Review of 10-9-1999 episode (MD-503; some spoilers)

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Opening Segment: With Rick (Phil LaMarr), in his first appearance since
MD-409. I suppose you could say that Rick is a variant of "The Ladies
Man" from SNL; still, LaMarr's character is more of an ass-backwards
ladies' man, always failing to score. He could probably talk all day
about how he played minor-league baseball, but he's here to tell us
that "chicks" get hot when they watch "Mad TV" because of Stuart. One
original character, but the fact that like many of the Phil LaMarr
recurring characters, he is not overutilized - even in season four,
with some characters being on practically every other week, Rick only
appeared in one segment, and in each of the preceeding three seasons,
he only appeared once. That fact alone should make this segment
seahson four openings, and by far the least creative of the three.

Chris Rock: Chris Rock (Phil LaMarr) appears to tell us that there
are no blacks on the TV screen, in a video that sounds like a
cross between a Gil Scott Heron piece and a Chris Rock monologue.
The funniest part here in my opinion is when Rock mentions that there
are no black people on "Friends" even though it takes place in New
York City - the writers of "Mad TV" were probably not the first people
to pick up on this (although a sketch that aired in the first season
made an oblique reference to the lack of ethnic diversity on the show),
but it's still funny - especially when LaMarr caps it off with, "[w]ay
to go, Guiliani!" Also funny is when Rock is reading TV Guide with
Mad TV on the cover, and the caption reads "Mad TV Really Needs a Cover."
And let's not forget when he suggests that the acronym UPN stands for
"[u]nder[p]aid [n]egroes." At the end, he plugs his HBO show. While
this segment was not uproariously funny - I think I laughed (maybe)
once during the entire segment - it is very well written and produced
and succeeds on a more sublime level, and as a result, viewers might
appreciate this much more than, for example, many of the Stuart sketches,
which often rely on recycled poo-poo jokes. In my opinion this was the
funniest segment of the show.

Politically Incorrect: Bill Maher moderates a panel of four celebrities:
Britney Spears (Nicole Sullivan), President Clinton (Will Sasso),
Corky from "Life Goes On" (Michael McDonald), and Janeanne Garafolo
(Alex Borstein). The topic is whether or not popular culture is
corrupting America's youth, but the conversation rather quickly gets
off topic, with Clinton hitting on Britney Spears, Corky getting a lot
of laughs by making fun of all of the other panelists, and Janeanne
Garafolo (who in real life was on the show several times) feeling sorry
for herself and generally acting sullen and dejected. The guy who plays
Maher sets the tone for the show by acting as if he's going to seriously
address the issue of misogyny - and then ends up referring to women as
"whores" and referring to Britney Spears as a "pop tart." Corky was the
funniest panelist, calling the president "white trash." After Britney
Spears mentions that the name of her breakthrough hit is "Hit Me Baby
One More Time," Corky queries, "[i]f I hit you one more time, do you
promise never to sing that song again?" Sullivan's Britney Spears impression
was good, but Borstein's Janeanne Garafolo seemed more dead-on (though
admittedly it's much easier to mimic a thirtysomething comedienne with
a political axe to grind than a seventeen-year-old pop singing sensation,
which is why the Spears impressions have always been difficult to
evaluate). Overall this was a very strong segment, and well-written.
[The only mistake here is that when Clinton sits on the left side, Maher
reprimands him for sitting in the wrong chair - but he emerged from the
left side of the stage, whereas everyone sitting on the right side
emerged from the right side of the stage - so if he was really supposed
to sit on the right side, why did he enter the set from the left side?
I suppose it's nitpicking, but still...]

Slap Happy: Not the name of a band that did novelty songs in the early
1980's; rather, this is the name of a new game from Spishak in which
a player insults another player (using insults on preprinted cards, and
the insultee then gets to slap the insulter. Even penis jokes can't save
this segment, which in my opinion not only falls far short of the classic
Spishak parodies of old (like "Spishak Car Wax" and "Namprin"), but wasn't
even as funny as the one from two weeks ago with the insulting baby
T-shirts. Write this one off as a loss, but at least we can be grateful
that the segment didn't last very long.

The Stick Chicks: It's essentially a "Charlie's Angels" parody, only here
we get three girls (Nicole Sullivan, Debra Wilson, Alex Borstein) who work
in a fast food place in a mall who also work in counter-espionage. The
idea of a "Charlie's Angels" parody isn't that original (how could it
be - the show itself was cancelled almost twenty years ago), but the
writers did a pretty good job here, faithfully re-creating the creaky
plots and dialogue, the cheesy fight sequences, and even giving the
girls silly names for good measure (Champagne, Autumn, and Echo). Also
the bad guy is a Russian even though the Cold War has been over for almost
ten years. Funny here is the way the uniforms for the workers at the
"Orange Julietta" are essentially the same as the uniforms at the weiner
place only with different colors. Sullivan may have gotten the best
line here; when Echo states that she is the smart one, she replies, "I'm
not the smart one; I'm the pretty one." Overall not the best segment
but still a good one.

Dateline NBC: Jane Pauley (Alex Borstein) interviews George Lucas
(Will Sasso), who discusses how Star Wars is a religion, how he
doesn't understand why some black people were upset about Jar Jar
Binks (also unveiling Aunt Jar-Jar Mimah for the first time), and
gets into a fight with Pauley over a game of "Simon." This was OK; I
don't watch "Dateline NBC" so I'm not sure if it was based on an actual
interview that Pauley may have done with Lucas; if so I may have found
this parody more accessible. 

Old Father: Father (Phil LaMarr) insists on playing one-on-one basketball
with his son (Aries Spears), and then promptly injures himself several
times. By the end of the sketch, he's injured his hip, he's vomited blood,
he's lost an arm, and he is suspended from the garage door. It's not
the fact that this segment uses gross-out humor that makes it disappointing
- there have been quite a few good gross-out moments on "Mad TV" (for
example, when Clark Kent puked all over Lois Lane in "Leaving Metropolis"),
but it's the fact that, like the sketch from last season with LaMarr as
the gimpy plumber, this sketch just takes the same joke and repeats it
over and over for the duration of the sketch. Creative-wise this
sketch reminds me most of the segment from "Monty Python's The Holy Grail"
in which John Cleese is a knight who insists on continuing to fight
King Arthur even as his limbs are hacked off (this is also reminiscient
of Bruce McCulloch's small fighting guy from "Kids in the Hall" who
insisted on fighting a guy who was a foot and a half taller than him,
even after the guy throws him over the side of a building), but if that
was the effect the writers were aiming for, why did they fail so
miserably?

Bunifa: Bunifa (Debra Wilson) in her first appearance of the season is
shopping for a new vinyl outfit. In typical Bunifa fashion, she is
alternately congenial and hostile; she's also talking to Sonya on the
cell phone at the beginning, so all the essential elements of the
character are replicated here. This is essentially the same as the
"Big Top Circus Burger" sketch, with Aries Spears as the manager again,
and with Mo Collins as the interloping customer who incurs the wrath
of Bunifa. It puts this character in a holding pattern, which is to
say it wasn't a particularly original sketch, nor did it add anything new to
the character, but it didn't bomb either.

Mad TV Classic: This time, we get "Clops III" from the Jerry Springer
episode. I really like the Corky Quackenbush segments, which is
why it's really a shame the show doesn't seem to be allocating enough money
for new ones. Although in many ways all the Clops segments had their
merits, this one has arguably one of the most memorable "Mad TV" moments:
the Pillsbury Dough Boy, on a shooting rampage, shouts "I'm sick of
the man giving me the finger - now here's my finger, BI-ATCH!" If they
had to rerun a segment, at least they picked a good one. But the effect
of these segments may ultimately be to cause viewers to tune out "Mad TV"
during the last ten minutes of the show - and many of those viewers
will likely watch either "SNL" or "The Howard Stern Radio Show."

Spy vs. Spy: The black spy tries to torpedo the white spy's PT boat,
but gets his comeuppance when the white spy redirects the torpedo to
destroy the black spy's plane. This was OK; again a season one rerun.

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Overall, there's enough good material in MD-503 to make it about as
good as last week's show. As with last week, however, a disappointing
trend is manifesting itself: the first 20-25 minutes of the show are
really good, but the second half becomes dominated mostly by second-rate
material, with the exeception of the last ten minutes of the show, in which
there is no new material at all! What is especially disappointing is that
it is the part of the show that competes directly against "SNL" and "Howard
Stern" that is the weakest. On the plus side, the quality of the shows
this season have generally been higher that last season, thus reversing
the downward spiral the show had been in for two years. But many of the
segments are longer, the production values are fairly low (though not
quite as bad as last year), and there isn't even enough money for new
animated segments or a full hour of programming. (6/10)