Review of 1-15-2000 episode (MD-513; some spoilers)

This review can also be found at:

        http://www.nic0lesullivan.org/md513.txt

Nicole Sullivan fans, take note: NBC will re-air two of the four
installments of "Later" in which Nicole Sullivan appeared as guest
host on Monday night and Tuesday night. The lineups are as follows:

Monday: Daisy Fuentes (America's Funniest Home Videos) - OAD November 25, 1999
Tuesday: Wilmer Valderamma (That 70's Show) - OAD November 23, 1999

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David Crosby Sells His Sperm: Melissa Etheridge (Mo Collins) and Julie
Siefert (sic?) (Alex Borstein) appear on a commercial in which they claim
they found out that David Crosby (Will Sasso) is the father of their adopted
children, then assert that for a price, you too can obtain David Crosby's
sperm. I'm not sure where they got the idea for this from - perhaps they
saw the David Crosby installment of "Behind the Music" in which it is
revealed that Crosby sired an illegitimate child during the 1960's, and the
child didn't find out about it until thirty-two years later, just before
Crosby was about to undergo liver transplant surgery. The Crosby impression
is not that accurate - Sasso plays it more like a generic fat slob - although
the makeup is good. Collins' Melissa Etheridge seems more accurate. Overall,
the segment wasn't the funniest I've seen, but it's certainly funnier
than most of the ones where they just have a cast member go out in front
of the studio audience.

Mambo Number Six: This is a segment about me. No; actually it's a
parody of Lou Bega's cover version of "Mambo Number Five," only done
by President Clinton (a slimmed-down Will Sasso). Three scantily-clad
dancers parade around the screen, interspersed with archival footage
of presidents. For once, the show's limited budget doesn't kill a video
parody: this segment actually looks like a real video. Of course, poking
fun at Clinton's womanizing is an idea at least as old as the Clinton
presidency (it just occured to me that many of the show's young viewers
probably do not remember a president other than Clinton, just as in the
1980's, many of us who came of age in those years couldn't remember
a president other than Reagan), so in that sense this is not a
terribly original idea (even doing a crossover with "Mambo Number Five"
is not that clever; I even though of it when it first came out) - but
the segment is pretty slickly edited, and holds up at least as well as
similar material on shows such as "Saturday Night Live."

Angela's Ashes: This is a commercial parody based on the idea of
turning the movie "Angela's Ashes" into a children's game. The players
are thrust into the role of Irish peasants who have all kinds of
misfortunes befall them. The game pieces are potatoes, and the players
spin a bottle every turn. This was not one of the better commercial
parodies they have done, but it was OK.

Smith Comma John for President I: An alien (Pat Kilbane) runs for president
but denies that he is an alien trying to take over and enslave Earth.
Probably the funniest moment here is when the alien turns on a three-way
light in order to try to prove that he's not an alien - the alien
appears to be in excruciating pain when he briefly turns it on, but then
asserts that the fact that he wasn't incinerated by the light is
proof that he's not an alien. This segment is the first parody based
in the 2000 presidential campaign, and it did not by any means equal
some of the show's political parodies of the past: e.g. Republican
Gladiators (who can forget Fist's stirring polemics - "TAXES SUCK!")
or the Dole/Clinton debate with Dole as Dolemite and Ice-T as Clinton's
running mate. But the segment had its moments.

Marvin Tivkah at Yoga: Marvin (Michael McDonald) attends a yoga class,
much to the annoyance of the other class members and the teacher (Mo
Collins). This was a lot like the first sketch, with most of the humor
emphasizing the character's obesity and physical awkwardness (the first
one also took place in a gym). The only new element here is a reference
to the characters' ethnic/religious background - he's not allowed to eat ham
because he's a (presumably) Orthodox Jew. This was not quite as funny as
the first one (in which Marvin faked a heart attack to get the personal
trainer to give him mouth to mouth), but there was a humorous moment
here when Marvin starts rolling around, bumping into other class members
and eventually rolling on top of the instructor.

Grease with Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton: This is a parody based
on the idea of Rogers (Will Sasso) and Parton (Alex Borstein) playing
the lead roles in this popular musical. It's one or two notches down
from a Broadway production, though: this is an advert for a show at the
Apex Convention Center. Rogers sings incoherently and wears an "Annie"
costume while Parton wails and plays guitar. I never really liked
this Rogers impression so that affects my judgement of the segment;
the funniest part here is the way the words "Apex Convention Center"
are spliced into the commercial to make it seem like the commercial
was made specifically for this appearance although obviously it was
not. The Dolly Parton impression is good, though, and also on the
plus side, this segment doesn't last long.

Smith Comma John for President II: "I'm sorry, sir, is that your wife?"
"What did you think it was, my dog?" Smith Comma John (Kilbane) presents his
wife, which is actually a Labrador retriever. The dog barks every time
he tries to pet it. This was OK; about as funny as the last one.

Dudes: Three rubes from Utah (Will Sasso, Pat Kilbane, Aries Spears) call
each other "dude" and cruise around Hollywood looking for hookers. They
pay one of them to have sex with Spears, but the hooker turns out to be
a man in drag. Spears has sex with him anyway, and afterward, the
three are ebullient - until Sasso says out loud "[Y]ou had sex with a
man!" Then the three drive around in profound silence, in contrast
to their earlier garrulousness - until they all resolve to have sex
with the drag queen. This is funnier than it sounds, and while not
a particularly outstanding sketch was quite solid.

Smith Comma John for President III: The alien (Kilbane) eats a corn
dog (they have to stop the camera and remove part of the corn dog bit
by bit). He likes to watch "Fraiser," which is proof that he is not an
alien. At the end, his tail flops out. Again an OK, not a great, segment.

Mistake of Your Life: This is a parody of the new Jennifer Love
Hewitt show, "Time of Your Life;" the "mistake" here is Hewitt leaving
"Party of Five" to do her own show, which turned out to be a ratings
disappointment (actually, ratings for "Party of Five" are down, too, but
that's another story). In this segment, Sarah (Brooke Totman)
toils in a bar, sings horribly off-tune, and calls up Bailey, practically
begging to be let back on "Party of Five." This segment immediately
appeals to the sadist in me because it is making fun of Fox's recent
ratings decline (even "Malcolm in the Middle" may not be the mid-season
hit that Fox is making it out to be; 31 million viewers doesn't mean
very much when the show airs right after "The Simpsons," "King of
the Hill" AND a football playoff game). The character of Sarah Reeves
may be well into her twenties by now, but she's still at the emotional
and intellectual level of a twelve-year old. If the real show is anything
like this parody, it's easy to see why the ratings would be low. There's
also a funny moment where a patron requests a table for a "Party of Five"
and Sarah screams (she's already cringing when one of the other
cast members refers to Neve Campbell). In my opinion this was the strongest
segment of the show. Favorite moments: (1) The R.E.M. song parody at the
beginning with lines like "It's the mistake of your life and you knew it/
You had a hit show, then you blew it...But your breasts look fine." (2)
The bit at the end when the show is pulled for another Fox reality-based
special and back-to-back episodes of "That 70's Show" (currently THE big
thing at Fox).

Shorty Holding the Baby: A couple (Nicole Sullivan, Pat Kilbane)
sitting on a park bench with their baby in a stroller nearby are
confronted by two toughs (Aries Spears, Will Sasso) who insist on
holding the baby. The couple, apparently intimidated by the pair's
thug-like behavior, relent. Then the two toughs give the couple a
card advertising their nanny-care service. This was a pretty funny,
if conventional, sketch; I liked Sasso's character, a misfit seemingly
based on Lenny Small. Having Kilbane in the sketch breaks the tedium
of the endless Sullivan/McDonald pairings, and both are good here, although
this is essentially Sasso and Spears' moment to shine.

Tactical Intelligence Team: Pamela Anderson Lee (Mo Collins) is the
star of Tactical Intelligence Team (T.I.T.). This is a parody of Anderson's
current project, V.I.P. We see a clip from the show in which Anderson
and her co-stars (Debra Wilson, Brooke Totman), clad only in lingerie,
are captured by an international terrorist and tied to a machine which,
when activated, causes their breasts to bounce up and down. This was
quite funny; I only saw about five minutes of V.I.P. once while channel
surfing, but I assume this is an accurate parody: since Pamela Anderson
is on the show, I can't imagine that the acting is very good. Mo Collins
becomes the second cast member to play Pamela Anderson (the first being
Nicole Sullivan, in "Babewatch"). Collins' impression seems a bit more
attuned to the particular idiosyncrasies of Anderson, while Sullivan
played it more like a generic babe - although in "Babewatch," it was
never explicitly stated that the character was supposed to be Pamela
Anderson; I just assumed that it was because of the character's
enhanced bust line.

Honeydipper Dan: Not only do they repeat material on "Mad TV," but now
they put it in the middle of the show rather than the end, probably
figuring we're less likely to notice if they bury it in the middle.
[If so, they may be making a mistake which is often made by executives,
network and otherwise, which is assuming that they are smart and everyone
else is stupid. Bad show, lads.] I was not impressed by this segment,
which is based on scatalogical humor about a mythical giant (Will
Sasso) who cleans outhouses, when it first aired about a year ago, and
I still don't hold it in high regard. But since there's still about
fifteen minutes to go here, maybe you won't switch to "Saturday Night
Live" just yet.

Frieda O'Keefe: Two female folksingers (Mo Collins, Alex Borstein) are
supposed to perform a song, but quickly get off track by talking about
their relationships. The two seem rather dyk-ish and may be based on
the Indigo Girls. Collins is the butch and Borstein is the femme. If this
is truly representative of female folksingers, you will probably wish
that all female musicians eschew their feminimity and just try to
rock in the tradition of Joan Jett and Lita Ford. Again a segment that
wasn't the greatest but had considerable entertainment value.

Closing Segment: Debra Wilson closes the show. Nicole Sullivan is
conspicuously absent, although Brooke Totman is there. The words
"In Memory of Don Martin" appear on the screen at the beginning of
the credits. This was OK.
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Overall, this was a fairly strong show, without any particularly
outstanding segments (with the exception perhaps of "Mistake of Your
Life,") but with a consistency that has been lacking in recent weeks.
The two strongest segments, in my opinion, were "Mistake of Your Life"
and "T.I.T.," both parodies of TV shows (further lending credence to those
who assert that the show has found its niche in movie and TV parodies).
For the second week in a row, Nicole Sullivan appears in only one sketch,
and by now there can be little doubt that taping for the sitcom "Talk to Me"
is reducing her availability for "Mad TV." [She does not even appear on stage
with the rest of the cast at the end of the show.] It is a little wierd to
see her playing such a diminished role in the show, especially since as one
of the few original cast members (and the most popular cast member of all),
she more than anyone else embodies the heart and soul of "Mad TV." Still,
even with the relative paucity of Nicole Sullivan content, it was a
good show. (6/10)


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