Conan O'Brien / Don Henley
March 10, 2001

Overview:
Conan O'Brien is hosting tonight. He's the star of
his own late-night talk show on NBC and he used to be
a writer on SNL. Since he already has experience with
SNL, he'll probably feel more comfortable with the
show. It feels weird having him host though because I
think he's the first late-night talk show host to host
SNL (Jay Leno doesn't count because he didn't have his
own talk show yet when he hosted SNL). He's a real
funny guy and it will be interesting to see what he'll
do tonight:

COLD OPENING ­ A Message from President George W. Bush
Yet another boring Bush opening. These are getting
really old. And please, SNL, will you let somebody
else other than Will freaking Ferrell open the show
for a change?!?
Rating: **

MONOLOGUE ­ Conan O'Brien
I was wondering myself during the opening montage if
Conan would walk on-stage in the same manner he does
on his own show, and he did.
A very lively audience tonight.
This was a pretty good monologue, really different too
(especially the way it ended). I thought Conan
would've done an actual monologue, but this was still
good. It was really, really long though. I thought
it would just end after Conan showed the clips of all
the sketches he's been in as a writer.
Rating: ****

COMMERCIAL: SubShack
This is weird. Just yesterday during a boring day of
school, I was creating some SNL sketches of my own in
my head, and one of those sketches was something very
similar to this commercial, with slim, gorgeous
supermodels wishing they were fat and taking these
special pills to do so.
This was pretty good spoof of the real "Subway"
commercial. SNL was supposed to show this in the
Katie Holmes episode since in the dress-rehearsal
promo from that episode, they showed a clip from this
commercial.
Rating: ***1/2

SKETCH: The Boston Teens
Funny, when Rachel Dratch appeared on Conan, they gave
a hint that they would do this sketch if he hosted,
but I didn't think they would actually go through with
it. Guess I was wrong.
Ben Affleck's cameo at the end came out of nowhere.
This was okay, but I'm not crazy about these
characters.
Rating: ***

SKETCH: Moleculo, the Molecular Man
This sketch bore a very strong resemblance to the
Superman sketch from last season with The Rock.
Anyway, this was pretty weak. Conan tried his best,
though.
Rating: **

SKETCH: Napster Testimony
This was hilarious. One of the better sketches this
season.
I noticed that over the commercials when they showed
the set for this sketch being set up, the announcer
lady said "Cast, please set yourself" I guess there
were so many cast members used in this sketch, to call
each of them by name would be too much.
Rating: *****

WEEKEND UPDATE ­ Jimmy Fallon and Tina Fey
Okay, it's official. These Updates are getting
shorter and shorter each week. I swear, Update was
only, like, 2 minutes tonight. There weren't even any
correspondents.
Some pretty "blah" jokes tonight, especially Jimmy's
lame "chocolat" joke. The cigarette bit was just
plain dumb. I did get a laugh at the crack on Tracy
Morgan, who appears to be just a joke on the show now.
I'm pretty shocked the "school shooting" incident
hasn't even be mentioned, but that's something that
you can't really joke about.
While Jimmy was telling the household mishaps joke, I
was afraid Chris Kattan would return with his
re-enactments again, and re-enact Michael Jackson's
accident. Thank god he didn't...
Rating: **

SKETCH: Mr. Brown's Taint Accident
A really bizarre sketch, and it wasn't very funny.
Horatio's bad acting didn't help it any. The ending
was really lame, and I'm starting to notice that
there's been a lot of references to the cast members
tonight. Like Tracy Morgan during Update, and Horatio
and Tracy in the Smigel cartoon.
Rating: **

CARTOON [Allegedly]: Find the Black People at the
Knick Game
Four words. What the hell? Okay, that's three words,
but who gives a flying rat's ass? This "cartoon"
(which I don't even know why it was called a cartoon,
considering that it wasn't) sucked miserably. What
the hell is Smigel smoking?
Rating: 0 stars

SKETCH: Deandra Wells
Not this sketch again. Do we really need another
sucky recurring sketch this season? The
transformation of Ana Gasteyer into the next Molly
Shannon is continuing.
Rating: *

SKETCH: A Message from the Democratic National
Committee
A complete waste of time. At this point of tonight's
episode, I really started not to care anymore, and it
seems that the writers felt the same.
Rating: It sucked

SKETCH: James "The Gentleman Masher" Corcoran
Pretty good for a last-10-minutes sketch.
Rating: ***

Overall Grade for Tonight: D+

Overall, a bad episode, and that's a shame considering
what a great host they had tonight. If the writers
actually got their creative pieces working for
tonight's episode, Conan might've turned out to be one
of the season's best hosts. Anyway, Conan tried his
best with what he had. I'm surprised there wasn't a
"Conan O'Brien Show" sketch. They actually could've
done it since they have the real Conan O'Brien show
set in the studio.

BEST SKETCH OF THE NIGHT: Napster Testimony
WORST SKETCH OF THE NIGHT: Deandra Wells
BLOOPERS OF THE NIGHT: None
FUNNIEST MOMENTS OF THE NIGHT: Not much; All the
walk-ons in the Napster sketch.

Cast Member Count Down:
Jimmy Fallon: 5 sketches (SubShack, Boston Teens,
Molecular Man, Napster, Weekend Update)
Will Ferrell: 4 sketches (George W. Bush, Napster,
Taint, Deandra Wells)
Ana Gasteyer: 4 sketches (SubShack, Napster, Taint,
Deandra Wells)
Darrell Hammond: 2 sketches (Molecular Man, Napster)
Chris Kattan: 4 sketches (Molecular Man, Napster,
Democrats, James Corcoran)
Tracy Morgan: 5 sketches (SubShack, Molecular Man,
Napster, Taint, Cartoon)
Chris Parnell: 5 sketches (Molecular Man, Napster,
Taint, Deandra Wells, James Corcoran)
Horatio Sanz: 6 sketches (Boston Teens, Molecular Man,
Napster, Taint, Cartoon, Deandra Wells)
Rachel Dratch: 4 sketches (Boston Teens, Molecular
Man, Napster, Taint)
Tina Fey: 1 sketch (Weekend Update
Jerry Minor: 2 sketches (Molecular Man, James
Corcoran)
Maya Rudolph: 2 sketches (SubShack, Deandra Wells)

The cast members were used quite well tonight, and we
got to see a lot of the under-used tonight - Horatio
Sanz, Chris Parnell (thank god), Rachel Dratch, and
even Tracy Morgan.

Next week, the 500th episode of SNL will be hosted by
Julia Stiles, who I don't care about and am
disappointed that we're not getting a more well-known
celeb./past host to host the 500th show, like Steve
Martin.

That's my review. I'm outta heah!!!

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