Saturday Night Live Season 19 Reviews - Episode 20 - Heather Locklear / Janet Jackson

 

“Is this another holocaust type scam?”

Cold Open: Coffee Talk

1 Star

Fucking Really?

Linda Richman is on the couch with her landlord and the big news is that she has tickets to see Barbra Striesand.  How many times has Linda seen Babs?  Seems like this is the topic of every conversation.  She gives the extra ticket to her landlord and she leaves, presumably to get changed for the monologue.  And, fuck, we’re taking callers?

Heather Locklear Monologue

2 Stars

Locklear goes through the SNL cast like Melrose Place

It’s been a stormy week for Locklear at SNL.  She’s in a love triangle with Hartman and Nealon, she’s pregnant with Farley’s baby and she’s having an affair with Canteen Boy.  She walks around the halls of 8H getting into fights with the cast and for some reason talks to Jay Leno who brags about his ‘headlines’ bit on The Tonight Show.

Eych Commercial

5 Stars

The hairball remedy cats ask for by name

Holy shit! A new commercial parody!  Saved the best for last it seems.  The bouncing ball sing a long of cats coughing up hairballs was a real treat.

Wayne on Melrose Place

3 Stars

Wayne dreams he is in Melrose Place

Wayne falls asleep watching Melrose Place and wakes up in bed with Amanda.  I’m guessing if I ever watched a single second of Melrose Place I would find this more amusing.  The whole cast dresses up as their favorite character, some funnier than others, but I have no idea who they are parodying so the humor was a little lost on me.  Locklear is really cue card happy here and not proving herself an adequate comedienne.  The sketch ends with Wayne waking up thankful that it was all a dream and then screaming because he is in Locklear’s dress.

Hot Button

4 Stars

Clarence Thomas and Ted Kennedy join the panel to talk about sexual harassment

Sexual harassment is the hot button topic but Thomas and Kennedy are more concerned with Locklear’s “hot button”.  Meadows and Hartman are really good here while Locklear is still having issues with her lines.  I liked Hartman’s Ted Kennedy and his frequent requests for Locklear to take her dress off.

Janet Jackson

“Throb”

This is a dance club tune that had no business ever being performed live on TV.  Janet sings one line over a backing track and seems to be mouthing other words but I couldn’t hear any of them.  This was just fit dancers grinding on each other.  The song is un-listenable and I suppose the choreography was nice but I wanted a song and I just got a collection of beats.

Weekend Update

3 Stars

“Pictures of Michael Fay’s caned buttocks could be worth half a million dollars.  This kid is sitting on a goldmine”

Brief Update this week with some quality jokes to make room for two desk pieces.  I will not miss watching these now that the season is over.

Desk Pieces

Norm is here with a homophobic perspective.  He doesn’t have a problem with gay people he just happens to be afraid of them.  Then he starts talking about Whitewater but is more concerned that Nealon is sitting too close to him.

“Who is watching the watchdog?  We all know who’s watching my crotch right now.”

I laughed during this but it was definitely his weakest piece this year.

Sandler sings a song for the summer.  He recounts lost summer loves, like when he found the lady of his dreams but she turned out to be his mother or his gym teacher.  For some reason Tim Meadows shows up to sing a line as Captain Jim from the audience.  The song ends with Sandler deciding to try and make it work with his mom.

Across The Bar

5 Stars

Nealon and Locklear lock eyes with each other at a bar

This was really funny.  An almost wordless sketch that is just about the physical comedy and performances.  Nealon and Locklear start flirting, they blow kisses, they make piggy faces, they drink an entire pitcher of beer, then it starts getting more and more absurd.  She kisses a man to her right so he does the same thing.  She unhooks her bra, he kisses the man again.  She drinks a bottle of poison, he does the same.  She rips off the label to show that it was just water, he rips off his label to show that he actually drank “really bad poison” and dies.  She steals his wallet and leaves.

Andy Rooney

4 Stars

Andy Rooney doesn’t like people

A few episodes ago Norm got into a bunch of make-up to play Charles Kuralt.  Here he puts on a gray wig and says he’s Andy Rooney.  If you ever saw Andy Rooney then you can see how accurate this is.  He would just complain about something for the last few minutes of ‘60 Minutes’ and sometimes would just say whatever the hell was on his mind, no matter how inane or rambling it was.  Here he talks about how he isn’t a fan of people, he doesn’t like People magazine and he doesn’t like pictures of people.  He ends it by going through a stack of mail and just reading the states on the envelopes.  It’s such a slow burn and it’s funny because it’s not funny.  It’s the Sideshow Bob stepping on rakes type of comedy.  He says 3 states and it’s funny, he gets to 7 states and you stop laughing but when he gets to the 10th the joke is funny again.

Amazing Time Savers

4 Stars

An infomercial where the host turns out to be a holocaust denier

Locklear is hosting an infomercial for a pasta maker and the sketch takes it’s time to get to the joke.  Finally she asks if this product is a big lie like the holocaust and the switchboard lights up.  She is oblivious to the bad taste of what she just said and keeps rolling with the script.  She is glad that the product is American made because she’s tired of buying from the Japs.  I liked the boundary pushing of this sketch but it did start to run out of steam and then it got me with the ending.  We get a disclaimer saying that the use of the racial slurs in the preceding sketch were used to demonstrate that bigotry is wrong, which you would have understood if you weren’t a retard.

L’Homme d’Orgasme

2 Stars

Orgasm Guy meets his French cousin

Rob Schneider is proud to be known for his most popular character Orgasm Guy but did you know that there is a french version too?  We see some french guy cum in his pants who is then joined by Schneider.  This could have worked with a french star, like if Gerard DePardieu was hosting but who’s this guy and why is he headlining a sketch?  This feels like a send-off to Schneider so part of me says, let the guy do what he wants but this was just not funny.  My only laughs came from Norm MacDonald’s lame attempt at a french accent.

Janet Jackson sings “Any Time, Any Place” and hey, she’s actually singing this time.  Her voice is beautiful but now she’s just sitting in a chair the whole time with a mic and it’s pretty boring.  There’s got to be a happy medium between the two performances.

So Long, Farewell

4 Stars

The Saturday Night Live family singers bid farewell to the season

The cast sings a la ‘The Sound Of Music’ with all their recurring characters signing off for the last time.  The GAP Girls, Tori Spelling, Ike Turner, Linda Richman, Matt Foley and the unseen this season Zoraida the NBC page, Richmeister and Pat.  Mohr, Silverman and Norm got a meta gag about how little screen time they get and McKean plays Lenny from ‘Laverne And Shirley’ because he doesn’t have a recurring character yet.  This is a way to say goodbye to Hartman who shows up at the end to cradle a sleeping Farley as the spotlight closes in around them.  I got really choked up watching this, seeing two comic powerhouses who unfortunately were taken from us too early being so sweet together.  Hartman is obviously holding back tears during the goodnights as well.

FINAL ANALYSIS

“I can’t imagine a more dignified way to end my 8 years on this program.”

Average

3.3 Stars

MVP

Norm MacDonald
Weekend Update, Across The Bar, Andy Rooney, L’Homme d’Orgasme, So Long, Farwell

Best Sketch

Across The Bar

Worst Sketch

Coffee Talk

How I Would Lorne Michaels-ed It

I’ve been saying this for years but I want them to make every season finale a hostless show.  Very rarely do I watch the show for the host anyway.  When someone like Alec Baldwin, Jon Hamm, Tom Hanks, Christopher Walken or Louis C.K. is at the helm I get excited because I think they feel that they have to bring the goods, but for the majority of the time I couldn’t care less who’s hosting.  This was practically a host free show, Locklear only talked in 4 sketches, which was nice.  I loved the ending of this, it was so sweet and a great way to say goodbye to Hartman.  The only thing I would get rid of is the ‘Coffee Talk’ cold open and maybe switch it with ‘Wayne in Melrose Place’.  The monologue should have been different too.  Did we need two Melrose Place parodies so close to each other?

Host Analysis

Locklear was at her best when she just had to look pretty.  The cue card reading was heavy in the few sketches she was in so it was smart to put her mostly in sketches where she had to talk right to the camera.  She wasn’t that great but luckily this episode wasn’t about her.

Final Thoughts

Well, I made it.  20 more episodes done.  I’m sure I’ll get more into my thoughts about the season as a whole later but my gut reaction is that it was pretty good.  There weren’t a lot of classic sketches but there were only a few sketches I can remember off the top of my head as being terrible and hated sitting through.

This episode was really enjoyable, probably because they had Locklear take a back seat to the cast.  The Hartman and Farley scene at the end broke my heart.  I watched it 3 times I loved it that much.  In a way that final sketch sums up the whole season.  They are not only saying goodbye to season 19 or to Phil Hartman, they are saying goodbye to an era of SNL that will probably never be seen again. The show goes in and out of relevance, in election years it gains more attention, but it has never really been at the top of the cultural zeitgeist like it was back then.  Movies, books, video games, memorabilia, the show was bigger than itself.  I watch the show religiously and I have to keep telling people about good things. Back then a person who never watched the show would still know the catchphrases.  The characters were stars and for the most part this was the end of the character driven comedy.  The show still has recurring characters and no doubt always will but it has never reached that level of celebrity since this cast left.  Wayne and Garth were stars as were Richmeister and Pat and to a lesser extent the GAP Girls.  When Rob Schneider and Julia Sweeney alluded to the dip in quality of the show, I really didn’t see it.  I really don’t like when the show is self-deprecating.  I don’t like knowing that they know they’re lazy.  But to insinuate that the reason season 19 was less funny than previous years is because there was no Pat or Richmeister is ludicrous.  My least favorite moments of the season came from hanging on to the old.  If I had to see one more Coffee Talk I would really reconsider watching these anymore.  Maybe the reason people aren’t liking the show anymore is because you don’t seem to like it.

Up Next
A season recap with best ofs, worst ofs, and a cast analysis.