Review of 10-28-1995 episode (MD-103)
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Phone Sex: Young man (Bryan Callen) calls a phone sex line, only to
discover that the operator is his mother (Mary Scheer). The two try
to assimilate this information: the mother that she raised a son that
calls phone sex lines, and the son that his mother is a phone sex
operator. It ends with the mother going up to her son's room to
yell at him. This is somewhat formulatic but nonetheless effective
and funny. We can also look back on this and recall that it's the
first of a number of sketches where Scheer and Callen would be paired
off as mother and son.

Opening Segment (A.D.D. Girl): Orlando Jones, Nicole Sullivan and Debra
Wilson announce that they want to increase public awareness of A.D.D.
(Attention Deficit Disorder) and that to this end, a member of the cast
(Mary Scheer) who is afflicted with A.D.D. has agreed to speak about the
disease. Mary Scheer comes out and delivers a rambling speech that touches
on everything from grinders and scalped concert tickets to clothing -
everything but A.D.D. Not as good as the previous week's opening segment
(well, they constructed a whole room on the set for that one, so it's
rather hard to compete), but still very good and worthwhile.

NDI vs. AE&E: This is a parody of those MCI ads that used to air around
the time this episode was taped. In them, an MCI operator warns AT&T that
MCI has accepted to AT&T's challenge to put their savings in writing, and
now MCI is going to steal away AT&T's customers, etc. Here, the NDI
operator (Nicole Sullivan) says that not only has NDI put their savings
in writing, but that NDI swears on the bible that the savings are real.
She then suggests that AE&E would not do this because they don't believe
in God. It ends with the NDI logo, and a warning not to deal with pagans.
Another very realistic, well-produced commercial parody (compare this with
the more recent "Nicole Sullivan: Celebrity Spokesperson" long distance
phone service parody, which was also quite funny, but didn't look as
much like a real commercial), and one that was funny as well.

Outing Dummy: This is about a ventriloquist (Artie Lange) whose dummy
accuses him of being gay. He says things like, "you're a homosexual;
why don't you admit it," etc. It ends with Lange strangling the dummy
on the floor. This is much funnier than it sounds. In fact, it may be
the funniest sketch from the first half of the season; at any rate it
had me laughing harder than I had laughed at anything I had seen in the
first two episodes. I strongly recommend this one.

Psychic Cop: The title basically describes this segment in a nutshell: it's
about a cop (Mary Scheer) that knows what's going to happen before it does.
This is the most SNL-ish sketch in this episode, which is to say that
if you generally were unsatisfied with the state of SNL circa 1995 you
probably wouldn't want to watch an hour of sketches like this, either.
Still, this segment had it's moments, especially at the end, where the
voice-over announces, "Next week, on Psychic Cop," and the psychic cop
announces "don't bother; we've been cancelled."

Spy vs. Spy (Tuba Bang): The white spy puts a bomb in the black spy's gloves
that goes off when he puts his fingers in his ears (to avoid the noise from
the white spy's tuba). This was pretty good, especially since back then
they were using all-new cartoons.

Mother and Daughter: A Long Island housewife (Nicole Sullivan) won't let
her daughter (Mary Scheer) go to a party because she thinks her daughter
looks too slutty; then when her date (Bryan Callen) arrives, she tells
him her daughter is sick, but then offers to go to the party instead.
She takes off her robe, revealing a rather trashy outfit. In the meantime,
she watches a Jerry Springer-like show on TV about mothers who screw up
their daughters' lives. The sketch successfully incorporates irony (i.e.
the fact that the mother is screwing up her daughter's life even as she
criticizes the mother on the TV show for doing essentially the same thing);
at the same time it may be a subtle commentary on Long Island families
(most of our best-known Long Island families are dysfunctional ones;
take for example the Fischers and the Buttafucos). Also good acting
by Sullivan, who plays an older woman (I liked the age spots they had
all over her arms), and Scheer, who plays a younger woman.

Racism vs. Spam: Let's chat, shall we? In a monologue that could conceivably
be nominated for the Monty Python Award for Most Creative Use of Spam in a
Sketch Comedy Series (if such an award existed), Orlando Jones compares
racism and spam. This is Orlando Jones' first monologue and possibly the
funniest. Did you know, for example, that both racism and spam contain
the letters m-a-s, which means "more" in Spanish, even though few people
want more racism and/or Spam? It's these type of poignant observations that
make this monologue work. It underscores the point that when they did away
with the monologues, the show lost an element of its appeal. [But then
again, once they started including people who were actors rather then
comedians in the cast, I guess they didn't have much choice.]

First to a Million: The goal in this game show parody is to accumulate a
million points. Each question, however, is worth only one point. This makes
the show somewhat tedious. This game show parody is somewhat SNL-ish, but
is still pretty funny, especially the way the questions are laid out
Jeopardy-style on a grid, but unlike Jeopardy, where the questions have
different dollar values attached to them, on this grid, all the questions
are worth one point. So it's funny when Artie Lange says something like,
"I'll take Ancient Civilizations for - one."

Don Martin - Wish Bone: A couple is eating a chicken; they each grab the
wish bone and each wishes the other were dead. But when the wishbone breaks,
they both fall out opposite windows and plunge to their deaths. So they
each got their wish, ironically enough. This was a pretty good animated
segment.

First to a Million II: Artie Lange is up to 11,000 points, but no dinner
for the contestants. Still funny.

Apollo the 13th - Jason Takes NASA: This was probably the most SNL-ish
segments of the show so far. It's essentially a cross between Apollo 13
and those ultra-violent Friday the 13th horror movies (do they still make
those? I would mention that my brother had a friend who worked at the
camp where they filmed the first movie, but then someone would accuse me
of having attention deficit disorder). It's still noteworthy because
this segment involved location filming, so it's at least as good as the
average SNL movie parody, perhaps even slightly better. The idea is
a little banal, but I got a good laugh when they were showing the corpses
floating around (if you haven't seen this, just try to visualize the
victim of an axe murderer floating around in zero gravity).

Phil LaMarr's Mulatto Monologue: Phil LaMarr announces the formation of
the Mulatto Entertainer's Association (MEA) and to announce a rally in
which other mulattoes (e.g. Mariah Carey, Slash) will appear. This was
good; it's about as good as his first monologue, though not side-splittingly
funny. The best may be the visual element: he introduces himself as being
half-Nigerian and half-Scottish, and when he announces his Scottish
ancestry, the camera cuts to a more distant shot of LaMarr so you can
see his kilt.

Don Martin - Blow Up Girl: This time, it's about three swimmers, two of
which have inflatable water toys; the third of which has a blow-up doll
which he takes back to one of the changing booths with him. This is
probably the dirtiest Don Martin segment so far. I suppose he was going
to engage in watersports or something. This was good.

Cookin' With Sherry: This is a parody of a cooking show; in this case
the host (Mary Scheer) is married to an abusive jerk (Dave Herman). Most of
her cooking is designed to render him unconscious in order to keep him
under control until the divorce is final. This was funny, especially the
way the kid keeps calling her husband "Daddy," and Sherry admonishes
him with the line, "He's not your daddy." Also an illustration of Mad TV's
earlier sociopolitical satire: they used to make fun of low-class families
and disfunctional families more than they do now.

Circus Monologue: Artie Lange rails against how safe the circus has gotten:
e.g., they feed the lions 15 minutes before the lion tamer's act. There was
only one clown in the little car, but he had a bottle of champagne and a
hooker. Overall not as funny as Lange's first monologue (the comparison
was inevitable because his first monologue was so good), but it still
made me laugh, and once again makes me wish they had the cast members
doing monologues again.

Homeland Improvement: Like "Home Improvement," only instead of a couple
of do-it-yourself experts, we get a couple of gun enthusiasts (Dave
Herman, Artie Lange). Instead of the Tool Time girl, we get a scantily-clad
militia girl (Nicole Sullivan). This was one of my favorite segments from
the early days of Mad TV, and when it first aired, it was topical, too:
after the Oklahoma City bombing, all these wacky militia guys were coming
out of the woodwork, it seemed. At the end a postal worker (Phil Lamarr)
shows up with a package that was returned for insufficient postage;
since it's a bomb, they tell the worker to wait outside until they write
a check, and the bomb goes off, killing the worker. When it first aired
I thought they were going to go totally over the top, saying that the
postal worker deserved to die because he was a federal employee (Don't
all these militia guys hate the federal government?) - but they didn't.
Still an excellent segment, and another example of the old "Mad TV" scoring
a direct hit with political satire.

NDI vs. AE&E #2: An old woman claims that her husband suffered a massive
heart attack when receiving the NDI phone bill; she dialed "911" but the
phone went dead halfway through the call, and her husband died. Then we
see a logo for AE&E and a voice-over: "AE&E: keeping friends and family
alive." I think this was even funnier than the first segment.

Like a Rolling Stone: The last segment is the world premiere of the (then)
new Rolling Stones video, "Like a Rolling Stone." One might say that having
an video of a bunch of fiftysomethings doing a cover version of a thirty-year
old song is not cutting-edge enough for a brand-new sketch comedy show
featuring virtually unknown talents, but then again, Mad Magazine is a lot
older than SNL (Mad Magazine started in 1952). As for me, I didn't think
the video was as good as "Love Is Strong," the Stones' big video from
the previous year, but the visuals were good enough to keep me watching,
and the Stones have a level of competence that is enough to keep me listening.
So I give it a thumbs up. This is also one of the few times they had a
musical tie-in (unless you count Corky and the Juice Pigs).

Closing Segment: The ADD Girl, Mary Scheer, returns to make some rambling
comments. This, too, was good.

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We're three episodes into the series now, and by now "Mad" shows some
signs of emulating SNL: more SNL-like segments, and even a musical
tie-in. For the most part, however, the creative forces behind the
show maintain the high standard set out in the first two shows, and
even surpasses it at some points. There are some weak elements, but
nothing really bombed. The Orlando Jones monlogue was particularly
good. Also note that there is only one Spy vs. Spy cartoon, unlike
the first two shows which had two apiece. I've been agonizing over
how to rank this; in the end I have to conclude that this episode on
the whole is not as good as either of the first two - but it just
barely misses the mark. (8/10)