Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
WHITE HOUSE CRASHERS
Tareq (BOM) & Michaele (KRW) Salahi photobomb Barack Obama (FRA) speech
— A topical spoof of the infamous White House crashers.
— I like Bill coming on as secret service agent and initially acting sternly towards the crashers, then backing off from them with an “Oh, it’s okay” gesture.
— Funny background antics all throughout this.
— Hilarious random inclusion of Jason’s Joe Biden as a friend of the crashers.
— Pretty funny when the crashers and secret service agents actually ask Fred’s President Obama to stop his speech and take a photo of them, which he does hesitantly.
STARS: ***½
MONOLOGUE
Swedish Chef (ANS) & other Muppets join host onstage for Christmas carol
— A very random excuse for a reprisal of the cast’s Muppets impressions, but I guess this is fun enough.
— Jason’s Fozzie voice sounds even more spot-on than it did in the Muppet Bus sketch from the preceding season.
— Jenny (in her only appearance of the night) takes over the Janice role last played by Michaela Watkins, who herself took over the role from Maya Rudolph. Kinda like the Hoda Kotb role, there almost seems to be a curse with the Janice role, as each individual cast member who has played Janice in this SNL era would end up no longer being on the show by the time SNL does the next Muppets sketch (though unlike Michaela and Jenny, Maya left on her own and wasn’t fired).
— A charming “Hark The Herald Angels Sing” performance from the Muppets.
STARS: ***
CARTER N’ SONS BBQ
Rerun from 11/7/09
VAGISIL SUPERSTARS OF BOWLING TOURNAMENT 1989
Pete Twinkle & Greg Stink cover 1989 ladies’ bowling tournament
— This sketch has officially become recurring.
— I’m getting a little tired of this era’s habit of always following up a “You’re watching (insert channel here)” station ID at the beginning of sketches by inserting a comedic one-liner about people who watch said channel (e.g. “You’re watching (insert channel here), which means you’re asleep and rolled over on the couch.”) Seems to occur about once an episode at this point of SNL’s run.
— Like last time, there’s a lot of fun and fantastic interplay between Jason and Will’s character, and the idiocy from Will’s character is always a hoot.
— Jason: “Vagisil – I scream, you scream, we all scream for vagina cream! (*long pause while the audience laughs*) Vagisiiiiil!”
— I recall hearing that one of the fake audience members in the background is Blake Lively’s real-life father (the man to Blake’s left in the background of the below screencap).
If that is indeed her father, that explains why her character singles him out by aggressively grabbing him briefly while she’s celebrating a strike at one point. I can also see a facial resemblance between the two of them.
STARS: ****
THE SITUATION ROOM WITH WOLF BLITZER
Elin Nordegren (host) abuses untrue Tiger Woods (KET)
— The debut of Jason’s Wolf Blitzer impression.
— Back when this originally aired, I remember not being happy by SNL’s decision to cast Kenan in the Tiger Woods role, as I felt back then that Fred would’ve been far more fitting in the role. All these years later, I now thank God SNL didn’t cast Fred in this role.
— I got a laugh from how Kenan’s Tiger Woods, after another brutal injury from his wife, begins his latest press conference by saying a lighthearted “Talk about a case of the Mondays!”
— Jason’s occasional mumbling as Wolf Blitzer is increasingly hilarious.
— An okay escalation to the scenes with Tiger Woods and his wife.
— I love the beast-like facial expression Blake makes when running after Kenan’s Tiger at the end of the sketch (screencap below).
STARS: ***
SHY RONNIE
musical guest’s duet with Shy Ronnie (ANS) is stymied by his mumbling
— Seemingly one of the most popular music video Digital Shorts in Lonely Island’s repertoire.
— Rihanna’s parts of the song are catchy.
— As someone who, all of his life, has been described as very shy and a low talker, I can really relate to Andy’s character.
— I love Shy Ronnie’s occasional “Ha-HAAAA!”s throughout this, especially after the “He pissed himself” part.
— Great turn with Andy’s Shy Ronnie suddenly breaking out into an audible hardcore rap when Rihanna has left, only to go back to his typical inaudbile shy mumbling when Rihanna briefly returns.
STARS: ****½
GOSSIP GIRL: STATEN ISLAND
less-glamorous borough has its share of drama
— Bill is always perfect at playing Italian wiseguys.
— The stereotypical New York-y wiseguy humor in this sketch in general feels bland, but the performances are pretty fun.
STARS: **½
KICKSPIT UNDERGROUND ROCK FESTIVAL
Under-Underground rock festival subjects attendees to hazards
— The debut of these Kickspit Underground pieces.
— A version of this got cut after the dress rehearsal of the infamous January Jones episode earlier this season, with January in Nasim’s role. Reportedly, that version had a different format from the one airing in tonight’s episode. Not sure if it was live or if it was pre-taped like tonight’s version.
— So many hilarious fake band names and extremely random events; way too many to single out the funniest, as they’re all slaying me. This is made even funnier by the rapid-fire pacing.
— Ass Dan!
— Excellent performances from Jason and Nasim. I can’t even imagine how awful January Jones must’ve been when trying to pull off this type of character in her cut-after-dress version of this (assuming her character was written to be like Nasim and Jason’s character’s in the aired version I’m currently reviewing).
— There’s the first instance of what would go on to be a running joke in these Kickspit pieces, with Ass Dan turning out to be dead.
STARS: ****½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Russian Roulette”
WEEKEND UPDATE
gibberish helps make Bill Cosby’s (KET) hip-hop album socially-conscious
recently fired from a movie, Brittany Murphy (ABE) thinks she’s doing SNL
— WTF? Bill Cosby put out a hip-hop album in real-life at this time? How was I never aware of this ridiculousness?
— Kenan’s Cosby impression is always solid. However, given the fact that a certain other guest commentary coming up later in this Update would end up being the victim of very unfortunate timing, it casts a dark shadow over this Cosby commentary in hindsight as well, given what would happen in regards to Cosby’s own future.
— After his Charlie Brown joke, Seth’s ad-lib, “Charlie Brown cannot catch a break. First, that football getting pulled away, and then, uh….AIDS” was very Norm Macdonald-esque, especially the “and, then, uh”, the silent pause afterwards, and then the way he said AIDS in a very deadpan manner while staring down the camera.
— OH. NO. Here comes the aforementioned infamous commentary in this Update: Abby as a loopy, out-of-it Brittany Murphy, in what ends up being just two weeks before the real Brittany Murphy would unexpectedly die. One of the most unfortunate cases of timing in SNL history. Between the Cosby commentary earlier and now this, oof. Tonight’s choices for guest commentators have aged horribly.
— When this originally aired, Abby’s Brittany Murphy impression cracked me up, and I was happy to see Abby get some much-needed airtime, but man, this is now IMPOSSIBLE for me to watch and laugh at in retrospect. All the troubled loopiness in Abby’s portrayal, intended for comedic value, just comes off really sad now.
— Needless to say, the Brittany Murphy commentary would later get removed from all reruns. Can’t remember what, if anything, it was replaced with in the 90-minute NBC rerun. Perhaps a re-airing of a pre-taped ad from another episode?
— I didn’t get the “gay dude’s refrigerator magnet” punchline to Seth’s joke about where you can find a photo of Marilyn Monroe smoking marijuana.
STARS: **½
SKIRT SHOPPING
Virginiaca supports her stepdaughter (host) in an upscale clothes shop
— OH, GOD. And I had (mercifully) completely forgotten about this wretched Virginiaca character, given the fact that her last appearance was all the way back in season 33. Thankfully, tonight’s sketch ends up being her final appearance.
— And, of course, we have our 10,000th different white stepdaughter of Virginiaca’s, despite how we’re always told Virginiaca is married to the same man in every sketch.
— Not caring much for Blake’s attempt at an urban voice. It sounds too forced, especially compared to how natural Jaime Pressly and Scarlett Johansson sounded doing an urban voice in earlier installments of this sketch. At least this isn’t as cringey as seeing Ellen Page attempt a character like this.
— As usual, not a single laugh from me during this sketch. Also as usual, my only reaction is lots of groaning and cringing at all the awful attempts at urban humor and drag humor.
STARS: *
UPS
Andy Azula (BIH) ensures UPS will be identified with a man in a lady wig
— I vaguely remember the real UPS commercials this is spoofing. I remember finding this to be such a spot-on and funny spoof back when it originally aired.
— Solid performance from Bill, even if the material itself is merely okay.
STARS: ***
LATE NIGHT WITH CHRIS HANSEN
celebs get ambushed a la pedophiles
— Interesting how the Weekend Update-only Seth Meyers does the voice-over in the opening “You’re watching MSNBC” gag. Oh, and the fact that this “You’re watching MSNBC” gag is YET ANOTHER example of a station ID inserting a comedic one-liner about people who watch the channel just further proves a point I made earlier in this review about how this SNL era overuses this gag. Twice in the same night, SNL?!?
— Despite my well-documented fatigue towards the talk show sketch format, the idea of a Chris Hansen-hosted talk show being done in the style of To Catch A Predator is fun.
— Jason’s Philip Seymour Hoffman impression is always good to see.
— Amusing seeing Andy as Keanu Reeves.
— Funny visual of Bill’s Chris Hansen hiding behind his desk in a silly-looking crouching position.
— I love Andy-as-Keanu’s delivery of “What’s going ON?”
STARS: ***
UPS
Andy Azula (BIH) feels in command with his UPS whiteboard & lady wig
— A follow-up, making fun of how insanely frequently the real UPS ads were aired around this time.
— Again, like the first ad, I commend Bill’s solid execution of average material.
— Ah, we actually get funny material, with the ending gag involving Bill smugly adding a stick figure erection on the stick figure drawing of his body.
STARS: ***½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest & Young Jeezy [real] perform “Hard”
POTATO CHIP THIEF
at NASA, astronaut candidate (JAS) admits stealing (WLF)’s potato chip
— Oh, here comes a sketch that’s rightfully beloved by many SNL fans, and is rightfully considered one of the biggest highlights of this otherwise not-very-well-liked season.
— Will’s (and Blake’s) pronunciation of “potato chips” is legendary.
— Fantastic voice and delivery from Jason, coming off like a prototype to his also-well-loved Maine Justice character from later in his SNL tenure. On a similar note, Will’s character in this Potato Chip Thief sketch seems kinda like it could be the same character he previously played in the Dr. Uncle Jimmy’s Smokehouse & Outpatient Surgical Facility sketch, as he has a similar look and voice.
— I love the finger dance Jason does with his hand when reaching for a potato chip in the bowl.
— Another hilarious little detail, with Jason actually dusting himself off when he sees that Will’s about to return right after Jason has eaten one of the potato chips.
— A fantastic insane and intense turn this sketch suddenly takes when Jason is accused of being a potato chip thief.
— When Will is angrily telling Jason things he will never do now that he’s been exposed as a potato chip thief, I love how one of things an off-camera Jason yells is “Take it back!”
— Oh, hell yeah! Now we’re getting a dose of Will’s classic purple-faced screaming routine, this time complete with him crouching on top of a desk.
— The commitment to this sketch is incredible, and the fact that none of the performers are breaking is adding to the amazing execution of this.
— I love Jason’s teary, emotional breakdown when finally admitting he took the chip.
— Blake, who’s giving a great supporting performance in her own right, delivers her “You don’t take people’s potatuh chiiiips” line perfectly.
— And there’s the moment that, for me, propels this already-classic sketch further into a classic: Jason hawking back up the potato chip he ate and spitting it into Will’s hand.
— Seeing the aforementioned Jason-spitting-into-Will’s-hand part reminds me that the dress rehearsal version of this sketch would later be aired in reruns of this episode. (I wonder if the reason was to fill in the extra time left over from the removal of the Brittany Murphy commentary from Weekend Update.) The biggest differences I can remember in the dress rehearsal version are that 1) when Jason’s about to hawk up the potato chip, he stretches out the bit where he repeatedly looks back and forth between Will’s open hand and Will’s face a lot longer and more exaggeratedly than he did in the live version, and 2) unlike the live version in which all the performers keep a perfect straight face for the entire sketch, Blake helplessly cracks up when Jason spits up the potato chip into Will’s hand.
— Jason: “Well…this certainly did not end the way I had imagined it…in my un-dried dreams.”
— Man, even the ending of this sketch is epic, with the unique blocking of the performers during the mock-dramatic ending shot.
— Overall, such a masterpiece. In a season where Will has sadly been pretty invisible, and a season that also ends up being his final one, it’s great to see at least one more live sketch that focuses on Will’s trademark delightfully oddball humor.
STARS: *****
GOODNIGHTS
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A decent episode. There was a lot of average material, and a few meh or flat-out bad things, but the show’s quality was given a boost with three standout very strong pieces: Shy Ronnie, Kickspit Underground Rock Festival, and (especially) Potato Chip Thief.
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
RATED SEGMENTS RANKED FROM BEST TO WORST
Potato Chip Thief
Kickspit Underground Rock Festival
Shy Ronnie
Vagisil Superstars of Bowling Tournament 1989
White House Crashers
UPS 2
Late Night with Chris Hansen
UPS 1
Monologue
The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer
Weekend Update
Gossip Girl: Staten Island
Skirt Shopping
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Joseph Gordon-Levitt)
a slight step up
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
Taylor Lautner
A bit of a shame that Blake Lively only hosts once, she does appear in I Just Had Sex and a cameo in a mothers day monologue but she was quite good as a host.
The original idea Jason (who co-wrote it with Colin Jost) had was for two hipsters to be advertising an underground music festival that’s somewhere in NYC but impossible to find. They tried it with January Jones in her episode and with Nasim in the Joseph Gordon-Levitt episode. Jost describes in his book that at 2 am on writing night of this week Mike O’Brien, who was in his first year as a writer had this idea to parody Gathering Of The Juggalos after seeing a commercial for the 10th anniversary of it and wanted Colin’s help on it. Jost told Jason about it and the three of them wrote the reworked version of Jason’s festival idea shifting it from being hard to find to focusing on what kinds bands and activities would be at the festival. Jorma Taccone saying “Mrs. Potato Dick” gets me every time.
Potato Chip Thief is an all-timer. The dress rehearsal version which airs in the network rerun is about seven minutes long and they had to cut out about a third of it for the live show. Here’s an article detailing how it came to be. https://uproxx.com/tv/snl-potato-chip/
The most interesting tidbits to me are that Forte just about blew out his voice doing it at dress, it was cut from the Taylor Swift episode despite her being “Very pro Potato Chip” and that Jason has this whole backstory of how his character from this sketch changes his name and becomes the judge from the Maine Justice sketches in a nod to Quentin Tarantino.
Small correction because I just found this article from The New York Times in 2010 which has a slightly different timeline than the one Colin writes about in A Very Punchable Face. Justin Long was the one who showed Mike & Colin the Gathering Of The Juggalos infomercial during the week of the Drew Barrymore episode.
https://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/26/fools-gold-an-oral-history-of-the-insane-clown-posse-parodies/?src=mv
A couple of days after it aired Violent J & Shaggy 2 Dope from ICP told the Detroit Free Press that they enjoyed the sketch and took it as a compliment because “if SNL knows who you are, you know you’ve gotten big.”
I sat shiva for Ass Dan.
I found “Kickspit Underground” so absolutely, unbelievably great when it first aired – one of my very favorite things from this whole era. Jason’s screaming, joyful proclamation of mimes running about is absolutelyBURNT into my memory. Unless I’m just totally missing it, why doesn’t SNL have this inaugural Kickspit up on YT?! Later installments were fun, but IMO they never topped this first one.
Oddly, I had totally forgotten about “Potato Chip Thief” until reading this review, but as I recall it, also a fantastic piece. It’s weird Will Forte; ’nuff said.
As for the Cosby rap album, I actually have it; I found it at a Goodwill last October. It was so bizarre, I just had to drop $2 on it. While undoubtedly a novelty (with an added bit of subsequent notoriety for, uh, obvious reasons), it’s not quite the dose of insanity I was hoping for, mainly because Cos himself doesn’t rap on it (that I’ve heard; as you may imagine, I haven’t exactly spent a whole lot of time listening to the thing). Instead, he has a group (the “Cosnarati”) rapping ‘for’ him. It’s just socially conscious hip hop with the expected ‘positive’ slant to it.
Not only do I believe Potato Chip Thief to be Will Forte’s magnum opus (in terms of sheer absurdity) but also the quintessential defintion of a 10 to 1 sketch.
There’s something about Jason’s performance in the Kickspit sketches that seems different than most other Sudeikis performances, just like his look and voice. These sketches have a similar feel to sketches that involve a narrator yelling about quasi-cool things that are available at certain locations (the Black Friday sketch with Anne Hathaway, some of the “Your Church…House…Graduation” sketches). I wonder if the writers are the same or not.
Blake Lively to me is sort of the prototypical “solid” host. She can’t really enliven shit material, but she does just fine and very good work in the top material in this episode. I remember reading the oral history of the potato chip sketch and wondering how Taylor Swift’s take on Blake’s character was. I would have been surprised that either performer could play the material well, but Blake does a good job and Taylor was a good host, so who knows?
The potato chip thief sketch actually grew on me at first. I wasn’t crazy about it when it aired live, but I think I was just too tired and tuned out. It’s now obviously amazing–the audience doesn’t really know what to make of it, but it benefits from the amazing commitment by the actors/characters to the insane logic of the sketch. Jason’s character sincerely wants to be an astronaut, yet he also inexplicably can’t not eat the potato chip. A far lesser sketch would have ended in a mocking way, yet the odd, theater-like melodrama of Jason proudly yet foolishly leaving as Blake/Will discuss what happened has always stuck with me. It’s like if Flannery O’Connor wrote a SNL sketch about potato chip thievery at NASA.
I remember loving the Brittany Murphy bit and also remembered how awkward the timing was. “Ladies and gentlemen, Blink 182!”
A surprisingly light night for Kristen, and by that I mean she was in like four things. I’ve gotten so used to her getting a ton of spotlights in each episode that still being in that many sketches is light for her standards.
I think that an episode just needs at least three great sketches to make it memorable, so this certainly fits that with Underground Rock Minute, Shy Ronnie, and Potato Chip Thief. The Underground Rock Minute sketches might be my favorite thing Nasim ever did on SNL. Everything else was so ho-hum that I don’t recall any of it despite rewatching it yesterday (especially Abby’s Brittany Murphy piece since that’s been buried.) Though that cold open was kinda fun too.
Geez, between Chris Hansen, that haunting Update, the Tiger Woods sketch, Fredbama, and Virginiaca, I can’t imagine what a Vintage airing of this ep would scrape together.
“UUUAAAGGGHHH!!! POTATO CHIP THIEF!!!!” is one of my favorite host line readings. Will Forte’s last masterpiece airing on the same night as the final wretched Virginiaca is a true moment of moving into a new era, even if they probably didn’t know that at the time…
Blake Lively is, as said above, the definition of a competent host. I can’t say I’m sorry she never hosted again, but she does a decent job, certainly did try hard, and is a key part of a wonderful sketch.
The Tiger Woods sketch was – and seems to remain – extremely controversial, not helped by the musical guest being the victim of a high-profile domestic violence incident (Rihanna later said that while she deplored violence, SNL makes fun of everything). I understand the complaints, but my main issue with this it how padded it feels – not even Jason can make this feel less sluggish. The same problem plagues that Staten Island Gossip Girl sketch – just endless, and comes across like they knew they had to write about Gossip Girl but no one actually wanted to bother.
Is this the last time we see the cast as Muppets? I know we’ll be getting a real Muppet cameo soon-ish. I am not that into the modern Muppets so I just prefer seeing the cast playing their own versions – Bill and Andy have always been a delight, and now Jason’s Fozzie is just as special. The sheer joy of Bill in these is really something.
Even beyond the unfortunate commentaries, Update feels off. Seth seems extremely distracted and punchy, stopping through two jokes to ramble. A very weird energy. I’d love to know what was going on.
Shy Ronnie is fine (I like the second one more), but not one I connect to as much as some other Lonely Island pieces; it comes across as a bit shtick-y. I will say they make great use of Rihanna’s talents, both vocally and in her performance. She and Andy have a neat little rapport in these that makes me wish they’d worked together elsewhere.
I like the Kickspit sketches, but after the first they all start to seem alike, or cashing in on the strengths of the debut. The later versions which try to make OTT moments out of the everyday, like the Christmas mass, are more to my taste. Everyone is great in these, but Nasim really comes into her own – you can already see by this point how some of the writers had honed in on her talents in a way they never really did with Abby, Casey or Michaela.
Promo (there are some sound quality/loudness issues). The first bit was very amusing to me for some reason.
I would suggest that this is not Forte’s masterpiece. There’s another one yet to come, although with a very different tone.
I’m probably the 1,000th person to make this joke, but Shy Ronnie would unironically be a popular rapper nowadays. Helps that he looks like Arnold Perlstein mixed with Lil Xan.
This episode holds a place in my heart because it was one of the first I ever saw.
I mainly remember that Tiger/Elle Woods sketch with all that tabloid-like behavior that ensued. I remember being amused by it. Shy Ronnie was okay. I might have thought Abby’s Britany Murphy was funny then but definitely not now. I think I do remember the Potato Chip Thief was hilarious. I guess that’s all I’ll comment on…