Review of 3-7-1998 (Some spoilers, but not as many as usual)

Another week, another first-run episode of "Mad TV," and another review.

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Mexican Restaurant: About a Mexican restaurant where all the customers smear 
food over their bodies and have sex. Not very funny. Aries Spears is good, 
but his talents are wasted on a poor sketch.

Phone Company Parody: Nicole Sullivan reprises her Drew Barrymore impression 
in a rather amusing sketch about a woman (Barrymore) who is harassed by 
different celebrities advertising phone companies: Candice Bergen (Mary 
Scheer), Paul Reiser (Chris Hogan), and Chris Rock (Phil LaMarr). In the 
end, we find out it is an advertisement for the U.S. Postal Service. Five 
minutes of watching this, and you'll wish deregulation had never happened.

Cabana Chat: Phyllis Diller is the guest. She and Dixie Wetsworth (Mary
Scheer) talk about their plastic surgery, and men. Worth watching just
to see the dwarfish Diller standing next to the tallish Scheer. Aries
Spears is good as James Brown, per usual.

Corky and the Juice Pigs: The Canadian trio does a Meat Loaf parody. Some
of this stuff may be old hat for their Canadian audiences, but in the
States, they have been a smash success. Not as good as some of their
previous appearances, but "Not Too Fat To Rock and Roll" is still funny,
especially if one finds Meat Loaf songs overly bombastic.

Grace Under the Influence: Brett Butler (Nicole Sullivan) stars as Grace,
who is perpetually drunk. Although this parody had an interesting concept,
with dialogue dubbed over what the actors/actresses are really saying, 
on the whole I didn't find it to be very funny.

Jane Austen's Tea'N'A: The recycling of old segments in "new" shows is 
rather cheesy. That having been said, this segment was probably the
highlight of tonight's show. Larry Flynt corrupts two prim and proper
upper class women (Nicole Sullivan, Mary Scheer), and has them in a
menage a trois.

Mother Teresa Beer: Beer company executives (Chris Hogan, Will Sasso,
Nicole Sullivan, Debra Wilson) debate over whether to market Mother
Teresa Beer. I found the part where Hogan's character
said that market research indicates that 100 percent of all alcoholics
are Catholics was very funny. Overall, a very good sketch.

Perez and Tucker: A cop show parody with Rosie Perez (Debra Wilson)
and Chris Tucker (Phil LaMarr). I think this was supposed to be on 
a previous show. This is an OK sketch and Wilson does a good Rosie
Perez ("You are so stupid!"); still, I've seen better cop
show parodies on Mad TV ("Cream of Cop" comes to mind: a sketch which
starts out with the silly concept of having a can of creamed corn as
a cop, but which is extremely funny). 

Mad TV Contest Winners Sketch: Six Mad TV contest winners are featured
in a sketch. This is pretty lame stuff. The guy who thinks he is Hank
Hill can't even do a decent Hank Hill impression (not that I care, 
anyway; I don't watch "King of the Hill"). In fact, none of the celebrity
impressions were good at all! I know that these are just ordinary folks
and maybe this criticism might be considered unfair, but if they are going
to put on such a poor performance, all the more reason not to put them
on a nationally-broadcast sketch comedy show. The two women playing the
robots were particularly bad; at one point they were unable to supress 
a giggle. Maybe this was good PR for the show, but it was rather painful 
to watch. To quote Orlando Jones from the 1997 Super Bowl special, 
"It sucks! It sucks!"

Spice Girl Auditions: Interspersed throughout the show, these were not
as funny as I thought they would be when I saw the trailer last week.
Swan Spice is probably the best of the four.

On the whole, not the best of shows, but Corky and the Juice Pigs and the 
Mother Teresa sketch keep this from being an outright disappointment,
along with "Jane Austen's Tea 'N'A."
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By the way, did anyone see the trailer for next week's show? They showed
a clip of the "Vancome Lady: Guidance Counselor" sketch from about two
months ago, but then they showed some other sketches that I think are
new ones. What is the story here?