Saturday Night Live Season 21 Reviews - Episode 15 - John Goodman / Everclear

"Did you shampoo my wife?"

Cold Open: 20/20

2 Stars

Christopher Darden tells Barbara Walters about his romance with Marcia Clark

Barbara Walters interviews Christopher Darden, the prosecutor in the O.J. Simpson trial, and eventually asks him if he ever had a physical relationship with Marcia Clark.

“Did you nail her?  We’re you riding the train to Clarksville?”

We get a flashback to the trial.  Marcia is calling Mark Fuhrman to make sure he doesn’t have any skeletons in his closet.  Darden thinks he might be a racist.  Marcia starts rubbing his shoulders and kissing his neck and they begin to have, in Darden’s words, ‘insane mind blowing sex’.  We go forward in time to the verdict where Darden and Clark are lamenting the not guilty verdict.  Marcia seems to only have one thing on her mind.

“The only thing I'm guilty of is being extremely horny.  It's time to take the black bronco down the 405.”

Back to the interview, Darden says he hasn’t seen her since.  We then go to Barbara Walters in studio with her cohost Hugh Downs who says that he can understand working with someone so long that romantic feelings start to develop.  They embrace and dive behind the desk.  This was just okay.  Cutting back and forth from present day to flashback presented some audio glitches.  I really liked the ending with Oteri’s Walters mounting Darrell Hammond’s Hugh Downs.  Not bad but also not great.

Chris Kattan and Colin Quinn are introduced as featured players in the opening credits

John Goodman Monologue

2 Stars

It’s John’s 7th time hosting so he can do whatever he wants

When you host 5 times you get 50% off at all participating Red Lobsters.  Your 6th time, Lorne hands you the keys to a new Mercedes and makes you drive him to the opera.  The 7th time is the sweetest because you don't have to do the monologue.  You can do whatever you want. Last week’s host, Elle MacPherson comes in to give Goodman his crown and scepter.  As he sits on his throne he is reminded of King Ralph which coincidentally 7 people went to see.  You also get to play with Lorne's secret remote.  He Cuts to the control room, Molly rehearsing lines, Tim flexing in the mirror, the ladies room where Nancy leaves a stall, followed by Mark McKinney and Norm gambling on cock fights in his dressing room.  He can also make the cast do anything he wants.  He tells Jim Breuer that he wants him to do that thing he did last night when they were drunk.  Jim does an impression of Alanis Morisette singing about Bob Dole.  He sings a poorly written parody of ‘Hand In My Pocket’ with lyrics about Bob Dole having one hand on his pencil.  It was at this point in the show where I wrote, ‘Why am I watching this?’.

Rerun of Grayson Moorhead Securities

The Real World

5 Stars

Bob Dole joins MTV’s The Real World in order to Court younger voters

We start with Kurt Loder reading MTV News. This is pretty unnecessary but it does put us in the universe of the sketch.  The Real World intro starts and when Bob Dole says, “start getting real” I lost my damn mind with laughter.  Most of the cast is playing aimless twenty somethings and then Bob Dole comes out screaming that someone ate his peanut butter.

“Bob Dole likes peanut butter.  Bob Dole's never made a secret of that”

This was wonderfully edited and performed, a highlight of the season so far.

The Joe Pesci Show

3 Stars

Joe interviews and beats up Marisa Tomei and Richard Dreyfuss

This is Joe’s salute to the Academy Awards.  He brings out his cohost Robert DeNiro, played this time by John Goodman, who has gained all his weight from Raging Bull back in honor of the proceedings.  His first guest is Marisa Tomei, played by Cheri Oteri, and Joe is upset that she won an Oscar for My Cousin Vinny and he didn’t get nominated.  He yells at her until she runs off.  Next he and Bobby act out a scene from Raging Bull but due to the censors they have to replace all the expletives with the word ‘shampoo’.  Finally, Darrell Hammond comes out as Richard Dreyfuss who is Oscar nominated this year for Mr. Holland’s Opus.  They beat him up when his eloquence is confused for insults.  If you’ve seen one of these you’ve seen them all.

The Real World

We got a runner.  In this installment Dole gets mad because nobody has taken his messages.  Then Tim and Mark are talking about a gay threesome while Dole shakes in his bed uncomfortably.

Substitute Teacher

3 Stars

The new sub is hard to understand

Who the hell is this guy?  It’s the new guy, Chris Kattan, in his first episode.  He’s the substitute teacher to a class but he speaks in weird gibberish and nobody knows what he’s saying.  He also writes on the board in scribbles.  That’s pretty much it, this is Kattan speaking nonsense words for 5 minutes.  It’s pleasant enough.  Goodman comes in as the principal, just to prove that he is in fact the host of this episode.

The Real World

Bob walks in on Nancy Walls in the shower and they hold a house meeting about kicking him out.  We get a beautiful shot of Dole peering in on them to reveal a single tear.

Weekend Update

Let this be a lesson kids, smoking kills.

Forbes was so despondent about his presidential campaign that he was overheard to say, ‘I feel like a million bucks’.

Chelsea Clinton is learning to drive from her dad and has become good at crusing for chicks.

K Mart introduced a new credit card.  If you apply and are turned down, kill yourself.

A man’s life was saved when his dog dialed 911. It was a close call though as 911 opertors had trouble locating the address ‘woof woof’.

Christopher Reeve was quoted as saying Robin Williams’s comedy made him want to go on living.  He also said that Pauley Shore's comedy made him pray for the sweet release that death would bring.

Colin Quinn talks about St. Patrick's Day.  I didn’t like this at all.  The only line worth mentioning was when he talked about all the Irish people that don’t drink, the ones in AA.

Everclear

"Santa Monica"

I owned this album and their next one.  I don't know why I loved Everclear but I thought they were rad circa 1996.  In a move I wish the show would do more, this will be the band’s only appearance.

Fecal Matters

3 Stars

Mark Fecal hosts a show about the subject you would expect

Mark Fecal’s guest today is NFL fullback Buster Phelps.  He asks Buster if he ever worries if his football is covered in fecal matter.  After a few more questions about poop particles, Buster leaves saying he thought the show was called Fecal Matters because of the host’s last name but it turns out that is just a happy coincidence.  We get a commercial for Fecalvision which are glasses you can wear that will show you fecal remnants around you.  We don’t have time for the cooking segment which would have demonstrated how to make Grandma’s Fecal Free Fudge Coils (they look like poop).  For a big long poop joke, it wasn’t too bad.

Rerun of Grayson Moorhead Securities

Meeting

4 Stars

Gary MacDonald can’t stop telling jokes during a board meeting

After two appearances behind the Update desk, Gary MacDonald gets his own sketch.  John Goodman starts the meeting by saying there are going to be massive layoffs.  Gary can’t help himself from making bad jokes that he can’t seem to commit to.

“You lose a job?  Check the lost and found, no.”

“We have to redirect money from the pension funds.”

“They should redirect Waterworld.”

“What about my family?”

“What are you Richard Dawson?  Family Feud, Survey says, no.”

“Are you aware your job could be in Jeopardy?”

“Are you gonna fire us in the form of a question?”

“Stop it.”

“What are you a Stephen King novel?”

“I Don’t get that one.”

“I think he may be referring the the Stephen King novel, It.”

Eventually Gary jumps out the window yelling ‘21 Jump Street’ all the way down.  It’s almost impossible to make unfunny jokes funny but I just love this character and Koechner is hilarious here.

Forbes-America

3 Stars

Steve Forbes creates his own country after losing the Republican primary

Forbes has purchased airtime and preempted Friends to talk to us about his new investment.

“I took $114 million and I bought myself my very own America.  And I'm the president.”

Using space satellites he cut out an America size chunk out of Russia and filled it with all the things Americans love like croquet, ponies and hot air balloons.  We cut to some people living in Forbes-America who are freezing and threatening to eat the ponies.  Forbes has yet to build any shelters but the country does have a flat tax.  This was short and cute and should probably have been the cold open.

Holiday Inn

2 Stars

Drunk salesmen praise Bill Brasky

This might get my vote for most perplexing recurring sketch.  You can tell that the cast gets a kick out of this but both incarnations have performed to a mostly silent audience.  It’s the same bit as last time they all tell crazy stories about Bill Brasky.  He made Ferrell wear a bikini in the office for 6 months, he performed gall bladder on Goodman, he rode Koechner like a horse through Wyoming for 3 days and he was once seen scissor kicking Angela Lansbury.  Everyone is going way over the top to try to get reactions from the audience, to little avail.

FINAL ANALYSIS

"He'll eat a homeless person if you dare him"

Average

3 Stars

MVP

Norm MacDonald

Monologue, The Real World, Weekend Update

Best Sketch

The Real World

Worst Sketch

Holiday Inn

How I Would Have Lorne Michaels-ed It

Forbes-America was short, topical and political so I would have made that the cold open.  It would have been a better start to the show than 20/20.  I also would have spaced out The Real World segments and maybe added one more as that was the best thing the show had going for it. 
Host Analysis

It didn't even feel like Goodman was there.  He was barely in the show and when he was in a sketch he played the straight man or just a walk on role.  It's not that Goodman didn't bring anything to the show, he wasn't asked to do anything.  He played Robert De Niro and one of the drunk salesman but other than that he was used like a featured player.  Chris Kattan and Colin Quinn had more stand out moments than Goodman did.

Final Thoughts

The Real World runner definitely saved the show.  Hell, it was the show.

Up Next

Phil Hartman makes his grand return to Studio 8H.  Expectations are high for this one.