Talk about it here.

These were brutal. Awful. Terrible. Any other adjective meaning "really bad" you want to use. We decided to only subject you to one of these because we love you. I think the jokes in Bischoff's opening monologue were purposely bad, which is normally my kinda thing, as I adore self-aware bad humor. That said, while this was intentional, it was hardly self-aware.

 

Hogan is Bischoff's guest. They show a clip from Tonight Show of Hogan apologizing to a fake Hogan, only for the real Hogan and Bischoff to take over the show. What crap. 16 years later, I think this segment is still going on somewhere. Hogan promos where he uses the word "shall" are always bad.

I wonder how many viewers switched channels during this? If you cut all the segments with Hogan talking I know I wouldn't complain.

Part of this I should like with the parody aspect but this fell flat all around and was just awful. Liz laughing at the jokes was my favorite part. Hogan seems fine just cruising this summer doing these celebrity matches.

Good Lord, this makes the Bischoff grandstand challenge of Slamboree look subtle and restrained. I don't know if this is another one of Bischoff's monologues that's cribbed directly from the Leno monologue the previous night, which is the angle that kickstarted this whole mess, but it does speak to the power of Leno's delivery and timing in comedy in general, regardless of what you think of Jay as a comedian. And another 9 million chin jokes...to call that "low-hanging fruit" would be an insult to the term.

 

I don't think I can properly explain the difference between this kind of attempted humor and what the WWF has been doing with Vince and his stooges. But it's just as well, because the difference in tone and delivery is pretty hard to miss. I think the bottom line is Bischoff's refusal to commit to looking like a buffoon, the way Vince was willing to. He still wants to try to portray himself as "cool" somehow. Notice that Tony & co. aren't allowed to talk over this.