So what is the deal with Sean Connery on SNL’s Celebrity Jeopardy sketches?
Was he on the show in the eighty’s and acted like they portray him, or is it some random celebrity they chose to pick on?
Me and Stainz have always wondered…
MtM
Well, none they don’t make him look any worse off than any of the other “celebrities” they depict as contestants. I think it’s just that Will Ferrell was genuinely funny the first time out on that skit, and like every other of the exceedingly few genuinely funny bits on modern-day SNL, they chose to milk it dry, and then keep milking it past the points where it was funny or watchable.
Actually, Burt Reynolds (as played by Norm MacDonald) was slated to be the celebrity who showed up in every sketch. But then MacDonald got fired.
I’ll take the Penis Mightier for 100, Alex.
Ferrel was playing Alex Trebek. Connery was played by Darrell Hammond.
I NEVER got the appeal of this. Will Ferrell is awesome, but its not like his Trebek impersonation was spot on- it wasn’t even close to sounding like him. Add to that Trebek has no other real impersonable quirks, except for his elitist attitude and condencension towards the contestants, which could have made for good satire, but they chose not to even use that in the ones I’ve seen. Basically it just turned into an easy opportunity to do mass celebrity impersonations, some good, some not so much, and for Sean Connery to insult Trebek ad nauseum. You really can’t go far with the premise of how many different ways can a celebrity incorrectly answer an easy question, and how will Connery read the one oddly phrased question in an offensive manner.
This was the best example of how Ferrell could be an excellent straight man–he doesn’t impersonate Trebek but simply acts as a sounding board for the wacko celebs. And though some of the impersonations were truly hit-&-miss, I always found the Connery stuff consistently hilarious, to the point where each installment would be part of a larger epic struggle (in Sean’s eyes) between the two of them. Funny stuff. 
Turd Ferguson. That’s a funny name.
Are you selling Penis Mightiers? It’s a gold mine!
“Damn you and your daily doubles, you brigand! One day it’ll be my turn, Trebek!”
I don’t know, even the ‘sub-par’ Celebrity Jeopardies had at least three or four jokes that were hilarious. As opposed to the shows now that would kill for three or four hilarious jokes. Plus it became a whole pop culture thing after a bit, of course.
Losing Norm MacDonald, however much I might like him in any number of other things, was great for this sketch. Connery is the same sort of one-note joke as Reynolds, I suppose, but one that is much funnier and much more capable of being extended into a string of sketches.
I agree, this was what made it funny. Trebek was more or less played straight (the accuracy of the impression or lack thereof didn’t matter at all) and Connery was played as an obsessive lunatic.
McDonald was suposedly fired because he was always making OJ is guilty jokes while on Weekend Update and the NBC prez at the time was a good friend of OJ.
Then shouldn’t Jay Leno have been fired, too?
I’ve seen that bit a hundred times and that still cracks me up.