Tag: Janet Jackson

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April 10, 2004 – Janet Jackson (S29 E17)

Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars

PREPARATION
Dick Cheney (DAH) coaches Condoleezza Rice (host) to flash a boob

— Darrell-as-Cheney’s extended phone conversation with an unseen President Bush has some laughs, but makes it painfully obvious that SNL doesn’t seem to have an official Bush impersonator by this point. I guess even after that 1960s sketch from this season’s Drew Barrymore episode where Will Forte played a young Bush, SNL is still iffy on the idea of Will OFFICIALLY taking over the Bush impression by playing present-day Bush. That would change in the very next episode.
— Interesting decision to have Condoleezza Rice being played by tonight’s host, Janet Jackson, instead of Maya once again.
— Darrell’s Cheney has some funny lines to Janet’s Rice.
— A good laugh from Darrell’s Cheney suddenly suggesting that Rice flash a boob during her 9/11 testimony, referencing a certain then-recent infamous incident from tonight’s host.
— Janet-as-Rice’s toothy smiling during her 9/11 testimony is funny.
— SNL was too early on their cue to blur out Janet-as-Rice’s boob flash, plus you can clearly see that Janet’s wearing a bra, but the gag is still working enough for me.
STARS: ***


MONOLOGUE
host’s home movies unconvincingly show she’s from a normal family

— Pretty funny bit about three siblings that Janet forgot about.
— Another obligatory “wardrobe malfunction” reference. This one didn’t work for me as much as the one in the cold opening.
— An overall pretty short monologue, but maybe that’s for the best.
STARS: **½


BRIAN FELLOW’S SAFARI PLANET
(host) & flying squirrel are a distraction

— Ooooooookay. So I take it from this Brian Fellow’s Safari Planet opening title sequence on my screen right now that Tracy Morgan is cameoing AGAIN this season?
— Yep, there he is. I love Tracy, but it’s a little sad seeing him hanging onto SNL so hard this first season after his departure from the cast, especially considering how tonight’s episode is around the time when a cancellation of Tracy’s unsuccessful NBC sitcom was all but confirmed by this point. As we know now, though, his post-SNL career would later take off.
— The whole conversation between Brian Fellow and Janet regarding if her flying squirrel is aware of 9/11 is hilarious.
— I love’s Will’s deadpan “I really don’t know how to respond to that” line about a particularly asinine thing Fellow asks regarding Will’s French poodle hating America.
— Fellow falling in love with Janet’s character dispels any assumptions that I (and I’m sure a lot of people) previously had about Fellow’s sexual orientation.
STARS: ***½


TICKET LINE
Starkisha balks at paying $250 for a ticket to a Janet Jackson concert

— Oh, god. Fucking Starkisha.
— Finesse In A Dress alert.
— Some self-deprecating humor with Janet playing a character complaining about Janet Jackson’s ticket prices and spreading unflattering rumors about Janet.
— Amy’s very whitebred, nosy character is cracking me up.
— Kenan telling Chris, in regards to Starkisha and her friends, “I’m just as afraid of people like that as you are” made me laugh, but felt like an inferior variation of his great line to Chris in the first Starkisha sketch (“Why they gotta be my friends? Hey, man, I came with YOU.”).
— Overall, while this sketch was still certainly bad, it didn’t come off quite as cringeworthy as the first Starkisha sketch and this had a few more saving graces.
STARS: **½


AN EASTER TREAT FROM SNL
HOS, CHK, TRM, JIF, Simon Cowell [real] perform a happy Christmas ditty

— Oh, hell yeah, the return of the “I Wish It Was Christmas Today” routine, always a favorite of mine.
— I gotta say, though – Chris Kattan cameoing for the THIRD episode this first season after his departure from the cast?!? And I thought it was sad that Tracy’s been hanging onto SNL so hard after leaving. With Kattan on his third cameo of the season and Tracy on his second, I’m starting to ask myself if either of them even truly left the cast?
— Interesting twist with this turning out to be an audition for Simon Cowell, who’s in the audience.
— Funny bit with Simon questioning what Kattan does in the band.
— I like Tracy’s “Imma kick this dude’s ass!” after an insult Simon directs at the band.
— Pretty fun turn with Simon joining in on the musical number while the audience musically claps along to the beat.
STARS: ****


MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
host performs “All Nite (Don’t Stop)”


WEEKEND UPDATE
off the record, Condoleezza Rice (MAR) outs co-workers’ lack of diligence

maudlin Kevin Eubanks (FIM) laughs at TIF’s lame joke

JIF sings the theme from nonexistent James Bond film “Jewel Eye”

— Looks like we get Maya as Condoleezza Rice tonight after all. What’s the point of having her play Rice the same night Janet did? Kinda reminds me of Martin Short and Rich Hall both playing Doug Henning at separate points in a single season 10 episode, but at least SNL lampshaded that by having Rich Hall’s Doug Henning say a tongue-in-cheek line about SNL having two Doug Hennings and how it’s an optical illusion. We get no lampshading of the sort with SNL’s two Condoleezza Rices tonight.
— Some laughs from Maya’s Rice gossiping in an off-the-record voice, making decent use of Maya’s knack for doing lots of “white” voices that Janet may not have been able to pull off had she done this same commentary.
— WTF? Finesse suddenly appearing out of nowhere as Kevin Eubanks from The Tonight Show?
— Again, I ask, WTF? What in the world was the point of the extremely brief Kevin Eubanks “commentary”?
— Tina’s mean-spirited joke about Jewel’s teeth rubbed me the wrong way. I don’t know why I found it so off-putting, given the fact that Update anchors over the years have certainly done lots of harsh jokes about celebrities.
— I think I used up all of my “WTF”s too early, because now we get this incredibly dumb and unfunny bit with Jimmy singing a James Bond-esque “Jewel Eye” song, which isn’t working for me at all. And unfortunately, THAT’S what they’re ending this Update on.
STARS: **½


PRINCE SHOW
Paula Abdul (host) & Steve Harvey (KET) visit

— A laugh from the camera panning over to Prince’s “scared” face (the third above screencap for this sketch).
— Kenan’s Steve Harvey impression makes its debut, and, wow, it’s COMPLETELY different from the Steve Harvey impression that we’re used to seeing Kenan do nowadays. Also weird in retrospect to see him playing Harvey with actual hair.
— Prince’s cry-singing while crawling on the floor is really funny. Even Janet seems to be cracking up at it.
— Overall, a decent Prince Show installment, but you can sense that the novelty of these sketches is slowly starting to wear off.
STARS: ***


CORKSOAKERS
(HOS) & (JIF) educate winery tourists on the art of soaking corks

— Another in the series of this era’s dirty wordplay sketches.
— This looks like the same set from another Italian winery sketch this season, where Jack Black played a wine taster doing an endless amount of spit-takes.
— An okay double entendre concept, but I’m not exactly bowled over with hysterical laughter.
— I love Rachel as a toothless grandma who still “soaks cork” at her old age.
— One of the more remembered aspects of this sketch is an unscripted one, with Janet always having trouble saying “soaking cork” instead of the actual term it’s a play on.
— After how bad of a laughing meltdown they had in the preceding episode, I’m glad Jimmy and Horatio are keeping their shit together in this sketch.
— When the winery guys are hornily rushing towards Janet and have to be held back, there’s a funny little detail that’s easy to miss, in which Jimmy grooms himself by combing his hair AND his thick fake mustache (screencap below).

— Overall, a very polarizing sketch among SNL fans (as is any dirty wordplay sketch that’s not Schwetty Balls), as it seems people either love or hate this sketch. I’m somewhere straight in the middle. I found this sketch amusing enough and it had a fun vibe, but to me, the sketch as a whole was just average and I didn’t find the puns to be nearly as well-written or funny as the ones in the preceding season’s Colonel Angus sketch.
STARS: ***


MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
host performs “Strawberry Bounce”


GOOD TIMES
Florida Evans (KET) & kin persevere amidst urban tragedies

— Hell yeah, a Good Times sketch! I became an instant huge fan of this show when I discovered it in reruns during my childhood in the 90s.
— SNL writer J.B. Smoove finds himself in another noteworthy onscreen role. The casting of him as J.J. in this particular sketch shows that this season only has a small amount of black cast members.
— The fake laugh track is a very accurate spoof of the boisterous Good Times audience.
— Kenan In A Dress alert. But, by god, he sounds absolutely uncanny in his vocal impression of Florida.
— Maya’s doing a spot-on impression of how over-dramatic Thelma tends to act.
— An unintentional laugh from the Black Jesus painting falling off the wall after Kenan’s Florida lightly touches it, a blooper that Kenan handles in a very funny and expert way.
— Another sign that this season only has a small amount of black cast members, as Maya has to play both Thelma AND Willona through the magic of a fast off-camera costume change. She’s at least doing an accurate impression of both characters.
— This sketch is perfectly and humorously hitting so many of the dramatic beats and hardships that the Evans family typically faces on Good Times.
— I got a good laugh from Chris’ white guy character incorrectly thinking the name Malcolm X is pronounced “Malcolm 10”.
— I absolutely love the ending line from J.B. Smoove’s J.J.: “Would this be a bad time to tell ya’ll I got Sickle Cell?”
— Overall, such a fantastic parody of a childhood favorite show of mine.
STARS: ****½


BOOM BOOMER
in the 1970s, cocaine sparks (CHP)’s interest in party game Boom Boomer

— Weird how this is the second consecutive sketch tonight set in the 70s, but I kinda like that, in a weird way.
— Speaking of the 70s, the 70s aesthetic of this sketch, the party setting, the look of the characters, and the fact that Seth and Amy are playing the hosts of this party all kinda feel like a precursor to the famous Key Party sketch from the following season.
— After Chris’ character gets coked up, it’s great to see Chris get a chance to go extremely over-the-top, because 1) he does that so rarely on SNL, 2) he does it so well, and 3) he’s been badly underused lately. However, this feels like a weak and abrupt way to end this sketch. If that “ending” was supposed to be a punchline, I don’t get it.
STARS: **


GOODNIGHTS

IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A decent episode, especially compared to both this season and the debacle of an episode that preceded this. Lots of okay material and one or two standout things.


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


HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Donald Trump)
a big step up


My full set of screencaps for this episode is here


TOMORROW
Lindsay Lohan makes her hosting debut

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May 14, 1994 – Heather Locklear / Janet Jackson (S19 E20)

Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars

COFFEE TALK WITH LINDA RICHMAN
Linda & friend (host) have tickets to see Barbra in concert

— The final gasp of Season 19’s extreme oversaturation of Coffee Talk sketches.
— How many times in these Coffee Talk sketches are we supposed to be surprised at an announcement that Linda Richman got tickets to see Barbra in concert, as if that didn’t already happen before?
— Heather Locklear looks almost unrecognizable in that get-up, and is surprisingly pulling off this role well.
— I did at least get a laugh from Richman angrily referring to a caller as a “Nazi pig”.
STARS: *½


MONOLOGUE
host & PHH, KEN, CHF, Canteen Boy, Jay Leno [real] talk soap opera-style

— A predictable premise for a monologue spoofing Melrose Place, but there could be potential here.
— I like the rivalry being portrayed between Phil and Kevin.
— A big laugh from Heather suddenly slapping Melanie after kindly greeting her.
— Heather seems awfully fixated on those cue cards.
— Random Jay Leno cameo. At least I got to hear Heather call him an idiot, which was satisfying.
— Heather’s dramatic Melrose Place-esqe encounters with various performers, while kinda fun, are starting to get a little old.
— Random Canteen Boy appearance, showing up for the first time since his infamous encounter with Alec Baldwin’s scoutmaster.
— According to GettyImages, Julia had a part cut out of this monologue after dress rehearsal (pic here). I wonder if she played the part that Melanie ended up doing in the live version.
STARS: **½


EYCH
the hairball remover cats ask for by name

— A huge laugh from Ellen’s cat initially going “eych”.
— Hilarious visual of the cats “singing” the jingle, which really makes this commercial.
— The monkey ending almost feels like a precursor to the Bathroom Monkey fake ad that’s coming up early in the following season.
STARS: ****½


MELROSE PLACE
Wayne dreams that he’s with Amanda (host) in Melrose Place

 

— The audience initially seems confused as to why SNL is even attempting a Wayne Campbell sketch without Garth. I’m with you, audience.
— Do we really need two Melrose Place parodies so close to each other tonight?
— Wayne is just recycling a whole bunch of old jokes from earlier Wayne’s World sketches (e.g. “Here’s a quarter, buy a clue”, “She’d give a dog a bone”, comparing Vagina dentata to the title of a Police album, etc.), giving this Garth-less Wayne sketch even more of a sad, lazy feel.
— Okay, Wayne finally got a laugh out of me, with his “I seem to be allergic to emasculation” bit.
— The cast’s impressions of Melrose Place characters are going right over my head, as I’m not familiar enough with the show. Chris’ impression made me laugh, though.
— The running gag of Heather entering in different outfits and Wayne addressing it before saying “Never mind” is falling completely flat.
— Again tonight, Heather is fixated on the cue cards. Her delivery of some of her lines is AWFUL.
STARS: **


HOT BUTTON
Clarence Thomas (TIM) & Ted Kennedy (PHH) sexually harass

— Technically, this is the only actual sketch Phil ends up appearing in all night. I know they’ve been phasing Phil out this season, but how the hell do you use someone like him in only one sketch in his final episode?
— A one-note premise that’s already starting to get a little tired only a minute-and-a-half into the sketch.
— Okay, this has now been getting a little better, especially with the reveal of Phil’s Ted Kennedy posing as a caller.
— I love the running gag with Tim’s Clarence Thomas equating everything to porn titles.
— Kinda surprised by how short this overall sketch was.
STARS: ***


MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Throb”


WEEKEND UPDATE
while giving a Whitewater editorial, homophobic NOM tells KEN to back off
ADS plays guitar & sings about his inappropriate “Summer Love” targets

— Here comes the final Kevin Nealon-anchored Weekend Update.
— Pretty tepid jokes from Kevin so far tonight, and the audience apparently agrees with me.
— Interesting how Norm is doing a commentary in Kevin’s final Update, considering who ends up taking over Kevin’s spot at the Update desk the following season. This is a nice unintentional passing of the torch.
— Norm doing a “homophobic perspective” is a funny meta, tongue-in-cheek spoof of Norm’s real-life views, though considering this is his first season, I’m assuming audiences at the time wouldn’t have gotten the meta-ness of this commentary.
— Noteworthy that Norm says to Kevin at one point “Go over some of your fake news and I’ll finish up here”, as Norm would famously introduce a lot of his own future Weekend Updates with “And now, the fake news”.
— Kevin’s jokes have been getting better, and I loved his random “Lord and Taylor” bit.
— Surprisingly, this is Adam’s first Update guitar song as himself this season.
— The mother reveal in Adam’s song is pretty funny.
— Ehh, the humor in Adam’s song is now dying off, and is paling badly in comparison to his previous Update songs as himself.
— During Adam’s song, we get a brief cutaway to Tim in the studio audience as his character from the Captain Jim & Pedro sketches, singing the words “Summer Love” while giving a thumbs-up. All I have to say about that is, SNL has really been trying to push these Captain Jim and Pedro sketches in the homestretch of this season.
— And thus ends Kevin’s final Weekend Update. I’m not clear on what the story is behind his departure from the Update desk. For years, I had always heard that he stepped down from Update voluntarily, because he felt Update was holding him back from appearing in more sketches (which is even sadder in hindsight, considering he would end up appearing in a significantly LESS amount of sketches the following season). But in more recent years, I’ve heard that he was actually fired from Update. Does anyone know the real story?
— According to GettyImages, this episode had a cut Chris Farley Weekend Update commentary that would later resurface as a bonus feature on his “Best Of” DVD, in which he plays a cigarette-smoking character named Jerry Sozio, who tells a rambling story that mostly just consists of him repeatedly going “So I says to the guy, I says, I says, I says…” (pic here), which would be reworked in the upcoming season 20 as a Point/Counterpoint Weekend Update commentary.
— Kevin’s overall tenure as a Weekend Update anchor was a letdown from how I had remembered it being in past viewings. Before doing these reviews, I had considered Kevin a not-great-but-still-fine Update anchor, I had really appreciated the Chevy Chase style he tried to bring back to the desk, and I had never really understood the criticisms many people seem to have of him as an anchorperson. But when covering his Updates in this SNL project, I’ve become quite disillusioned on his Update tenure. I was fine with his Updates for most of his first season, but towards the end of that season, I started feeling his Updates took on a disappointing blandly average quality, which is where it would stay for the following season 18, before getting even worse in season 19, where he seemed to really struggle at times and the studio audiences seemed to be over him. I’ve now come to fully understand the criticisms people have of him, even if I’m still not as down on his Update tenure as those people are. After getting through this pretty rough season of Update, all I have to say is, I welcome the upcoming new Update anchor with open arms, especially since he’s always been tied with Dennis Miller as my personal favorite Update anchor of all time.
STARS: ***


ACROSS THE BAR
in a bar, (KEN) tries to match (host)’s silent nontraditional flirtations

— I love Kevin’s dopey smile when Heather starts flirting with him.
— Very catchy 90s background music, and it’s adding a great touch to this sketch.
— A huge laugh from Heather randomly pulling her nose up and snorting.
— I love Kevin imitating everything Heather does, especially when does the same drawing of himself that Heather just did.
— Ha, I love the fact that Kevin kisses Norm on the lips, considering this is coming right after a Weekend Update in which Norm kept adamantly accusing Kevin of being gay and having the hots for him. Now THIS is a passing of the torch.
— Hilarious how after Heather’s bra-removal trick, Kevin just sits there frozen and stumped, not knowing how he can imitate that, then he just grabs Norm and kisses him once again. Norm noticeably starts cracking up this time.
— Great turn with the drinking of poison.
— Overall, a masterpiece. Why, oh, why couldn’t tonight be Kevin’s final episode? This sketch would’ve been a fantastic way to conclude his SNL tenure.
STARS: *****


60 MINUTES
Andy Rooney (NOM) reads addresses off letters he’s received

— Our third of season 19’s trilogy of solo Norm sketches with him impersonating a famous figure.
— Yet another solid celebrity impression from Norm.
— I love the brave anti-comedy of this, with Norm just slowly showing a long string of envelopes and saying where each is from, all the while the audience reacts almost uncomfortably. I recall seeing an old SNL newsgroup post from 1994 in which someone compared this sketch to the famous Sideshow Bob rake scene in The Simpsons, in that it’s funny at first, then stops being funny for a while when it keeps going on and on, then becomes funny again because it keeps going on and on. There’s also a very Andy Kaufman-esque quality to this sketch, and as someone who considers Andy Kaufman one of my comedy idols, it’s no wonder I love this sketch so much.
— Good ending with Norm’s Rooney detailing how he always sets fire to letters he receives and dumps it out of a window.
— A perfect sketch in my eyes, and it symbolizes so much of what I love about Norm’s divisive sense of humor.
STARS: *****


AMAZING TIME SAVERS
bigoted (host) sells pasta makers to home shoppers

— The name of Mike’s character, Richard Hayden, is also the name of David Spade’s character in the movie Tommy Boy, which I believe was filming at this time.
— Speaking of Mike’s name being Richard Hayden, Heather oddly called him “John” just now, for some reason. Cue card error?
— Hilarious turn with Heather’s character, as part of an analogy, casually mentioning the Holocaust being a lie, and then acting nonchalant about that statement while many phones ring off the hook.
— Very funny how Heather’s character keeps downplaying the Holocaust statement during calls she takes, and keeps trying to tie it back into the Pasta Maker machine.
— More laughs from Heather’s character now casually making racist comments about minorities.
— Heather’s performance in this sketch is fantastic.
— David playing a stoned caller discussing the different ways “rural” can be pronounced reminds me of a scene he would later do in the movie Black Sheep where he involuntarily gets stoned and finds various ways that “roads” can be pronounced. I believe both this sketch and Black Sheep are written by Fred Wolf, but I’m not sure.
— I love Mike’s very uncomfortable reactions throughout this. When something similar would later happen to him in real life in a certain Hurricane Katrina benefit incident with Kanye West, I bet Mike wished he had a table to hide under like he did in this sketch.
— A great touch at the end with a whole bunch of phones being heard ringing immediately after the un-PC ending disclaimer.
STARS: *****


L’HOMME D’ORGASME
Orgasm Guy visits his French cousin (Rafael Fuchs)

— I liked Rob’s tongue-in-cheek mention of Orgasm Guy being his most famous character.
— Who the heck is this Rob Schneider lookalike playing French Orgasm Guy? Odd how they’re letting a completely unknown person star in a sketch.
— A minute into this French scene, and Norm’s half-assed French accent has been the only laugh so far.
— Yeah, this sketch is falling terribly flat, especially when compared to the great first Orgasm Guy sketch.
— Overall, the only thing this sketch really succeeded in was breaking the streak of perfect post-Weekend Update sketches. Gee, thanks for that. If this was intended as Rob’s swan song, oof.
STARS: *½


MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Any Time, Any Place”


SO LONG, FAREWELL
cast & recurring characters sing “So Long, Farewell” to end the season

— I absolutely LOVE this idea. An extremely fun and fitting way to close a season, and a very sweet idea for a sendoff for such an invaluable and irreplaceable cast member like Phil Hartman.
— David’s only two appearances of the whole night have been in drag.
— Interesting how the featured players are singing about their lack of airtime, which doesn’t really make sense in Norm’s case, especially given how much he dominated tonight’s episode.
— Speaking of Norm, you can tell by the awkward smile on his face that he feels silly about participating in this musical piece. The following season, he’s completely absent from the big Grease number in the John Travolta episode’s goodnights, so I’m guessing he had an aversion to doing musical pieces.
— I love that Richmeister and Pat sang the lyric “We skipped this year, and that’s why it was bad”. Nice way of acknowledging both the year-long absence of those two characters and the lack of quality of this season.
— Michael’s (in his ONLY appearance of the whole night) Laverne and Shirley bit is great.
— Ah, now Matt Foley is the only person remaining onstage, as the song slows down.
— When Phil says “I can’t think of a more dignified way… to end my 8 years on this program”, his voice is trembling in a way you can tell he’s holding back tears. I’m starting to feel emotional right now.
— And now I’m feeling even more emotional as we see the now-legendary visual of Phil singing goodbye to the slowly-zooming-away overhead camera as Matt Foley falls asleep in his arms. That’s something that, while probably touching even when it originally aired, would later take on a VERY touching, emotional meaning in retrospect after the untimely deaths of both Phil and Chris mere months apart.
STARS: *****


GOODNIGHTS

IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A bit of an oddly structured season finale, in that the first half was shaky and iffy, but the second half was amazing. There were no less than FOUR sketches in the second half of this episode that got a five-star rating. Very, very impressive, and it more than makes up for the shaky first half. Not a bad way to end a season. Heather Locklear was a wildly inconsistent host, coming off terrible in some pieces (mainly the Wayne Campbell sketch), pretty good in one (Coffee Talk), and perfect in two (Across The Bar, Amazing Time Savers). She was also strangely absent from most of the post-Weekend Update half of the show, but considering her inconsistency and the fact that most of the post-Update half was on an absolute roll, that’s probably a good thing.

— This would end up being the final episode for Phil Hartman, of course, as well as Rob Schneider, Julia Sweeney, Melanie Hutsell, and Sarah Silverman, making this the largest number of cast departures in years. As for the legendary Phil Hartman, a.k.a. “The Glue”, just…. what is there to say? There are no words I can come up with that I feel can do justice to his greatness and importance to SNL, a greatness and importance that, in my opinion, has yet to be matched since then, and possibly never will. I just want to add that back when I first started this SNL project, Phil was one of the cast members who’s tenure I was most excited to cover, and now that I’ve completed it, I feel very honored. Rob Schneider, I’ve always felt had an underrated tenure, and I still feel that way, especially when covering season 18, which was a fantastic year for him. Unfortunately, his tenure didn’t end on the best note, as he took a step down his final season and became more hit-and-miss than usual. Julia Sweeney was a cast member who I’ve always felt was on the show at the wrong time. During these early 90s seasons, she struggled more and more as her tenure progressed and the Boys Club atmosphere of the show increased, culminating in a terrible final season in which her airtime was basically reduced to that of a typical featured player. If she were on during a better era for female cast members, I have no doubt she would’ve had a successful run and could’ve produced more recurring characters than just Pat. While I highly doubt she would’ve been a breakout star performer, she most likely would’ve been a solid Ana Gasteyer-type utility female. As I mentioned several times in earlier reviews, Melanie Hutsell is a performer I had always had disdain for in the past, but came into her tenure with an open mind during this SNL project. That ended up working to an extent, as I found myself being a lot less annoyed by her and starting to appreciate some of her comical supporting performances. I even developed an immunity to her mugging tendencies. However, I still don’t find her anything particularly great, and the sketches she starred in were usually more miss than hit. Sarah Silverman, I have almost nothing to say about, because she did next to nothing during her one-season tenure. Knowing what a big star she’d go on to become later in her career, her underusage on SNL feels like a huge missed opportunity on the show’s part, but I also wonder if Sarah’s young age at the time played a big part in that. Maybe she was just too green for the show back then.

— Season 19 as a whole was certainly a disappointing one, especially coming after the amazing long run of successful seasons from 1986-1993. The first half of this season, while still a big step down from what came before, actually wasn’t TOO bad, aside from the very rough Christian Slater episode. We even got a string of episodes ranging from okay to great in November and December. But as soon as the second half of the season arrived, the troubles for this season kicked into full gear. A lot of episodes were rough, certain sketches started having a low-energy feel and dead atmosphere, and strong episodes were much fewer and farther in between. Many unfortunate characteristics from the doomed upcoming season 20 also started arising during the last few months of this season. Even though I came into this season being prepared for all of those things, I wasn’t expecting to be depressed by the string of bad episodes from around February and March. I’m guessing the reason it was depressing to me this time, unlike in my previous viewings of this season, is because, due to the nature of this SNL project, I was now watching this season in the context of SNL’s entire timeline up to this point. I guess reviewing this season after having just reviewed the high-quality 1986-1993 years made the decline in the second half of this season harder to take. One consistently strong asset to this season was new featured player Norm Macdonald, who’s distinctive style was a welcome new addition to the show and he would often be the biggest or sole highlight of a sketch, especially during the particularly rough second half of the season.

— As a bonus, here’s a famous EW article from towards the end of this season, giving suggestions of how to fix SNL for season 20. I’m sure a lot of you have already read this article before, but I figured it would be a bit of a different experience to read it now, as we’re currently in the context of this period of the show.


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


HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (John Goodman)
a step up


MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS ENTIRE SEASON, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS (Note: These picks were hastily made off the top of my head and will naturally be missing some deserving sketches. I don’t have enough time to do full, thought-out “Best Of” picks for this whole season)


HOW THIS OVERALL SEASON STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING SEASON (1992-93)
a big step down


My full set of screencaps for this episode is here


TOMORROW
The notorious season 20 begins, the last of the three most infamous seasons in SNL history. Steve Martin hosts the premiere, and we get a few new cast members, as well as a new Weekend Update anchor.