Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
THE ROCK OBAMA
health care obstructionists turn Barack Obama (FRA) into The Rock Obama
— An out-of-nowhere reprisal of The Rock Obama sketch from the preceding season.
— This feels a little empty without Andy’s Rahm Emanuel devilishly encouraging Obama to “get angry!” like he did in the first installment of this sketch. Speaking of Andy’s absence, we won’t be seeing him AT ALL in tonight’s episode. He was reportedly feeling under the weather this week and wasn’t able to do the show.
— And with this random sketch reprisal, we now, of course, get a Dwayne Johnson cameo. Always welcome to see him on SNL.
— Bill’s delivery of “He turns into…The Rock Obama!” was surprisingly weak. See, this is why we need Andy in this sketch.
— Funny bit with The Rock Obama clapping and responding “Hahahaha! Me like dog!” when making Bill bark like a dog.
— The arm-ripping/“Better call your insurance!” bit was HILARIOUS.
— After being stuck in Non-Speaking Bit Part Hell for the last two episodes, Jenny FINALLY gets her first speaking role in a live sketch since her notorious F-bomb from three episodes prior.
— The timing seems kinda off during the early portion of Jason-as-Joe-Biden’s conversation with The Rock Obama.
— I like the detail of Jason’s Biden yelling “Geroni-joooeeeeee!” when jumping through the wall.
STARS: ****
MONOLOGUE
host fends off attackers while singing “The Music Of The Night”
— Gerard Butler announces in a VERY excited manner that he’s the first Scotsman to ever host SNL. I recall an online SNL fan back at this time in 2009 pointing out that that’s NOT true. According to that fan, former hosts Alan Cumming and at least one other person (I forget who) are Scottish.
— Musical monologue? Uh-oh.
— Some okay sudden turns with Gerard occasionally fighting with enemies mid-song.
— Kristen’s walk-on noticeably gets big applause from the audience. Back when this originally aired, I took that as a sign of Kristen’s huge popularity, but then somebody online pointed out to me that the applause might’ve just been because Kristen was walking on as a Phantom Of The Opera character.
STARS: **½
FUQUAY SATIN’S GRAND HOOCHIE SKANK ROSÉ
Fuquay Satin’s (KET) skank rosé is ass-pouringest champagne
— An interesting and different-feeling SNL commercial for this era.
— Solid performance from Kenan. In hindsight, this feels like a warm-up for a big breakout moment Kenan will be having later in this episode with a certain sketch.
— Funny line from Kenan at the end regarding the drink tasting funny after being poured down someone’s ass.
STARS: ***
GAME TIME WITH RANDY AND GREG
alien Greg’s tail keeps conversation away from sports topics
— Odd how this is another sketch tonight that’s brought back from the preceding season’s Dwayne Johnson episode. This time, Dwayne himself has no involvement in this sketch, despite being in the building tonight. The co-host character he played in the first Game Time installment has been replaced with a co-host played by Kenan. As I pointed out in my review of the first installment of this sketch, the interesting thing about Kenan’s new co-host character is the fact that it’s the same character he played at the very end of the first installment of this sketch, who was introduced as the show’s upcoming guest. Nice continuity and attention to detail.
— Despite the “Game Time With Dave and Greg” title from the first installment now being “Game Time With Randy and Greg” in tonight’s installment (as can be seen on the TV screen in the background of most of the above screencaps for this sketch), this inexplicably still opens with the “Game Time With Dave and Greg” title screen by mistake (the first above screencap for this sketch). Wow. I nitpicked the Celebrity Family “Fued” typo in the Ryan Reynolds episode earlier this season, but that’s minor compared to this. How the heck did this “Dave And Greg” gaffe get past SNL’s editors? This would at least later be fixed in reruns.
— Love the bit with Kenan making tongue-clicking sounds to calm Bill’s Greg character down after his tail has appeared onscreen. The very distinct, loud, standout laugh from an audience member during this part makes it even funnier to me.
— While tonight’s Greg rehash is definitely still working, it seems kinda lazy for SNL to reuse the Game Time setting. There was a cut-after-dress-rehearsal sketch from the preceding season’s Zac Efron episode in which Greg, in what would’ve been his second-ever appearance, was put in a completely different setting as the co-host of a children’s show. (A publicity photo of this cut sketch was even shown online somewhere shortly after that episode’s original airing, but after 11 years, I can’t remember where I saw it, nor do I know if it’s still available. Maybe GettyImages has that photo nowadays, though.) So it seems that, at one time, the plan was for SNL to place Greg in different settings in each appearance he would make. However, since SNL deemed that aforementioned Zac Efron sketch not good enough to make it on the air (someone who attended the dress rehearsal of that episode claimed the sketch was actually great), I guess they decided to lazily play it safe by keeping Greg in the original Game Time setting.
— Like the first installment of this sketch, Seth has a rare non-Weekend Update role as the voice of a caller.
— Greg’s freak-out over Gerard grabbing his tail is absolutely priceless.
STARS: ****½
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
Beast (host) thinks Belle (KRW) isn’t a Beauty since she lacks a big ass
— Great make-up on Gerard.
— I like Kristen’s facial reaction to Gerard’s “I can hardly wait until your transformation” line.
— Funny reveal that Gerard’s Beast is under the impression that Kristen’s Belle is the beast.
— Hilarious turn with Gerard’s Beast bluntly disclosing “I like a big ass.”
— Very funny performance from Bill as Lumiere, and I love his line about once dating a menorah.
— Great line from Bobby’s Cogsworth about a “3:45 ass”.
STARS: ****
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “She Wolf”
WEEKEND UPDATE
enlisted New Jerseyite same-sex couple won’t tell, prefers you don’t ask
Heene family balloon hovers by SEM in search of additional media coverage
SEM translates host’s Scottish-accented message to his family back home
Persistent Genital Arousal Disorder sufferer (KRW) gets stimulated
— (*groan*) Another appearance from the New Jersey Gay Couple. Thankfully, this ends up being their final appearance.
— Ugh, the New Jersey guys’ joke about gay soldiers being stationed at Fort Dix was groan-worthy enough the first time SNL used it, decades prior in the “At One With…” sketch with Joe Piscopo and Charles Rocket in the season 6 premiere.
— The bit with Seth being interrupted by the balloon from that infamous Balloon Boy hoax (man, does that take me back) is…odd. No idea what else to say about it.
— Very rare to see an SNL host do an Update commentary as themselves.
— Some of Seth’s translations of Gerard’s native Scottish message are pretty funny.
— Meh, an obvious joke with Kristen’s Persistent Genital Arousal Disorder sufferer eventually stifling orgasms during her commentary.
— Continuing tonight’s theme of audience members with a standout loud laugh, one audience member’s very noticeable constant laugh during one of Kristen’s stifled orgasm faces is making me laugh more than Kristen’s stifled orgasm face itself is.
— I did like the “Oh, that doesn’t help” response from Kristen when Seth tries to quell her orgasm-related grief by putting his hand on her shoulder.
STARS: ***
300
Leonidas (host) addresses Don’t Ask Don’t Tell with all-gay Spartan army
— A topical “Don’t ask, don’t tell”-themed 300 sketch? And right after Seth made a cheap joke just minutes ago on Update about 300 being “gay”? (*groan*)
— Another groan from me, at Fred doing his ol’ “lispy gay voice” routine once again.
— Fred and Bill playing another gay couple tonight? Really?
— I got a cheap laugh (my first laugh of the whole sketch) from Bobby in that stomach-baring outfit.
— An actual FUNNY bit right now, with Jason’s revelations of why he did all the homoerotic things he did with Gerard’s Leonidas. Even just the mere smug smile on Jason’s face during this part is cracking me up.
STARS: *½
WHAT UP WITH THAT?
singing & dancing bumps panelists; James Franco cameo
— Ladies and gentlemen, we have a major recurring sketch debut!
— There seemed to be a big audio glitch at the beginning. Funny to see in hindsight that a sketch that would go on to become such an iconic recurring sketch almost opened with huge technical difficulties.
— Feels fascinating to now look back at this What Up With That debut, back when SNL probably had no idea how huge it would become. I also haven’t watched a What Up With That sketch in literally YEARS, so it’ll be fun to re-live this.
— I love Kenan going into SNL’s audience during his singing just now.
— Speaking of SNL’s audience, actress and future SNL host Saoirse Ronan can be seen in the audience (to Kenan’s right in the sixth above screencap for this sketch).
— Oh, now this sketch has REALLY begun to take off! We get our very first sighting of Jason’s red tracksuit dancing character, the true MVP of these What Up With That sketches (which is saying something).
— Kenan is so damn fantastic in this sketch that he even managed to make his accidental flubbing of his intro of Abby (in her only appearance all night) come off funny instead of cringeworthy. I also like Abby’s facial reaction to that.
— An absolutely classic crazy-eyed look on a now-sweaty Kenan (the ninth above screencap for this sketch) when he’s occasionally rhythmically repeating random key words from what Abby’s saying.
— Damn, this sketch is getting more and more infectiously fun.
— Hilarious walk-on from Gerard as “The Sex-ecutioner”.
— I love Will’s announcer character from earlier in this sketch now walking on while doing The Robot.
— Very fun dance from Kristen.
— Ha, we see our very first instance of Bill’s Lindsay Buckingham getting bumped, which, even in this inaugural What Up With That installment, we’re told happened various times before.
— Overall, what a fucking blast. I’m not sure how I’ll react to the (many) subsequent installments of this sketch in proportion to tonight’s first installment, but this first installment was absolutely perfect to me. I’m sure I’ll find the subsequent installments to be very fun, but probably not quite as magical-feeling as this first installment. We’ll see, though.
— This sketch is said to have been an official huge turning point for Kenan. There was a whole article a few years ago featuring people from SNL talking about how this What Up With That debut was the important moment in which Kenan finally found his voice as an SNL performer, and gradually started to become the reliable SNL veteran he’s considered by many to be today.
STARS: *****
COTTAGE CHEESE IDEAS
new secretary Trina unhelpfully interrupts (host)’s meeting with (JAS)
— (*groan to end of all groans*) Kill me. The second (and thankfully final) appearance of motherfucking Trina, a.k.a. the motherfucking “Thomaaassss!” lady, a character that always induces some of the saltiest, most acid-spewing rants from me that I’ve ever given in any of my reviews in my SNL project. How does SNL follow up the classic debut of What Up With That with THIS?!? Talk about mood whiplash.
— Why does Trina always seem to associate with men named Thomas? At first, I thought Gerard was playing the same Thomas that Steve Martin played last time, who was Trina’s husband, and I assumed we were supposed to ignore the fact that Gerard’s Thomas looks ABSOLUTELY NOTHING like Steve’s Thomas, but then just now, Gerard said something about having hired Trina for this job, which shows that he’s NOT her husband like Steve’s Thomas character was.
— Two-and-a-half minutes into this sketch, and man, what the hell am I watching?!? (*sigh*) It never ceases to amaze me how absolutely barren the material for this god-awful Trina character is. Like I said in my review of the first installment, it feels like they seriously threw Kristen out there with literally NO writing at all, just an annoying quirky character that Kristen (who has gone on record saying she herself hates this Trina character) was forced to awkwardly ad-lib her way through, as if that alone is supposed to carry a 4-minute sketch. And also like I said in my review of the first installment, these sketches are a whole bunch of NOTHINGNESS. It’s a fucking joke that these two Trina sketches ever made it on the air.
— The actual Jason Sudeikis/Gerard Butler pitch meeting portions of this sketch, as brief as they are, seem promising enough to make a sketch of their own, without the mind-numbing Trina stuff.
— As I’ve disclosed in my reviews lately, I’ve recently been starting to surprisingly warm up to some Kristen Wiig characters and impressions who I previously hated the HELL out of (Kathie Lee Gifford, Target Lady, Gilly). Well, that sure as hell ain’t happening with this Trina character.
— I got a genuine laugh just now from Jason beginning a statement to Gerard by asking him “Uh…Thomas, is it?”, after Trina referred to him as Thomas a zillion times throughout the sketch. Unfortunately, the laugh I got from that line of Jason’s still isn’t enough to make up for how awful this sketch in general is.
— End my misery, SNL. I am BEGGING you. This sketch is seriously starting to give me a headache. My look while watching this sketch is starting to match how Gerard’s character looks right now (screencap below).
— Ugh. As further proof of how ridiculously lazy the writing of this sketch is, they have Jason, right before leaving, respond to Gerard desperately asking him not to tell anybody about the absurdity he witnessed from Trina by saying “I feel like I will. Just bein’ honest”, which is the EXACT SAME exchange that previously happened between Steve Martin and Casey Wilson in the first installment of this sketch. How are you just going to straight-up reuse that exchange? Man, fuck this sketch.
— What a stupid and lame ending with Gerard and the pen cap. “Ohh. This IS for this!” I bet Gerard felt so dumb having to perform that portion of this sketch (if not the whole sketch).
STARS: * (I wonder if this is the first time in my SNL project that a segment I gave a perfect five-star rating to was immediately followed by a segment I gave a lowest-of-low one-star rating to. I think the closest this happened before is two separate episodes in the late 90s/early 00s era in which a Celebrity Jeopardy sketch I rated five stars was immediately followed by a god-forsaken Pretty Living sketch that I gave a one-and-a-half-star rating to. Right now, Pretty Living is looking almost downright tolerable compared to the Trina dreck I just sat through.)
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Did It Again”
DAVEHEART
movie chronicles William Wallace’s cowardly brother Daveheart (host)
— Odd how this is the second sketch tonight with the male cast playing a group of soldiers and Gerard playing their leader.
— An okay concept with Gerard as a cowardly version of Braveheart.
— Gerard freaking out over the goat made me laugh, but this sketch in general is starting to feel like it’s running out of steam.
— A surprisingly large amount of live speaking roles tonight for Jenny.
— This sketch continues to run out of steam, as I’m not caring much for the scene with Gerard locked up in chains.
STARS: **
GOODNIGHTS
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A strong first half (despite two of those strong sketches being rehashes), but the quality really dropped off in the post-Weekend Update half, aside from an epic debut of What Up With That.
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
RATED SEGMENTS RANKED FROM BEST TO WORST
What Up With That?
Game Time With Randy And Greg
The Rock Obama
Beauty And The Beast
Fuquay Satin’s Grand Hoochie Skank Rosé
Weekend Update
Monologue
Daveheart
300
Cottage Cheese Ideas
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Drew Barrymore)
a mild step up
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
Taylor Swift
The third Scot that hosted SNL was James McAvoy, but wasn’t until 2019.
The first What Up With That is definitely an all-timer. I think the later ones suffer a little too much from the sketch being repeated so often during 2009-11 and seemed more about the novelty of which cameos they got than genuine inspiration, but the return appearances after made me smile (particularly the Martin Short one – perfect excuse to bring out Jackie Rogers Jr. – and the At Home one).
I almost think the Trina sketches were James Anderson and Kent Sublette testing to see whether they could write absolute garbage and it would still get into the the show as long as Kristen was the lead.
One-time host Patrick Stewart does have Scottish heritage, though he was born in North Yorkshire.
Also, I believe Budweiser covered the entire ad budget for this episode’s original airing, and rather than airing commercials, showed old outtakes and bloopers from SNL past, IIRC.
The Beauty and the Beast sketch here reminds me of a later Beauty and the Beast sketch with Emma Thompson (I think the punchline there is the Beast has lots of sex with the household appliance staff people? I forget).
What Up With That never did top the first installment because the insanity of the formula wasn’t known going in. I do think Gerard’s character is one of the best of the various host characters to appear on the show. It’s a really dubious premise for a sketch seeing how almost none of the cast is black, but Kenan and company manage to make it usually work.
That’s the joke, yes. This sketch reminds me of that, and to a lesser degree, a sketch with JJ Watt as Bigfoot. I’m not crazy about any of them, although Butler’s is the best of the three, as the direction is less clunky and the writing is more focused. (he must have enjoyed it as well as he promoted this sketch on his Instagram in 2017 when the new Beauty and the Beast was released in theaters).
I generally enjoy most of the WUWT reprisals – they work out some of the shakiness of the debut, and it’s one of the few recurring sketches of modern SNL that emphasizes cast chemistry. I do think that the emphasis on chasing guest stars was counterproductive – for every lovely moment like Robin Williams making his final SNL appearance or Lindsey Buckingham meeting his fictional self, you have unfortunate moments like Sam Jackson badmouthing Kenan to the press because Kenan had to try to clean up his mistakes on air.
Gerard Butler hasn’t been in too many highly visible movies as of late but here at arguably the peak of his fame, he does well for himself as the host. Patrick Stewart has Scottish heritage but was born in Mirfield in England, not to be confused with Muirfield which is in Scotland.
What Up With That? started with Kenan having the idea “a host is obsessed with his tv show’s theme music” so he tells that to Bryan Tucker and they brought Rob Klein in to help with it. They just gave Katreese Barnes the phrase “Oooo-we what up with that” to work with and she created the theme music. American Dad did a bit once about something that doesn’t start out good but gets better as it goes along and the character Steve says “It’s like a SNL episode with a crappy opening but then Kenan does What Up With That and you feel better about things”
Andy is originally written as the show’s announcer and Forte appears as himself. As Stooge mentioned Andy is sick this week so in dress rehearsal, Higgins does an off-camera V.O. Also in dress rehearsal, there’s a Jeff Montgomery sketch where he scares a man (Sudeikis) and his son (James Franco) by trick or treating two weeks early. That got cut so they gave Forte the announcer part and had Franco sit in as the other guest besides Bill’s Lindsey Buckingham that Diondre never talks to. The Sexecutioner, White Pete is an all-time great character name. Jenny & Nasim are the first two of six backup singers, seven if you count Sasheer in the mini appearance in the 40th-anniversary show.
Someone mentioned it in an earlier review but this Trina piece is the sketch that Kristen put her foot down on doing a third time because she didn’t find it funny. I’m almost positive there’s an interview with Sublette and Anderson about another sketch where they admit that sometimes they underwrote stuff and would let Kristen or more recently Cecily find the character in rehearsals.
To expand on what Hello Floreda said during the first commercial break Sudeikis explains that Anheiser-Busch covered the ad budget for the whole show to promote new Budweiser Golden Wheat so every commercial there’s a Bud ad, a look-in to the next sketch, and about a minute long dress rehearsal sketch including the Riding My Donkey Political Talk Show, Perspectives from Chris Rock / The Wallflowers and a sketch where Harvey Keitel plays the owner of an Indian casino and cannot stop laughing, that’s not part of the character he just broke, Hard!
Forgot to add the article about the history of What Up With That
https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-news/kenan-thompson-origins-snl-sketch-what-up-with-that-725408/
Re: Old Glory Insurance. IIRC the robot was built for the restaurant sketch and Adam McKay asked if he could use it for his pretape.
I believe this is the Rock Obama sketch where he got caught up in the moment and threw Bill Hader too hard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG92XeRPlBg
Beyond the hosts already mentioned, someone in the stream I watched this episode in mentioned Kyle MacLachlan (I guess some might not count him though, as he’s American…). Anyway, that’s on whoever wrote the monologue, and Gerard Butler is charming enough with what he’s given. I guess there may have been some Sarah Brightman fans in the audience, but I wouldn’t be surprised if most of the applause was for Kristen herself.
Butler is fine (other than some shaky accent work), but he’s one of those celebrities who blurs together for me to the point where I struggle to remember what they look like. Between the various musical moments and the somewhat generic feel to him I’m reminded a bit of some hosts in recent seasons. The Daveheart sketch (which…desperately needed punching up) is a real “oh…he’s this guy” type of moment, as he ends up reminding me so much of one of the Baldwin brothers (probably Stephen).
I think Gerard’s most entertaining on Update with Seth, more entertaining to me than Kristen basically just repurposing the Activia sketches (the “thank you for coming” line being the best part). Speaking of rehash, I am able to still find something to enjoy in the “gays guys from _____” pieces, but this one really felt tacked on. An upcoming episode beats the DADT topic to death – not sure why they didn’t just leave this to that week.
Seth and the balloon is exactly like what he’s been doing on his show lately, with various talking objects helping to fill the place of guests. I’ve been surprised at how much of his talk show style is already prevalent in his early-ish Update work.
This is a pretty bog standard return for Greg the Alien, but Bill’s performance is so fantastic I can’t complain. They don’t ruin the premise and they leave the door open for one more terrific sketch with this setup. I do wish we’d seen him in another setting just one time – the Efron sketch could have been a classic.
I can definitely see Andy being the original pick for the announcer role on WUWT. Will never quite feels right to me (Tara is more of a natural in the part). That last Jeff Montgomery sketch was so thin I’m wary of what a revival would have been like, but I wouldn’t mind seeing the dress rehearsal footage sometime…
Another episode where you can see just how much heavy lifting Jason is left with. Trina, yes, but moreso that tired, tired 300 twaddle. By not playing up a lisp or campery, Jason only makes his character’s unapologetic sexual behavior and obsessions funnier. It’s the type of role that Norm could have killed in if Norm had been willing to go there.
I honestly kind of hate the champagne commercial. When you have no black women in the cast, bringing in various extras just to talk about pouring champagne on their asses feels very tone deaf.
I love the idea of the dress sketches and I wish this had been done more often – I also wish they’d gone back a little further. The robot crashing into a sketch as an homage to Old Glory Insurance was hilarious; it’s such a brilliant idea I am sorry it didn’t happen.
Trump’s half Scottish too, if we’re going to include ethnic background as a qualifier.
I wonder how late in the week it was decided Andy was too sick to do the show. He was on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon on the 13th (Tuesday) and mentioned who the host and musical guest were that week, and seemed pretty okay? It must have been a pretty last minute thing I guess. It’s interesting seeing an episode with an absent cast member, who isn’t there because they werent able to be, as opposed to all their sketches getting cut. It just makes you wonder if there is a flavour missing this episode, or if the episode had potential to be better had there been a digital short or something.
Replying to myself just to add that, since leaving SNL, Andy has said that he was basically constantly sick while at SNL, because the schedule was so intense (particularly with the digital shorts) and he didn’t sleep and eat right. So he must have been REALLY bad this week. He even had a failed character that was ‘Gereld Who’s Always Sick’ based on the fact that ….. he himself was always sick …..
I didn’t realize Andy was absent until reading your review. Something definitely felt missing from it while watching, though. It wasn’t a bad episode but everything other than WUWT (and Beauty and the Beast just because they kept saying “BIG ASS”) washed over me.
The next episode holds a special place in my heart, because it was the first one I ever saw.
I’m not sure I’ve seen this ep but I could’ve sworn I’ve seen all the What Up with That? sketches…
is Andy being sick why they ran breaking clips throughout the episode?