So I have now finished watching the infamous Steven Seagal episode from April 20, 1991. Seagal has long been considered one of the worst hosts in the show's history, as he had no actual interest in SNL (and maybe never even saw it before?) and was so insecure that he insisted on looking cool and powerful the whole time. In the writers' room he suggested a skit where Victoria Jackson plays an assault victim and he plays a therapist who tries to cheat her out of her money and then propositions her. The pitch was thankfully rejected.
For the longest time I thought I didn't actually see this episode before, but then I saw a skit that I distinctly remembered so I must have seen this when it aired? They don't rerun this one since everyone agrees it's just a bad show, so I don't think I saw this after the fact. Or maybe they just reran the one bit I remembered. I dunno. Weird.
Well regardless I clearly forgot most of it, so let's find out: is the Steven Seagal episode as bad as everyone says?
The cold open: Hans and Franz meet Steven Seagal. Not the worst, but as someone who's been going episode-by-episode for a few seasons, I have to say that SNL goes back to the Hans and Franz well
much more often than I originally remembered, and the premise just isn't really strong enough to come back to this many times. Still, the idea behind this one is fine I guess, if predictable; Hans and Franz talk about how Seagal is a "girly-man" and whatnot, then it turns out he was standing behind them the whole time. They freak out and Seagal shows that his pinkie finger is stronger than either of them. Could have been executed way better but supposedly the whole reason the skit played out this way was that Seagal insisted that he "win" against the Schwarzenegger parodies. Once you know that, it' becomes clear that that's all he wanted out of the sketch.
A few things stand out that get established early on by the cold open. First off, I know this will shock you to your core, but Steven Seagal has zero range. In every bit he just does his thing without variation and on the one hand it's unintentionally funny how bad he is at this, but on the other hand it's just dull to sit through. His line delivery is just plain terrible and he trips over his own lines and steps on other's quite a few times. Another thing I noticed is that the audience reacts less and less as the episode wears on.
The Monologue: Seagal lists off some of his movies and then sings Kung Fu Fighting. Of all the unintentional comedy this might be the funniest because he's not singing, really. He's just kind of speaking the lyrics. It ends up sounding like something a bad impressionist would come up with.
Nico vs. The Richmeister: The sketch opens with our host as one of those cop-playing-by-his-own-rules archetypes, with Phil Hartman as the angry police chief. Seagal's poor acting skills become painfully clear when he's up against Phil Hartman, whose acting chops absolutely blast him out of the water and into another dimension. It's just kind of amazing seeing the chasm that separates the two. Anyway the joke here is that the chief demotes Seagal's character and he's forced to do paperwork, which leads to him using the copy machine and into the office of The Richmeister, Rob Schneider's only real recurring character. For the uninitiated, this character's entire gimmick is that he loudly comes up with obnoxious nicknames for whoever happens to be using the copier.
Seagal just flatly tells him that he's annoying and he doesn't want to listen to him anymore before hanging him out the window, with Schneider's character continuing to vomit catchphrases. The skit just kind of ends after he pulls him back inside. At this point it becomes clear that we're mainly going to do bits about how Steven Seagal is Mr. Tough Guy in different scenarios.
All-Star Celebrity Tribute to Reginald Lee Addams: A sketch with no Seagal in it. The idea is that there's going to be celebrity tributes to every single American serviceman who was in Iraq, one by one in alphabetical order, every night for god knows how long. Pretty decent idea, has a bit in there with George Bush (Dana Carvey) doing obviously pre-recorded and hastily-edited thank-you videos for each person. It does get dinged a billion points due to Rob Schneider briefly appearing and doing a cartoonish Arab accent. This is not the last time we'll be seeing insensitive portrayals of other races in this episode, sadly.
The Dark Side with Nat X: A recurring character of Chris Rock's, Nat X has "the only 15-minute show on TV" and will usually insult his white guests. Here Steven Seagal plays Andrew Dice Clay for some reason? And it is jaw-dropping how bad his impression is. Once
again he's just playing Steven Seagal doing Steven Seagal Things, with no effort to sound like anything else. Chris Rock's performance is very energetic so Seagal sounds like grandpa doing a local commercial in contrast.
Weekend Update also happens but eh whatever. The big news item of this era was a tell-all book about Nancy Reagan, if you're curious.
Musicians for Free-Range Chickens: Another bit without Seagal, mainly bringing it up because this is the sketch I remember seeing as a kid. It's supposed to be like Live Aid but to make it so all chickens are free-range... and I... guess I still don't get it? As a kid I thought "well yeah let's be nice to chickens :)" but now I'm not entirely sure what the point is here. Is it making fun of celebrity activism? The idea of rights for farm animals? Is it just because singing songs about chickens sounds funny? Is it purely so everyone can trot out their best musician impression? Eh whatever. Michael Bolton was the musical guest for this episode and I have to say he's probably the funniest one in this bit since he's singing the song 100% seriously even though all the words are about chickens. Hell just put him in the sketches, clearly he's having way more fun here.
The Boyfriend: Okay, back to business. Pretty straightforward concept here: Chris Farley plays a highschooler who's come over to pick up his date (Victoria Jackson) and the dad (Seagal) is strict and intimidating. Overdone sure, but I can see how the writers would figure having an action star who kills a bunch of people in his movies would push the concept. The thing is, this sketch has
zero juice to it. If we're going to rehash this idea then you're going to want the dad to be absurdly scary, but once again it's Steven Seagal Just Doing A Steven Seagal Line Read. He just... sits there. Saying things. "Oh you know a lot about cars?" he says, "well then I guess I won't be getting any phone calls about how the car broke down so you'll be late getting back... huh..." It's bland as hell. The audience is clearly very disinterested because they don't respond.
Brace Steele: Greenpeace Photographer: Yeesh. Nobody reacts to this whatsoever, and it's obvious why: this entire sketch is just hellishly awkwardly performed from start to finish. We open with Seagal's character's backstory about how he was taught in the ways of peace, zen, and photography from a Japanese sensei (played not at all sensitively by Mike Myers) who then sends him out into the world to defend nature.
Then the skit proper begins and it gets even more wince-inducing. The idea... I think... is that we're supposed to laugh at Seagal playing a pacifist, especially since he's clearly going to eventually do action movie stuff. But the guy just
can't act, and I mean AT ALL. The sketch has Phil Hartman as the leader of Exxon, telling the board of directors about their plans to cause environmental disasters. He then calls George Bush (Carvey again), who openly admits to working with them in their evil schemes. Seagal then tromps on in to say ah ha, but he got photos of their nefarious meeting, which causes Hartman to respond with "okay but those are photos, you can't tell what we're saying in those, ergo I will just tell people we were discussing something else!" And this goes back and forth for a bit, and you can tell Hartman is trying desperately to hold this garbage sketch together while the guy he's directly interacting with can't even attempt to put any emotion into any of his stumbling lines. You can see it even in my screenshot there, but Seagal's eyes are absolutely
superglued to the cue cards. He conspicuously stares at them the entire time and it just feels that much more like the worst school play ever.
Hartman's character then says "ah, but you Greenpeace guys are non-violent!" and he and other cast members take turns slapping Seagal around a bit.
Seagal then gets mad and we get to the action movie stuff. He punches guys and throws them through the prop table and chases Hartman's character away. Then he just weirdly says something about how this is what happens when you hurt nature and the sketch just... sort of... ends.
This is considered one of the worst bits and good god, yeah it's pretty bad! There are more offensive SNL skits out there but if you want a perfect storm of racism, bad line delivery, and no actual jokes then you've come to the right place. And this was the last sketch of the episode! This was the grand finale!
So overall was this the worst SNL ever? I guess it depends on your definition of "worst" but it's certainly up there. The unintentional comedy wears off immediately so it doesn't even have that going for it. I know there are some seasons that are wall-to-wall trash though, so maybe I'll reevaluate when I get to those. I suspect the Elon Musk episode is even worse though, so uh good luck to me when I finally get to that one!
