Saturday Night Live Season 26 Reviews - Episode 9 - Charlie Sheen / Nelly Furtado

 

"I thought the eel farts were a little salty"

Cold Open: Vice Presidential Address

3 Stars

Dick Cheney tells the super rich that they’ll be fine

Dick Cheney addresses the nation as President-Elect and speaks to rich people exclusively.  Bush comes in with a doggy he found and wants to keep.  Dick has two heart attacks but is revived with a shot by Karl Rove.  I would have had him eat Karl’s heart to gain his strength, but that’s just me and maybe would be a little too much.

Charlie Sheen Monologue

4 Stars

Charlie takes questions from the audience

It’s an old and tired format, but I still do enjoy the questions from the audience monologue.  Paula Pell asks how much she could charge if she was a hooker, Steve Higgins asks for a refund for Men At Work, someone offers Charlie a big bag of cocaine and Tracy makes his weekly cameo to grab it.  We end with someone asking Charlie if he would like to follow in his father’s footsteps and play the President but nobody would want a President who’s not very smart, used cocaine and been to jail just because his dad was President.

FOX

5 Stars

Promos for upcoming reality shows

10 beautiful women on an island and 1 has a venereal disease on Herpes Island.  A family stuck in a trailer fights off thoughts of incest on Temptation Trailer.  And on The Cannibal, 8 men are locked in a cabin for a year with no food.  This was all great.  FOX and reality shows in general were getting really trashy at this time.

Iron Chef

5 Stars

Japanese chefs go up against an American bachelor

The mystery ingredient is shark head and while The Iron Chef infuses his with eel farts, the American bachelor chef makes shark head nachos, shark head pizza bagels, and Pillsbury biscuits with shark head.  This was a sketch I remember catching late at night when I wasn't watching the show religiously and thinking, oh, SNL is good again.  I have whipped up a platter of bachelor snacks in my day and found a kinship in Charlie's character.  The English dubbing and bad Japanese accents hasn't aged all that well but this sketch is still really funny.

Eric Dickerson's NFL Pre Game Special

1 Star

Eric Dickerson interviews Dan Fouts, Rick Vaughn and Dennis Miller

Uh oh, a sports themed sketch from 20 years ago.  Something tells me I'm not gonna have much context for this.  Tracy is playing an athlete and the joke seems to be that he has a stilted and awkward delivery.  However, Tracy is known for stumbling over his lines so that may just be Tracy, it's hard to tell.  Charlie comes out as his character from Major League, a reference I'm not sure worked in 2000, much less 20 years later.  Speaking of references, Jimmy's Dennis Miller impression returns.  Wow, I hate Jimmy Fallon's Dennis Miller.  It sounds nothing like Dennis, but it kind of sounds like Dana Carvey's impression, which kind of makes it seem like stealing.  Down to the "cha-chas" and the laugh and the hair flip.  Those weren't things that Dennis Miller did.  Those were exaggerated characterizations that Dana invented.

Dr. King Assembly

2 Stars

The Culps sing on Martin Luther King Day

Jerry Minor addresses the middle school but this sketch isn't about him, this is just set up for The Culps.  I've mentioned this before but I hate how this sketch always tricks me by having someone talk before hand and set up an interesting premise only to bring out characters I've seen 15 times already.  Thankfully, I saw the keyboard and the banner for Alta Deena Middle School so I got wise and immediately lowered my expectations.  They sing a medley which includes Play That Funky Music and Party Up by DMX.  This had the feeling of just doing it to do it and, no lie, this is the 16th appearance of these characters.

Weekend Update

A joke about Osama Bin Laden blowing up a Crate And Barrel for his son's wedding hasn't aged well.  Nor has the word "fag" being in one of Jimmy's punchlines.  Charlie makes a cameo to accentuate a punchline about hookers.  Chris Kattan gives us another terrible re-enactment, this time of Prince Charles falling off his horse.

Katherine Harris shows up to respond to critics who made fun of her appearance.  She makes jokes about Paul Begala, Jay Leno and Bill Maher before being hastily cut off.  This was a big old bag of meh.

Marta Mercado is the illegal maid to Bush's nominee for Secretary Of Labor.  I don't quite remember this story but Maya's performance is funny and this was real short.

Nelly Furtado

"I Am Like A Bird"

This was pleasant but I guess I remember this song being less repetitive and a little better.

Soap Opera Shoot

3 Stars

An over eager actress cameos on a soap opera

I appreciate that Molly is throwing in some new stuff mixed with the old in her final season, but Patsy March (her character here) reminds me a lot of Sally O'Malley.  In fact, while I was watching this I kept wanting to see Molly's 50 year old character which is something I never think to myself.  Molly is an actress who has one line on a soap opera and she keeps elaborating it to make her part bigger much to the director's chagrin.  She also refuses to take off her hat and insists on inserting her name into her line.  Once she nails the take, Will enters with a cape and sword as another screen hungry actor, so at least this has a punchline.  I also enjoyed the camera work in this, the angles and the staging made it more interesting.  It was a well directed piece that reminded me of something the show would do in the late 80's, early 90's era.

Big Baby

5 Stars

A woman gives birth to a dude

This is another sketch I remember from my casual SNL watching days.  I had stopped my hardcore fandom around the time Norm got fired and would only catch episodes if I happened to be up late and home alone on Saturday night.  I laughed so hard at all of this stupidity.  Charlie delivers Rachel’s baby and out comes a naked Will.  She’s given birth to a 37 year old dude named Ted Brogan.  Not much else to say, you just gotta see this one especially if you’re a Will Ferrell fan as this is a pure Will sketch.

T.G.I. Friday's

3 Stars

An obnoxious waiter got his job through nepotism

Charlie and Molly are celebrating their anniversary but their waiter is Chris Kattan and he’s rude, sarcastic, and inept.  He gets fired but reveals that he is the son of Thaddeus Garfield Ignacious Friday, the founder of T.G.I Friday’s, who is played by Will in a big handlebar mustache.  This was heading towards worst of the season until Will came out and saved it.  He seems to know exactly how bad this sketch is and revels in it.  A great rug pull as this started out as a Kattan showcase that was tanking but turned into an oddball Will sketch.  I also like how the Lucky Charms encrusted zucchini fries make a return appearance from an earlier Mary Katharine Gallagher sketch at T.G.I Friday’s.

The Pervert

2 Stars

A pervert makes other perverts uncomfortable

An Adam McKay short about a guy who gets off on the Cream Of Wheat chef.  This specific perversion is even looked down upon by other perverts played by Adam and Horatio.  Not much in this worked for me aside from the visual of the pervert in Heaven getting spoon fed Cream Of Wheat before a hot make-out session.

Classic Vaudeville

4 Stars

Charlie and Fleisy perform ‘Whores On First’

It’s weird that this was before “winning” and tiger blood but Charlie is still notorious for being a coke head whore monger, but at this point we found that quaint.  Now I’m wondering if the proceeding short was a comment on how we treat our celebrity perverts.  Charlie and Rachel do an altered version of Abbott and Costello’s Who’s On First with whores.  Who does oral, What uses her hand, and I Don’t Know takes it in the keister.  You get the joke pretty quickly but the quick timing and performances make it work.

FINAL ANALYSIS

“Would a complimentary brownie Caesar salad change your mind?”

Average

3.4 Stars

MVP

Will Ferrell
Vice Presidential Address, FOX, Eric Dickerson’s NFL Pre Game Special, Dr. King Assembly, Soap Opera Shoot, Big Baby, T.G.I. Friday’s

Best Sketch

Iron Chef

Worst Sketch

Eric Dickerson’s NFL Pre Game Special

How I Would Have Lorne Michaels-ed It

Eric Dickerson was a big old buzzkill so early in the show.  Luckily the show recovered and was really solid until the end.  I would have either cut that sketch entirely or swapped it with anything in the back half.  On the other hand, getting it out of the way early had me forgetting it pretty quickly so maybe it’s best where it is.  Go ahead and leave it alone, just spare me that Dennis Miller impression.

Host Analysis

He was pretty great actually.  He was really funny in the sketches that poked fun at his image but also played an excellent straight man when called upon.  He was in this episode a lot but was still able to blend into the ensemble so at times I forgot this was the Charlie Sheen episode.  He’s a big reason why a sketch like Big Baby works.  Will’s doing most of the work but you need someone like Charlie to say absurd lines of dialogue with a straight face so the sketch can ground itself in reality.  I realize the chances of getting another Charlie Sheen episode are pretty slim but I would welcome him back.

Final Thoughts

My favorite of the season so far.  This one was just filled with solid sketches and was so damn fun.  It felt fresh too with only one recurring sketch.  Soap Opera Shoot felt like a Sally O’Malley sketch but the character was a little different.  Charlie was a really solid host, we only got one musical performance, and if you like out there Will Ferrell sketches then this one has two for you.  This is a rare one that you can watch beginning to end without feeling like you should skip around.

Up Next

American Beauty star Mena Suvari hosts with musical guest Lenny Kravitz.