Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
CONGRESSWOMAN MICHELE BACHMANN’S RESPONSE TO THE PRESIDENT’S STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS: THE SECOND ATTEMPT
Michele Bachmann’s (KRW) State Of The Union response has technical gaffes
— I barely remember the topical Michelle-Bachman-facing-the-wrong-camera speech that this is spoofing. Also, this seems like a flimsy thing to base an entire cold opening on.
— Meh, extremely predictable facing-the-wrong camera gags. The “flawed graph” gags aren’t doing much for me, either.
— That off-camera crash sound effect towards the end fell flat.
STARS: *½
MONOLOGUE
Mark Zuckerberg [real] reacts to portrayals of him by host & ANS
— Nothing much to say about this so far, but not bad.
— I got a laugh from Mark Zuckerberg cornily smiling into the camera when telling Lorne “Come on, I invented poking!”
— I love Andy’s “Awk-beeeerrrrrrg!” line during the Eisenberg/Zuckerberg meet-up.
STARS: ***
ONCE DAILY ESTRO-MAXX
pre-op transsexuals like (BIH) use Estro-Maxx hormone replacement therapy
— Ohhho, god. Much like I said about the Chaz Bono bit SNL did in the preceding episode, this transphobic commercial, which wasn’t remotely funny even when it originally aired in the pre-“woke” days of 2011, has not aged well AT FUCKING ALL. But what’s more is that, when this commercial originally aired, SNL deservedly ended up getting a lot of shit from GLAAD, who called the commercial out on its transphobia, and launched an online petition against SNL (here’s a link to an article). As a result, this commercial would end up getting removed from reruns.
STARS: *
MR. WIZARD’S WORLD
balloon-rubbing charges up teens (host) & (NAP)
— A very funny dirty turn this sketch takes with an innocent Jesse and Nasim curiously using balloons to experiment with each other’s private areas.
— Some good uneasy reactions from Bill as Mr. Wizard to Jesse and Nasim’s “experimentation”.
— Nasim’s sexual-related eagerness to use the Van De Graaff Generator is amusing.
— An impressively-fast wig change done on Nasim and Jesse when they were off-camera before we see them with their hair standing on end.
STARS: ****
DON’T FORGET THE LYRICS!
contestant’s (host) mistakes are Freudian slips
— Oh, wow, I completely forgot about this show (Don’t Forget The Lyrics) until now. (I feel like I’ve been saying that once in each of my latest episode reviews. This season’s been doing quite a number of spoofs of shows from the early 2010s that would end up not lasting too long.)
— Funny opening line from Jason’s Mark McGrath: “I’m your host, Mark McGrath, and yeah…I do this now!”
— I’m kinda meh on the main conceit with Jesse saying embarrassing incorrect lyrics to hit songs. I’m more amused by some this sketch’s throwaway jokes between Jesse’s songs (and even some of those aren’t too great).
— Okay, I did get a laugh from Jesse’s “Celebrate Saddam Hussein” lyric during his singing of the song “Celebration”.
STARS: **½
WXPD NEWS NEW YORK
Herb Welch gets defensive after botching college campus drug bust story
— These Herb Welch sketches have officially become recurring.
— The usual big laughs from Bill’s performance as Herb Welch.
— Good gag with Welch suddenly pulling out a second microphone and hitting Jesse with it right after hitting him with the first microphone.
— Bill seems to be amping up the mugging faces in some portions of tonight’s Herb Welch installment, but it’s not hurting this particular sketch.
— And now, right after one of his aforementioned camera-mugging facial expressions, Bill has started breaking, then turns away from the camera so we can’t see his laughing (the second-to-last above screencap for this sketch). An off-camera Jason ad-libs “Come on, Herb. Hold it together, Herb!”
— A very funny line from Welch, saying “There you have it: the city college now fully integrated” at the end of his interview with a black student.
STARS: ****
THE CREEP
(ANS), (Akiva Schaffer), (Jorma Taccone) & (musical guest) are stalkerrific; John Waters cameo
— Ha, a very random John Waters cameo. Good to see him.
— The usual very fun and catchy music video starring all three Lonely Island members.
— A particularly funny scene with a 6-year-old Andy creeping in the room that his parents are having sex in.
— Nicki Minaj is fitting well in this.
STARS: ****
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Right Thru Me”
WEEKEND UPDATE
Hosni Mubarak (FRA) is oblivious to his culpability for Egypt’s troubles
fabulously successful Tyler Perry (KET) isn’t put out by Oscar snubs
— (*sigh*) So far, this Fred commentary is coming off as the usual bad Fred-plays-a-foreign-political-figure-on-Update commentaries from around this time.
— Fred’s relying too heavily on those “D’youknowwhatImean?”s to milk laughs from the audience.
— Kenan’s Tyler Perry commentary started off slow, but has gotten funnier halfway through. I especially like him throwing in occasional non-sequitur statements about his success (“My best friend is Oprah”, “I own an island”).
— Seth’s been having a few really solid jokes tonight.
STARS: ***½
THE ESSENTIALS WITH ROBERT OSBORNE: BRIDE OF BLACKENSTEIN
Blackenstein’s (KET) Bride (musical guest) is Blaxploitatiously cheeky
— With this sketch, I see this SNL era is getting full mileage out of finally having a black woman on the show for once.
— A laugh from Jay’s “Oh, no, that’s not good” when finding out his Bride Of Blackenstein creation can speak.
— The line about Bride Of Blackenstein getting her mouth from “a ho who didn’t know her place” made me laugh a lot, though I feel a little wrong for it.
— Dr. Blackenstein: “You ever been with a sista?” Igor: “No.” Dr. Blackenstein: “Then you wouldn’t understand.” Igor: “I’ve just been with Jewish girls.” Dr. Blackenstein: “Oh, then you kinda understand.”
— Bill steals this whole sketch with his hilarious “70s pimp” voice.
— A funny drab close-up of Kristen’s flat butt in contrast to the various close-ups of Bride Of Blackenstein’s shapely butt.
STARS: ***½
SKINS
promiscuous druggie minors’ product placements restore ad revenue
— I laughed more than I probably should’ve at the announcer’s opening line, “You’re watching MTV. Shut uuuuuppp!”
— Well, to continue using my unintentional new catchphrase, I completely forgot about this show (Skins) until now. Watching this 36th season of SNL all these years later has become a nostalgia trip for things I completely forgot about, moreso than the last few seasons that preceded this.
— As this generic MTV programmer, Andy looks the same way he used to look when playing Kevin Federline several seasons prior.
— A big laugh from Andy referring to L’Oreal as “French Oreos”.
— A very amusing blooper with Andy accidentally knocking over the MTV Moonman award on the desk, and then, after both he and the audience can’t stop laughing about it, he just casually tosses the award off the desk while in the middle of delivering his lines.
— Some decent laughs from Skins desperately resorting to having its actors plug low-budget, random, out-of-place products during scenes.
— Abby: “That sounds great…for young vaginas.”
— A funny ending line from Paul, with him revealing “I’m 12”.
STARS: ***
SPA TALK WITH TYLA YONDERS
Tyla Yonders’ (KRW) poo-based balms don’t soothe family discord
— Like I said recently, I know it isn’t right to judge a non-recurring sketch from its first 15 seconds, but damn, I can already tell early on in this sketch that I’m in for a typical annoying, badly-written Wiig character piece. A lot of those just have a way of feeling D.O.A. right from motherfucking jump street.
— Kenan’s delivery is at least funny during his and Abby’s appearance.
— I’m getting no amusement from the arguments going on between the various families.
— Overall, as I expected, I did not like this sketch, nor did I like Kristen’s character, and I certainly didn’t like all the sophomoric, unfunny animal poop mentions. Thank god this sketch never ends up becoming recurring, given the fact that it kinda feels like it was set up to.
STARS: *½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Moment 4 Life”
EL SHRINKO
(ANS) & (host) claim they need to take a penis-reducing medication
— Despite this being another sketch with a sophomoric premise, this one is at least coming off mildly funny.
— I like Vanessa’s testimonial with her reciting her lines monotonely while eating chips.
— Another sketch-stealing walk-on from Bill tonight, as brief as this one was. I also love Andy’s reaction to him.
STARS: ***
GOODNIGHTS
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— An average episode, which has pretty much become par for the course this season. (I’m still waiting for that standout strong season 36 episode, and at this point, I’m sadly starting to think I’m never going to get it, and should just accept this season’s bland averageness.) The first half of this episode did have a few strong pieces, though.
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
RATED SEGMENTS RANKED FROM BEST TO WORST
The Creep
Mr. Wizard’s World
WXPD News New York
The Essentials with Robert Osborne: Bride Of Blackenstein
Weekend Update
Skins
Monologue
El Shrinko
Don’t Forget The Lyrics!
Congresswoman Michele Bachmann’s Response to etc.
Spa Talk with Tyla Yonders
Once Daily Estro-Maxx
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Gwyneth Paltrow)
a slight step up
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
Dana Carvey
I’ve always loved the Bride of Blackenstein. It’s where I first saw Bill’s ability for scene stealing, and there’s something surreal about seeing Jesse Eisenberg and Nicki Minaj in a sketch together.
I think Jay and Seth wrote the Blackenstein sketch iirc
Yeah I was kinda shocked when a few posters called this a great season. I didn’t remember it that way and the reviews seem to reflect the complete “cruise control” nature of this season.
Seth Meyer’s assembly line at work
Reading the reviews of this season in particular has become a pretty nice nostalgia trip for me, as this was one of the first seasons where I was watching live pretty regularly (’07-08 was the first season I began watching live), so I kinda have some fondness for this season, even if it ultimately wasn’t the most memorable. Reading the reviews and seeing the screencaps brings back a lot of small things (like Nasim’s incredulous “Wait, what is this FOR?” in the El Shrinko commercial, followed by Vanessa eating chips and her out-of-sync “Shrinko!” at the end).
For some reason, the “Don’t Forget the Lyrics” sketch is one i remember very well, and that has weirdly stuck with me and will pop up in my mind every once in a while, between Jesse’s cock-ups (“It’s not unusual if it was Toy Story 3!”) and Jason’s reactions and lines (“…under contract?… Oh, replaceable!”)
Jay and Seth wrote Blackenstein with Jost, while Mulaney wrote the monologue.
Looking back I forgot how boom or bust Taran’s first season was. This is one of like 3 or 4 shows he got shut out of, two episodes after his big success in Merryville Brothers.
Couple of quick observations: Herb Welch says “Lay it on me, my man!” and then breaks just as Stefon did in the Paul Rudd episode. Bill ‘s “70’s Pimp” voice is the same one he uses as Colonel Nasty in the Gettin’ Freaky with Cee Lo Green sketches from next season and Vanessa’s character in El Shrinko sounds fairly similar to Brecky from the We’re Not Pornstars Anymore sketches.
I didn’t care for this season at the time. I loved the cast but the writing was so bland. It didn’t help that Will Forte’s departure left a gaping void in the weirdo departement, which is my sense of humour. It wasn’t until the Jack Sparrow digital short that I felt the excitement of a truly classic sketch.
Season 36 and 37 are forgettable but season 38 is one for the ages in my eyes.
Paul was hailed as Will’s replacement in the weirdo department.
It feels like that label hurt Paul more than helped, as the expectations were on him but he doesn’t get the showcases to prove whether he has earned such a label.
Will was a genius, but was also somewhat fortunate to come into a cast not exactly full of strong male sketch performers. In comparison, the 10-11 cast was stacked in that department, which not only hurts Paul, but in the long run, doesn’t do Taran a lot of favors either, as by the time he is in a position to step into a leading role (13-14), the show is rocked by uncertainty and a ton of on and offcamera changes.
It’s slightly amusing to me that Skins is a tv show you’d forgotten all about, when the original UK series (of which the US version was based on) ran for 7 seasons and is still relatively popular today, or at the very least remembered today. It’s a shame though that the funniest moment of that sketch is Andy’s blooper with the award…
Also, someone mentioned it in comments yesterday, but it’s both fun and annoying that so much of the digital short is drowned out by Nicki Minaj fans screaming during her appearances. I love hearing how enthusiastic the fans are, and I also enjoy hearing studio reactions to pre-filmed sketches in general, but it does seem a little overkill! It’s also entertaining to see such a young and relatively new/green Nicki Minaj in this silly Loney Island video, I can’t really imagine her agreeing to that these days!
Interestingly, Nicki was in a digital short in 2018, but it was cut for time.
Is John Waters’ appearance in the Digital Short really random? The guys’ whole aesthetic seems to be modeled specifically on him.
I don’t mean to be pedantic. But if say, Derek Jeter or Carrie Underwood introduced the video…THAT would be random.
I wonder if they ever asked Nicki to host. She seems like someone they would have loved having around this time.
Andy seemed to be all over this episode – I guess because of the host. Another example of him not just being there for the digital shorts.
Another episode with a very “modern” SNL feel, not in especially positive ways (although, weak as it was, at least the cold open was not 10-15 minutes long).
I’m not sure whether this Mark Zuckerberg cameo (which got a lot of hot take Twitter notice last year as another example of SNL’s corporate ways) is as bad as the rotgut Bezos-buttkissing material in Steve Carrell’s last episode. That was putrid, and probably had worse writing than Jesse’s monologue, but at least you didn’t have the incredible awkwardness of Bezos trying to do comedy acting. I watched this monologue once, tried again this time, and just couldn’t do it.
The odd thing about the Estro Maxx ad is they removed it from the repeat yet felt free to upload it on Youtube a few years later, where it remains!
After getting such broad showcases in two big roles tonight, Kristen kind of sticks out in that El Shrinko sketch as it feels like something she’s outgrown. Still, she does a decent job in the cold open and in the Tyla sketch (even though I didn’t care for the sketch itself).
I’d love to know what was cut from Update in comparison to the two we got…
I don’t quite get the logic in having the very fun and lively Blackenstein sketch air later in the episode (was it a content issue?). Nicki’s line readings are a bit shaky, but she gives a lot of personality, and I just absolutely love Bill’s performance here, along with Kristen and the gag about her flat butt.
I also don’t get the logic in having two different “bad acting” sketches in one night – they just cancel each other out. The “El Shrinko” sketch at least has a few bits that entertain me, but the Skins parody has a weird “how do you do fellow kids” feel to it and an idea which doesn’t warrant a full sketch. Speaking of ideas that don’t warrant full sketches, that “Don’t Forget the Lyrics” has one or two good jokes (the Toy Story), but the rest just drudges on, and Jason’s part is oddly overwritten for reasons I don’t understand.
The Mr. Wizard sketch made me smile because I watched the original (Bill does a decent job at capturing his style), and then because it’s a fun concept mostly well-executed. Most of Jesse’s performances are too anxious for me to enjoy, but this one fit the sketch just right. Nasim is also great.
Another very good Herb Welch installment.
The Creeper video is another excellently made product for Lonely Island, also managing to seamlessly weave Nicki Minaj into the proceedings. Not quite one of my favorites from them, but one to go back and study.
Here is John Waters talking about his involvement:
https://www.baltimoresun.com/bs-mtblog-2011-01-john_waters_owned_the_best-story.html
Promos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-GiLIbtNZ0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq9dXyvkO4s
The Dana Carvey episode is one of the first I saw of these years. I remember finding it to be lacking in energy and tripping with gaffes, but maybe now that I’m more used to the vibe of this season, I will enjoy it more…
I mainly remember that Herb Welch sketch which was funny as always…