Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
ADULTERERS PRESS CONFERENCE
Mark Sanford (JAS) & other unfaithful officials sidelined by Tiger Woods
— A fairly funny idea of officials being desperate to bring up their own sex scandals while the nation is obsessed with Tiger Woods’ sex scandal.
— I’m getting tired of Will-as-John-Edwards’ constant love child mentions in this cold opening.
— Overall, some laughs, but this cold opening was nothing too great as a whole.
STARS: **½
MONOLOGUE
host belatedly stands up to Kanye West in Video Music Awards reenactment
— Funny callback to Kenan as Reba McEntire.
— Do we really need a monologue focused around the then-overexposed Kanye West/Taylor Swift VMAs incident, months after it happened? Not to mention how Taylor Swift herself took the high road in her SNL episode earlier this season by relegating the obligatory VMAs reference to a small bit towards the end of the monologue.
— Two monologues in the past three episodes to feature the host doing backflips? Has this become a requirement for ALL male hosts at this point?
— Impressive moves from Taylor Lautner here, though this lacks the excitement that Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s moves had in his monologue.
— Ha, I like how, after TWICE botching his attempt to kick the Kanye West mannequin’s head off, Taylor ad-libs by straight-up punching the mannequin’s head off instead. Nice save.
STARS: **½
ROSE BOWL PROMO
(host) can’t relax during pre-taping of Rose Bowl player introductions
— Very fast costume change for Kenan, considering he had less than a minute to do a costume change between his Reba appearance towards the very end of the monologue and his appearance as a football player in this sketch, which is appearing immediately after the monologue, with no break in between.
— Speaking of Kenan, I’ve been noticing around this time that he’s been losing weight. It’s particularly noticeable in this sketch. His gradual weight loss would continue both this and the following season, only for him to eventually gain all the weight back sometime after 2010. From what VERY little I’ve seen of Kenan in 2019 and our current year, 2020 (as I’ve mentioned in some previous reviews, I’ve been on a still-ongoing hiatus from watching new SNL episodes, ever since December 2018), it seems like he’s lost more weight than ever. I’ve never seen him so thin.
— A little chuckle when Taylor first makes dumb faces at the camera during his intro taping, before you realize this is going to be the ONLY main joke in this four-minute sketch.
— Lately, Bill seems to be trying to make “D’ohhhhhh, boyyyyyy” his catchphrase, as he said it in both the Secret Word sketch from two episodes prior and now this sketch. That “D’ohhhhhh, boyyyyyy” groan of his also matches my fatigue over this tiring, badly-written sketch.
— Ha, I actually got a big laugh from Taylor’s bad dancing and singing during the most recent take, as stupid as it was. The way his voice went in an upwards pitch at the end of his stretched-out, goofy-voiced utterance of his name Phil (“phiiiiiiIIIIILLL!”) made me lose it, and I almost hate myself for laughing so hard at something THAT dumb.
— Andy steals this sketch with his walk-on at the end, easily the funniest part of this poor sketch.
STARS: *½
SURPRISE
imminent pregnancy announcement puts surprise-loving Sue through the roof
— Oh, god. If you’re familiar with my reviews, you’ll know my reaction to seeing Surprise Sue appear.
— At least it’s been over a year since this character’s last appearance. I didn’t realize until very recently that Sue only appears a handful of times during Kristen’s SNL tenure. She only appears once per season from seasons 33-35, completely skips season 36 (I think Kristen announced around that time that she retired the character, because she was sick of playing her), and then makes a return once in season 37, Kristen’s final season. After that, Sue makes one more appearance years later in a 2016 episode that Kristen hosts. It feels like this character appeared a lot more often and more frequently than that, but perhaps that’s me just getting her mixed together with certain other Wiig recurring characters who I don’t like (a lot of those characters run together in my mind).
— Two-and-a-half minutes into this, and I can’t find anything to say about the content of it. This sketch is featuring the same old, same old stuff that didn’t even work all that much for me in this character’s first sketch, yet has STILL suffered diminishing returns for me in the follow-up installments.
— Sue trying to keep herself from revealing the surprise by shoving pieces of a gingerbread house into her mouth and climbing up a chimney feels like a downgrade from her trying to keep quiet by smashing a bottle over her head and jumping out the window in prior installments of this sketch, but at least they tried something a little different this time, unlike the second installment of this sketch, which copied too many gags from the first installment.
— It’s worth noting that this ends up being Kristen’s ONLY appearance all night. Very surprising, given how very heavily SNL has been typically relying on her both the preceding season and this one (much to the chagrin of some online SNL fans at the time). I remember an online SNL fan back at this time had a theory that the reason for SNL going so light on Kristen in this episode may have been because the Gilly Christmas special was going to air a few days afterwards, which obviously features tons of airtime for Kristen.
STARS: *½
PGA TOUR
PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem (JAS) downplays Tiger Woods’ hiatus
— Some good laughs from Jason very unconvincingly attempting to assure us that the PGA Tour is going to be fine without Tiger Woods, and how it has plenty of other golfing superstars.
— I like Jason desperately taking a drink from a flask of liquor.
— Pretty funny walk-on from Bobby removing sponsor logos in the background while Jason is still going on to the camera about how “fine” the PGA Tour is going to be.
STARS: ***½
SHOW CHOIR
middle schooler (ANS) heckles Christmas program of classmates’ show choir
— Will’s role reminds me of the prison warden role he played in the 50’s Ent sketch (in which Will memorably kept yelling “Shut the eff up!” to the off-camera prisoners booing the onstage performers) from the Ashton Kutcher episode all the way back in season 28, Will’s very first season.
— Not caring for this sketch at all. Not even Will is doing anything for me. His role in this sketch pales badly in comparison to his role in the aforementioned 50’s Ent sketch.
— Ha, yet another Andy Samberg walk-on that salvages a bad sketch. He’s playing this particular obnoxious role to absolute perfection.
— Nice singing voice from Kenan during the part where the stage show actually gets legitimately good all of a sudden.
— Bah, a lame ending.
STARS: *½
PGA TOUR
Tim Finchem (JAS) puts on a brave face amidst desperate PGA Tour changes
— Absolutely hilarious how the only sponsors the PGA Tour can now get are things such as Madoff Investment Group and the movie Old Dogs.
— Jason is perfectly selling his character’s increasing desperation and diminishing emotional state.
— A lot of funny new golf rules that Jason lists off.
— In hindsight, a reminder that Jersey Shore was the new hot show at the time, which also serves as a reminder that the debut of Bobby’s Snooki impression (which we’ll be seeing quite a lot both this and the following season during Jersey Shore’s peak of popularity) is right around the corner.
— I love Jason suddenly having second thoughts when realizing the PGA Tour’s new addition of sexy female caddies would be a bad idea.
STARS: ****
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Superman Tonight”
WEEKEND UPDATE
Tiger Woods mistress #15 (NAP) wrongly thinks relationship was special
Native American stand-up Billy Smith’s indigenous punchlines fall flat
— Something about Seth’s voice sounds a little odd and slower tonight. Is this another Update in which he has a fairly hoarse throat?
— Nothing much to say about Nasim’s commentary at all. Her occasional sayings of “Oh, fu-huuurrr suuurrre” feels like the only real humor, and even that’s being run into the ground here.
— Wow, Fred’s Billy Smith character, appearing for the first time since way back in 2004, believe it or not. Just to put into perspective how VERY long it’s been, the last Weekend Update commentary Billy Smith did prior to this was during the Fallon/Fey era of Update. (Billy Smith’s actual last appearance prior to tonight was a very brief, silent walk-on in Liam Neeson’s season 30 monologue, which is still a very long time ago from tonight’s episode.)
— Given how badly downhill Fred has been going this season, it’s kinda nice to see the return of an actual funny character from Fred’s actual good years on SNL. Back in those days, he was a master at pulling off Andy Kaufman-esque anti-comedy that this Billy Smith character relies on.
— Sadly, Fred doesn’t even seem to be able to play this character the way he used to. In tonight’s appearance, Fred is mugging up a fucking STORM at the end of each punchline. He never went THIS over-the-top in this character’s previous appearances. It’s completely ruining the character for me, and he’s making the mugging the joke rather than the obscure Native American terms that the punchlines end with. (*sigh*) Just another sign of how bad Fred has gotten this season (and how worse he would continue to get after this).
— Now Fred’s milking the “What else? What else?” gag too much.
— Seth can be heard laughing off-camera at the Billy Smith commentary as loudly as the audience, and certainly louder than me.
— Boy, this Billy Smith commentary is insufferable. Please end this already.
— Hey, Seth? We didn’t need you to explain the punchline of your Amish/“weaving” joke. We got the joke on our own, thank you. As I always say, a comedian explaining their own punchline is one of the biggest comedy sins.
— Overall, the second consecutive subpar Update.
STARS: **
LAB PARTNERS
in science class, tweens (host) & (JES) debate merits of Edward vs. Jacob
— Ugh at the reveal of Taylor in drag, early on in this sketch. I’m already starting to sour on this sketch.
— Unlike the Firelight short from the Taylor Swift-hosted episode earlier this season, which was still able to appeal to me as someone who’s never seen a Twilight movie, this Twilight-centric sketch is going way over my head, can’t hold my interest, and seems like it’s meant to just pander to young Twilight fangirls who may be watching. I also don’t like how this feels like a lame attempt at the “Celebrity makes fun of themselves while playing someone else” trope (which SNL did to better effect even just two episodes prior with Dave Matthews in the Mellow Show sketch).
— This sketch is DEATH so far.
— I finally got an actual laugh, from the cutaway to Bobby’s dumbfounded facial reaction. Good ol’ Bobby.
— Oh, no. Jenny makes a bad gaffe right now (her second bad gaffe of the season, and I don’t need to say what her first one was), where she accidentally reads Bill’s line off of the cue card (“Hey, what have I told you, Marianna?”) when Taylor’s character is making out with a book. You can tell Jenny instantly realizes her mistake and is rather embarrassed by it. To Jenny’s credit, she at least didn’t say the line very loudly, and thus, I’m sure a lot of viewers don’t notice it when watching this sketch. However, this gaffe is still a sign of how green Jenny is as a live sketch performer. Reruns hide this gaffe by replacing the shot of Jenny reading the wrong line off the cue card with a random close-up of Bobby just looking on while doing and saying nothing.
— A very awkward and empty ending.
STARS: *½
PGA TOUR
drunk Tim Finchem (JAS) is angry & distraught over future of his sport
— These PGA Tour bits have been the ONLY things working for me in tonight’s episode so far.
— I love the continued downfall of Jason’s character. We also get a funny visual of a tie wrapped around his head.
— Very funny how one of new sponsors is the letter Q.
— Hmm, this is starting to run out of steam a little. This third PGA Tour ad is starting to come off like this runner has been stretched a little too thin, though as usual, Jason is selling it as best as he can.
STARS: ***
ETERNAL SPARK OF LOVE
(KET) slides in with soulful commentary on young lovers (host) & (ABE)
— Interesting structure to this sketch.
— I like how Kenan’s soulful interjections are now taking a different turn when uncomfortable awkwardness starts happening in Taylor and Abby’s romantic encounter.
— Very funny part with Kenan’s character falling off of the moving platform and then yelling at the crew member responsible.
— This sketch continues Kenan’s growth arc this season, as he is a hoot in this sketch. I particularly love him very briefly popping his head into the screen just to yell an angry, quick “NO!” at the camera, in reaction to something embarrassing Taylor revealed about himself.
STARS: ****
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “When We Were Beautiful”
DOORBELLS AND MORE
Tina Tina Chanuse (JES) voices custom doorbells to suit all needs
— Bobby has the ability to even make his sarcastic utterance of “Pff! Nice doorbell!” come off very funny.
— Wow, the usually-underused Jenny Slate in ANOTHER big role tonight. This, combined with the fact that the usually-dominant Kristen Wiig has made only one appearance all night, along with the fact that Abby and Nasim have been making a fairly large amount of appearances as well, makes me feel like I’m watching an alternate universe episode from this SNL era.
— I have very mixed feelings on the humor of Jenny’s various doorbells, but I think I’m leaning closer to the “Don’t care much for it” side.
— Bobby continues to get a lot of humor out of the littlest things, as I love his sideways thumbs-up before he exits.
— It’s getting tiring hearing all of these comedic doorbell voice-overs back to back. I’m now realizing that some of these doorbell voice-overs would actually make me laugh if I heard them as an isolated, individual gag rather than hearing all of them one after another.
— Jenny’s reaction to Taylor walking out on her was fairly funny.
— When this episode originally aired, I remember feeling that Jenny had finally “made it”, and I considered this to be her breakout night. However, the reception a lot of online SNL fans at the time had to Jenny’s showing in this episode was very negative, due to 1) the poor Lab Partners sketch Jenny co-starred in, 2) Jenny’s aforementioned bad gaffe in said Lab Partners sketch where she mistakenly read Bill’s line off the cue card, and 3) this polarizing Doorbell sketch. I even remember that, right after this episode originally aired, one online SNL fan made a snarky post that stated “Message from the future: Jenny Slate only lasted one season on SNL.”
STARS: **
IN MEMORIAM
a photo of Heino Ripp marks his passing
GOODNIGHTS
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— Not a good episode AT ALL. Mediocrity dominated the night, and the overall episode had a completely forgettable, “nothing” feel. Aside from a (very) few highlights, this episode was a total write-off.
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
RATED SEGMENTS RANKED FROM BEST TO WORST
Eternal Spark Of Love
PGA Tour 2
PGA Tour 1
PGA Tour 3
Adulterers Press Conference
Monologue
Doorbells And More
Weekend Update
Rose Bowl Promo
Show Choir
Surprise
Lab Partners
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Blake Lively)
a big step down
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
The 2000s come to an end. James Franco hosts the final episode of the decade.
If Blake Lively was at the one end of the competent host pile, Taylor Lautner is probably at the other end. There’s nothing I can really blame on the guy, but he doesn’t do anything…good either. If the episode had better writing and sketches, I’m willing to guess he would be passable.
A number of the sketches in this episode feature decent components of a sketch but not something that could be the whole sketch. If various other people proved to be troublesome photo shoot subjects in the Rose Bowl sketch, that perhaps had potential (it reminds me too much of The 300 sketch with Peyton Manning, one of the lowlights of that good episode). The gag with Taylor playing a Team Edward fan is too hacky on its own to carry a sketch, but might have worked as a joke in something else.
Doesn’t Eternal Spark of Love return at least once?
Yeah, this feels like the show deciding that Jenny Slate had been sidelined enough after the opening and thus she gets two prominent roles. Unfortunately, it’s prominent roles in a weak episode and not the greatest material (and as you point out, she does make a gaffe that is just unfortunate). In an alternate universe SNL perhaps she gets prominent roles in a good episode and does well (hell, I dunno, maybe she gets Nasim’s role in Underground Rock Festival or something). Alas, her tenure was just plain snakebitten (but this again puts the lie to the claim that she was basically punished the whole year for the F-bomb incident–she’s clearly getting a nice push here).
There are times when runners work and times when they don’t. This is probably one of those times where they should just have been combined into one sketch, I think. The only thing you might lose is seeing Jason get progressively more insane.
Eternal Spark of Love returns once more in the Jennifer Lopez episode.
This episode is frustrating because every sketch had bits in it I really liked, but as a whole they were very weak. I liked the PGA runner, I liked Andy’s performance in Show Choir but not the rest of the sketch, I liked parts of Eternal Spark of Love, and I liked Jenny’s character in Lab Partners but Taylor’s performance just ruined it all. A lot of stuff here could’ve been reworked into better things. Even the monologue would’ve been fun if the subject matter was different, as Taylor gave a good performance.
I’ve heard some say this episode is where S35 takes a turn for the worst. I’m curious to see if that holds true.
Trivia note: About 5 years after this, Taylor would go on to replace Andy on a BBC4 sitcom Andy appeared in called Cuckoo. I’m not sure if they ever interacted or not.
This is a pretty rough episode. It contains many of the worst elements of 93-94 (low energy, aimless writing, unpleasant material, mediocre/poor host), with 01/02-05 (shameless pandering to pop culture, low energy, mediocre/poor host). That it isn’t at their level is mostly down to the cast being more likeable and this era being too grindingly mediocre to ever be truly awful (or truly great, but I guess there are pluses and minuses to pabulum).
It starts off on a shaky note with that “did nothing else happen this week?” cold open which doesn’t even make much sense (Mark Sanford and John Edwards had notorious sex scandals that made national headlines for months and months – years in Edwards’ case) and slides further with that monologue I cringed most of the way through. Yet again the show’s attitude toward Kanye West makes me uneasy – they are happy to have him on, yet also happy to exploit his ugly pop culture meltdowns and go as far as to have imagery where somebody knocks his head off. These games would finally (I hope) come to a screeching halt after his behavior during the S44 premiere, but it never should have gotten to that point. There’s so much else I find hard to sit through with this monologue, especially the pandering toward the gossip columns of the day (Tina Fey would probably even suggest they back it up – oh wait, she wouldn’t) and Taylor’s stilted delivery. The martial arts were well-coordinated, and Kenan’s Reba cameo made me smile, so…yay?
The Christmas pageant sketch, other than having women involved, gives me the strongest 93-94 feelings of the night (the second strongest being Nasim’s ceaseless, failed attempts at a catchphrase in her overlong Update segment). It’s just so sour, and also so confusing – are we supposed to feel bad for the bullied students, or are we supposed to feel they deserve to be bullied because the bully was proud of them when they were being serious with their performance only to go back to hating them when they start acting like idiots again? You could say I am overthinking the sketch, but I need something to do since I’m certainly not laughing. Probably the only interesting element is that Andy is cast in a very blatant Sandler-type role; Sandler was a big inspiration to Andy, but this is one of the only times in his tenure he approaches that type of performance. Andy, one of the most inherently likeable cast members ever on SNL, is not quite able to play this type of role, but I can’t really complain about someone being likeable and easy to watch, can I? Beyond Kenan’s lovely little song, Andy is the only point of praise I have here.
And finally we have another installment of Fred “man of many races” Armisen, which isn’t really worth going on about as I’ve probably said it 5 million times already, but seeing him attempt to do Native American inflections, or whatever the hell he was going for between face-pulls, just made me wince.
The Twilight sketch just feels too much like pandering, so much so that I almost want to invent a new word for it. There is not even any humor involved which isn’t pitched solely to the Twilight fan base, and how much is it going to appeal to them when they are painted as pathetic? I’m glad Jenny got a lead role, rather than just putting Andy or Fred in a wig and a dress, and her frailty onscreen works for the character, but it’s just not good.
You pretty much sum up that football sketch – it’s not awful, but too long and too much of the face-pulling. It seems very cynical, in an odd way, as if saying well here is the Comedy Moment for Taylor. Not so much. Generally the show is better at managing the one comic showcase in an episode for someone who is clearly not a comedian.
I normally would have skipped the musical performances but watched this (well, part of it) in a stream, so caught the second performance. A real slog – not exactly the best thing for this episode.
Taylor is poor in the Eternal Spark of Love sketch, but Kenan is great – another example of how he can salvage a concept. The moment where he falls off the treadmill is especially funny to me. This one didn’t need to recur, so naturally, it does, but that doesn’t take away from Kenan’s work here.
I also have mixed feelings about the Tina Tina sketches. I don’t think the character is the best, especially to recur, and I do agree they overegg the sounds, but Jenny’s extreme anxiety oncamera works for this role and is oddly endearing to me.
I can’t defend the Surprise Sue sketches, per se, because they are very samey, and the physical material looks cheaper through overexposure, but this particular type of mania from Kristen clicks with me, along with some of the sillier bits like her running out of the house with the Christmas tree. The sketch also feels much less clunky than most of the rest of the night, thanks to how Kristen controls the flow. With that said, these are more Kristen sketches that don’t allow anyone else to have any comedy – they make sense for a weak host, but seeing 4-5 other cast members also just playing straight roles (and some, like Will and Bill, had such undefined roles here I couldn’t tell if they were meant to be friends, brothers, or lovers) feels imbalanced.
Regarding what you said about thinking some of these characters appeared more than they did, I think part of this is down to how, when the episodes originally air, you have no idea what the end result is going to be. It can feel like the sketches are going to go on for a decade (and of course now on SNL they very well could), so you have no real perspective at the time. I felt this way with the Mango sketches or MKG sketches or cheerleaders sketches in the late ’90s. I’m still not that fond of them even today, but I have more perspective on them now because I know the place and time they end.
The runner mostly just relies on Jason’s herculean combo of charm and determination, and works for those reasons.
(happy birthday, Jason!)
Promo:
Team Edward vs Team Jacob was a huge thing at the time, as was the alleged relationship between Taylor and Taylor (the song Back to December is about him). I remember enjoying the sketch, and feeling so uncomfortable when Jenny read the wrong cue card.
The four featured players are all over this episode, but above all this was Jenny’s best chance at breaking out. Too bad the material didn’t rise to the occasion, besides the PGA runner. This reminds me of Year 30 more than anything else, and another low tide in the uneven Year 35.
We’re still another year-plus away from Triangle Sally, by default my favorite late-period Wiigy character.
What happened to Taylor Lautner?
Speaking of, the combination of him and Bon Jovi was strange, and where was Jon Bovi? That was a missed opportunity.
Jason and Will were both on Seth’s show a year and a half ago and they talked about how they wanted to do a Jon Bovi with Jon Bon Jovi but he turned it down. They tried doing one without him anyway that ended up getting cut at dress rehearsal and then getting performed on Seth’s Second Chance Theater.
Thank you, Casey. I’d never seen that. As fun as ever – as if a decade had not passed by. Bon Jovi really missed a nice PR opportunity not performing with them.
I think I remember this being one of the episodes that made me officially feel like I was too old to be in SNL’s target demo, and I was still in my 20s at the time, but damn all the Twilight and tween humor, yeesh!
I’m not proud of this, but I still laugh at the visual of Jenny in the Elvis wig.
Jon Bon Jovi was NBC’s “artist in residence” to promote the latest Bon Jovi album (they exclusively appeared on NBC shows for two months). I remember the performances being a slog too, but they were so unmemorable apart from the complete lack of enjoyment I got out of them.
Is this one even worse than January Jones? At least that one was more interestingly bad.
Wait. The artist-in-residence thing was real? That’s hilarious. I thought it was just a joke written for 30 Rock.
I’m not sure if I even saw this particular ep and if I did, the Suprise Party one would probably be the most memorable one mainly because of Kristen Wiig…
While this episode wasn’t strong, Wiig was barely on the show and SNL remembered there were other women in the cast.