Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
NEWT GINGRICH: MOON PRESIDENT
in 2014, triumphant Moon President Newt Gingrich (BOM) sees Earth explode
— This is the third consecutive cold opening about a republican presidential candidate, the last two of which have been huge misses, but this is a refreshing and creative change of pace, with Bobby’s Newt Gingrich being the moon president two years in the future. This is fun.
— Interesting seeing Bill do a Ronald Reagan impression.
— Bobby’s Gingrich, as his salutation to Nasim: “And may divorce be with you.”
— Some funny insane embellishments in how Gingrich’s presidency will go.
STARS: ***½
MONOLOGUE
audience members deny having been customers of former stripper host
— A nice confident entrance from Channing Tatum, even sliding down the banister of the stairs in front of the entrance door, which I’ve never seen a host do.
— Good appearance from Kenan as “Big Ronnie”, Channing’s guard.
— A funny overconfident delivery from Taran of “I’ll have you know we haven’t had sex in 10 years!”
— Not caring at all for the turn with Channing’s whole interaction with Fred.
— Andy gets a laugh with his usual, reliable goofiness.
STARS: **½
IT’S GETTING FREAKY WITH CEE LO GREEN!
Matthew McConaughey (host) & Colonel Nasty (BIH) counsel
— The second and final appearance of this sketch.
— Only three segments into the first episode after Paul Brittain’s mysterious mid-season departure, and SNL has already had to replace a role of his. One of the horn players in the band within this talk show sketch was played by Paul in the first installment, and Fred has now taken over that role, even wearing the same wig Paul wore.
— A good Matthew McConaughey impression from Channing, but like I said in a previous episode review, McConaughey impressions are a dime a dozen.
— Much like in a typical Justin Timberlake-hosted episode, we have female audience members screaming at practically everything Channing says and does.
— This is still a fairly fun installment of this sketch, but I’m not finding it to be quite as fun or enjoyable as the first installment. It’s probably for the best that SNL ended up retiring this sketch after only two installments.
STARS: ***
DOWNTON ABBEY
Spike TV promo for Downton Abbey is geared toward a young audience
— Between the ESPN Bowl Madness commercial from two episodes prior and now this commercial, Andy’s carving out a niche for himself lately as a solid voice-over of a certain style of SNL commercials, which is interesting in hindsight, knowing we’re in the final months of Andy’s SNL tenure.
— Funny concept of Spike TV advertising Downton Abbey in their usual “x-treme”, bro-type manner.
— A solid ending line, with the voice-over opting to call Downton Abbey “Fancy Entourage”.
STARS: ***½
NBC FOOTBALL PROMO
NBC’s Super Bowl coverage team utters eccentricities during a promo shoot
— A good laugh from Kenan’s random breastfeeding line.
— A lot of funny odd, disturbing revelations from each anchor before they all do their lower-head-and-then-slowly-raise-it bits, though the latter is getting a little too redundant for me.
STARS: ***½
SECRET WORD
Mindy Grayson & probed astronaut (host) are ineffectual
— (*groan*)
— Hmm, the “funny story” that Bill recounts to us (him telling his wife, in regards to her new pantsuit, “If I wanted to make love to a man, I’d join the navy!”) is something I can picture Kenan’s future recurring character, Reese DeWhat, saying during the usual parts of each Cinema Classics sketch where he recounts a rude thing he once said to his wife. That makes sense, given the fact that these Secret Word sketches are written by the same writer(s) who would write the Cinema Classics sketches (James Anderson and/or Kent Sublette). I’m not 100% sure about that, though, so please correct me if I’m wrong.
— Channing’s character, while a change of pace for this recurring sketch, isn’t quite working for me the way most of the characters played by SNL hosts in these Secret Word sketches do. Bill’s seriously the only thing holding this sketch together for me.
— Ugh, somebody shut this Mindy Grayson character the fuck up already. This character, who was already annoying to begin with, continues to get even more and more on my nerves with each passing installment of this sketch lately.
STARS: *½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Holocene”
WEEKEND UPDATE
Guy Fieri (BOM) presents some impractical Super Bowl party food ideas
Lana Del Rey (KRW) addresses negative reaction to her performance on SNL
— Seth, to Bobby’s Guy Fieri: “Guy, I’m excited for these recipes. Are you ready?” Bobby’s Guy Fieri: “I was born crazy!”
— Bobby’s always fun as Guy Fieri, and is elevating the okay material he’s been given in this commentary.
— Boy, Bobby’s delivery has suddenly started getting really stumbly during the portion of the commentary where he list off the many ingredients of a complicated meal. In his defense, he does have a lot of wordy dialogue in this portion.
— Ah, another instance of Update’s tradition of a tree frog joke always getting interrupted.
— Oh, turns out the interruption to Seth’s tree frog joke is caused by Kristen as Lana Del Rey, addressing the real-life backlash Del Rey received from her musical performances in the preceding episode. Interesting meta-ness here.
— So far, this Lana Del Rey commentary is basically SNL being preachy to us on why the internet is wrong in their heavy criticisms of Del Rey. I gotta say, though, SNL’s not wrong. And there are some laughs here from the points being made about the internet’s overreaction. I remember being very salty towards this preachiness from SNL when this originally aired, but now, I can see where they’re coming from.
— In one of the points Kristen’s Del Rey passive-aggressively makes about why the internet is wrong, she says she failed to reach the “high bar” set by previous SNL musical guests such as Bubba Sparxxx, Baha Men, and Shaggy. A funny line, but to nitpick, 1) Baha Men technically were never a musical guest, they were just uncredited special guests in one episode who randomly performed a brief snippet of their one hit during a going-to-commercial shot, and 2) are they seriously lumping Shaggy with Bubba Sparxxx and Baha Men??? Am I missing something? Since when is Shaggy a national joke? And I don’t recall his SNL performances being bad or ridiculed by viewers. From that same time period of musical guests (because SNL is apparently unaware that bad musical guests existed before and after the early 2000s), I’m sure SNL could’ve found a more ridiculous musical guest that deserves to be lumped with Bubba Sparxxx and Baha Men. Sisqo, anyone?
STARS: ***
BAT MITZVAH
neighbor (host) dances dirty with (NAP) at her bat mitzvah
— Some good laughs from the inappropriate wild dance moves that Nasim and Channing are doing, interspersed with appropriate tame dance moves that Nasim’s character’s mom taught them.
— Funny cutaway to Abby during the aforementioned inappropriate wild dancing.
STARS: ***½
RUBY TUESDAY
stocky Janet (BOM) hits on Tom Brady (host) on the eve of the Super Bowl
— I love Bobby’s opening line, when reacting to seeing Channing’s Tom Brady: “Oh, shut your moooooouuuuuth! Tom Brady at Ruby Tuesday?!?”
— Bobby has the ability to make a hacky “man in drag” role funny. I even laughed at him obnoxiously making raspberry sounds with his mouth while calling over the bartender.
— I think I recall there being a bit of controversy regarding Bobby’s character having the same name (Janet Peckinpaugh) as a real-life person who’s a congresswoman or something like that.
— Some funny oddball revelations from Bobby’s character about herself.
— Boy, SNL sure botched that freeze-frame on Channing, by accidentally freeze-framing on him too late when he started walking out of the shot to get ready for the next sketch (screencap below), AFTER he held a pose for a long time to allow SNL to do their freeze-frame on him.
STARS: ***
GO-TECHS FLEX
(host) & (KRW) amateurishly endorse Go-Techs Flex oddball exercise system
— Meh, this isn’t working much for me. Usually, I love random, bizarre humor, but the randomness and bizarreness of this particular commercial feels like it’s trying WAY too hard, and it feels like Kristen’s just playing a stock “zany character with a weird hairstyle” role that SNL loves typecasting her in during her later seasons.
STARS: **
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Beth/Rest”
BONGO’S CLOWN ROOM
retiring strip club deejay Tommy intros hardly-sexy male dancers
— An odd choice of a sketch to bring back, given the fact that Jason’s character was retiring from his job at the strip club in the first installment of this. And he’s retiring AGAIN tonight, a year later? I can’t complain, though, as Jason absolutely killed it in this sketch the first time, and I’m looking forward to another great performance from him.
— Has Channing danced in literally EVERY SINGLE SEGMENT he’s appeared in tonight (including the monologue)? Sure feels like it.
— Jason: “Got great news from my sister today: my nephew does not have ADHD, he’s just a little dickhead!”
— As usual for this sketch, tons of hilarious lines from Jason all throughout.
— Jason’s line about “that Sandusky fella” was so funny that it even caused Jason himself to crack up.
STARS: ****
GOODNIGHTS
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A better episode than I recall. (I remember kinda trashing this episode when it originally aired, and I think I ultimately deemed it to be the worst episode of this entire season.) It turns out this episode was decent and passable, but nothing special as a whole, with the only sketch I rated higher than three-and-a-half stars just being a retread (though a damn funny one).
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
RATED SEGMENTS RANKED FROM BEST TO WORST
Bongo’s Clown Room
Newt Gingrich: Moon President
Bat Mitzvah
Downton Abbey
NBC Football Promo
It’s Getting Freaky with Cee Lo Green!
Ruby Tuesday
Weekend Update
Monologue
Go-Techs Flex
Secret Word
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Daniel Radcliffe)
a slight step down
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
Zooey Deschanel
I think I agree with your original assessment, this was pretty much a front to back dud for me, the first of this season. At least the requisite late era Jim Downey political cold open of the night wasn’t horrendous for once.
I know people who love Target Lady or even Garth and Kat, but I don’t think I’ve ever met a single soul that cared for Secret Word. Just tedious.
I know its months away at this point, but man I am interested to see your thoughts on Chappelle’s episode. Last night we got what’s easily the longest monologue in the show’s history (and in my opinion, one of the best).
Chappelle’s 2nd monologue was in fact, the longest one in SNL History at about 16 and a half minutes. In fact, I believe the previous record was the 11 minute monologue that Dave did in 2016. So unless they invite him back for a 3rd stint, that’s gonna be nearly impossible to top.
Agreed it won’t be topped, especially because the long monologue and looseness of the show felt like Lorne being a little more lax than normal, due to it being an unprecedented sixth show in the row, and a night I imagine most of the (most very left-leaning) cast wanted to celebrate (Bowen tweeted him & Ego were already drunk by the goodnights)
Without spoiling too much for Stooge, I’ll just say the 16 minutes was totally justified. The longest aside from Dave’s two monologues must be Don Rickles, who clocked in around 10 minutes.
Yea Rickles is third, with Louis CK at 4th & 5th (I forget which ones of his). Mulaney’s from a couple weeks ago was up there, at 9 and a half minutes.
How Long Was John Mulaney’s Monologue From Last February 2020 ? That Was About The Founding Fathers Where The ARMY Can NOT Live in Your House, Jesus Doing Magic For The Disciples, He Was Promoting March And He Had That Sick Girl Wanting To Meet Miranda Lin Manuel ! ! !
Janet Peckinpaugh was a well known local Connecticut news anchor for many years and I believe Bobby is a UCONN alumni so it definitely seems plausible that’s where Bobby got the inspiration from.
Also RIP Trebek 🙁
Hopefully you can be with your mother in heaven. Of course, you’ll have to give her a few minutes, she’s a bit busy with Connery right now
Channing sucked as the host. Everything he appeared in was not only bad, but he dragged down all the sketches he appeared in. Nothing he did was funny. The worse of the bunch was the Cee Lo talk show. The screaming from the audience didn’t help. Plus, anyone can do a McConaughey impression.
The Lana Del Rey segment was very smug, self-indulging, and narcissistic. SNL was saying “we don’t care” to those online not only critical of the show, but also to anyone who didn’t like the real Lana’s performance. It also felt like they were defending her so they can bring her back for future episodes. It just left a bad taste in my mouth.
The monologue to me pretty much set the tone for how the episode was going to turn out. It was basically Channing just there to be “sexy” and play himself. Basically, it was pandering to those who saw him as eye candy. None of the cast made the monologue any better. In fact, those who played the audience members who pretended to forget seeing the host as a stripper gave dreadful performances, while Taran’s was even worse, especially with his delivery.
The rest of the episode was forgettable. This goes to show the impact the host made on SNL.
Speaking of Timberlake, doesn’t he make a cameo on Maya’s show as Bon Iver?
Yes, SNLLover: Timberlake does cameo in (to date) Maya’s lone hosting gig to date as Justin Vernon — the lead singer of Bon Iver. With them as musical guest on Tatum’s, also, long hosting gig: I remember having to put the closed captions on & my volume up. I could barely understood what they were singing.
Cody, that’s Justin Vernon for you. Its like trying to understand Thom Yorke, there isn’t much point.
Anthony,
Shockingly, I’ve never had a hard time translating or deciphering Radiohead — esp. Thom. But Bon Iver? Well.. But, I see your point.
Also just to add: very weird series of musical guests with this episode and the ones preceding and following it. Karmin was flat out terrible from what I remember, and Del Rey & Iver (both artists I like) were either big on nerves or just having off nights.
As I vividly recall, I know the mass populace hated Karmin — but not me. However, the musical guest after them, Sleigh Bells, on Zooey Deschanel’s episode was far deserving of the vitriol that Karmin got.
Anyway, just my 2 cents… ?
Karmin was actually on Zooey’s episode, Sleugh Bells was on Maya’s episode. Agreed tho, Season 37 in general had a lot of shitty music.
Eli Manning, hosting a few months from now, would win his 2nd Super Bowl the day after this show
I believe Seth made a podcast appearance around this time where he is asked about the Lana controversy, and he says that he didn’t understand the criticism at all because the only thing he found strange about her performance at all was that she didn’t change outfits between the first and second song – as usually performers like her would take their appearance as a moment for fashion. I actually like their addressing it, and i like that they defended her – women in music tend to face absolutely baseless criticism online, and when there is something to be criticised such as a bad performance, women get far more severe attacks than men. SNL would have missed a trick by not addressing it, and the way they did it by defending her, but also to an extent poking fun at her persona and stage presence, I think works well!
Nerd Alert: This is the first time the musical guest is introduced from a straight on home base shot since 1995!
Shaggy is not a joke, but his song Bombastic would be a meme shortly after this, particularly a performance by an obese rat in the 2006 Nickelodeon animated movie Barnyard.
Yes, I typed that correctly- the rat was named Biggie Cheese.
Bubba Sparxxx isn’t a national joke, either – an easy target in 2012, yet the future’s backin’ up the pickup truck to deliver a nice wet load of bro-country. Get your boots.
For me, the main problem with the Lana Del Rey commentary piece is it becomes dated right after SNL milks the moment for publicity. It’s something designed knowing most outlets focus on the “haha, Del Rey is a fraud?” angle, and ONLY that if the piece isn’t a review or recap. To SNL’s credit, it doesn’t jump on that bandwagon nearly as much as loading political cold opens with cameos, yet the show can’t wrap itself around a higher standard when it mostly books based on mainstream popularity and exploiting trends.
The day after this episode, SNL’s cast (sans Jason, who I guess was busy elsewhere) took part in a Super Bowl plugfest which also features the casts of 30 Rock and Parks and Rec at the start. A glimpse at an era that would soon change far more drastically than NBC had ever imagined.
Once you get past two complete and total scumbags, the cast appears at around 3 minutes and 10 seconds. It’s fascinating just how much the caste system of SNL (especially modern SNL) shows up even here in terms of who is placed where and how much focus they get. I don’t know whether to laugh or shake my head at poor Abby being almost completely blocked out by Kristen (not Kristen’s intent, I’m sure).
Another ep that I hardly remember…
Just rewatched this one today. Not a total dud, but the absolute worst Secret Word of them all, and that says something.
My lord, what a truly awful recurring. Californians is bad, but it knows it’s bad. Absolutely nothing redeeming here.
This is the vintage show on January 29th.
Two weeks ago NBC showed the Lana Del Rey episode (Daniel Radcliffe) and last week was Charles Barkley. These three episodes were all in a row in Season 37 (eps 11-13). I’m not sure why NBC chose to do this. Maybe they want to move to a format of showing Vintage episodes from 10 years earlier.