SNL: S19E10... HOST: JASON PATRIC... DATE: JANUARY 8, 1994
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Who The F%*# Is Jason Patric
I have to admit that I went into this viewing with the lowest expectation of any episodes that I've watched to date. First off, as the slug line suggests, I had no idea who Jason Patric was at all and his pictures didn’t help one bit. If anything they hurt because based on the screenshots from the show he looked like he was from some “celebrity” fronted band who was trying to capitalize off of grunge since it was so popular at the time.
Usually, I don’t look up the hosts who I don’t know as I prefer to try to figure it out while watching the episode but today, I’m was a bit hung over, which not only added to my negative attitude going into the viewing but also made it so that I was less interested in my usual fun and games. Right away I found that he was in Lost Boys which is cool but this is was a movie from 1987 so it wasn’t the movie he was there to promote.
I then saw that he was actually there to promote Geronimo, which was a movie that I remember liking after being reminded that it existed at all. Keep in mind, all of these thoughts came before watching even one second of the episode so it didn’t help that this episode also dropped from the seventeen segment format that I loved during the last two episodes and is back down to a thirteen segment episode which I hate since the fewer sketch format can feel like it’s dragging on.
All this preemptive hate eventually evolved into interest since more often than not it’s these people that I’m less familiar with who usually end up being some of my favorites. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case tonight as right out of the gate, he started with the worst opening monolog that I have yet to see where not only did he tap into my pet peeve by warning that even he didn’t see why he was asked to host but he then went on to admit that he doesn’t even like the show. Joking or not, his attitude was so horrible that I was half tempted to just skip this episode altogether.
The one good thing that did come from this episode is that I hated it so much that it made writing this review much easier than having to come up with an interesting way to say that the viewing was just okay. Again, to be clear, I had no hard feelings toward the host going into this viewing since I didn’t even know who he was. All of the hatred above and below purely came to light during the viewing of this episode. With that, it’s now time to shift gears and share what I actually saw as I give you…
The Wicker Breakdown:
This week's show started with a sketch called Andrew Giuliani Acts Up that parodied Rudolph Giuliani’s acceptance speech after winning the position of New York City’s mayor where his son was acting up in the background only in the sketch Chris Farley played the boy and went over the top with his antics leading up to the announcement of, “Live from New York…”
Jason Patric then officially opened the show with a monolog about how he had no idea why he was there as the host, noting that he doesn’t even like the show which lowered my expectations even more toward this host that I was already disinterested in. Of all of the host, he seemed the least interested of them all to the point where if I wasn’t watching as part of a challenge I might actually go as far as to skip this episode.
The NFL On Fox was a sketch that made fun of the fact that FOX bought the rights to air NFL games which was actually a major step in making it a legitimate competitor to the other three major networks. In the sketch, the main joke was how FOX would ruin football by marketing it to the youth which was Fox’s target audience at the time. Just like in the opening monolog, our douche of a host acted like he was completely disinterested in being there.
The Road To Self-Improvement was a parody of an infomercial where our uninteresting host teamed up with David Spade to promote his Self-Help system while, once again, Jason Patric played a character who refused to play along to where it was hard to tell if his bad acting was actually part of the sketch or if his acting skill were just that limited.
Blind Melon then took to the stage to perform No Rain.
Once again, Kevin Nealon gave us the news. This week, Kevin Nealon slipped into his Subliminal Man character to discuss the White Watergate Scandal which led to one of the weirdest things that I’ve experienced during this challenge in that the feed I’m watching cut out the sound just for this segment but I was able to watch the full clip on the NBC.com feed.
Mister Intense was a sketch where Jason Patric played the titular character that was so intense about everything that he came across as a serial killer and again was not funny at all. After a while, he eventually broke the sketch to highlight even more that he’s actually the a$$hole being portrayed.
Coffee Talk then returned for another installment with Linda Richman doing her usual Coffee Talk think only this time the real-life Richard Simmons dropped in which was a nice break from having to deal with the worst host of all time.
Where's The Rest Of Me? was a sketch where Jason Patric played a hand model where once again, he played an arrogant jerk who thought that he was God’s gift to the world who then got into a car accident where he then had to go on living the rest of his life minus the tip of his index finger, ruining the hand that made him a superstar.
Blind Melon then returned to the show to perform Paper Scratcher.
Herlihy Boy Dog Sitting Service returned for another installment where this time Adam Sandler played the persistent young boy to beg us to allow him to watch our dogs while Chris Farley played his father to reassure us that his boy could handle the job by using an aggressive tone to beg us to give his boy a shot. The sketch was eventually ruined when Jason Patric stepped in to add his unfunny note to the otherwise funny joke.
Ski Lift was a sketch where our horrible host got stuck on a ski with Kevin Nealon where the two got stuck into a nightmare of a loop of small talk.
Finally, Jason Patric closed the show by thanking the audience and saying his goodnights.
Even though I feel that this was the worst host that I’ve seen so far, thankfully, there were enough sketches without him to come up with this list of my three favorite moments from the night. First, I loved this week’s Coffee Talk because it was so fun to see Richard Simmons involved in this otherwise horrible episode. Next, I really liked the cold opening where Andrew Giuliani Acts Up because I remember this speech and loved seeing Chris Farley play this obnoxious kid. Finally, I was a fan of Herlihy Boy Dog Sitting Service but only up until Jason Patric stepped in to ruin the reoccurring sketch.