October 2, 2010 – Bryan Cranston / Kanye West (S36 E2)

Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars

PRESS CONFERENCE
Rahm Emanuel (ANS) & new chief of staff Pete Rouse (BOM) are antithetical

— I always love Andy’s portrayal of Rahm Emanuel. A bit of a shame this is one of the last times we’re going to see it (he makes one more appearance in the cold opening of this season’s Jeff Bridges episode).
— Good turn with Andy’s Emanuel giving Bobby’s Pete Rouse frightening, overly-intense advice.
— Bobby’s nervousness and whininess as Rouse is pretty funny.
STARS: ***½

MONOLOGUE
host hopes to up his name recognition with “Charlie Kane” variant

— Funny underwear photos of Bryan Cranston throughout his career.
— Geez, they’re wasting Bryan on a freakin’ song-and-dance monologue? And a very generic one at that? (*sigh*)
— Nothing particularly noteworthy about the song, except a laugh from the big photo of “Bryan Cranston” (really Bill Paxton) that Nasim is briefly seen carrying into the shot.
STARS: **

PEPTO-BISMOL ICE
Pepto-Bismol Ice brings diarrhea relief during a night of clubbing

— A decent and strangely-kinda-cool premise of a version of Pepto-Bismol that’s marketed as a malt liquor for clubbing.
— Pretty funny interaction between Andy and Nasim.
STARS: ***

THE MILEY CYRUS SHOW
Miley Cyrus (VAB) doesn’t let Johnny Depp (PAB) say much

— Wow, it shows a lot of confidence on SNL’s part to place such a big Vanessa Bayer showcase in the lead-off spot of this episode, when Vanessa’s only in her second episode as a featured player.
— Vanessa’s take on Miley Cyrus is very solid. This is an important moment for her, as it ends up being her breakout role.
— Odd to see in retrospect that the first installment of this soon-to-be-recurring-sketch has Bryan playing Billy Ray Cyrus, given the fact that Jason would take over the role in all subsequent installments.
— I love that tonight’s lead-off sketch is now heavily featuring TWO newbies, as Paul (in his first noteworthy SNL role) has now shown up as Vanessa-as-Miley’s interviewee, Johnny Depp.
— Turns out Paul’s performance as Depp is nothing to write home about. He’s doing a pretty generic take on Depp, and it’s not showing off Paul’s comedic skills.
— Given how new Vanessa is, it’s charming seeing her soaking in the extended audience laughter she gets after she says “Yeah, me, too” in response to Paul’s Depp saying he’s taken on darker roles.
STARS: ***½

WHAT UP WITH THAT? BACK TO SCHOOL EDITION
Morgan Freeman & Ernest Borgnine [real] sit & watch

— Vanessa has taken over Jenny Slate’s role as one of the backup singers of this recurring sketch, and Taran has taken over Will Forte’s role as the announcer.
— Great guests in tonight’s What Up With That: Morgan Freeman and Ernest Borgnine!
— I love the anxious, stifled-mouth look on Kenan’s face during Morgan Freeman’s serious spiel about school (the sixth above screencap for this sketch).
— Absolutely hilarious visual of Bryan as a George Clinton-esque singer. Also, the detail of him in briefs is a good callback to the monologue.
— The “back to school” theme of tonight’s What Up With That is adding a nice bit of a change of pace to this recurring sketch’s formula.
— I like the creepy-eyed look on Paul’s face during the Mary Kay Letourneau / Vili Fualaau bit.
— The big open-mouthed smile on Ernest Borgnine’s face throughout this sketch is so fun and charming.
STARS: ****½

BASKETBALL GAME
on a basketball court, Shana simultaneously attracts & repels co-workers

— For the second time tonight, Taran has taken over a recurring Will Forte role.
— On a similar note, Abby has taken over the “ignored girl” role that Casey Wilson and Jenny Slate played in the previous two installments of this recurring sketch. Unlike Casey and Jenny, Abby doesn’t end up suffering the “curse”, in which each cast member who plays the “ignored girl” role in this recurring Shana sketch gets fired before getting to appear in a second Shana sketch.
— Bryan’s disturbing turned-on facial reactions to Shana’s actions are pretty funny. He’s making something out of a fairly nothing role.
— As usual, standard Shana stuff, but it still works for me. What doesn’t work for me in these sketches, however, is the repetitiveness of Andy, Kenan, and Will/Taran’s reactions to Shana.
— Hmm, this installment is going a little too heavy on the burp/fart humor.
— This sketch surprisingly ends up being Kristen’s ONLY appearance all night, believe it or not.
STARS: **½

RESCUE DOGS 911 APP
emergency response promotes movie & thwarts robbery; Helen Mirren cameo

— An extremely random brief cameo from Helen Mirren (who will be hosting later this season) in the Rescue Dogs promo shown on Andy’s phone.
— For the names shown in Andy’s address book, SNL uses the first and/or last names of SNL writers and other staffers from around this time, strangely even including two writers who got fired (or left on their own, I’m not sure) after the preceding season: Hannibal Burress and Jillian Bell.
— A laugh from Kenan’s “Let’s shoot this motherf(*bleep*)” and subsequent gunshot when Bobby has shown up as the pizza delivery guy.
— Good visual of the rescue dog chewing off Fred’s arm.
STARS: ***

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Power”

WEEKEND UPDATE
Anthony Crispino is misinformed about Ground Zero mosque & LeBron James

as her comic strip run comes to an end, Cathy (ANS) plans for retirement

— Bobby’s second-hand news guy, Anthony Crispino, has officially become recurring.
— Like last time, some amusing false into relayed by Bobby’s Crispino, though his false info tonight feels a little less funny than the ones from his first appearance.
— Seth sure loves breaking out that German accent whenever he does an Update joke about Germany. I love his delivery during the World War I Reparations joke tonight.
— This is the first time Andy’s Cathy has appeared in over a year, and, I believe, the last time we’d end up seeing her.
— Hilarious how the sentimental Cathy goodbye montage consists of just two brief clips.
STARS: ***

KID SMARTZ
(KET) is lone contestant to rebuff emcee’s (host) kisses

— Bryan is a natural as a cheesy game show host.
— I see SNL’s doing a spoof of a real-life viral video of an early 1980s children’s game show host creepily taking delight in kissing his prepubescent female contestants on the cheek.
— Aaaaaaaand cue the obligatory “hilarious” man-on-man kissing between Bryan and Andy.
— This sketch now takes another horrible turn, with us not only getting a Kenan In A Dress sighting, but him portraying this particular female character in his tired “sassy black female” manner.
— Somehow, this sketch continues to get even worse as it goes along. What is the point of this mess?
— The Bryan/Andy portions of this sketch are some low-rent Vogelchecks-level shit.
— Overall, wow, that was just awful.
STARS: *

THE BJELLAND BROTHERS
zero-hit wonders (host) & (FRA) perform song about sparkling apple juice

— In both of Jason’s only appearances all night, including this sketch, he’s just playing a background role with no dialogue. Geez. Really, SNL? (Granted, one of those background roles of his was in What Up With That, where his background dancing always steals the show, but still, it’s fucking insane that a veteran as fantastic and reliable as Jason gets stuck in nothing but non-speaking background roles in an episode from his SEVENTH season.) Bill, who’s playing the guitarist in this sketch, has also gotten shockingly very little to do in tonight’s episode. All of this combined with Kristen only appearing in one sketch all night (albeit in a lead role) is quite jarring.
— This sketch is destroying my patience, between the annoyingly repetitive “I’ve sent a bottle of sparkling apple juice…etc.” singing, and the lame lines about how poorly the careers of Fred and Bryan’s characters have gone. Fred used to be so masterful at doing anti-comedy pieces back when he was in his prime earlier in his SNL tenure. This sketch’s seeming attempt at anti-comedy is just sad and frustrating.
— I could do without the audience participation bit.
— Lame ending line from Fred: “This is the only song we’re doing tonight.”
— Overall, the second consecutive sketch tonight that I absolutely hated. What’s happened to this episode all of a sudden?
— This sketch would later be replaced with the dress rehearsal version in reruns. Two big differences I remember in that version: 1) the placement of the cast members playing Fred and Bryan’s band is different, with Jason’s drummer character now being very visible behind Fred and Bryan during the entire sketch, instead of being off to the side where we can only occasionally see him whenever the camera cuts to a wide shot of the stage. 2) Whenever Fred and Bryan ask the audience to sing some of the lyrics of the repetitive chorus, the audience humorously doesn’t respond at all (keeping up this sketch’s illusion that nobody’s in attendance at Fred and Bryan’s concert), unlike the live version, where the audience did respond, which hurt the joke (as bad as the joke was).
STARS: *

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest & Pusha T [real] perform “Runaway”

BASEMENT KARATE
fifth-grader Henry (NAP) suffers his dad’s (host) self-defense lessons

— A laugh from Bryan bluntly punching Nasim’s young boy character in the face when making him simulate an attack.
— Yet another solid characterization from Nasim as a child character. This character’s manner of describing the flaws in his own fighting performances throughout this sketch is amusing me.
STARS: ***½

i-SLEEP PRO
black noise generator allows (KET) to slumber peacefully

— A fairly cheap and stereotypical premise, but at the same time, it’s a pretty fun and unique way to utilize newbie Jay Pharoah’s talent for doing many voices, as he’s providing all of the various recorded “black noise” voices heard from the i-Sleep device.
— I particularly like the Friday bit, with Jay doing the voices of both Ice Cube and Chris Tucker’s characters from Friday. Odd, though, how Jay has done a Chris Tucker impression in the 10-to-1 segment in both of his first two episodes. This kinda reminds me of when Rachel Dratch, back when she was a new featured player, played Calista Flockhart/Ally McBeal in both of her first two episodes.
STARS: ***

GOODNIGHTS

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IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— An okay episode, and, like a lot of other episodes from around this time, was not as bad as I had remembered. (As I mentioned in a recent review, I tore this episode apart in my original 2010 review of this episode, and, much like my original 2010 review of the Ryan Phillippe episode, it ended up receiving a lot of backlash from members of the now-defunct saturday-night-live.com message board, who felt I was being way too negative and “nerdy”.) That being said, that horrific one-two punch of Kid Smartz and The Bjelland Brothers airing back-to-back damn near destroyed me. Bryan Cranston sadly wasn’t used to his full potential in this episode, and was given a few too many poor roles, but he still managed to make the most of it.

MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS

RATED SEGMENTS RANKED FROM BEST TO WORST
What Up With That? Back To School Edition
The Miley Cyrus Show
Basement Karate
Press Conference
Rescue Dogs 911 App
Weekend Update
Pepto-Bismol Ice
I-Sleep Pro
Basketball Game
Monologue
The Bjelland Brothers
Kid Smartz

HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Amy Poehler)
a slight step down

My full set of screencaps for this episode is here

TOMORROW
Jane Lynch