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Welcome To The Five-Timers Club, Mr. Walken

I am so happy that this season is finally over!!! I’m also very happy that tonight’s Walken episode turned out to be pretty good since I, other than a few classic moments, I haven’t been all that impressed by the last few. As far as the season goes, I think the two biggest issues were, one, there was barely any change in the cast between this season and the last which as a daily viewer, made it feel like an extra-long year.

My second issue is the fact that most of the hosts from this year were made up of talented but non-comedic actors. This meant that yes they could deliver what was written for them rather well but with so many of them this year the writing felt flat because they didn’t have much to contribute. I know that I blame the writing staff in many of my reviews but it’s not all their fault because when there were episodes that featured comedic hosts, those episodes were funny enough to compete with any other year.

As far as Christopher Walken goes, I’m kind of sad because, back in the day, I used to love when I’d see his name as an upcoming guest, but, as I already said, other than his classic moments, most of his visits have been so repetitive that they’ve felt rather flat. As I’ve said in past reviews, I don’t think I had as big of a problem with the repetitiveness back when I had to wait years between each visit but it does seem more like an issue when you see these repetitive shows every other month.

With that said, I think a big reason I liked tonight’s episode is that this is around the time that I started to lose track of the show and went from religiously watching it every single week to just watching it when the timing was right and it just happened to be on. I did go back and watch many years randomly through services like Netflix and Hulu when they became available but from this point on my life wasn’t as tightly connected to the show as it was in my early stages of life.

I think I also really like this show because it almost didn’t happen since I couldn’t find the full show anywhere on the internet but between several streaming services, I was able to put almost the entire night together by watching individual clips. However, thanks to all of the starting and stopping to track things down, it was hard to really get a feel for the night as a whole but I really did like what I was able to watch.

With that said, it’s now time to move on from sharing my views on this episode and season in order to share what I saw, as I give you…

The Wicker Breakdown:

This week's show started with A Message From Mayor Rudolph Giuliani where Darrell Hammond as Giuliani attempted to get ahead of the story of his affair by introducing America to Rachel Dratch who played the woman who he was having an affair with, who also hid behind a plant throughout the entire sketch, peeking her head out from time to time. Rudy not only admitted to his affair but also made it very obvious how much he hated his soon to be ex-wife going as far as to wish he had the huevos to take care of her the way that Robert Blake took care of his wife at the restaurant. After a while, Ana Gasteyer entered the scene as Rudy’s wife who had a baseball bat and was ready to do some damage only to be cut off by the announcement of, “Live from New York…”
Christopher Walken then officially opened the show with a monolog where he sang Let Call The Whole Thing Off, only at very point in the song where he was supposed to pronounce a word two different ways he sings them the same exact way, making fun of the fact that our host’s delivery can seem like he’s reading without thinking of inflection or intent.
Mango then returned after a while off. This time Christopher Walken played a janitor that fell for Mango’s magical mini stripper spell. The best part is how Walken played the janitor as being gullible enough to think that Mango was a real cop at the start of his routine so he was really caught off guard when he discovered this was a strip routine. Of course, Mango left Walken alone which then gave him a chance to sing a song called Mango to the tune of Lady by Lionel Richie, complete with reenactments of famous movie scenes. It would have been nice if the sketch ended there but then it evolved to have that sit-com feel that I’ve been complaining about as it dragged on and got a little dramatic as Walken came to grips with the reality of their relationship.
This was followed by another parody of Hardball where this time Darrell Hammond as Chris Matthews yelled at his panel of guests while trying to discuss the latest rise in fear over the energy crisis and America’s addiction to oil.
We then got another installment of The Continental that was pretty much the same as any other installment only this time he tried to entrap a woman in his sky rise apartment with a lost and found scheme.
Once again, Jimmy Fallon and Tina Fey gave us the news. This week Chris Kattan dropped by for another Terrible Re-Enactment where this time he mimicked an injury that happened to Joey Fatone. Kevin Nealon also stopped in to revise his subliminal man character for an editorial on the current cast after reminding the audience that he’s no longer on the show in order to correct those who keep getting confused by all of the reruns that air on Comedy Central. The news then ended on a cliffhanger where Winona Ryder announced that she was pregnant without revealing the father but we do know that it’s either Jimmy or Tina.
Weezer then took to the stage to perform Hash Pipe.
Will Ferrell and Rachel Dratch then revised their creepy couple characters known as the Love-Ahs for another sketch where they get too romantic while trying to entertain their guests, who this time were played by Christopher Walken and Ana Gasteyer. Though Gasteyer’s character seemed to be a bit of a prude Walken fit in well with the romantic weirdos and even eventually admitted to once joining the hosts in a three-way.
TV Funhouse the introduced the Anatomicals who were anatomically correct parody version of Yogi Bear and his friends. This time the Anotomicals caused Lorne Michaels to rethink his deal with Satan considering this is the quality of content that he is now putting out to the world.
Centaur Job Interview was as the title suggests, a sketch where Chris Parnell as a Centaur interviewed with Christopher Walken for a new job. Walken seemed to have very little concerns about his qualifications as he was far more interested in asking him bizarre questions about what it’s like to be a centaur. After being super polite and answering all of Walken’s questions, Parnell asked if he got the job only to be told, “No, we don’t hire dirty filthy centaurs,” which led him to leave the room with his head down.
Badger Up His Butt was a sketch that took place during a business meeting where Will Ferrell was acting like a complete jerk and everyone was wondering why since he normally was super nice. They keep asking what crawled up his butt as he started to show signs of pain. This pain got so bad that he had to go to the hospital where Dr. Walken revealed that Will Ferrell had a badger stuck up his butt during a camping but there was nothing they could do because it might hurt the badger.
Weezer then returned to the stage to perform Island In The Sun.
Memorial Day Greetings From "Saturday Night Live" was set up to be a Memorial Day-Themed follow-up to I Wish It Was Christmas Today but then other than the opening line where Horatio Sanz acknowledged Memorial Day, the song quickly evolved to be another rendition of I Wish It Was Christmas Today.
Finally, Christopher Walken closed the show by thanking the audience and saying his goodnights.

At first, I was kind of nervous about this episode but thanks to sketches like these that contained my three favorite moments, the night turned out to be pretty fun. First, I loved Mango Meets Walken The Janitor because there was an amazing parody song in the middle of the sketch that played over some brilliant fantasy clips. Next, I really liked the monolog routine where Christopher Walken sang Let Call The Whole Thing Off because it cracked me up how he didn’t change the pronunciation of the words in the song ruining the entire point. Finally, I was a fan of the Centaur Job Interview because it reminds me of the Jay Mohr story about Walken being very excited about a hypothetical question about getting the power to wag his tail like a dog.