Julia Loius-Dreyfus/Paul Simon (05.13.2006)

This blog entry is a companion piece to the newest episode of the We Heart Hader podcast. Give it a listen, won't you? 

You can either finish reading this blog post first and then listen or you could just listen first and then come back to this. Do whatever you want. It's up to you. I certainly won't mind.

Parallel Earth

In an alternate timeline, 43rd U.S. President Al Gore (Himself) addresses the nation on such crucial issues as giant renegade glaciers, bailing out the big oil companies and keeping the nations’ trillion dollar budget surplus inside the good ol’ lockbox.

• Even though the “lockbox” callback didn't quite land and this was a pure liberal fantasy (Michael Moore AND George Clooney on the Supreme Court? Come on, guys…) and seemed like it only served the purpose of the show indulging Gore's wish fulfillment even more than The West Wing Short from the episode he hosted four years earlier, parts of this were quite funny if you can get around Gore's typical dry, stuffy delivery.

• Gore's lines about having created “an anti hurricane and tornado machine” and George W. Bush being a mere MLB commissioner being tasked with tapping phones to find out which players are steroid abusers made me laugh.

• I also liked the lines about Six Flags Tehran, Afghanistan becoming a popular spring break destination, Arnold Schwarzenegger becoming “El Presidente” of “Mexifornia” in order to solve the immigration issue which has a strong economy. Other than that, the rest of this may have been lost to the mid aughts time fog. 

• I also liked his segue into LFNY being “the scariest thing we Americans have to fear.” C+

Monologue 

Julia Loius-Dreyfus discusses how “New Adventures Of Old Christine” captures the right audience and debunks the myth of her breaking “the Seinfeld curse” after chance encounters with Jason Alexander and Jerry Seinfeld (Themselves)

• Very nice of Julia to acknowledge her time as a cast member AND the fact that she is the first female alum to host the show!

• The rant about retitling “Old Christine” with the words “New” and “Adventures” to appeal more to men instead of using other proposed titles like “Football Christine”, “Barbecue Spaceship Christine”, “Coke Off A Whores’ Ass Christine” and “CSI: Christine” didn't quite work for me but Julia did her damndest to put this over.

• I did like how this monologue incorporated another pre-taped “Digital Short but more upscale” piece with Julia bumping into Jason Alexander in the streets of NYC.

• Jason and Julia's interaction mostly worked for me with Jasons pathetic Costanza-like unraveling at Julia having a legitimate hit sitcom after his two failed shows in a row followed by Jason being hit by a car after excitedly running out into the street once Julia tells him she could try to get him on this week's SNL. All of this played out well in a funny and entertaining way.

• The ending with Jerry having cut the wires that led to the stage light falling and missing Julia felt kind of awkwardly shoved in. It didn't totally make sense and felt like a cheap excuse to get Jerry to make a filmed cameo just so the show would be able to say they had a “Seinfeld reunion” and the press could run with that as a headline.

• Speaking of which, it's a bit telling that Michael Richards wasn't involved in this monologue…and this would've been several months before the incident at the Laugh Factory. I think the best case scenario would be that he was simply asked to participate and declined.

• I am curious to know who wrote this as it doesn't seem to be totally in SNLs’ voice in this period (unless maybe Tina, Seth or Colin Jost contributed to the “Old Christine” rant at the beginning?) and the Jason/Jerry cameos make this feel like they got someone like David Mandell or another former Seinfeld scribe to come on as a guest writer this week? B-

Tech Pack

You'll be “blown away” by this new device that allows you to store your phone, mp3 player and digital camera on your body as you run through the airport.

• Get it? Because it's a wrap around waist fanny pack with extra wiring and a game show buzzer to “control” all of your devices that looks like a suicide bomb both up close AND from a distance!

• This was a decent blackout piece that worked well enough. The only thing that may have aged this was that the advent of smartphones may have rendered this obsolete but Sudeikis sold the sheer obliviousness of this well. C+

Bum Attention

Jen (Dreyfus) is distraught that the is the only one of her three friends at lunch not to get grossly hit on by a creepy, dirty, bum (Hader) on their way to lunch. Her friends (Dratch, Poehler, Rudolph) feel bad enough to pay this man to say something to her.

• Pretty straightforward concept here. While this may have been an inauspicious start for him in this episode, Bill may have been the only male member of this cast who could properly sell the sleaze of this.

• Amy and JLD were the only ones on the female side who could make this work as well. I can't really imagine any other female host that could've made this work better.

• Sudeikis was great as the maitre d trying to kick out Hader’s character.

• James’ Taylor's “Shower The People” was the funniest possible needle drop here.

• I remember having read somewhere that this exact sketch was originally cut from the Billy Bob Thornton/Creed episode nearly five years earlier. Really would've been interesting to see how this played out then. C+

Morning Show

Cohosts (Wiig) and (Sanz) are plagued with production problems including audio problems rendering the weatherman (Armisen) inaudible, word of an old crew members sudden death on his 72nd birthday not getting around before air and a repeating peppy theme song accidentally playing over guest author (Dreyfus) relaying how her harrowing story of drug addiction inspired her new book.

• While I mostly liked the idea behind this sketch, it felt like a big case of “been there, done that” for me as I know for sure I've seen MADtv do several “local newscast goes horribly wrong” sketches around this time (hell, even SNL already did one of these with Ferrell and Gasteyer four years earlier and MADtv even based an entire sketch around that “leather chair making accidental fart sound when sat on” gag with JLD here).

• Unfortunately, this sketch didn't really escalate itself to any interesting or creative new places those previous sketches didn't.

• I suppose the “Happy Birthday, Stan!” callbacks were funny and JLD played her part well, though.

• The gag with Horatio walking back to his chair but tripping, falling and having to grab JLDs’ boobs for leverage was funny…but the fact that it was Horatio of all people makes it play…differently today. I'll explain why later. C-

MySpace Seminar

At the Learning Annex, hip 27 year old Danny (Samberg) teaches a group consisting of one dorky 40 year old suburban mom (Loius-Dreyfus) and six obvious middle aged pedophiles with flimsy covers (Hader, Forte, Meyers, Parnell, Sanz, Sudeikis) how to create and fill out their own MySpace profiles.

• MySpace references and cheap pedophile jokes? Is this the most 2006-ass SNL sketch ever? It has certainly aged weird for a sketch that may have been a well loved deep cut from this era (I'll get to that part a few bullet points from now).

• For starters, I'll say that Julia brings her own take and unique presence to the “cloying mom” role that we wouldn't get from Amy, Maya, Kristen or Rachel (some of whom have already played these roles in the past so much it's easy to picture any of them here).

• Similarly, Seth is bringing his own unique take to the “creepy, degenerate budding pedophile” role that's way further off the beaten path than what the other guys are giving us. His “Dateline” joke actually landed despite how telegraphed that might have felt. 

• Speaking of Seth, I have a feeling he may have written this sketch as well since it matches his style, he was co head writer with Tina this season (probably preparing to step up and fill that role full time once Tina left) and it reminds me a bit of the “Coach Burt” sketch from Steve Buscemis’ 2011 episode that I know he did write.

• Bill's few lines (and Jason's one) here aren't necessarily the big laugh getters in this sketch but he does a good job setting the tone here (as well as setting up some plausibility that the sketch is actually targeting MySpace and even just the internet itself for not doing a better job of safeguarding themselves against online predators instead of just being an “lol pedophiles” sketch).

• Speaking of parts of this particular sketch that have aged weird…Horatio playing one of the pedophiles in this sketch is…well, maybe a little too on the nose if you're aware of the lawsuit against him. That being said, his mini nervous breakdown while explaining his username “9thGradeSk8rBoi” username was actually funny.

• Forte seems to be playing a primitive, muted version of his classic Jeff Montgomery character here. It still works here and is still very funny particularly his fake typing and insincere “ooohh noooo I don't want thaaaat line read when Andy suggests he change his username from “NaughtyGirlHotStuff”.

• The ending with Finesse entering as a cop looking for his own class as the pedophiles rushed out and Horatio simply placing a plant in front of his face and standing in a corner worked for me. B-

Paul Simon - “How Can You Live In The Northeast” and “Outrageous” 

• Not much to say about these performances. I liked the songs even though they were semi Mellow deep cuts.

• He sure has a lot of questions to ask us though. He's like some kind of cross between Bob Dylan and Joan Osborne.

• I guess Paul just had some new album out at the time and given his connections to the earliest years of SNL I can see how they wanted to book him to make this episode feel like more of an “event”?

Weekend Update w/Fey & Poehler 

Al Gore (Himself) and Amy Poehler debate the merits of global warming

Finesse Mitchell delivers a commentary on the do's and don'ts of high school prom fashion

Tina's grandfather Wolfgang Fey (Armisen) has difficulty with the automated phone system (Dratch) used to sign up for prescription Medicare

David Blaine (Samberg) attempts to hold his breath at the Update desk for nine minutes…but only makes it to 21 seconds

• The only joke I liked during this Update was Amy's lone about new body armor for soldiers in Iraq looking “too goofy” (“Donald Rumsfeld said ‘that's good…we only ordered seven of them’).

• At least Tinas’ joke about high schoolers breaking their virginity pledges “if she's on her game” continues a minor THEME!!! for the night.

• If the bar starts at a new satellite channel for toddlers having a hit show called “CSI: Poopy Town” or New Jersey changing its slogan to “I Love NY”, something is seriously wrong.

• Good thing this Update was overstuffed with commentaries.

• Al Gore's second cameo of the night surprisingly didn't play well. It seemed like it mostly served the function of letting him plug “An Inconvenient Truth” against Amy playing up her “dumb blonde” persona. 

• I did like the part of Gore's commentary where he just showed a heavily redacted White House memo with just the words “CONJECTURE /UNSUBSTANTIATED/ LOONEY TUNES!!” and “Everything…is…great…drive…big…car…a lot.”

• Armisens’ segment playing Tinas’ grandfather trying to sign up for a Medicare prescription plan over the phone was…OK. I kinda liked the ending with him having accidentally ordered 18 tickets to Scary Movie 4 at a Magic Johnson Theater. It was funny enough but other than that it was just “lol old people and their Medicare problems”. Maybe with my new job this hits a little too close to home to be funny…but even when I saw this nearly 20 years ago it wasn't that funny either.

• Strangely, Finesses’ commentary might have been the funniest part of this Update. It was just some harmless riffing on outlandish teen prom fashion.

• I especially liked the “boots”, “pimp/magician” and “Skittles” jokes as well as his own admission that his mom took him as his date to her own prom because she couldn't find a babysitter.

• Sambergs David Blaine commentary is a close second to Finesses’ since he sold it on sheer Samberg goofiness alone with a small assist from Sudeikis.

• Seems odd to me that they put all that makeup on just his hands to achieve that “prune hands” effect when it wouldn't have taken THAT long to just soak his hands on water. C+

Charades 

In this vintage GSN rerun from 1979, host Bert Convy (Parnell) gives clues to stewardess Beth Burns (Poehler) and housewife Debbie Wagner (Dreyfus) that celebrity guest judges Rich Little (Hammond), Nipsy Russel (Thompson), Charo (Maya Rudolph) and Olympian Caitlyn Jenner (Forte) must guess based on the crude, accidentally blatantly sexual gestures Beth & Debbie must resort to making.

• This sketch was just…all over the place.

• Premise-wise, it was purely ribaldry. The only twist is that the panel of 70s celebrities are only able to guess Poehlers’ guesses correctly and make Dreyfus the butt of cheap sex jokes making Dreyfus lose and Poehler the reigning champion.

• Still, there's some fun to be had if one can see the forest for the trees.

• For instance, Kenan's chipper acting and less raunchy guesses (“checking for hernias?”) were delightful.

• Darrells’ jammed in bursts of dated-even-then impressions (“as W.C. Fields would say ‘ah yes, a housewife'”) and Parnells’ mock-polite-annoyance was possibly the funniest part of this whole sketch. 

• Seriously, Darrells’ portrayal of Rich Little as an out-of-touch dated hack does come across quite a bit funnier if you've seen the actual Rich Little “Christmas Carol” special from 1979.

• Chris' acting does remind me quite a bit of his acting opposite Jimmy Fallon as Kevin Pollack in that Celebrity Poker sketch from season 29.

• Forte as Caitlyn Jenner seemed like it was just there for set dressing and Armisens’ Carlin isn't quite as good as he seems to think it is. In fact, it's pretty much a watered down version of Rick Moranis’ George Carlin from SCTV. His constant guessing of “party at ___________s’ house” got old quick.

• Maya as Charo, while visually dazzling and understandably over the top, was probably the biggest thing weighing this sketch down. The “casting couch” type jokes were a bit off putting but hey, at least she's not slut shaming herself? C+

Unsolved Mysteries

Actress Michelle Armstrong (Dreyfus) is filming a reenactment of the abduction of Sandy Patterson (Wiig). She tells director Sean Driscoll (Parnell) that she has trouble suspending her disbelief at the outrageous story that somehow involves aliens (Forte) “led” by Dracula (Armisen) as well as E.T. (Forte V/O) a handful of gremlins and ghosts, and Col. Sanders (Hader) rescuing her. 

• Chris and Julia were both solid in straight roles while Kristen, in a rare feat, manages to play one of her paint-by-numbers over the top wacky/crazy lady roles (and this character, we're supposed to believe, is legitimately, mentally ill with Parnell simply enabling her) in a restrained enough capacity to NOT steal focus from any of the other players and place the focus onto herself. In fact, she seemed to be doing a milder version of her Target Lady voice here. I even liked how she over pronounced the hard T when she said “I was so fright-ened”.

• I got a kick out of the sounds of moaning ghosts including one's who just said “boo” and simply “ghost” (were Steve Higgins and Jason Sudeikis doing those voices?) as well as the prop E.T. arm hanging out of a closet.

• Bill really nailed his brief absurd walk on asking if his Col. Sanders is supposed to enter through the window.

• I even thought the ending where Darrel Hammond as Robert Stack came on to inform us that JLDs character was seemingly abducted by Cap'n Crunch was fun and thematically appropriate.

• The only criticism I have of this sketch is how it seemed like a cheap excuse to throw a bunch of random 80s pop culture references together (“monkeycheese” style as…a certain other popular SNL podcaster would say) and 2006 seeming like an odd time for an Unsolved Mysteries parody. I mean, I'm not even sure Robert Stack was still alive at this time let alone if Unsolved Mysteries was even on in reruns anywhere but hey…SNL got away with a lot of “random 80s pop culture reference” sketches around this era (in fact, a lot comedy did…particularly this show and internet comedy…I guess 80s nostalgia was just particularly en vogue in the mid aughts) and they mostly worked regardless of the time fog so, I think I can let this one slide. C+

Digital Short: Peyote

In a PSA for Peyote, Will Forte attempts to talk Andy Samberg out of suicide while they both appear to be in altered states.

• This was essentially a near blackout length gag and it was very funny, but at the same time rather complicated to explain without visuals, but I'll give it a try.

• The idea is that at first we see very tight shots of Forte (looking up & speaking through a megaphone) and Samberg (looking down slightly and leaning tightly against a wall with the corner of a window just above him in frame).

• About 38 seconds in we pull out to reveal both Forte & Samberg are on the sidewalk, Samberg standing with Forte on his knees and Jorma Taccone walking by and shooting them both a dirty look. The tag line for the whole thing is “Through Good Time And Bad: Peyote”

• Essentially, this digital short is basically a cross between “Lettuce” and “Close Talkers” but this was a great piece of brief drug induced absurdity to place in the ten to one spot that was a very uniquely Forte/TLI joint. B+

Overall Thoughts

• Boy, this episode was all over the place, wasn't it?

• There may have been a couple of lowkey classic deep cuts in this episode but overall it felt shockingly…forgettable given all the names involved (and especially when you compare it to both of JLDs’ subsequent host outings).

• I think the one thing bringing this episode down a little was the palpable sense of burnout lingering through the proceedings. 

• I mean, the lead off sketch was a dusted off dress cut from four seasons ago and Update especially felt like it was running on fumes. 

• They must've been pinning their hopes on Julia putting a lot of sketches over (which, hey…I get it) but this episode really had the feeling of “we're really just running put the clock on this season so we can get to figuring out how we can reconfigure the show in the face of looming cast departures and upcoming budget cuts at NBC”.

• At least they seemed to have been able to figure out a way to make Julia the main focus of the show without making it seem like cast airtime was unbalanced at all. No cast member was completely shut out of the show.

Closing Thoughts 

• Well, that was an episode more notable for its significance in the context of SNLs history more than…most of the sketches from it that aired.

• …and hey, if you haven't already done so BEFORE reading all of the preceding words for whatever reason, please find the time in your day to listen to the newest episode of the We Heart Hader Podcast that I essentially wrote this specific blog entry for.

• Yes, I know about 90% of this blog is literally a transcription of said podcast as these are essentially all the notes I prepared for said recording, but still…I put a lot of effort into both and it would mean the world to me if you took the time to listen to the podcast I made with Deej in addition to reading this blog.

• Speaking of, the next entry on this blog will likely be a full length review of the upcoming Quinta Brunson/Benson Boone episode of SNL which will air on the night of May 3rd (so, naturally, that review will be posted to this blog on the evening of May 4th).

• The next episode of the We Heart Hader Podcast will be available two weeks from today and it will feature our first ever guest! That's right, Jon Schneider, the main host and creator of The Saturday Night Network himself will join us as we each count down our personal top 5 Bill Hader sketches of season 31!

• Deej and I are both eternally grateful to Jon for giving us each our first shot on his show and continuously having us both on as part of his Patron Feedback shows. Naturally, we always wanted to have him on with us as a guest at some point down the line but very recently Deej and I discussed it and decided that Jon should be our FIRST EVER guest because it just wouldn't seem right to have it any other way as we start bringing on guests in general…so yeah, we moved those plans up quite a bit.

• Now, I know I have been teasing some potential upcoming guests for our podcast myself (whom I have since reached out to privately and fortunately they both have expressed interest) but I was actually just hinting at two other people I wanted to possibly get on for a very specific season 32 centric discussion that I have no idea when we'll get to record at this point…so, I guess I should hold off on saying any more about those tentative plans until they get nailed down in the near future.

• Anyway, see you soon!