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Finally, A Great Show For This Season, Hosted By The Star Of Shazaam!!

First off, if you haven’t been following the progress it’s not that this season is bad it’s just been filled with episodes that have been good without being great. This episode, hosted by Sinbad, is the first of the year to break the great barrier. One of my favorite parts of this show was how enthusiastic Sinbad was throughout his hosting duties to where he genuinely seemed to be having a lot of fun.

I’ve said this in the past but it bears repeating that a host’s energy alone can make or break a night which was partially the case with this episode. I say partially because this show was fun enough that it would have been great no matter the temperament of the host. I think the big part that made this episode so fun was that they opted to parody more established references that all stood the test of time as opposed to some random piece of work from the host that I’ve never heard of.

Also, as I keep pointing out, this season also seems to be continuing to go light on having to resort to reoccurring characters for laughs so this night filled with parodies of well-known shows was way more fun than the random one-off sketches that can be fun but still mostly have a generic fell about them. Generic might actually be the best word to describe how I feel about this season so far since generic can be good it just doesn’t have specialness that a brand name will try to sell.

Whatever, the rest of the earlier season doesn’t matter at this point, I just hope that this episode starts a new trend that the rest of the season can live up to. We’ll see what happens but until then, it’s now time to shift gears from sharing my thoughts to sharing what I saw as I give you…

The Wicker Breakdown:

This week's show started with Bush And Clinton In The Oval Office for Clinton’s tour of his new digs after winning the Presidential Election. In the sketch, Bush was a bitter loser due to the fact that he will go down in history as a one-term president while Clinton was a bit of a good sport in his efforts to cheer the now Ex-President. As always, this eventually led to the announcement of, “Live from New York…”
Sinbad then officially opened the show with a monolog/stand-up routine with jokes about how big of a dream it is to host the show when growing up in a black community. He then went on to joke about the movie X where he had a supporting role. After this, the routine mainly focused on the recently released Bram Stoker’s Dracula movie.
We then got a fake ad for Cluckin' Chicken where we got to witness the animated mascot talk us through the food preparation process that was happening to his body after his head got chopped off.
The Gloria Brigade was a parody of the movie Glory only instead of following a group of black Civil War troops we followed a gay brigade, in reference to Bill Clinton allowing gays to serve in the military. Being that the soldiers were gay, their base camp was nicely decorated with areas set up for spa-like activities. About halfway through the sketch, we learned that the black troop from Glory was actually going to stop by later on to share dinner as a combined group. At dinner, the black troops were uncomfortable when they first discovered the men were gay but after realizing they actually had a lot in common, they joined forces to win the war.
Black Motorist Today was a talk show hosted by Sinbad to share tips to black drivers on how to drive outside of the black community in order to lower their chances of being pulled over for minor infractions that would normally be let go if the driver were white.
This was followed by another installment of Deep Thoughts By Jack Handey where Jack shared how he responds to people who ask him to define love.
Sade then took to the stage to perform No Ordinary Love.
Once again, Kevin Nealon gave us the news. This week, David Spade dropped in for another Hollywood Moment to bash all of the celebrities making tabloid headlines and Adam Sandler also stopped by to perform his Thanksgiving Song.
Superman's Funeral was a sketch where all the members of the cast dressed as comic book superheroes to mourn the loss of their super friend. Throughout the sketch, they made jokes about everyone’s special powers while they compared their abilities with those of their now dead friend. Not only did Chris Farley pay homage to Belushi by playing the Incredible Hulk but Sinbad also introduced a brand new hero named Black Lightning who claimed to be an old friend of Superman from the early years even though no one in the room had any idea who he was. Other than that there were a lot of comic book references that were pretty fun.
At Home With Monica Seles a parody show that made fun of the tennis star’s bizarre noises that she made on the court by showing how she also used the same sounds in her personal life while doing everyday activities.
This was interrupted by a fake ad for Bram Stoker's Blacula which was a parody of the Bram Stoker’s Dracula movie that was brought up in the opening monolog only starring Sinbad who is reviving the Blacula character from the ‘70s Blaxploitation film.
We then went back to the Monica Seles sketch that only lasted a minute before it was interrupted by another fake ad for Gilligan's Biosphere making fun of the real-life experiment that was going on that year via a Gilligan’s Island parody.
The Dark Side With Nat X returned for another segment where this week the host of the only five-minute show on TV interviewed Sinbad who played Joe Jackson to discuss the controversy of a recent NBC mini-series about the Jackson family where they mainly joked about all of the abuse that went on.
We then got another Deep Thoughts By Jack Handey where Jack shared a very quick story about his friend named Caw who got confused every time that a crow was near.
Sade then returned to the stage to perform Cherish The Day.
The Proud Pattersons AKA The Overacting Negro Ensemble was pretty offensive but funny sketch that made fun of the overacting that often showed up in black films from around that time with lots of dramatically raised voices for unnecessary emphasis over even the most mundane piece of news that they learned.
Office Thanksgiving Party was a sketch that as the title implies was a sketch that took place at a Thanksgiving office party. In the sketch, Sinbad is talking with Dana Carvey at the punch bowl where co-worker after co-worker dropped by to say things to Sinbad that make him seem terrible which makes Carvey concerned until Sinbad explained the innocent truth.
Finally, Sinbad closed the show by thanking the audience and saying his goodnights.

I am so happy to finally have another episode where there were actually too many options to fill the list of my favorite three moments of the night that I am about to share right now. First, I loved the Office Thanksgiving sketch because the way the jokes were set up it almost felt interactive because it allowed the viewer to guess the punchlines based on the clues we got. Next, I really liked Superman’s Funeral feature Black Lightning because of how now that I’ve watched it in the age of the internet I learned that Black Lightning was actually real and not the made up character that I always thought. Finally, I was a fan of the Cluckin' Chicken because I always found it interesting to think about the life of an anthropomorphic mascot if they were actually real.