A good tribute that could have been just a little better.
My thoughts on the 'Best of Tim Meadows' are a bit mixed. First of all, it's great to see that this best of set was made. Meadows was a cast member of SNL at least as long as anyone since the show's inception (perhaps the longest). He is very deserving of this recognition. During that time he played all kinds of characters, from tough to sensitive, from goofy to dead serious. He also had a very wide range. Therein lies a big flaw with this tape. While it contains many skits that are very funny in general, it also leaves out many that showed Meadow's true talent.The funnier skits are great. One particularly good one is 'Perspectives,' a very early Sunday morning talk show hosted by Lionel Osborne, a clueless, aloof talk show host who thinks everything is fantastic. There are two Perspectives skits that are quite funny. One of them is an out-take with Chris Rock as the guest as a member of the Million Man March. It's quite humorous to see them both start to loose it laughing due to the content of the material. There are also several skits of Meadows doing O.J., where he accentuated O.J.'s guilt in all instances. Some other great clips include him doing Sammy Davis Jr., Ike Turner on Weekend Update, and of course some Ladies Man skits. The downside of this tape is that it does leave out some great characters that Meadows has played, while including some that could have been left out. For instance, there is Jingleheimer Joe, a skit where he is a census taker, and others that are quite funny, but don't showcase Tim's true talent. The fact that there are no skits of him doing Oprah is a travesty. He did Oprah better than Oprah did Oprah, yet there is only a two second glimpse of this in the closing credits. One would think that perhaps one of these could have made it on to the tape in lieu of three Ladies Man skits. Other great characters he's done that didn't make it on include Bernard Shaw of CNN, Michael Jackson, and Don King, just to name a few. There's also another skit with 'Captain Jim and Pedro,' played by Meadows and Adam Sandler. While this is a very funny skit, it is Adam Sandler who clearly steals it, while Tim's character is sort of just along for the ride. That said, I would recommend this tape to any and all SNL fans, particularly anyone who has had any appreciation for Tim's work over the years.
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