Review of 5-2-1998 episode (some spoilers) ==================================== ======================================== Home Business Marketing: Man (Pat Kilbane) wants to quit his boring accounting job and start a home business; we get to see him in varying stages of decline, as his home business fails, his wife divorces him, and he winds up homeless. This is better than most of their parodies of "make money fast" commercials, and a good start to the show. Opening Monologue: Debra Wilson works the crowd. Her breasts do seem to be larger. South Parknut: A cross between South Park and Peanuts. I thought this would be really funny when I read about it in the program listings; this was not quite as funny as I thought it would be but was still very good. Some may remember a series of obscene versions of the Peanuts comic strips that circulated a number of years ago (one of them showed Charlie Brown sporting an erection); this is humor in the same vein. Funny especially if you watch South Park because they make reference to some of the more memorable moments of that series: e.g. "Kyle's Mom is a Big Fat Bitch" becames "Charlie Frown is a Big Blockhead", and Sloopy (Snoopy) says "hidey-ho" at the end, after biting CB's head off. Antonia: Antonia (Nicole Sullivan) must land a plane; and - guess what - Phil LaMarr is the air traffic controller who must deal with her. This was about average for Antonia sketches. Window of the Soul: Another Mad TV classic. Apart from the fact that they're just padding supposedly "new" episodes with old material, I would query the wisdom of attaching the word "classic" to anything less than fifty years old. In this case, we are talking about a Mad TV segment from two years ago. Joe Eszterhas (Dave Herman) talks about his new movie, "Window of the Soul." Catherine/Sally (Nicole Sullivan) kills her husband (Bryan Callen) and has an affair with the sheriff (Orlando Jones) in this parody of Joe Eszterhas films. Herman-as-Eszterhas delivers the obligatory statement in which he claims he is being persecuted for his art. Good performances by Herman and Sullivan make it work. I Love Lucy '98: Lucy (Nicole Sullivan) gets involved in an orgy presided over by The Artist Formerly Known as Prince (Phil LaMarr). The funniest element of this parody in my opinion was Fred (Will Sasso) parading around in S&M gear. This was alright; LaMarr does a good Prince and Sullivan does a pretty good Lucy. The Funeral: David Boreanaz (Himself) of the hit UPN show "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer" shows up at a funeral and disrupts the proceedings because all attention shifts to him; then we find out it was all a sham to see if Boreanaz would show up at all. This was probably the funniest segment of the show, even though the plot of the sketch as elaborated here doesn't sound that funny. The best part is where a mourner (Aries Spears) mistakes Boreanaz for Kevin Bacon and keeps asking him to do "Footloose". Obviously, in the "Buffy" wars, Mad TV at least gets the consolation prize: we didn't have Sarah Michelle Gellar hosting the show, but we had Nicole Sullivan doing a pretty good Sarah Michelle Gellar impression earlier on in the season, and now we have David Boreanaz. Office Sketch: Underling (Will Sasso) gets chewed out by his boss (Pat Kilbane) who subsequently returns, apologizes, and waves his "thing" in the underling's face. Debra Wilson also appears as a secretary. Not a very original concept, but still funny, especially the second part (where Kilbane waves his "thing" in Sasso's face). Dinner: Man (Phil LaMarr) is with his fiancee (Nicole Sullivan) in a restaurant; she appears to be hard of hearing, and thus he is unable to break up with her, but in the end we find out she is just feigning deafness. This is another sketch that is a lot funnier than it sounds, especially the denouement ("I'll tell you when this relationship isn't working."). Art Party: Halie Straw (Nicole Sullivan), an eccentric old woman, hosts an children's television program about art, which consists mostly of her telling a story about athropomorphicized animals and drawing scribbles on paper. This is funny in that it's not too far off from some of the children's programming they have on PBS stations. Sullivan's performance is convincing enough; again, not side-splittingly funny, but good anyway. ================================== ========================================= In my opinion, this show probably falls somewhere into the middle of the pack, maybe a little bit above average on the strength of "South Parknut" and the David Boreanaz segment. While not deserving the highest accolades, none of the segments bombed and quite a few were rather good. I noticed here that Lisa Kushell did not seem to appear in any of the segments (although she came out at the end); also, Alex Borstein seems to appear only in the "I Love Lucy" segment. The show is dominated by Nicole Sullivan, who appears in almost every sketch, and she rises to the occassion as Antonia, Lucy, and Catherine/Sally, the woman in the "Window of the Soul" segment. ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ