Review of 3-27-1999 episode (MD-420; some spoilers) ========================================================================== Opening Segment: With Ms. Swan (Alex Borstein) doing a magic trick, assisted by a member of the studio audience. She guesses the card which the girl picked; the cards looked like a marked deck (I'm saying this because I used to have a marked deck years ago). This wasn't very funny. American Folklore Theater: It's about Honeydipper Dan (Will Sasso), a 20-foot tall giant who used to clean out the outhouses before the United States had indoor plumbing. He wears a clothespin on his nose even though he likes the smell of feces. Most of the humor here is scatalogical (what am I saying - all of it is). It's mildly funny but not as funny as you might think; at first I thought it was because the poop jokes were too juvenile for me, but that can't be true because the very same day I was laughing at Cartman's flaming rectum while watching a rerun of "South Park." Yassir Arafat Party Tricks I *: Arafat shows us a party trick (he simulates his tounge with his fingers). This was OK. Sketch about Couple: Wife (Alex Borstein) is mad at her husband (Pat Kilbane) because all he thinks about is sex and she wants him to be more sensitive. Finally, she calls in sick at work and tells the secretary that she's going to have sex with her husband all day. Then she herds him upstairs like he's a male whore; less than thirty seconds later, they both come back down again and she's off to work. This was a good sketch, worth watching, but not well-written enough to put it on anyone's A-list of sketches. Nevertheless, Borstein and Kilbane do a good job here. Heroin PM: It's the medicine that helps you get off a speed high. (Although I suppose it would work equally well for cocaine or other stimulants.) For a celebrity endorsement, we get Keith Richards (Pat Kilbane) - an OK impression, but he doesn't put much into it; he doesn't do a British accent or anything. This doesn't look like a real commercial (those who say that now the SNL commercial parodies look more like real commercials are probably right), but the satire is razor sharp; I laughed when McDonald first said that he couldn't sleep because of all the crystal meth he had taken. Good performances by Sullivan and McDonald. Yassir Arafat Party Tricks II: This time, he's doing happy face, sad face. Better than the first one. Rusty: Rusty (Michael McDonald) wins a contest to be in a burger commercial; he promptly annoys the director (Nicole Sullivan) and the rest of the crew. The denouement involves Rusty regurgitating the burgers while the film is rolling. This wasn't that funny although I have to admit that Rusty is probably one of the less annoying of the new recurring characters (not much of an endorsement, I admit), and definitely less annoying than Stuart. I suppose you could criticize the show because this is the second segment that relied on humor related to bodily functions, but since Rusty blowing chunks was one of the few funny moments in this sketch, I won't. [Also, I think one of the cameramen was the guy who delivers the flowers in the oral sex sketch.] Catwoman Gets Cable: Catwoman (Debra Wilson) gets cable installed, then tells the installation guy (Aries Spears) that she's not going to pay. This is similar to the first Catwoman segment, and just as Phil LaMarr beat up the Catwoman's henchmen so does Aries Spears. This time, however, the Catwoman consoles herself by stealing a box of girl scout cookies. This was a good sketch - like many of the better recurring characters, Catwoman is not overutilized, and the character is expertly revitalized by Wilson. Also there was a funny moment when they cut to Spears, who asks if Catwoman is going to pay for the installation, but the camera is at an angle, so that it looks like the whole room is tilted. Spears then bends forward at a 90 degree angle so that his head isn't cut off. Happy Folger: The dirty old man (Michael McDonald) is back to tell us how he met his wife - the details are quite graphic and crude, per usual. This was pretty good, even if it's just recurring character-by-numbers material. The part about him getting off by looking out photos of his grandmother was particularly funny. Then at the end he gets punched by the priest (Phil LaMarr) as usual. Yassir Arafat Party Tricks III: Yassir Arafat pantomimes someone flossing their teeth. This was probablt the funniest of the segments The Hustler: A hustler (Will Sasso) tries to hustle another pool player (Aries Spears). The idea is to raise the stakes gradually (on the first game they bet $20), and apparently after the hustler loses $1 million, he intends to raise the stakes to $5 million. But the other pool player says no thank you; he's happy with the $1 million and leaves. Pat Kilbane is the "impartial" observer who claims he's never met the other hustler, even though they're wearing the same suits and he knows exactly how much time elapsed between when he entered the pool hall and Sasso entered the pool hall. They reflect on the fact that they only have $800 million left now; Sasso says that he can't afford to make mistakes like this anymore. I liked this sketch although I never saw the movie so I'm not really sure how good Sasso's Minnesota Fats was. The sketch was well-written although somewhat conventional (SNL-ish) - but still funny. Yassir Arafat Party Tricks IV: This time, he extends his arm out a few inches from his sleeve. This was OK. Mad TV Classic: This is the first of two segments in which Nicole Sullivan played Lucy. The plot of this segment involves a scheme to run a heroin refining operation. This was pretty good - Sullivan does a convincing impression of Lucy (and Alex Borstein's Ethel is also quite good), and the makeup for this segment was excellent. Still, I was surprised they chose this and not a movie or commercial parody, given the fact that it's the movie and commercial parodies that have suffered this season since the show has such a low budget. Spy vs Spy: The black spy gets the white spy to jump out a window by making him think he is on a boat with a bomb on board (he plays a tape with sound effects while the black spy is asleep to induce him to have a dream about it). This was good, but as with all the Spy vs. Spy segments, they are reruns (I think this one first aired in MD-103 but I am not sure). ========================================================================== Once again, we get an OK episode. Probably the best segment was "Heroin PM" but the Happy Folger sketch and the Hustler were both good. Many of the other segments were either not funny or if they were funny, often they were still underwhelming. It's almost as if they've used up a lot of their A-list stuff; I suspect a lot of this stuff was taped a while ago and if the material was really strong they probably would have used it already. Still, it's possible that they saved a lot of the good stuff for the next sweeps period, so hopefully the last five episodes will be better. (5/10) * I think that was Michael McDonald's impression of Yassir Arafat. I think it was probably him as Arafat in that Eracist sketch last December, although some fans seemed to think otherwise. Also, I didn't see Mo Collins or Andrew Bowen in any of the sketches. Mo Collins I could understand because supposedly she is in a limited number of episodes for contractual reasons, but I am not sure why Bowen was absent.