy in that viking costume is one of the first visuals that comes to mind.
Also, I agree with you that the applause at the beginning of cold opens is unnecessary. I have no idea why they do that. Ever since applause breaks caused a certain sketch to get cut from John Mulaney’s first hosting stint in S43, I’ve been extra sour on them.
The Larry King/transgender sketch hasn’t aged well at all, and we’re going to see a handful of gender dysmorphia sketches going into the 2010s. Natalie’s Digital Short and Sheldon’s Bar Mitzvah were the two highlights for me, though Update wasn’t that rough. Natalie was a really good host carrying mediocre material.
To answer your question about the weird applause at the start of cold opens in modern times: I’ve seen the show twice (in 2018 and 2020) and both times they lit up the applause sign after literally the first line. It’s just one of those ways they try to build up energy in the studio, I suppose, but it also follows some stand-up, a musical performance by the cast (led by Kenan these days and the SNL ladies), the house band playing some tunes, and then a very exaggerated countdown to air. (In case you’re curious, the applause sign is also lit up for cameos and at the end of all sketches.)
Also, haha, oof, that transphobic sketch really makes me wonder when any of SNL’s periodical, misguided trans-centered sketches are gonna put them under storm. I feel like that’s something that I’m surprised they’ve never been strongly criticized for retroactively, because both this episode’s Larry King sketch and that Estro-maxx are REAL stinkers.
I’ve seen some criticism of the Estro-maxx (something else that was brought on by Bill Hader blowing up last year); this sketch seems to be fairly unknown (I’d never heard of it). I think transphobic material was so prevalent in pop culture for so long that it may not be as much of a surprise as, say, Jimmy Fallon’s blackface sketch was to people recently). I was kind of surprised when they finally put the first few Stefon sketches on Youtube (no longer blocked in the US) earlier this year as they, if memory serves, use the t word.
Yeah, I suppose it’s pretty fair to say that this is an incredibly obscure sketch, but I feel like more deeply buried things have been found. I also find it amusing to think that since this will be the SNL Vintage episode tomorrow, there were definitely some editors who watched through the episode, saw this in 2020, and just went “No fucking way.”
Estro-maxx is still readily available on YouTube though, which feels very odd. I suppose a part of the reason this stuff doesn’t get caught as easily, too, aside from the fact that transphobia is far more tolerated than racism unfortunately, is that these sketches are more ensemble pieces; you can’t just say “Jimmy did blackface” and call it a day, and because the writers of sketches are always so obscure, there’s not really a good person to blame aside from SNL as a whole. I dunno. I’m not too smitten on cancel culture within a certain timeframe, but it would be nice to see some level of accountability that SNL, just being SNL, would never offer, lol.
I’ve seen people say that quite a few times lately – when will SNL (or I guess they mean Lorne) have to face questions rather than individual performers. I think that’s why the show mostly seems to just stay quiet if possible (as Jimmy was advised to do) and also why so much is kept out of circulation. I really wish at some point, even if they no longer air this type of material (aside from the occasional transphobic joke on Update), they could consider some sort of program addressing their past content, like a documentary on their channel. Probably not worth the blowback for them though, as the main response from people who are unhappy would just be that the show should be canceled, but I kind of wish they’d consider it.
What about the hacky, stereotypical gay humor throughout the decades? Plus, the stuff involving incest?
I can’t even imagine anything involving Nasim Pedrad’s character in S39 will still hold years from now, and don’t even get me started on those “Kissing Family” sketches. Heck, none of Paul Rudd’s S34 episode to me holds up.
It seems that SNL tends to get defensive when it comes to offending viewers, while saying that the staff comes across as a “family.” Yet, it is strange that they don’t really let the cast speak out much on the material.
I was trying to remember what made the cut in the vintage airing…
I think it was cold open, monologue, Jamba Juice, the digital short, Needlers, Nuni x2, and portions of Update (Natalie’s bit was there – Kenan’s was NOT).