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Daddy Would You Like Some SNL

As someone who’s had identity issues throughout most of my life, I’ve always been fascinated by weirdos like Tom Green. Whether we’re talking Andy Kaufman, tonight’s host, or even ICP, I feel like I can relate to the fine line being walked between their persona and a true personality. Whether or not I truly like the content these characters/people create, I always get obsessed whenever I discover a new performer who uses this style.

With that said, I can also see why anyone might disagree and find these performance artists to be untalented and annoying because I big part of this brand of entertainment seems to be throwing randomness at walls in order to see what sticks. I don’t think that I’m smarter for seeing more, but since I do relate since I walk a similar line as part of my mental disorders, I find that I’m also watching for different things.

Where some may see surreal jokes that just flop, I get very caught up on the thought process of how they got from point A to point B which can be more fun than the actual joke. Take the bald eagle sketch for example, I could see how others might watch this sketch and see nothing more than Tom Green and Will Ferrell dressed as bald eagles and running around doing whatever it takes to be annoying which is pretty much what happened as the end product, but I can’t help but to think of how things when down in the writing room, which is place that I’ve only experienced as an amateur but still found it to be the most fun place in the world.

I could see Tom Green and Will Ferrell wondering around the room throwing out whatever ideas came to their mind while the rest of the room chimed in or just sat back and laughed. I could see some writing liking this approach at first while inside being worried that these ideas being pitched were real while one guy tried to add to the fun completely unaware that this wasn’t his realm and the rest of the room laughed while trying to figure out how to make it all work by the end of the week.

I picture Tom and Will specifically because they seemed to hit it off and made a better couple than our whacky host and Drew Barrymore who were engaged around this time. I also picture the writing room whenever this type of host drops by because on a standard night there’s less guessing when it comes to the idea farming except for the few sketches where they draw outside the lines.

Again, I can see how others might hate this episode for the randomness but for me, I’m thankful for the night because it was at least way different than the rest of the shows from this season that have all felt so standard and safe, even the one I found to be pretty good, which was hosted by Charlize Theron. I don’t know if I’d go as far as to say this was a good as well but I did laugh more while watching this episode than I have since the season’s start.

Hopefully, this gives you a little more insight into why I like some of the things that I like but either way it’s time to move on and share what I saw, as I give you…

The Wicker Breakdown:

This week's show started with A Message From George W. Bush And Al Gore that kept getting interrupted before it could even start Chris Parnell as Tom Brokaw restarting with Breaking News since the networks seemed so desperate at the time to be the first to announce anything that they rushed to the air with anything. This happened several times before we went to the actual joint message where Will Ferrell as Bush stared at the camera for a moment before realizing that he was on the air and then went on to discuss the recount and preemptively accepted his victory because he won the Electoral College. Before he could get too full of himself Darrell Hammond as Gore dropped in with the Supreme Court judges to reassure the country that he wasn’t giving up and that Bush had to wait until Monday to say anything either way. The two then sang I Got You Babe, which eventually ended with the announcement of, “Live from New York…”
Tom Green then officially opened the show with a monolog that started with him randomly touching the crowd as if he were a blind man before attempting to hype the crowd with his bizarro antics. We also got to meet Tom’s mom and dad who were regulars on his MTV show which we found out was because he and Drew Barrymore planned to get married at the end of the show, well, at least Tom planned this because it seemed like a total surprise to the E.T. actress who was his fiance at the time who eventually gave in after he badgered her. After a quick pretend-fight, the couple announced it was all planned and that they would be getting married on the live on the air before throwing to a fake commercial.
We then got a repeat of the Magic Mouth ad from earlier in the season which was a device that disguised farts by translating toots into words.
Bald Eagles was a sketch that had Tom Greed as a bald eagle cub who strays from his mother, as played by Will Ferrell, after a fight only to find himself in the studio audience where he body surfed and did other weird things to invade everyone’s personal space until Will Ferrell joined in to play along. All of this happened while Molly Shannon and Jimmy Fallon played bird watchers who cheered them on.
Rap Street had Tom Green as a rapper named Good-Boy who tried to win over Jerry Minor and Horatio Sanz as old-school rappers, Grand Master Rap and Kid Shazaam while on their fictional talk show and was successful since he stuck to the old-school hip-hop style.
Lorne And Tom In A Tub was, as the title suggests, Lorne and Tom in a tub while our host tried to amused the show’s producer with some rubber ducks who seem enthralled as he watched on while drinking from his juice box.
This was followed by a parody of Hardball with Darrell Hammond as Chris Matthews makes fun of Ana Gasteyer as Katherine Harris who was the Secretary Of The State in Florida who bore a brunt of the responsibility for the wackiness in Florida following the controversial, “Too close to call,” election.
Dog Show then returned with Will Ferrell and Molly Shannon as two weirdos who host a show with real dogs and this time had on Tom Green as a Wizard who ruined the sanctity of the show by entering the scene with a pig that squealed out of control, freaking out all of the dogs and drowning out the people performances in the process.
TV Funhouse then gave us an animated parody of Sex And The City with a cartoon called Sex In The Country that showed barnyard animals having sex with the residents of the farm.
Once again, Jimmy Fallon and Tina Fey gave us the news. This week, Molly Shannon dropped by as comedian Jeannie Darcy to perform a bit from her ‘80s style stand-up routine that had every joke end with the catchphrase, “Don’t get me started.” The real Gwyneth Paltrow also stopped by to reveal that she’s living with Jimmy Fallon after Tina Fey gave him grief for making up stories about himself during an experimental gossip segment.
David Gray then took to the stage to perform Babylon.
We then got a parody of Oprah where Will Ferrell as Dr. Phil tried to fix marital problems of Maya Rudolph as Oprah’s talk show guests who were struggling because Tom Green was a Tom Green-style weirdo who wouldn’t open up. Dr. Phil, Tom, and Ana Gasteyer then participated in a game meant to build trust that felt more like an improv warm-up that failed to really go anywhere other than Will Ferrell randomly blurting out Dr. Phil phrases from time to time.
VH-1 Storytellers showcased the band Air Supply’s Thanksgiving song that erupted into a homosexual kiss between Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan as the two lead members of the band.
Rock Around The Clock had Tom Green and Will Ferrell destroy a grandfather clock on stage while acting like a couple of weirdos while singing the classic song.
Finally, Tom Green closed the show by marrying Drew Barrymore, only she never ended up showing so they just cut to the credits while our host lost his mind wondering where she ran off to.

To be clear since I feel like my review is a bit confusing since I pretty much said that I didn’t find this episode to be any good but it was the funniest I’ve seen in a while, which is true but by not good I mean when considering what the masses might find acceptable. My mental head thought it was great because of sketches like these that contained my three favorite moments of the night.

First, I loved the Bald Eagles sketch because again, I could only picture what was going on in the writing room that led them to choose this as such an early sketch and how Jimmy Fallon and Molly Shannon’s bird watching narrative seemed like a very loose effort to get this chaos to make any sense. Next, I really liked Lorne And Tom In A Tub because I always like just how far Lorne will actually go to play along with a joke, even though he seems more like a stuffy multi-millionaire. Finally, I was a fan of the Rap Street sketch because I felt that everyone involved was pretty good with their brand of old-school wrap.