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A Boring Night With The Bad Boy Of Beverly Hills

As I said back when Jason Priestley was the host, aside from parody and pop culture references, I didn’t really follow 90210. At the same time, I’m also open to accepting any of the cast members as host because I recall that they all seemed to double down on their efforts avoid being pigeonholed as melodramatic performers and remember them being funny in their non-90210 appearances, so I was half looking forward to this show.

To top off this vague interest, I also liked Luke Perry in the movie version of Buffy The Vampire Slayer so I thought he’d be able to pull this off. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case with this episode to the point where I would say that this showing didn’t even live up to the same good but not great status as the rest of the shows this year.

This episode missed the mark so much that even the evergreen sketches that featured the cast with sans host were just as boring as the sketches with the star which is a very rare scenario. Once again, this started right at the top with the monolog where the main joke was that the show wouldn’t be all that good with Obi-Wan Kenobi telling Luke to use the cue cards because his comedic instincts weren’t good enough to carry a joke on his own.

It’s one thing when they make this type of joke on a night that turns out to be super good but when you joke about a show being bad and then go on to deliver said badness as promised it’s no longer a joke, it’s just mean. The thing that really sucked was that there were a couple sketches that had hilarious premises but for some reason, they played really flat.

I wish I could blame time and my modern eyes but I don’t think this one was even good back then. I mean the opening sketch was about a man who was transformed into a tampon in order to live inside of the woman he loves. Keep in mind, I love twisted humor but even that was a little too much for me and remember thinking it was more creepy than funny even when this episode originally aired.

It seems like it’s been quite a while since I’ve used the term second-half-slump but that’s definitely how I would describe tonight’s program. With that, it’s now time to move on and share what I saw as I give you…

The Wicker Breakdown:

This week's show started with the Open White House where Bill Clinton hosted a meet and greet to celebrate Mental Health Week where the Prime Minister of Italian got mixed in with the cavalcade of crazy guests since Bill was thrown off by his crazy accent. Of course, this being the opening sketch it eventually led to the announcement of, “Live from New York…”
Luke Perry then officially opened the show with a monolog about how all of the men in the audience with sideburns own him some money for stealing his look. He then went on to attempt another joke only to be interrupted by Obi-Wan Kenobi who said, “Luke, use the cue cards,” to discourage Luke Perry from straying away from the prepared material in a way that sort of tapped into my biggest pet peeve of even jokingly setting up the audience for a subpar show in the way that it implying that the host isn’t talented enough to perform on his own. Then again, Perry played off of the joke pretty well and wasn’t making it about himself.
We then got a repeat of the Chameleon XLE ad from earlier in the season which showcased a luxury car that was camouflaged to look like a piece of junk.
Prince Charles then addressed the audience about a recent tabloid story about his affair with Camille Parker-Bowels and how he planned to give up his right to the throne and be shrunken down to become The Tampon Prince in order to live a life outside of the public eye and inside the woman he loves. This lead to a parody of The Fly where Charles was turned into a tampon with his tiny head while his body was left normal sized with a giant tampon string where his head used to live. After that, the sketch went on to be a slow but disturbing scene as Camille receives The Tampon Prince as a gift.
Mrs. Hibbert's Yard Boy was a sketch where Luke Perry played a landscaper for Julia Sweeney who played the titular homeowner who kept using sexual innuendoes to get Luke Perry in bed only he was too dumb to get any of the clues. Eventually, the two almost got caught by Mr. Hibbert who went on to pick up on Perry as well.
Mick Jagger then took to the stage to perform Sweet Thing.
Once again, Kevin Nealon gave us the news. This week, Opera Man dropped for another segment where he sang about the top stories or the week. Mike Myers also played Mick Jagger while Mick Jagger played Keith Richards for a segment where the two discussed the latest controversy where Ice T was dropped from his record label for making his Cop Killer song.
Magic Fish Town Meeting took place in a town that had access to a lake filled with magical fish that were growing to become extinct due to the town’s greed. In this town, every single person is the king who all have more wealth than they could ever need only they still struggled in their efforts to be happy.
SNL Halftime Spectacular was a parody of the Super Bowl Halftime Show only SNL-themed with “Michael Jackson” as the special guest who lip-synced his way through every one of his top hits in a medley that took a little over a minute.
Mick Jagger then returned to the stage to perform Don't Tear Me Up.
High School Liar's Club was a game show hosted by Phil Hartman who played the school principal where he questioned three students about the lies that they’ve made to make them sound cooler than they actually were.
Sassy's Sassiest Boys was a talk show sketch where Phil Hartman interviewed a panel of the Sassiest of the Sassy actors in Hollywood which included “Christian Slater,” “Mark Wahlberg,” and “Rick Schroder.”
This was followed by another installment of Deep Thoughts By Jack Handey where Jack made a guess as to why police don’t let people go near plane crashes.
Dark Moments In Black History was a segment hosted by Queen Shenequa where she claimed that an interception during that year’s Super Bowl was actually a case of racial injustice that was looked over by the world when really it was just a good play.
Tommy's Goodbye was a sketch where Luke Perry played a country bumpkin who was saying goodbye to his family to venture out and give city living a shot. The sketch was built up to be one of those end of the night sentimental sketches that I usually love but in this case, it felt like it went nowhere and I was absolutely bored by the end when I found that it went nowhere at all.
Finally, Luke Perry closed the show by thanking the audience and saying his goodnights.

Even though I’d consider this to be a second-half-slump show, at least it was easy to find these three favorite moments because they were the only moments that come close to making me laugh. First, I loved the Magic Fish Town Meeting sketch because the concept of a town overrun with wishes had some great potential even though the delivery was just a little off. Next, I really liked High School Liar's Club because, for the most part, I like game show sketches in general. Finally, I was a fan of the opening sketch with Bill Clinton because I like how they tied all pro-wrestlers into a joke about Mental Health.