EPISODE REVIEWS

John Goodman / Paula Cole
February 7, 1998

Linda Tripp Dinner

This was pretty good. It was funny to see Goodman dressed up in drag. The sexual jokes kind of got old after a while.

Grade: B+

Monologue

This was more like a musical guest than a monlogue. I like the Blues Brothers, though, so it was fine with me.

Grade: B

Morning Latte

I like this skit but Chris Farley was much better at the producer than Goodman was, and all the jokes were basically the same. It was basically recycled from the Farley show.

Grade: C+

Clinton vs. the 10 Commandments

Absolutely hilarious. Everyone was great, especially Hammond, as always. It was also very well written.

Grade: A+

CBS Sports

This was a weak imitation of the CBS sports thing with Sarah Michelle Gellar. The Brian Boitano character is exactly the same as he was on the Gellar episode, with the same joke about him being gay, except Kattan was not as funny as Hammond was in the role of the second commentator. Shannon as Kwan needed some sort of joke, because the bit about Japan was not funny at all, and really bland compared to Gellar doing Tara Lipinski.

Grade: C -

The X-Presidents

I like this skit but I think it gets kind of old. They keep on trucking in new plays on it (before it was Nixon, this time it was the First Ladies) to try and keep it fresh. Still, it had some good jokes, like George Bush being called upon while in bed.

Grade: B

William Ginsburg appears on the Food Channel

Very boring. Breuer was irrelevant and not funny, and Goodman's character desperately cried for some strong supporting character to play off of.

Grade: C -

Weekend Update

I suppose it's time for me to publicly declare whether I like Colin or Norm so that I can get hate mail from the other side. During the previous two shows, Quinn was clearly VERY nervous, and as a result was not very funny. I was wondering if he would be funnier when he finally got comfortable. Well, this time he was clearly comfortable, and this performance was equal to, in my opinion, the best performances of Norm. The problem with Norm was that 50% of the time you knew how he would complete the joke. With Quinn, though, this doesn't happen. Right now I think Quinn is the better choice.

Grade: A

Judge Judy

I was thrilled to see Akyroid back as Irwin Mainway, who was one of my favorite characters when he was a cast member. Sadly, this time the Mainway was pretty diluted; Jane Curtain was a much better opponent of Mainway than Gasteyer. Still, this was very funny, and Oteri's impression of Judge Judy is very good.

Grade: B+

Martha Stewart

I thought this was one of the better Martha Stewart sketches.

Grade: B+

Ginsburg Comes on Univision

I thought this was much funnier than the previous Ginsburg appearance, although I don't really know why.

Grade: B -

The Cobra

This skit was halfhearted, pointless and had no joke whatsoever. The cobra coming on at the end was perhaps the worst part of any show I've seen all year. The whole thing was just BORING.

Grade: F

Neil Diamond on Storytellers

This was pretty funny. Still, it seemed underdeveloped--Tim Meadows' character didn't get to do a lot.

Grade: B

Overall: Dissapointing for two comedians as good as

Dan Akyroid and John Goodman, but it was not a bad episode by any means.

Grade: B +

Episode Review written by VoiceMan83

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