October 11, 2014 – Bill Hader / Hozier (S40 E3)

Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars

KIM JONG-UN
sore-footed Kim Jong-un (BOM) can’t convince his army that he’s healthy

— Mikey Day! I’m surprised to see him appearing so early in my SNL project (seen behind Taran and Beck in the second above screencap for this cold opening), as this is two seasons before he would get promoted from a writer to a cast member. I didn’t know he made onscreen appearances as an extra this early into his tenure as an SNL writer. I’m aware he has some noteworthy actual speaking bit roles towards the end of the following season, which was probably Lorne testing the waters with Mikey as a possible future featured player.
— It also feels kinda odd to see Mikey and Taran standing right next to each other here, knowing in hindsight that Mikey would basically replace Taran’s spot in the cast when he’s added to the season 42 cast right after Taran’s firing.
— Good performance from Bobby as usual, but so far, the material itself is bad.
— It’s now a minute later, and yeah, it’s definitely safe to say the writing of this is pretty awful. It’s sad that the most interesting thing about this entire cold opening is the sighting of a pre-cast member Mikey Day as a silent background extra.
— This season so far is now 0-for-3 in good cold openings, with tonight’s cold opening being the worst of the three.
STARS: *½

MONOLOGUE
KRW & Harvey Fierstein [real] draw forth BIH’s deep singing voice

— Lots of fun energy from Bill Hader at the very beginning of this, getting the crowd hyped up.
— A comforting demeanor from Bill here, and I particularly like him sharing the true story of how Megan Mullally discovered him and suggested him to Lorne.
— (*sigh*) It’s way too soon for yet another Kristen Wiig appearance, after the Cameo Torturefest that was the season 39 finale. I know Kristen is the co-star of the Skeleton Twins movie that Bill is promoting in this hosting stint, but still, come on, SNL.
— Blah, I could’ve done without Bill making a “Don’t make me sing” reference.
— Kristen at least does have a few mildly amusing Wiig-esque deadpan random lines.
— (*groan*) Cue the musical monologue. Between that and a Wiig cameo, there’s a lot for me not to like in this monologue. Bill deserves so much better than this.
— Not even the gag with Bill’s comically-deep singing voice is doing much for me.
— Harvey Fierstein cameo. At least he’s always a pretty fun presence.
STARS: **

WXPD NEWS NEW YORK
crotchety Herb Welch whiffs on high school abstinence pledge story

— Good to see Herb Welch back, even if these sketches got repetitive towards the end of their original run.
— Taran’s anchorman character opens this sketch by saying he’s filling in for Jack Burns. If that was supposed to be a mention of the name of Jason Sudeikis’ character from previous installments of this sketch, they got his name wrong. It’s Jack Rizzoli, I believe.
— I got a good laugh from Herb Welch rudely telling Taran, “I know you’re smooth down there!”
— Another good angry remark from Herb Welch to Taran: “Stick a Zagnut in it, sideburns!” I don’t know if John Mulaney writes these Herb Welch sketches or not, but that Zagnut line had a very specific Mulaney feel to me.
— Yet another good line from Herb Welch to Taran, with Herb responding to a “Why didn’t you…” question of Taran’s by rudely asking him, “Why didn’t your wife take your last name?”
— It feels a little odd not seeing Jason in the anchorman role. Taran is fine here, but I’m not finding him to be quite as strong as Jason was in this role. Jason had a better and funnier chemistry with Bill in this sketch’s previous installments.
— Surprised by how short this overall sketch was. What we got was certainly fine, but was too much of a straight rehash of previous installments. They didn’t try doing ANYTHING new with the formula this time.
STARS: ***½

THE GROUP HOPPER
movie comprises young-adult fiction cliches

— Some funny lines from the movie trailer voice-over throughout this.
— Beyond commercials/trailers I vaguely recall seeing back at this time in 2014, I have no real familiarity with the Maze Runner movie that I think this pre-tape is spoofing. However, that’s still enough for me to “get” and enjoy this spoof.
— Hilarious look and voice from Bill.
— Pete’s doing a solid job in this out-of-his-element role.
— When Sasheer reveals that she’s a virgin pregnant with Pete’s baby, I absolutely love Pete’s delivery of “Well, that sucks!” into the camera.
STARS: ***½

HOLLYWOOD GAME NIGHT
Al Pacino (BIH), Kathie Lee Gifford (KRW) & other celebrities are unhelpful

— Very fun performance from Kate as Jane Lynch.
— Lots of other amusing impressions from the cast.
— (*groan*) Oh, come on, SNL! Kristen Wiig in a second appearance tonight?
— Am I crazy, or does it kinda sound like SNL’s using a phony laugh track at the beginning of Kristen’s appearance as Kathie Lee Gifford, particularly when she mimes drinking from her wine glass? I’m not trying to be mean or anti-Wiig with that observation, as I can understand the audience’s amusement towards Kristen’s Kathie Lee shtick, even if I myself am not laughing at it in this sketch (I did like it in the later Today sketches from Kristen’s tenure as a cast member, but that was in the past, and I sure as hell wasn’t clamoring for the random return of her Kathie Lee shtick in this Bill Hader-hosted episode), but the audience laughter at her antics at the beginning of her appearance here just sounds strangely kinda canned to me.
— I love Kate-as-Lynch’s frustration over the dumb answers the celebrity contestants give. I’m also getting almost a Will-Ferrell-as-Alex-Trebek vibe from said frustration of Kate’s Lynch, even though this sketch obviously doesn’t come remotely close to approaching the quality of a typical Celebrity Jeopardy sketch.
— (*groans again*) Not only is Kristen needlessly appearing in this sketch like I pointed out earlier, but she is ALL OVER it, getting a large majority of the comedic lines with her old Kathie Lee shtick. Oh, I’m starting to get those very unfortunate “season 39 finale” vibes agaaaaaiiin….
STARS: **

HELPFUND
poor HelpFund beneficiaries wish (BIH) would ask for more than 39 cents

— Great turn with Jay, while tending to his labors, discreetly whispering to Bill, “Ask for more!” and “Ask for more money!”, while Bill is speaking into the camera about 39-cent donations.
— I love how a now-frustrated Bill, still speaking into the camera, keeps trying to drown out the conversation the citizens are having in the background about the measly 39-cent donation amount Bill keeps asking us for.
— Yes! Then-writer Leslie Jones in another onscreen appearance! She’s gotten so noteworthy in her occasional onscreen appearances by this point of her tenure as a writer that you can actually hear a woman in SNL’s audience cheer “Woo-hoo!” when Leslie enters this commercial.
— The questions that Bill is now being bombarded with by the four citizens as they crowd around him are excellent.
— I howled at the four citizens all throwing their hands up and exclaiming “Awwwwww!” in an aggravated manner when Bill takes a wild guess and says that the country he’s in is Africa.
— An excellent ending line from scene-stealer Leslie Jones, delivered into the camera, as Bill is being taken away against his will: “If you wanna see this cheap-ass white man again, you better send us $200 cash, right now! Don’t hesitate!”
— An overall perfect, spot-on, and brilliant takedown of these ads.
STARS: *****

JAN HOOKS TRIBUTE
BIH & KRW mark JAH’s passing

“Love Is A Dream” {rerun}

— Hoo, boy. This is going to be really emotional for me to get through.
— Man, do I vividly remember how extremely heartbreaking it was when the sad news broke about Jan Hooks’ death earlier that week.
— I’m very appreciative that SNL has taken the time out of a new episode to give Jan a much-deserved full-fledged tribute. Given the fact that, after she left SNL, she never achieved the post-SNL fame she deserved, nor did her amazing SNL tenure go on to be anywhere near as known among people as it should be (I’m still fuming at all of the rude “Uh, Jan who???” comments I remember reading shortly after her death, on social media and in the comments section of news articles announcing her death), I recall being kinda doubtful during this week in 2014 if SNL’s then-upcoming Bill Hader episode would do a full-fledged tribute segment to Jan, complete with an intro featuring somebody eulogizing Jan, or if SNL would go the usual route of just throwing a brief little In Memoriam photo or clip of Jan after Weekend Update or before the goodnights. I was very glad to see they ended up going the full-fledged tribute segment route.
— Speaking of a tribute to Jan, the episode that aired on SNL Vintage (which was only in its second-ever month on the air at this time) earlier the same night of this Hader episode was also a wonderful way to pay tribute to Jan, as it was the Alec Baldwin episode from season 15, which is undeniably Jan’s absolute best episode as a cast member. (The Tom Hanks/Aerosmith episode, also from season 15, was originally scheduled for that weekend’s SNL Vintage slot, but after Jan’s death, they made a last-minute change to air the Baldwin episode as a way to honor Jan.) For some great praise I gave to Jan in that Baldwin episode, and a story I shared about how my very first viewing of that episode back in a Comedy Central rerun in 2000 instantly made me a huge Jan Hooks fan, here’s my review of it.
— A nice simple, short, and heartfelt message here from Bill and Kristen about Jan. Given the fact that I’m sure both Bill and Kristen were big fans of the late 80s era of SNL and probably grew up idolizing that cast, I wonder if they persuaded Lorne to put on a full-fledged tribute for Jan, instead of a measly still photo or brief clip. Maybe I need to give Lorne more credit, though, and assume that a full-fledged tribute for Jan was his own choice.
— For my full thoughts on the Love Is A Dream short film that’s receiving an encore presentation, read it here in my review of the episode it originally aired in.
— Even though Love Is A Dream was previously already shown as a tribute to the deceased Phil Hartman during SNL’s 25th Anniversary Special (and would spark some unfortunate, “What?!? That short didn’t have any laughs! Why didn’t SNL honor Phil with one of his actual FUNNY sketches?!?” comments from some online SNL fans back at that time in 1999), it’s still a perfect choice for a tribute to Jan. Such a beautiful, wonderful short, and given the strong connection that Phil and Jan always had both as cast members and as people, it’s very fitting and poignant that the same short film would be aired as a tribute for both of them at separate times.
— Speaking of Phil’s death, I’ll quote something I wrote in my afore-linked original review of this short, as it bears repeating in this Bill Hader episode review, since the Hader episode is mentioned in the quote: “The part right now with Phil’s character first showing up reminds me that when this film aired as a tribute to Jan in the aforementioned Hader episode, it wasn’t until Phil’s entrance that it fully hit me that both cast members in this film are now gone. And then my heart sank.” As an addendum to that quote, just let me add right now that, as long as I live, I will never forget that eerie, vivid heart-sinking feeling that I mentioned in the quote.
— Given the context of why this short is being re-aired in tonight’s episode, the ending of this short has honestly reduced me to a crying, blubbering mess right now (even moreso than it did when I previously reviewed this short in the afore-linked review), so much so, that I actually have to pause the video I’m watching of this episode so I can have a moment. That has rarely, if ever, happened to me during this SNL project of mine.

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Take Me to Church”

WEEKEND UPDATE
PED mostly regrets his decision to buy a gold chain to get hip-hop cred

all of Stefon’s autumn entertainment recommendations feature Dan Cortese

— Michael, in another early instance of him or Colin going off on a stand-up-style rant about a news story, makes a particularly funny hypothetical quote at one point of his gay marriage talk, about how there are some people in gay couples who REALLY don’t want to get married: “You know, I wanna marry you! But society, man…….”
— Great to see Pete in his second Update commentary, just two episodes after he knocked it out of the park with his first.
— Some good comments from Pete here, and, like his first Update commentary, he’s coming off likable and relatable. However, his commentary tonight is nowhere near as strong as his first one. Some of the material in this one feels kinda ho-hum.
— Only three Updates into this new Jost/Che era, and Colin and Michael’s delivery already kinda feels to me like it’s practically reached the stage that’s now considered to be their trademark delivery. (Maybe it only feels that way to me because it’s been a long time since I’ve last seen a present-day Jost/Che Update.) However, they’re still doing a lot of Seth Meyers-esque jokes in these early Updates of theirs. But, as I said in my last episode review prior to this one, their delivery makes those jokes work far better for me than Seth’s delivery ever did.
— Reminiscent of Stefon’s last few appearances during Bill’s tenure as a cast member, the audience is already cheering WILDLY while Michael is only in the middle of setting up Stefon’s commentary.
— I love how tonight’s Stefon commentary begins with him looking around at the new Update anchors and new Update set in a puzzled manner, then asking “How long have I been on anesthesia???”
— Very funny how Stefon responds to seeing the multiracial pairing of Michael and Colin by lustfully saying, “Mmm, one of each!”
— Yet another very funny remark Stefon makes about Michael and Colin, referring to them as “Barack and Mitt”.
— A few slow portions early in tonight’s Stefon commentary, but it’s getting better and better as it goes along.
— Bill is noticeably stumbly with some of his lines in tonight’s Stefon appearance, but it’s forgivable when you’re aware that a lot of Stefon’s lines are traditionally re-written at the last minute by John Mulaney to surprise Bill on the air.
— Some of my favorite moments of tonight’s Stefon commentary: him imitating the Spanish TV voice-over of Seinfeld ads, him saying one club is located “where Donald Trump Jr.’s chin should’ve been”, him saying one club opened in the two hours between when Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett died, and, of course, that very memorable running gag tonight with how each different club Stefon describes has a mention of Dan Cortese, the latter gag of which is reducing Bill to absolute tears.
STARS: ***½

PUPPETRY CLASS
Anthony Peter Coleman brings traumatic Grenada tales to puppetry class

— Oh, what are you doing, SNL? While the original installment of this sketch is an all-time favorite of mine and many other SNL fans, a follow-up to it was never needed and will obviously never come close to measuring up to the original installment, which should’ve been left as a classic one-off. In fact, I remember Bill even doing an interview shortly after leaving the SNL cast, where, when talking at one point about the first Puppetry Class sketch, he mentions that when the idea came up at SNL to possibly do a Puppetry Class follow-up at one point of Bill’s final season as a cast member, Bill and the writer(s) of the sketch decided against the idea, because they knew there was no way to top the first installment and that it shouldn’t be touched. So what happened this week? Why’d they change their minds?
— Kinda interesting how both of tonight’s sketches that are brought back from Bill’s tenure (Herb Welch and this) have Taran replacing the performer who played the main straight man role in the previous installment(s).
— I like the “Mosquito…mosquito…mosquito” bit from Bill’s Anthony Peter Coleman.
— Coleman, when told to lighten the mood of his puppet because they’re telling jokes now: “Here’s a joke: GOD!”
— Wasn’t necessary to do a variation of the gag from the first installment where the puppet blows real smoke out of its mouth.
— It’s good to see Bill is still killing it in his portrayal of this character, even if this sketch itself pales in comparison to the first installment and is trying too hard to recreate it.
— Oh, I’m liking this flashback war sequence right now. A nice change of direction from anything that happened in the the first installment of this sketch.
— In the flashback war sequence, I love Bill’s delivery of “It’s not ya damn stuffing!”
— An empty ending to this sketch.
STARS: ***

INSIDE SOCAL
(PED) & (BIH) contribute reports from a teen perspective

— Nice to see this for a second time, as this works as a recurring piece.
— A funny tiff between Kate and Taran.
— Like the previous Inside SoCal installment, some of the little details and things add to the humor.
— Pretty fun addition of Bill as a reporter, and the unsure direction that his report goes in is providing some laughs.
— I love the heated fight that Beck and Kyle get into with Bobby at the end.
STARS: ***½

MUSICAL GUEST INTRO

— Showing how rather dominant she was back in the first half of this episode, Kristen Wiig shows up to flat-out do this musical guest intro by herself, as if she has gradually become this episode’s official host or co-host over the course of the night. Before you ask “What the hell?!?”, there’s a reason Bill isn’t doing this intro, as we’ll understand when we see him appear in the sketch after the following musical performance.

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Angel of Small Death and the Codeine Scene”

CAT
The Cat In The Hat’s (BIH) old flame (CES) derails kids’ rainy-day fun

— Pete has been all over this episode. That’s nice to see, after he was completely shut out of the preceding episode (which was shocking, given how highly-acclaimed his debut in the season premiere was). And given the fact that Bill was the one who originally discovered Pete and suggested him to Lorne (much like Megan Mullally did with Bill himself), it makes sense that Pete would be heavily utilized in this particular episode.
— Now we see why Bill couldn’t introduce Hozier’s second musical performance, as it seemingly took a long time to apply those Cat In The Hat prosthetics onto him.
— Very funny turn with Bill’s Cat In The Hat suddenly going from his typical goofy, jolly voice to a subdued, straitlaced voice when recognizing Cecily as an old flame of his.
— Bill’s doing a solid job in his back-and-forth shifts from “jolly mode” to “serious mode”.
— Absolutely perfect casting of Taran as Thing 2.
— Cat In The Hat: “Hey, Thing 2.” Thing 2: “(sternly) Actually, I go by Jonathing now.”
— A killer departing line from Bill’s Cat In The Hat: “Oh, the places she let me go…”
STARS: ****

GOODNIGHTS

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IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A good episode, but definitely not as strong as I would’ve expected a Bill Hader-hosted episode to be, which is further proof of how shaky the first quarter of this season has been. This episode was still easily the best of the three episodes this season so far, though. And Bill Hader was his usual excellent, reliable self. I’m also relieved that, aside from some Kristen Wiig appearances I griped about, SNL didn’t go the full route they went in the last hosting stint from a late 00s/early 10s-era cast member (Andy Samberg) by bombarding the whole episode with a “reunion” of the late 00s/early 10s cast.

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

 

RATED SEGMENTS RANKED FROM BEST TO WORST
HelpFund
Cat
(tie) The Group Hopper / Inside SoCal
WXPD News New York
Weekend Update
Puppetry Class
Hollywood Game Night
Monologue
Kim Jong-un

HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Sarah Silverman)
a step up

My full set of screencaps for this episode is here

TOMORROW
Jim Carrey hosts, and a certain scene-stealing female writer is added to the cast