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Not A Bad Show From The Revenging Nerd Turned ER Doctor

Yesterday I shared my hatred of one-hour dramas that fall into the 10:00 in the P.M. time-slot following the two hours of primetime sit-coms and how I’m also rarely a fan of hosts from this realm. Though that might get one thinking that my expectations might be low for the episode being that Anthony Edwards was on to promote ER, this wasn’t the case because I was actually looking forward to seeing the former Revenge Of The Nerd star take on the world of sketch comedy.

I wouldn’t say that he turned out to be the most hilarious host of all time, but I would say that this turned out to be another solid show from this season. Edwards was another one of these hosts whose enthusiastic energy was enough to keep the show feeling fun. That’s not to say that the fun was just a feeling but his fun-loving personality definitely set the tone.

His involvement didn’t really seem to matter either way since the cast is to credit for the above average quality of this season. Not only is this, as I keep pointing out, a mostly new cast, but they arrived following the longest running collection of castmates so far. This means, not only is their new energy refreshing; they replaced a cast that was starting to treat the show like a job and performing on auto-pilot.

Though I feel the cast is to credit for each episode being on the better side of average, I wouldn’t say that they steal the hosts’ thunder like some other seasons made up with strong personalities making up the cast. For example, the season with Billy Crystal and Martin Short seem to be more about them and their characters over anyone who happened to be the host. The same goes for the season with Michael Anthony Hall and Robert Downey Jr., but in both of these cases, the cast was made up of already established stars.

Thankfully, this current collection of newbies don’t have big heads (yet) because I’m not all that sure about many of the hosts that make up the rest of the season line-up. After seeing how the cast interacts with similar hosts like Anthony Edwards, who don’t have names that quickly come to mind when thinking of sketch comedy, I’m not a nervous about the lesser-known names because I know that they’re in good hands.

With that said, it’s now time to wrap this review up by moving on to share what I saw during this viewing, as I give you…

The Wicker Breakdown:

This week's show started with a parody of Inside Politics that covered the Republicans who were holding an anti-war rally against the conflict in Bosnia. They were against war more because the Democrats were for it and not that they cared at all about the actual matter at hand. Bob Dole then stepped in to break up the rally because he couldn’t stand seeing his party going against their traditional warmongering ways. Of course, with this being the opening sketch, it eventually led to the announcement of, “Live from New York…”
Anthony Edwards then officially opened the show with a monolog about how happy he was to be a part of the show ER. He then went on to introduce David Koechner who played a character named Swabby who was a Popeye looking guy that was supposed to be a janitor who was cut from ER during the show development process. It then turned out that the SNL audience was more excited about Swabby than Gilbert from Revenge Of The Nerds.
This was followed by a fake ad for Grimaldi's Classic Creations which was a Christmas Nativity Scene with a digitally crying Jesus that sounded Satanic and would not stop until the battery died.
The Joe Pesci Show then made its SNL debut with Jim Breuer as Pesci who hosts a talk show where he both verbally and physically abused his former co-stars “Sharon Stone” (Nancy Walls) and “Macaulay Culkin” (Anthony Edwards) who he had on as his guest. He finished the night with “Jim Carey” (Mark McKinney) who he had on just to be his amusement only to end up abusing him as well.
We then got a parody of Nightline where Darrell Hammond as Ted Koppel discussed health care issues with actors who play doctors as his guest, including the host, Anthony Edwards who played a doctor on ER, TV’s medicine woman, Dr. Quinn, Dr. Zhivago, and Dr. Pepper who rounded out the panel. As the sketch went on, more and more fictional doctors were introduced to the scene with no one having an idea of what is really going on in the world of medical treatment.
Mary Katherine Gallagher returned for another installment where this week she was her quirky/annoying self while showing off at a wedding reception.
Once again, Norm MacDonald gave us the news. This week, David Koechner dropped in to read some news as Norm’s younger brother named Gary who the family saw as the funny one, but his nerves were so overwhelming that he could barely get out his jokes.
Foo Fighters then took to the stage to perform I'll Stick Around.
G-Dog Does The Nasty was a sketch where Tim Meadows played the titular G-Dog who throws his back out in the middle of his a nasty dance routine.
Spade in America then returned for another installment where David Spade reenacted a Thanksgiving that he spent with his father in a bar.
Turning Point was a parody of a talk show hosted by Barbara Walters where they interviewed Anthony Edwards as Princess Diana to show her ditsy side while she discussed how she didn’t fit in with the royal family.
Foo Fighters then returned to the stage to perform For All The Cows.
The Hulk Hogan Talk Show!!! was, as the title suggests, a talk show sketch with Hulk Hogan as the host. Will Ferrell played The Hulkster’s fill-in host who interviewed a recently released hostage. Even though this was supposed to be a serious show since Hogan wasn’t around, they still stuck to the regular format by breaking in with wrestling clips from time to time.
Finally, Anthony Edwards closed the show by thanking the audience and saying his goodnights.

Again, this may not have been the best show ever, but I feel that, in general, this season has been the best at handling hosts who might have successful acting careers but aren’t really household names thanks to sketches like these that contain my three favorite moments of the night. First, I loved The Hulk Hogan Talk Show!!! because I was fully expecting a Hulk Hogan impersonation, so it cracked me up when Will Ferrell hosted a serious show as his replacement only to be interrupted by WWF themed content. Next, I really liked the Dateline discussion of Health Care because I laughed out loud when I found out that Dr. Pepper was one of the guest Doctors to discuss the issue. Finally, I was a fan of the Grimaldi's Classic Creations fake ad because the toy Jesus’s cry was hilarious.