Saturday Night Live/Val Kilmer/U2

Val Kilmer/U2
Season 26, Episode 7
Airdate	December 9, 2000
Production Number	1175
Written by	James Anderson Robert Carlock Tony Daro Tina Fey Hugh Fink Melanie Graham Steve Higgins Adam McKay Dennis McNicholas Lorne Michaels Jerry Minor Matt Murray Paula Pell Matt Piedmont Jon Rosenfeld Michael Schur T. Sean Shannon Robert Smigel Barry Sobel Andrew Steele Scott Wainio James Downey ("Gore Lawsuit")
Directed by	Beth McCarthy Miller
← 26x06 Tom Green/David Gray	26x08 → Lucy Liu/Jay-Z
Saturday Night Live — Season Twenty-Six

Val Kilmer/U2 is the seventh episode of the twenty-sixth season of Saturday Night Live, and the four hundred and ninety-fourth episode overall.

Guest Stars: Val Kilmer (Host), U2 (Musical Guest)

Special Guests: Maceo Parker (Himself)

Episode Breakdown

• A Message from Al Gore: Vice President Al Gore (Hammond) re-emphasizes the fact that he won the popular vote in the presidential election, although the electoral vote is still up in the air. But because the Supreme Court ordered Florida to stop the recount, Gore claims his only legal alternative now is to sue George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and the Supreme Court and force Bush to concede the election plus pay damages. He introduces his lawyer Sidney Shiner (Kattan), who explains that Gore's awkwardness and insincerity on television is directly related to Bush's efforts to stop the recount. Because this has affected Gore's ability to make money in his livelihood, the Bush campaign owes him several thousand dollars in damages. Afterwards, Joe Lieberman (Parnell) also mentions that Shiner will be helping him sue ABC in an accidental injury case.
• Val Kilmer's Monologue: Val Kilmer wishes that he were at home watching the episode instead of going through the nerve wracking process of performing in it, in response to his wish, Clarence (Hammond) from It's a Wonderful Life appears and shows him how the show would be if he had never hosted. All of the cast members are standing around looking depressed because they couldn't do sketches about The Doors or Top Gun. Tracey Morgan is upset because he couldn't sell weed to the audience members, and Chris Kattan, still wearing his Mango costume from a cut dress sketch, contemplates suicide. Kilmer decides to host the show after all and finishes the monologue.
• Wade Blasingame, Attorney-At-Law: An advertisement for attorney Wade Blasingame (Ferrell) who sues dogs and illustrates his point by having his brother Doug (Parnell) do things like humping visitors and digging up the yard. Perry Meigs (Gasteyer) provides testimonial that Blasingame got her $4000 from a dog's owner. Blasingame boasts about having had 23 dogs put down and, for a small fee as mentioned by postal worker Johnson Young (Morgan), will kill a dog himself. Blasingame denies this, but he does say that he's glad that the dog is "burning in hell" after eating a poisoned steak.
• VH1, Behind the Music: After Jim Morrison (Kilmer) died and went to "Rock and Roll Heaven," he explains how he put together a super group as "revenge" against God. He gathered Jimi Hendrix (Minor) on lead guitar, Janis Joplin (Gasteyer) on harmony vocals, Keith Moon (Sanz) on drums, Buddy Holly (Fallon) on rhythm guitar and Louie Armstrong (Morgan) on trumpet to create "The Great Frog Society." The band struck it huge when Jesus Christ (Ferrell) saw them perform live and signed them to his record label. A stabbing victim from Altamont (Kattan) and a woman who died in the infamous Who trampling (Dratch) express their fandom over the band, but the band was quickly falling apart. To make things worse, Morrison's new girlfriend Amelia Earhart (Gasteyer) starting writing their songs, and Holly was reincarnated as a sheep. Although the band was over at that point, they reunited after everyone was reunited. The credits play over the reincarnated versions performing "The End" by the Doors.
• Palm Beach: A new soap opera premieres on NBC called Palm Beach, about the people involved in the Florida recount scandal, including Katherine Harris (Gasteyer) and Jeb Bush (Kilmer) fighting over their love life and the recount. George W. Bush (Ferrell) comes in the room and asks Jeb to fix his computer because it's "doing that thing again," leaving Bush to discuss his cabinet choices of either Nolan Ryan or The Rock for secretary of the interior. When he discovers that he has to be president for four years, he declares that he's going to kill Dick Cheney for lying to him about it being "like a fishing contest." Al Gore (Hammond) bursts through the French doors and gets into an argument with Harris, which causes Bush to start crying. He bursts into tears again when Jeb says that Cheney had another heart attack. Tom Brokaw (Parnell) comes in the room to announce that the Supreme Court will hear Gore's arguments and that Sandra Day O'Connor is pregnant.
• Veronica and Company: A talk show hosted by supermodel Veronica Kilvere (Shannon) spotlights three people, Dr. Marshall Reeves (Kilmer), Jeannie Fuchil (Gasteyer) and a robot street performer named Kevin Aquarius (Parnell). Fuchil talks about cookies that won her a bake-off, but Fuchil is put to shame by Kilvere who just talks about how she's lucky that all she needs to do is put on a bikini to make hundreds of thousands of dollars. Reeves explains that he's not really a doctor, he's an actor on Gideon's Crossing who uses his status as a fake doctor to get women into bed. Finally, Aquarius dances like a robot on stage. He eats a cookie, but starts to choke because of his peanut allergy. He hands her a medical alert about his allergy but she does nothing to help him.
• Beautiful Day: U2 song.
• Weekend Update:
  • Jesse Jackson (Hammond) and Al Sharpton (Minor) comment on the 2000 election and the rumors of African Americans being disenfranchised in their attempts to vote. Jackson tries to keep on message, but Sharpton constantly interrupts him with rhyming verses which make little sense. They intend to march on Florida but close with Sharpton singing a NBA commercial jingle and Jackson demanding that people "keep hope alive."
• Iceman, the Later Years: 15 years after Top Gun, Tom "Iceman" Kazanski (Kilmer) is a commercial airplane pilot. He insults the co-pilots (Ferrell and Parnell) for being dangerous and out of line. He does the same to the flight attendant (Gasteyer) and tells the co-pilots that he got the 747 up to Mach 3 and alerts them about a "bogey," which turns out to be a taxiing flight. He spends the rest of the flight spouting catchphrases from the movie while his co-pilots keep the flight normal.
• Seasons Greetings: Horatio Sanz, Jimmy Fallon, Chris Kattan and Tracey Morgan sing a song about Christmas. Sanz plays a travel guitar, while Fallon pretends to play a keyboard held by Kattan. Morgan dances on the side and doesn't seem to do much of anything else.
• Elevation: U2 song.
• Doing Voices: Jack (Kilmer) meets with Kate (Gasteyer) and her husband Scott (Ferrell) for a blind double date with Kate's sister Margaret Healy (Shannon). The date starts off normally, but Margaret starts to do strange voices when she gets nervous. Eventually, the entire table joins in except for Scott, who doesn't find the voices cute or amusing. He leaves them and drives home alone.
• The Tyson Brothers: At a recording studio owned by A&M Records, Burt Bacharach (Kilmer) comes in for a recording session with Brenda (Gasteyer), and introduces her to the Tyson Brothers, Tom (Ferrell) and Wesley (Parnell), who perform the trumpet and saxophone parts to "I Say a Little Prayer." Bacharach tells them to do the song straight, but after Tom improvises some during his saxophone solo, the two get into a screaming argument over whether or not it was an improvisational. The two start to cry and they're kicked out by Bacharach.
• Corn Chips Nail Tips: A commercial for nail tips made out of corn chips featuring trashy versions of Morgan and Rudolph, as well as a homeless Sanz.

Notes

"Live from New York, It's Saturday Night!"

• Chris Parnell as Senator Joe Lieberman.

Music

• The End, performed by the Reincarnated Great Frog Society: The song performed at the end of the "Behind the Music" sketch was a cover of "The End" by The Doors, a song that appeared on the band's first album. "The End" is most well known for a sequence in the movie Apocalypse Now, which used it to show the main character's descent into madness. It is well known for going off on wild, inexplicable tangents like that which was sung by the little girl.
  

  

  Bono grabs a hold of the camera before wandering on to unlit sets.

• Beautiful Day, performed by U2: "Beautiful Day" is the lead single from U2's All That You Can't Leave Behind and is about exactly what it sounds like. The song was originally known as "Always" until it was rewritten when Bono made a sudden outburst of "it's a beautiful day!" It was a massive success for the band and won them three Grammys: Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.

• Elevation, performed by U2: The second performance by U2 was of "Elevation," the third single from All That You Can't Leave Behind. It was used as an opener for the band's Elevation and Vertigo tours and has remained in the band's setlist since it was first released. In the performance, Bono makes an unrehearsed move and goes into the audience and sets for the following sketch while singing it, forcing the cameramen to scramble after him. He also grabs a hold of both a camera on stage and a crane camera to sing into it as an extreme close-up.

• I Say a Little Prayer, performed by Burt Bacharach: In the final live sketch of the episode, two session players perform over an existing track of Burt Bacharach's "I Say a Little Prayer." The song was originally recorded with Dionne Warwick in 1967 and gained popularity for its use in films like My Best Friend's Wedding. In the episode, the saxophone part of the song is actually played by acclaimed saxophone player and former member of James Brown's backing band, Maceo Parker. He also played in Parliament with George Clinton and was an unofficial member of The New Power Generation with Prince.

Trivia

The Show

• First Appearance: Jerry Minor's impression of Al Sharpton marks the first such impression on the series. Although Minor would only portray Sharpton one more time, the impression would recur more often for Tracy Morgan and Kenan Thompson.

• Spur of the Moment: When Bono walked out into the crowd during U2's performance "Elevation," it was a move that was entirely unrehearsed and did not occur in dress rehearsal. This resulted in awkward, confusing camera angles because the camera men were forced to "wing it." At some point, the SNL band abandoned their posts at home base to watch Bono travel through the sets and sing, he also sang a bar of "Light My Fire" when he spotted host Val Kilmer in the on lookers.

• Guest Musician: Maceo Parker sits in with the Saturday Night Live band and can be seen performing in the two musical break bumpers before commercials. He also performed the saxophone bits in the last live sketch and is thanked by Kilmer during the good nights.