Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
THE RUSH LIMBAUGH SHOW
marginal backers replace Rush Limbaugh’s (TAK) deserting sponsors
— Great to see featured player Taran starring in a solo cold opening for a change.
— The “motto” for Syria Tourism Board being “Aah! No! There’s nowhere to hide!” is hilarious.
— Some good laughs from the strange, low-budget companies that don’t exist in real life being the only sponsors Taran’s Rush Limbaugh has left. Also, am I correct in remembering SNL would later use this same concept of “Controversial right-wing TV/radio host lists off their show’s strange, low-budget, non-existent-in-real-life new sponsors, after losing most of their big-name sponsors due to recently saying something offensive” in a Laura Ingraham cold opening? In fact, I think it was in one of the last new SNL episodes I ever watched before starting my (still ongoing) hiatus from watching new episodes. So that would pinpoint the Laura Ingraham cold opening in question as being from about November 2018. In fact, coincidentally, it may have even been in that season’s (season 44) Jonah Hill episode. (For the record, the final new episode I watched before starting my hiatus was season 44’s Steve Carell episode. And, yes, the quality, or lack thereof, of that episode played a part in my decision to go on a long break from watching new episodes, though the main reason was my increasing dissatisfaction with SNL’s quality in general at the time.)
— I got a big “Oh, so wrong” laugh from the bit with the Fake Rape Whistles sponsor.
STARS: ***½
MONOLOGUE
Tom Hanks [real] puts an end to Oscar nominee host’s week of pomposity
— A fairly fun monologue premise, with a video chronicling Jonah’s week at SNL.
— Interesting seeing SNL’s wardrobe room, which I don’t think we’ve seen all that often over the years, surprisingly.
— A particularly funny comment from Bobby pointing out Jonah’s glasses keep getting smaller while his scarves keep getting bigger.
— TOM HANKS!
— As always, Tom is reliably funny here, especially when he cruelly fakes Jonah out by acting like he was going to let Jonah have one of his Oscars.
STARS: ***½
SIX YEAR OLD
back at Benihana, 6 year-old Adam teases his dad’s (BIH) girlfriend (VAB)
— This character from Jonah’s first hosting stint has officially become recurring.
— This sketch of Jonah’s was solid the first time, and I don’t mind seeing it become recurring, but boy, is it lazy on SNL’s part to place this character in the EXACT SAME Benihana setting from his first sketch. There are so many settings you can place this character, so why keep him confined to the Benihana setting from his debut?
— At least we get a nice new addition to this sketch with Vanessa as Bill’s new girlfriend.
— It turns out that Jonah continues to do a solid job as this character, and, like last time, I’m getting good laughs from his Borscht Belt-esque one-liners, helping me overlook my frustration with SNL lazily reusing the Benihana’s setting.
— I notice that Jonah’s occasionally causing himself to break out into brief giggles in the middle of some of his lines, but it’s not detracting from the quality of this sketch or anything.
STARS: ****
SCIENCE FINDERS
tennis balls to the groin put stress on (host)’s heart; John MacEnroe cameo
— Not too sure about this concept. And after how bad a lot of this season’s Digital Shorts have been, I have a right to be wary of this short.
— The endless replaying of Jonah’s yell from the initial groin hit he suffers has a “So dumb, it’s funny” quality.
— A pretty good laugh from Jonah immediately getting hit in the groin a second time as soon as he removes the ice pack from his injured groin.
— John MacEnroe makes yet another SNL cameo.
— While the concept of this short remains a little questionable, the execution isn’t bad. Again, there’s a “So dumb, it’s funny” quality to this short, further helped by how it’s being presented in such a mock-serious way.
STARS: ***
J-POP AMERICA FUN TIME NOW!
samurai-wannabe (host) has bad swordsmanship
— A funny visual of the exams that Taran and Vanessa turned in, shown by Jason.
— For the first time, the guest in this recurring sketch is male.
— Holy hell at that samurai voice Jonah’s attempting.
— I love the photo of Taran and Vanessa hosting a Rastafarian version of this show. I actually would like to see them do that version of this sketch.
— All of a sudden, Jonah has begun helplessly laughing his way through his lines, for no visible reason. He would later reveal in an interview that the reason for his laughing in this sketch is because (and this is from my admittedly faulty memory, so some details may be a little off) he spotted a friend of his in the floor seats of SNL’s audience, and remembering the odd laugh that friend has induced a laughing fit from Jonah himself.
— No idea how to react to the song Jonah’s doing, but I can see a “So bad, it’s good” quality (which is probably what they’re going for).
STARS: ***
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Simple Song”
WEEKEND UPDATE
diabetic Paula Deen (KRW) responds to family problems & charges of racism
ANS doesn’t realize how bad his Sarah Palin impersonation is
Stefon’s St. Patrick’s Day plans involve a long kiss with SEM
— Meh, not sure I need a second appearance from Kristen’s Paula Deen, after her first appearance in a sketch from the preceding season’s Scarlett Johansson episode. I was okay-ish with that sketch back then (probably only because I had just suffered through that St. Kat’s Middle sketch and was desperate for a laugh), but this impression of Kristen’s, and, more specifically, that voice she uses, are all better left in small doses. I didn’t even remember until now that this impression of Kristen’s ever made a second appearance.
— Well, just now, Kristen’s Deen made a passing mention of the Three Stooges (or, as she calls, “a three stooge”), so that’s something, at least (for me, anyway).
— What the hell was with that ending of Kristen’s Deen commentary??? Was that even an ending???
— Ha, Andy showing up doing Tina Fey’s trademark impression, Sarah Palin.
— I like the meta, self-aware direction this Palin commentary has gone, with a sotto voce Seth calling Andy out on all the inaccurate things he’s doing in his Palin impression, and how he should just leave this impression to Tina.
— Ha, speaking of meta, I love Andy quoting “Daaa Bears!” as one of Palin’s alleged catchphrases.
— Here’s our Stefon commentary. This particular one is fairly important, as a special moment happens at one point during it.
— Funniest comments from Stefon tonight are the mention of an old Pakistani woman that looks like a California Raisin, the trivia game “Shaun White or Bonnie Raitt?”, one of the clubs mentioned having the name “…………..(*looks around in a concerned manner*)…………Kevin????”, the mention of black Irish comedian Sinbad O’Connor (I wonder if the latter is writer John Mulaney making an intentional nod to a memorable line from SNL’s classic The Sinatra Group sketch), and Stefon’s explanation of what a Human Roomba is (the latter of which makes Bill bust up in particularly hard laughter, even moreso than he usually does in these Stefon commentaries whenever he reads a newly-rewritten line on the cue cards).
— And there’s the aforementioned special moment of tonight’s Stefon commentary, with him following his “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” button gift to Seth by suddenly giving the unsuspecting Seth a big, long kiss on the lips, complete with playful slaps to his face during the kiss. Certainly much more acceptable than most of SNL’s “men kissing each other for an unnecessary cheap laugh” moments from the late 90s to the early 10s, and it’s also yet another thing that continues the growth of the great story arc between Stefon and Seth.
STARS: ***½
PRIMATE RESEARCH CENTER
(host) is outed as a racist zoophile by the ape he taught to speak (FRA)
— Good make-up on Fred, rendering him downright unrecognizable.
— A quintessential example of a “Jonah Hill as a character who gets humiliated by something personal about himself getting exposed” sketch that seems to be his SNL trademark (aside from the Six Year Old sketches), as this type of sketch (often involving Jonah getting called out on clogging a toilet) appears at least once in a lot of his hosting stints.
— I’m not enjoying this sketch. Even for “immature, crude humor” standards, it feels below par and isn’t remotely funny to me. Also not helping is Fred’s delivery. Something about the VERY slow-paced, beast-like, slightly-hard-to-understand delivery Fred’s deliberately using as the ape when disclosing all of Jonah’s deviant actions is getting on my nerves.
— Overall, oof. Didn’t care for this AT ALL.
STARS: *
LIZA MINNELLI TRIES TO TURN OFF A LAMP
on Cats’ opening night, Liza Minnelli (KRW) does what the title above says
— A variation of Kristen’s Ann-Margret Tries To Throw Away A Wad Of Paper Into A Trashcan sketch. I liked that one, but yeah, I did NOT need a follow-up.
— This version seems to be more well-known among people than the Ann-Margret version, which is odd to me, because I’m finding this one to be FAR inferior to the Ann-Margret one. Also, the concept of “Celebrity has a difficult time doing a simple task” was far more fitting & fun with the Ann-Marget dancing routine. Compared to that, this Minnelli sketch is doing too much by having Kristen’s Minnelli wandering around aimlessly and rambling about random things, and it’s not funny AT ALL to me. And at the risk of sounding redundant after what I just said about Fred’s voice in the preceding Primate Research Center sketch, adding to my lack of enjoyment of this Minnelli sketch is the annoying delivery Kristen’s using. I know she’s just trying to sound like Minnelli, but her attempt at it is annoying as hell to my ears.
STARS: *
SIDE NOTE: The mid-commercial break shot of SNL’s studio shows the set for a SportsCenter sketch finished being assembled on the home base stage while Jonah and Jay, both dressed in character (complete with wigs), can be seen among the performers taking their place for the sketch (screencap below).
However, when SNL comes back from the (very long) commercial break afterwards, what do we see? Jonah dressed as himself and standing by the audience while introducing The Shins again, who proceed to launch into their second musical performance. So…what the hell?!? What happened??? Why’d SNL decide at LITERALLY the last minute to cut the SportsCenter sketch, after going through all the trouble of getting the set assembled and getting all the performers into costume? I guess they realized during the commercial break that there’s not enough time to do that sketch AND the 10-to-1 sketch that we’ll be seeing after the second Shins performance. And, knowing in hindsight what the ending of the 10-to-1 sketch has in store for us, I assume SNL didn’t want to risk the ending of that 10-to-1 sketch getting cut off due to the show running long, so they decided to scrap the about-to-air SportsCenter sketch.
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “It’s Only Life”
ANNIVERSARY SONG
(host)’s anniversary surprise for (KRW) turns into “C U When U Get There”
— A funny unexpected turn with the soft, classical music suddenly turning into upbeat hip-hop music, and Jonah breaking out into a singing of Coolio’s “C U When U Get There”, all to Kristen’s utter confusion. All the absurdity here is pretty fun.
— Now this has gotten even more fun with Kristen having a change of heart and deciding to happily go along with the “C U When U Get There” musical number, after Jonah wins her over with his big explanation for why he’s using that as their anniversary song.
— Oh, hell yeah. Now this has gotten EVEN MORE fun with all of the performers dancing their way off the set and, while still dancing and singing “C U When U Get There”, going through SNL’s studio and interacting with the audience.
— I like how, while the performers are going through SNL’s studio, Kristen and Jonah are starting to comically exaggerate their singing to each other, in a manner that you can tell they’re having so much fun with each other. They’ve both been having strong chemistry all throughout tonight’s episode. Even at the end of that Liza Minnelli sketch that I absolutely hated, we got to see Kristen and Jonah having fun together with the goofy dance they were doing while hamming it up in each other’s faces.
— Ha, an absolutely perfect ending, with the In Memoriam graphic of Coolio, which, as soon as it showed up, initially made some viewers back in 2012 (including myself) think “Wait, WTF? Coolio DIED?!? When did this happen? How come I’m just now hearing about this, in an SNL sketch of all things?”, until you notice the year they put for his death: 3162. Absolutely hilarious and awesome.
STARS: ****½ (the entire last minute of this sketch was great enough to bump the rating up)
GOODNIGHTS
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— The first half of this episode was absolutely fine, but once Weekend Update ended, the show crashed-and-burned hard with the first two post-Update sketches (which worryingly seems to be becoming a trend for this season lately, given the fact that the post-Update half of the preceding Lindsay Lohan episode also fell horribly apart), only for the show to thankfully rebound nicely with the very enjoyable 10-to-1 sketch.
— This episode seemed to have a lower-than-usual number of sketches, which is odd, because nothing felt particularly long in this episode, aside from Weekend Update. Update must’ve been even longer than I thought if it took up THAT much of the show to the degree that it left a shorter-than-usual amount of time for sketches.
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
RATED SEGMENTS RANKED FROM BEST TO WORST
Anniversary Song
Six Year Old
The Rush Limbaugh Show
Monologue
Weekend Update
Science Finders
J-Pop America Fun Time Now!
Liza Minnelli Tries To Turn Off A Lamp
Primate Research Center
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Lindsay Lohan)
a step up
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
Sofia Vergara hosts. We also get a new female addition to the cast, a certain female who’s still in the cast today in 2020.