Author: Stooge

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October 25, 2014 – Jim Carrey / Iggy Azalea (S40 E4)

Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars

EBOLA PRESS CONFERENCE
Ebola czar Ron Klain (TAK) & Al Sharpton (KET) address public health

— As I said in a recent review, the constant then-topical Ebola virus mentions in these early season 40 episodes are relatable to our current COVID era.
— A few mild laughs from Taran’s Q&A session, but nothing special.
— The usual somewhat amusing comments from Kenan’s Al Sharpton.
— What was the point of having Beck as one of the reporters, when he has absolutely nothing to do or say at any point of this cold opening?
— Overall, while this cold opening wasn’t terrible, it was very forgettable, thus making this season now 0-for-4 in good cold openings. My goodness. I cannot remember the last season that started out with such a long consecutive losing streak with cold openings. Even the dreadful season 30 had at least one good cold opening by this point of that season.
STARS: **½


OPENING MONTAGE
— SNL writer Leslie Jones has been added to the cast, due to popular demand after making some very noteworthy, scene-stealing sketch appearances and Weekend Update commentaries.


MONOLOGUE
underworld rock & roll king Helvis (host) sings of his love for pecan pie

— Great costume from Jim Carrey upon his entrance.
— What was with the unseen voices of two(?) real audience members loudly howling “AWOOOOO!” in unison after Jim says Elvis Presley liked to raise a little hell? Or was that sound of men howling  “AWOOOOO!” just a planned sound effect played by SNL?
— Solid Elvis voice from Jim.
— (*sigh*) Yet another musical monologue. At least this has a fairly fun and out-of-the-ordinary concept for one, though.
— Meh, there’s SNL’s usual unnecessary habit of having a few cast members play cheesy backup dancers during a host’s musical monologue.
— Hmm, hate to say it, but nothing particularly funny at all is happening during the song, and I’m kinda starting to lose interest. Jim’s charm and fun energy is the only thing really carrying the song.
— Good ol’ Bobby shows up to add a little comedy. Love the way he pops into frame from under the camera as soon as his character is called.
— A nice wide shot of the studio during the camera pan-out at the end.
STARS: **½


LINCOLN
Matthew McConaughey (host) rolls a booger while driving his Lincoln

— A hilarious and spot-on spoof of Matthew McConaughey’s Lincoln ads, and this spoof is also serving as a reminder of what a good impressionist Jim can be at times.
— I think this is SNL’s very first mention of Uber, which I’m pointing out because of the excessive number of Uber mentions that the (infamous) following Chris Rock-hosted episode is said by SNL fans to contain. (I personally only remember one Uber mention in that entire episode, but we’ll see how many there are.)
— Very funny comment from Jim’s McConaughey about his agent telling him it would’ve made sense to do these Lincoln commercials after doing the movie The Lincoln Lawyer.
STARS: ****


CARREY FAMILY REUNION
(Jeff Daniels) & other kin are like host’s characters at family reunion

— A variation of the Walken Family Reunion sketch from Christopher Walken’s season 33 hosting stint.
— Leslie’s first sketch appearance as a cast member, and she already has a great little moment with her over-the-top laughing response to a mild joke of Jim’s, followed by her saying a well-delivered “You are so crazy, Jim Carrey!”
— I like seeing Jim and Taran play off of each other here, reminding me of their fun chemistry at some parts of Jim’s previous season 36 hosting stint.
— The set-up to the Cable Guy bit is (intentionally) predictable in a very fun way.
— A very solid Fire Marshal Bill from Cecily.
— I really like how, as a contrast to the Walken Family Reunion sketch, this sketch is featuring the cast imitating the host’s movie characters instead of imitating the host himself. (I’ve heard that the later Sandler Family Reunion sketch, which I’ve yet to see, takes that same route.) It makes the sketch feel less redundant in that way, and I’d say this cast is more successful at these Carrey movie character impressions than most of the season 33 cast was at their Walken impressions.
— A nice cameo from Jeff Daniels, complete with him fittingly dressed as Jim’s Dumb & Dumber character.
— I remember that, when I watched this episode during its original airing, I assumed the guy in the Riddler costume at the end of this was just an uncredited extra, until a backstage photo of Pete in the Riddler costume surfaced online shortly after the show. Watching this sketch now with that knowledge, it’s strangely kinda endearing to see Pete imitating Carrey’s trademark mannerisms, as it feels so different from the type of acting Pete usually does on the show.
STARS: ****


LINCOLN
with kids in his Lincoln, Matthew McConaughey (host) channels Rust Cohle

— Funny reveal of two kids unexpectedly being in the backseat of the car during all of this rambling of Jim’s McConaughey, then we get an even funnier reveal that he has no idea who’s kids those are.
STARS: ****


GRAVEYARD SONG
unscary dead guys Paul (TAK) & Phil (host) haunt a graveyard on Halloween

— Odd how this is the second consecutive live sketch with Bobby’s entire face painted a color. Did they just quickly slap all of this gray face paint over his green face paint from the previous sketch? It’s just amusing to me to imagine that, under all that gray he’s wearing on his skin in this sketch, his skin is entirely green.
— Another fun pairing of Jim and Taran.
— This clearly must be an early Mikey Day/Streeter Seidell writing collaboration, as this sketch’s concept not only has Day & Seidell’s familiar fingerprints all over it, but the specific “non-scary, musical, meme-ish, catchphrase-driven characters among a group of legitimately scary horror characters” theme is very reminiscent of Day & Seidell’s iconic David S. Pumpkins sketch from a few seasons later. This Paul & Phil sketch is basically the lesser-remembered precursor to David S. Pumpkins.
— Great “SHUT UPPPP!” outbursts from Bobby right now.
— I can’t find much else to say about the sketch itself. I’m enjoying it, and Jim and Taran are certainly fun, but I don’t find this sketch to be nearly as outstanding or as noteworthy as some of Day & Seidell’s later sketches with a similar theme (not just David S. Pumpkins, but, say, the Kevin Roberts sketch with Larry David, which is my personal favorite version of all these sketches).
STARS: ***½


ALLSTATE / LINCOLN
Matthew McConaughey (host) runs over Allstate spokesman Dennis Haysbert (KET) in his Lincoln

— An absolutely classic turn with Kenan’s Dennis Haysbert ironically getting run over by a car out of absolutely nowhere while in the middle of doing an Allstate commercial, followed by another absolutely priceless reveal of a meditating Jim-as-Matthew-McConaughey behind the wheel of the car, continuing the Lincoln runner of tonight. A simply perfect conclusion to this runner.
STARS: *****


MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Fancy”

musical guest & Rita Ora [real] perform “Black Widow”


WEEKEND UPDATE
romantic comedy expert Daisy Rose (VAB) forces meet-cute script on MIC

Drunk Uncle complains about feeling tricked & mistreated by Halloween

— Meh, didn’t the cold opening earlier tonight already make that Ebola joke about New York City now officially having every disease?
— Yeesh, Colin’s delivery of his opening run of Ebola jokes was pretty bad, which shows that, as much as I’ve been liking him on Update this season, he still certainly has some growing to do until he reaches the stage where he’s officially become a reliable co-anchor.
— Love the bit with Michael comparing Ebola to black people.
— A one-off(?) Update character for Vanessa, which I have absolutely no memory of. This could be interesting.
— Already, early in this commentary, Vanessa’s doing an absolutely spot-on and very funny spoof of typical “meet cute” tropes from romcoms.
— Michael is playing off of Vanessa perfectly, as he has some hilarious reactions and one-liners towards her.
— An overall very strong Vanessa commentary. I’m surprised by how much I had forgotten about this little gem from her until now.
— After a bumpy start at the beginning of tonight’s Update, Colin has gotten better, especially his “I thought ‘convicted sex offender’ was Here Comes Honey Boo Boo’s key demographic” punchline, which feels like the type of ballsy joke he’d do in more recent seasons. And Michael’s been having a few strong jokes tonight, too, especially his “sex study being perfected last night by…ya momma” punchline.
— Maybe I spoke a little too soon about Michael, as that brass knuckle/meth pipe joke of his was lame as HELL. However, something about his kiddie delivery of that joke’s punchline tickled me. It felt so odd hearing him talk in that kiddie voice.
— An absolutely PRICELESS beginning to Drunk Uncle’s commentary, where he, upon reacting very negatively to seeing Michael (for obvious reasons), actually scoots his own chair aaaallll the way over to the opposite side of the Update desk (I love how Michael can be heard incredulously asking “Are you seri–?” at one point during that) so he’s now sitting next to Colin for the remainder of this commentary. Not only was that an absolute riot, but that move of Drunk Uncle’s certainly has to be a first in Weekend Update history.
— (*sigh*) SNL, please STOP with that beyond-tired “That’s not me” “That’s not anyone” exchange in EVERY DAMN ONE one of these otherwise solid Drunk Uncle commentaries. Not even the audience laughed at that exchange tonight.
— Tonight’s Drunk Uncle commentary as a whole, while funny, was a little too average for his standards, and not one of his more standout commentaries. However, that fantastic “Drunk Uncle scoots his chair all the way from Michael’s side of the Update desk to Colin’s side” opening gag alone is one of the highlights of this entire episode.
STARS: ***


SECRET BILLIONAIRE
eccentric & elderly (host) seeks to pair with (CES)

 

— Jim accidentally enters the shot briefly while trying to discreetly take his seat as the camera is on Taran and Cecily.
— Something about this sketch is already giving off a bit of a dire, worrisome vibe, but I’ll try to remain open-minded towards this sketch.
— It’s now a minute later, and that dire/worrisome feel is sadly continuing. Maybe it’s something about Jim’s EXTREMELY slow-paced delivery as this character that’s hurting my enjoyment.
— Okay, that whole very-detailed story from Jim’s character regarding pleasuring himself in a hot air balloon and falling 3,000 feet was actually very funny.
— An even funnier detailed story from Jim right now, about an airplane hangar filled with 250 men named Dennis and one named Brian, and Jim theorizing how’d they all react.
— Cecily has some funny little straitlaced responses, especially her responding to one of Jim’s disturbing stories by innocently saying “Aww, I love seafood!”
— Overall, I have very mixed feelings on this sketch. It had such a bad and worrisome first two minutes, then suddenly became much funnier with some of Jim’s disturbing stories, but even with that upswing, the sketch still had a bit of an “off” feel to it, and I still can’t help but feel that Jim’s extremely slow-paced delivery hurt some of the humor of this sketch for me.
STARS: I’m still torn, but I’ll give it *** as a whole, just on the strength of that brilliant “Dennis/Brian” story


GHOSTS: FACT OR FICTION?
(LEJ) gets spooked during paranormal search

— A good first major showcase for Leslie as a cast member.
— A simple premise and simple writing, but Leslie is selling it very well with her character’s skepticism and various frightened reactions.
STARS: ****


HIGH SCHOOL
amid zombie attacks, (host) maintains his undead son (PED) isn’t infected

— A much funnier character voice from Jim here than in the Secret Millionaire sketch.
— The timing seems really off at certain points of this sketch. Odd long pauses and such, particularly when Jim is clearly very late on his cue when he’s supposed to feed Pete pieces of brains from his pockets.
— Funny interaction between Pete and Jay.
— Good zombie growls from Pete throughout this.
— Overall, despite a few laughs, this, much like the Secret Millionaire sketch, suffered from having too much of an “off” and dragging feeling, except, unlike the Secret Millionaire sketch, this one didn’t have enough merits to earn it a decent rating.
STARS: **


OFFICE COSTUME CONTEST
for office costume contest, (host) & (KAM) dance a la “Chandelier” video

— I love the controlled frustration in Sasheer’s delivery when correcting Vanessa by saying “……I’m Vanna White.”
— The whole sequence at the beginning of this sketch with Vanessa’s really bad guesses on what each co-worker’s Halloween costume is is fantastic, so much so, that I could watch an entire five-minute sketch with just Vanessa doing that. I especially love her confusing poor Aidy’s non-costume red dress as her being dressed as a meatball, which gets great reactions from Aidy.
— Fun concept of a Chandelier-themed Carrey/McKinnon dance-off in the office.
— Oh, hell yeah. I love the fourth wall-break turn with the Carrey/McKinnon dance-off going from the sketch’s set to all throughout SNL’s studio. It feels like you rarely, if ever, see a recent SNL season like this have a fourth wall-break that goes this extensive.
— So many fun antics from Jim and Kate in their around-the-studio dance-off, with them even now going through some of the sets from tonight’s earlier sketches. All of this is fantastic.
— I will say the Lorne bit was meh and kinda unnecessary, but it was brief enough not to particularly hurt the great vibe this sketch has going.
— More and more as Jim and Kate’s around-the-studio dance-off continues, this sketch is having a truly epic feel, the type of epic feel that kinda gives me goosebumps and makes me feel like I’m witnessing something truly special. In fact, when this originally aired, I remember this was among the number of Kate McKinnon moments from 2014-2017 that made me feel like I was watching a legend in the making.
— Excellent random ending with Aidy unexpectedly winning the office costume contest, which gets a perfect exaggerated puzzled reaction from her.
STARS: *****


MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest & MØ [real] perform “Beg For It”


GEOFF’S HALLOWEEN EMPORIUM
Geoff’s (host) Halloween Emporium proprietor is possessed by a demon

— Interesting pairing of Vanessa and Cecily in this speaking-straight-to-the-camera ad, making this kinda feel like a bizarro universe version of the ex-porn stars sketches.
— Great vocal modifier on Jim.
— Jim’s vocalizations and mugging are priceless. You can tell that, at one point, Jim is attempting to crack Vanessa and Cecily up, but those two are such pros that they don’t bat an eye.
— Unless I’m forgetting something, it had been a long time since SNL last broke out the ol’ vomit tubes prior to this sketch. A nice disgusting touch with the vomit in this particular sketch being black/dark brown, which perfectly fits Jim’s demon character.
STARS: ***½


GOODNIGHTS

IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— While definitely not having the overall classic feel that a Jim Carrey-hosted episode should have (and did have, in Jim’s beloved first hosting stint), this was still certainly a good episode, and received a nice amount of sketch ratings in the high 4-5-star range from me (granted, three of those were the Lincoln three-part runner).


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


RATED SEGMENTS RANKED FROM BEST TO WORST
Office Costume Contest
Allstate / Lincoln (Part 3)
Lincoln (Part 1)
Carrey Family Reunion
Lincoln (Part 2)
Ghosts: Fact Or Fiction?
Geoff’s Halloween Emporium
Graveyard Song
Weekend Update
Secret Billionaire
Ebola Press Conference
Monologue
High School


HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Bill Hader)
a slight step up


My full set of screencaps for this episode is here


TOMORROW
Chris Rock / Prince

Posted on

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

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

Posted on

October 4, 2014 – Sarah Silverman / Maroon 5 (S40 E2)

Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars

60 MINUTES
Barack Obama (JAP) gives examples of the online savvy of ISIS

— Some mild laughs here and there, but this cold opening is mostly dragging. Feels like the typical tepid, dull, overly-talky political humor that Jim Downey used to regularly write in his past-his-prime later years at SNL, even though he officially left the show over a year before this. (He was credited as a guest writer in the preceding episode this season, which had a cut-after-dress-rehearsal Obama cold opening that tonight’s different Obama cold opening has repurposed some lines for, but Downey’s not credited as a guest writer in this episode.)
— Overall, this season so far is 0-for-2 in good cold openings.
STARS: **


OPENING MONTAGE
— The overhead shot of 30 Rockefeller Plaza with the G.E. sign in plain view (first screencap below), which was shown between the musical guest and host portions of this new opening montage in the preceding week’s season premiere, has been replaced tonight with a long shot of New York City (second screencap below). I recall hearing that the reason for this change is because of a G.E./Comcast sign changeover at 30 Rock.

— I forgot to mention this in my review of the preceding episode when bringing up the fact that Darrell Hammond has taken over as SNL’s new announcer, but Darrell’s announcing sounds very low-key in these early episodes compared to how he would sound in later seasons. I remember some online SNL fans back at this time saying Darrell’s announcing is too unexciting. I assume that, at some point, someone at SNL must’ve had a talk with Darrell, telling him he needs to up the energy.


MONOLOGUE
SAS sits on audience member’s lap & takes questions from her younger self

— Some pretty funny jokes from Sarah Silverman in the first few minutes of this monologue, and I loved the cue card bit, but I’m even more excited by the great turn this has now taken with Sarah actually going into the audience and sitting in an audience member’s lap while having a conversation with her. I know that this audience member must be a plant, but this is being executed perfectly, as the back-and-forths between Sarah and her are actually coming off very natural, and Sarah has fantastic remarks to what the audience member says. This is also a fun use of Sarah’s usual laid-back style.
— Ah, there’s Sarah finally mentioning her previous stint as an SNL featured player. Initially, it was kinda disappointing that she didn’t bring it up at the beginning of this monologue, but now we see she was saving it for this portion of the monologue.
— Oh, I absolutely LOVE this sequence with Sarah taking questions from clips of herself as an audience member in season 19’s frequent questions-from-the-audience monologues, made even funnier by how 2014 Sarah is playing it completely straight by giving a serious answer to 1993/94 Sarah’s specific questions that are comically shown out of their original context (e.g. her “Are you going to be doing a solo album now that you’ve left Wilson Phillips?” question originally asked to Rosie O’Donnell, and her “What did you feed the dinosaurs?” question originally asked to Jeff Goldblum). I also find it interesting seeing the 20-year difference in both SNL’s visual quality and Sarah’s looks. I’m amazed at how little Sarah has aged in 20 years.
— Aw, a missed opportunity not to include a clip of Sarah from Charlton Heston’s season 19 questions-from-the-audience monologue, where Sarah is dressed as an ape (screencap a little below) and asks Heston, “Are you some kind of talking mu-tant?” Imagine how truly hilarious it would’ve been to see a clip of that being shown out of context in this 2014 monologue. And I would’ve loved to have seen 2014 Sarah’s serious answer to the “Are you some kind of talking mu-tant?” question.

— Overall, this is one of my personal favorite monologues from recent years.
STARS: *****


THE FAULT IN OUR STARS 2: THE EBOLA IN OUR EVERYTHING
(TAK)’s love for (SAS) is tested by Ebola

— A great reveal that the illness the lead female character in this Fault In Our Stars sequel has is Ebola. Taran’s reaction to that reveal is hilarious.
— Lots of solid scenes between Sarah and Taran after the Ebola reveal.
— Funny Terrance Howard impression from Kenan.
— Given our current times, the then-topical Ebola premise still comes off rather relatable to today.
STARS: ****


HEAVEN
in Heaven, just-arrived Joan Rivers (SAS) roasts other dead celebrities

a photo of Joan Rivers marks her passing

— A promising concept and setting, having the then-recently-deceased Joan Rivers give a comedy roast of other dead celebrities.
— Funny cutaways to Bobby as a hysterically-laughing Ben Franklin.
— Interesting seeing Adam Levine and Kyle sitting next to each other here, as I’ve always noticed somewhat of a facial resemblance between them.
— Yikes, Sarah is stumbling over her punchlines left and right throughout this sketch, which is hurting a lot of the humor, given the fact that she has most of the comedic lines in this sketch.
— I’m not crazy about Kate’s Lucille Ball impression. She seems really miscast in this role.
STARS: **


WHITES
whites will enjoy time remaining until they’re dethroned by demographics

— The recently-demoted-from-the-cast Mike O’Brien casually appearing with the rest of the cast in this. I’m guessing he wrote this commercial himself.
— Speaking of appearing with the rest of the cast, Sarah is blending in well with the cast here, as if she was back to being a cast member again.
— A hilarious and biting concept.
— During the whites’ expressed desire for “four more white presidents”, Beck gets a great laugh with his lighthearted “Even if they have to be girls.”
— I love the part with the voice-over saying “It’s all yours, Mexicans!” while we see an again-lighthearted Beck acting like he’s going to hand a Mexican man a globe, only to playfully yank it away from, then puts his arm around the Mexican man’s shoulder in a friendly manner.
— Overall, perfect execution of this brilliant premise. If this was indeed a Mike O’Brien-written piece, then he has succeeded once again with yet another fantastic pre-tape.
STARS: *****


FORGOTTEN TV GEMS
backstabbing is absent from Supportive Women soap opera

— A rare non-Cinema Classics appearance from Kenan’s Reese De’What character. Also a rare glasses-less appearance from him.
— The usual funny story from Kenan’s De’What about a rude thing he once told his wife.
— Pretty funny kind-hearted twist that Cecily and Sarah’s initially-tense soap opera scene takes.
— Taran’s basically playing the same type of “straight man character making an uncomfortable face” role he played in the Ebola commercial earlier tonight.
— The second and third scene in this sketch is basically repeating the basic joke of the first scene, but the execution is okay, especially the third scene.
STARS: ***


MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Animals”


WEEKEND UPDATE
Al Sharpton (KET) has ideas to counteract Secret Service ineptitude

COJ & MIC each identify phrases that are inappropriate for them to use

to feminist musical duo Garage (KAM) & Her (SAS), everything is “a woman”

— Ah, the very first time that a Jost/Che Update features one of the anchors going off on a stand-up-style rant about a news story after delivering a traditional Update joke about said story. That’s one of my absolute favorite aspects of the Jost/Che era of Update, and Michael’s rant here is very good.
— Michael’s delivery of general Update jokes, while still not at the familiar stage it would eventually go on to be, is getting closer and closer to it tonight.
— The usual “Kenan’s Al Sharpton misreads something” gags, but sue me, it always gets a cheap chuckle from me.
— Like Michael, Colin’s Update delivery is also improving and getting closer and closer to the delivery we’re now familiar with.
— Honestly, I was pushing it in my last review prior to this, where I proudly declared that the jokes in the inaugural Jost/Che Update thankfully don’t have that corny, tame Seth Meyers feel from the last few seasons of Update. I think I was just overexcited by the new feel of that inaugural Jost/Che Update in general that it blinded me to any Seth similarities in the jokes. However, even if it is true that some of that Seth Meyers influence has carried over into a lot of the jokes in these early-era Jost/Che Updates (a carry-over that thankfully wouldn’t last forever, as we know now, as Colin and Michael would gradually develop their own style of jokes over time), to me, Colin and Michael’s delivery is selling them so much better than Seth’s delivery ever did.
— Much like his “and all the ass” punchline about Derek Jeter’s MLB career stats in the preceding episode’s Update, Michael’s hilarious punchline about Jimmy Carter snorting peanut dust off a hooker’s ass is an early instance of what would go on to be known as a trademark Che-like joke.
— Ah, our very first interaction piece between Colin and Michael, with Colin asking Michael if it’s okay for him to say words like “bae” and “in da club”. This is a solid segment, especially Michael using “Thank you for your help, officer” as an example of things black people can’t say, and him telling Colin he ruined the term “cray-cray” for everybody.
— Good to see Sarah appearing with a current cast member in an Update commentary, once again making Sarah come off like she’s a cast member once again.
— Meh, Sarah and Kate’s song is falling kinda flat for me.
STARS: ***½


RIVER CRUISE
(CES), (SAZ), (SAS) are stuck doing “Proud Mary” on a Nebraska steamboat

— Oh, here’s a sketch would gain notoriety right after its original airing. There were huge accusations from some Groundlings comedians that SNL stole this sketch from them almost entirely verbatim without permission, and an online video of the original Groundlings version of the sketch was offered as full proof that, yes, this SNL sketch was indeed plagiarized. I believe it would be revealed that the culprits of this plagiarism were James Anderson and/or Kent Sublette (can’t remember if it was just one of them or both), both of whom I believe are Groundlings alums and are also two of my absolute least favorite writers in SNL history (the latter of which I’ve certainly made no secret of in my reviews). IIRC, this Sarah Silverman episode would also never get an NBC re-airing, and there’s been speculation on SNL boards that the reason for that is possibly because of the controversy over the plagiarism of this sketch. (Then again, I think I recall that this episode in general was pretty poorly-received by SNL fans at the time, so that might also have something to do with the lack of an NBC rerun.)
— And in case there was any doubt that this is indeed a James Anderson and/or Kent Sublette sketch, the writing style of Kenan’s opening speech is FILLED with known Anderson-isms, especially Kenan happily exclaiming “Yerm!” instead of “Yum!” Silly word substitutions in the style of “yerm” or “cornel of kern” (the latter being from a season 44 Steve Carell sketch that infamously went horribly awry) have been a staple of James Anderson-written sketches for years.
— Good to see Sasheer finally getting a lead role after being horribly underused in the season premiere and being overshadowed by the not-yet-a-cast-member Leslie Jones, but damn, why does it have to be in this, of all sketches?
— Blah, the mid-song stories from each of the ladies are all falling flat with me so far.
— I do kinda like Sarah’s “90 months” bit just now, but it’s not enough to get a laugh from me, and the rest of her story is falling just as flat with me as the other ladies’ stories are.
— Oof, the audience is absolutely DEAD during practically this whole sketch, and I don’t blame them one bit.
— There’s Kenan doing his Deandre Cole entrance dance from the What Up With That sketches.
— Overall, this was AWFUL. Anderson and/or Sublette really had to resort to stealing this weak material?!? That’s fucking sad, and just furthers the ire I’ve always had towards those two as writers. And history has shown that those two are perfectly capable of writing horrible sketches on their own without resorting to plagiarism.
STARS: *


HOME FROM VACATION
in a car, (BOM)’s surprise proposal to (SAS) goes awry; Adam Levine cameo

— Hilarious reveal of a shocked Bobby slowly rising from behind the backseat of the car immediately after overhearing Sarah’s confession to Taran that she cheated on Bobby, then we get another hilarious reveal right afterwards that Bobby happens to have an open engagement ring box in his hand, as he was planning on springing a surprise proposal on Sarah.
— I love Bobby’s angry delivery of “Gross! You grew?!? Shut your mouth!”
— All the surprise twists, as well as the way some portions of this sketch are intentionally being played in an uncomfortable manner, are reminiscent of that excellent and underrated Wedding sketch from the preceding season’s Andrew Garfield episode. Much like that Wedding sketch, this appears to be a Chris Kelly/Sarah Schneider-written piece. I notice that a number of Kelly/Schneider sketches around this time are great at having lots of surprise twists, such as their fantastic Cartoon Catchphrase sketch from the preceding season’s Kerry Washington episode.
— Pretty funny sequence with how all the radio stations that Taran turns to are playing songs about cheating in a relationship, even if that gag feels a little cliched.
— Hmm, Adam Levine’s entrance, which was supposed to a funny appearing-out-of-nowhere gag, came off awkwardly-executed.
— More great angry line deliveries from Bobby.
— Ugh, in addition to how awkward his entrance came off, Adam Levine’s delivery of some of his lines is weak, reminding me of what a bad and unlikable host I found him to be back in season 38.
— Pretty funny gag with Levine getting hit by a truck off-camera and then flying over the hood of the car. The little “Whoooa!” heard from him as a dummy of his body is thrown over the car hood somehow added to the humor.
— Something about the whole “Let’s all go to Pizza Hut!” conversation the characters have at the conclusion of this sketch really rubbed me the wrong way. Feels like SNL was going out of their way to shill for Pizza Hut. Maybe I’m looking too much into that, but either way, it was a bad and out-of-place way to end a sketch like this.
— Overall, a great first half, but this sketch somewhat fell apart in the second half, despite still having some merits. This sketch as a whole, while not bad, doesn’t hold a candle to the aforementioned Wedding sketch with Andrew Garfield.
STARS: ***


POEM
love-hate triangle (SAS), (KYM), (BEB) duos finish each other’s sentences

— Very funny turn with how the “two people finish each other’s sentences while realizing they’re soulmates” romcom trope that was initially shown happening between Sarah and Kyle now happens between Kyle and a bully, played by Beck. The specific, immature threats that Kyle and Beck are romantically saying in unison are also hilarious.
— Funny montage of Beck’s bully character doing horrible, violent things to Kyle, made even funnier by the uncharacteristically tender music & filming effect used for that montage.
— I love the little detail of Kyle making a quick, disgusted, subtle “Urgh!” vocalization after revealing he was forced by Beck to eat “stinky stew supreme”.
— Satisfying turn at the end with Beck’s bully character getting his comeuppance.
— I recall hearing that Nick Rutherford (the member of Beck and Kyle’s original Good Neighbor group who SNL initially passed on when hiring the rest of Good Neighbor, then got hired this season as a writer) is the person driving a car both times a character in this short gets run over by a car while stuffed in a garbage can. You can see a brief glimpse of Nick in the driver’s seat (screencap below).

STARS: ****


MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Maps”


VITAMIX
(VAB)’s pricey Vitamix blender puts her friend (SAS) on the defensive

— Even though it wasn’t even intended to be comedic (I assume), I laughed at Vanessa’s smiley delivery of “Well…it’s up there” when asked how much the Vitamix blender costs. She has a way of selling little lines like that so well.
— A good increasing negative tension between Vanessa and Sarah’s characters, even if I’m a little confused about where this sketch is trying to go.
— Yeah, more and more, I’m having very mixed feelings towards this sketch. I now “get” the tone this sketch is going for, but something about the execution feels a little ehh, which is a shame, because I am liking aspects of Vanessa and Sarah’s performances.
STARS: **½


GOODNIGHTS

IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— Not as weak as I had remembered, but this episode as a whole was still nothing to write home about. Despite a few strong highlights (two of which received a perfect five-star rating from me), 1) this episode felt like it never fully took off, 2) almost half of the segments were forgettable, and, 3) even though this episode was an improvement over the season premiere, something about this season is still kinda giving off that fairly rough vibe that it had in the premiere. To say nothing of that terrible River Cruise sketch, which is bad enough on its own even without having any knowledge of the plagiarism controversy.


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


RATED SEGMENTS RANKED FROM BEST TO WORST
Whites
Monologue
Poem
The Fault In Our Stars 2: The Ebola In Our Everything
Weekend Update
Home From Vacation
Forgotten TV Gems
Vitamix
Heaven
60 Minutes
River Cruise


HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Chris Pratt)
a step up


My full set of screencaps for this episode is here


TOMORROW
Bill Hader

Posted on

September 27, 2014 – Chris Pratt / Ariana Grande (S40 E1)

Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars

STATE OF THE UNION
Ray Lewis (KET) can speak to NFL legal woes but won’t

— Very funny line from Aidy about how, as part of her relaxation routine, “a crack team of Korean ladies rehabilitate my feet.”
— Feels kinda odd seeing the host appear in the cold opening of a season premiere.
— Wow, Aidy is unusually stumbly with some of her lines throughout this. Season premiere jitters, I take it?
— Nothing much to say about the cutaways to Chris Pratt’s Roger Goodell, though the “We Fight 4 Women” confusion is fairly amusing.
— Pretty funny running bit with Kenan’s Ray Lewis constantly changing the uncomfortable subject by going back to his faux-noble talk about schoolbuses.
— Jay’s Shannon Sharpe impression is usually good for a laugh, but he’s going a little too over the top tonight, even for an impression of an inherently goofy-voiced person like Shannon Sharpe. I HATE that ridiculous, unfunny laugh Jay keeps doing at the end of each of his bits in this, which makes Jay come off like he’s trying way too hard to get a cheap laugh.
STARS: **½


OPENING MONTAGE
— New montage.

— SNL has a new logo for the first time in 8 years. The number “40” is an additional part of the new logo, commemorating this being the milestone 40th season. (Speaking of SNL reaching their 40th anniversary, I will make the one and only exception to my strict “Review only regular episodes and no specials” rule by reviewing SNL’s 40th Anniversary Special when I reach that point of this season, due to popular demand and some good arguments that were made for why I should do that.)
— Former cast member Darrell Hammond has taken over for the recently-deceased Don Pardo as SNL’s new announcer.
— Michael Che and Pete Davidson have been added to the cast.
— Nice touch with how the chyron of each cast members’ name follows their movement.
— Seeing this opening montage and SNL logo, as well as the arrival of Michael and Pete, all make me truly feel like I’m officially in the now-current SNL era, especially since this opening montage was the current one when I started this One SNL A Day project in June 2018.


MONOLOGUE
host plays guitar & sings about his SNL experience; Anna Faris cameo

— I love the meta “van down by the river” reference that Chris Pratt makes.
— (*sigh*) We already open the season with a musical monologue.
— Chris seems a bit nervous, but in an affable, likable, relatable way instead of a worrisome, detrimental way.
— Hmm, I had absolutely no prior memory of Anna Faris’ (brief) appearance in this monologue. Me having no prior memory of something in an episode is something I should get used to for these next handful of seasons I’m reviewing, for reasons mentioned at the end of my last review prior to this.
— Some of the lyrics to Chris’ song are kinda amusing, and at least SNL’s not going the “Bring out cast members as cheesy backup dancers” route they usually go for musical monologues in this era, but I’m still a little meh on this.
STARS: **½


CIALIS TURNT
Cialis Turnt raises sexual performance & bedroom excitement to extremes

— Blah, this “turnt” stuff is the type of modern pop culture thing that I don’t like, sometimes not even when SNL spoofs it, which is the case here. It also doesn’t help that it feels like SNL goes to the “erectile dysfunction” route for fake ads too often in the 2000s and 2010s.
— Beck looks very Jeff Richards-esque in some shots here.
— Some amusing lines, but yeah, this type of humor isn’t for me.
STARS: *½


ACTION FIGURES
life-size & alive He-Man (host) & Lion-O (TAK) action figures wreak havoc

 

— Something about those fake eyebrows make Taran resemble Will Ferrell, to me at least.
— Some good laughs from the various observations and discoveries made by the now-live-action toys.
— Lots of good destruction of the set throughout this.
— Some timing issues during this sketch, where it feels like people are late on their cues, resulting in stretches of awkward silence.
— I love Aidy’s “Oh, my sweet meats!” line when He-Man and Lion-O are getting hot-and-heavy towards her.
— Another funny Aidy line, with her responding “Oh, I know” after being told that patting your own crotch feels good.
— Yet ANOTHER great Aidy line, with her telling She-Ra, while heading towards the hot tub with He-Man and Lion-O, “She Ra, come on. I know you’re a freak.”
— More timing issues, as this sketch ends in a very awkward and empty manner.
STARS: ***½


ANIMAL HOSPITAL
(host) & fellow animal hospital workers are unfazed by pet mortality rate

— (*groan*) They’re really doing this tepid sketch a second time?!?
— Aaaaaand predictably, this is going the exact same route as the first installment of this sketch, repeating the “Your pet is dead” joke over and over and over and over.
— Kyle noticeably keeps staring at the cue cards in an awkward, unsure manner, but the reason for that is because he was thrown into this role after dress rehearsal. According to the dress rehearsal report that FeaturingEmilyPrager (a frequent commenter on this blog) posted online shortly after this episode originally aired, Kyle’s role was played by newbie Pete Davidson in dress rehearsal, but Pete was taken out of the role for the live show because he reportedly performed the role rather awkwardly in dress rehearsal, a total contrast to how smoothly he performs elsewhere in this episode (as we’ll see later on when he starts making appearances).
— Ugh, this sketch reprisal is insufferable. Never should’ve brought this back.
STARS: *


MARVEL
success of Guardians Of The Galaxy spurs more odd Marvel superhero movies

— Some okay laughs from some of the ridiculous premises being made into big-budget Marvel superhero movies.
— Aidy, who’s been on somewhat of a hot streak in tonight’s episode (minus her occasional line flubs throughout the cold opening), is very well-cast in this commercial as “Pam”.
— Okay, this commercial’s concept is starting to get kinda old and dull.
— Meh, a long way to go just for a “Chris Pratt dressed as Princess Leia” punchline.
STARS: **½


MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Break Free”


WEEKEND UPDATE
The Girl You Wish You Hadn’t Started A Conversation With At A Party is patronizing & dim

unlucky-in-love LEJ details the comforts & pains of being a single woman

PED is willing to go down on a guy as a means of financial responsibility

Cheer Up, President Obama- KET sings “Ooh Child” for COJ & MIC pep talk

— Michael Che has become the new co-anchor of Weekend Update.
— I love both the new Update opening title sequence and new Update set. Both of these things are also making me feel even more like I’ve officially reached SNL’s now-current era.
— Wow, they’re letting brand-new Update anchor Michael deliver tonight’s first Update joke, instead of letting the slightly-more-experienced Colin do that? That’s very rare for a new co-anchor in their very first Update.
— Oof, Michael is already showing how new he is, and showing that it probably wasn’t the best decision to have him deliver the first joke in tonight’s Update, as he stumbles really badly during his first joke, which hurts the audience response to the punchline. Michael at least remains completely nonchalant after finishing the punchline, not looking remotely flustered over his gaffe like most anchors would. I do recall his first few Weekend Updates having quite a number of line flubs, which drew criticism from some viewers.
— Much like the preceding season, Colin’s delivery is still very stilted-sounding. His jokes themselves have improved, though.
— Michael’s delivery sounds very different in this first Update of his. He’s using a more straitlaced delivery. Reminds me of how Norm Macdonald used a VERY professional-sounding, somewhat-stiff delivery in his first few Updates before resorting to his now-famous natural delivery.
— A fitting decision to have Cecily, in her first Update after either being removed or stepping down from her position as Update co-anchor, do an Update commentary as a character, which is where her strength on Update truly lies.
— Good to see Cecily’s Girl At A Party character back after a year-long hiatus, a hiatus that even gets acknowledged at one point of her commentary tonight, with Michael asking her where she’s been all this time, and her responding, “I went on my birthright trip to Israel”, leading to a funny back-and-forth between her and Michael.
— Girl At A Party: “There are babies in China…who don’t even know they’re adults.”
— Cecily hasn’t lost a step with this character after her year-long hiatus. I even love the detail of how, after trying to wow Michael with a supposedly-brilliant fact, she tells him “I just blew your brains out” instead of “I just blew your mind.”
— The punchline to Michael’s Derek Jeter joke, with Michael saying “and all the ass” at the end of the listed-off stats that Jeter achieved over his career, is our very first of what would go on to later be known as a trademark Che-like joke.
— Then-writer Leslie Jones appears in her second Update commentary, after her much-talked-about first Update commentary from towards the end of the preceding season.
— Like last time, Leslie’s performance is incredible here, and she is absolutely taking charge with her hilarious stage presence. So many laughs from her commentary tonight, even if it’s not quite on the same level as her famous previous commentary.
— I wonder if Colin threw that Kid Rock joke in as an intentional nod to his recently-fired castmate Brooks Wheelan, given what a huge Kid Rock fanatic Brooks is known to be.
— Pete Davidson makes both his very first SNL appearance AND his very first (of what will be a very large number over the years) Update commentary, notably being introduced by Michael as “resident young person”.
— Pete is impressively coming off as a total natural in this debut of his.
— Pete, on why he didn’t need to go down on a guy for money during his high school years: “I lived with my mom at the time. I had food, clothes, I had a TV in my room. I didn’t need to go down on a guy. My mom was already doing that.” Not only a hilarious line, but it comes off even funnier in hindsight knowing the close relationship Pete’s mom would later develop with SNL.
— Lots of laughs from Pete’s details and scenarios about the concept of going down on a guy for financial security.
— Pete’s overall commentary tonight really wowed me, both in 2014 and now. He came off poised, laid-back, and likable, he delivered his comedy routine with great quick pacing and a witty demeanor, and his comedy routine itself was strong enough to feel like something you’d expect to see from a long-time veteran stand-up comedian, not some 20-year-old kid like Pete was at this time. Very impressive.
— Boy, 2014 SNL sure loves that “Ooh Child” song, between the Lena Dunham episode and now this Kenan segment on Update.
— One of our first of many ISIS mentions this season. Hoo, boy. There’s going to be quite a number of…uh….interesting ISIS-related things that I’m going to have to review this season.
— I’m loving this “Cheer Up, President Obama” segment that Colin, Michael, and Kenan are doing. This format is very refreshing and new for Update (I can never in a million years picture it appearing in any Updates from the preceding season), and Colin and Michael have a lot of good lines here. Michael in particular is coming off very laid-back here, much like the fully-formed Update persona he’d later have.
— Overall, we have definitely entered a new era of Update. It felt very exciting and fresh just now to experience this. I’m really liking the new, different feel of this Update era. Despite the rough start with his first joke, Michael had a pretty good night. Even though there’s still some early-era kinks he has to shake out, you can still definitely see the potential in him. And even Colin’s jokes tonight were improved over his corny Seth Meyers-esque jokes from the preceding season, although, like Michael, Colin’s delivery isn’t fully-formed yet. While this new Update era would definitely improve later on (and eventually go on to be one of my all-time favorite Update eras, probably somewhere in the top 3 with the Norm Macdonald and Dennis Miller eras), tonight’s Update provided hope and let it be known that we were no longer in the corny, tame Seth Meyers-influenced years of Update.
— My reaction to this Update when this episode originally aired was interesting. Right from the announcement that summer that Michael would replace Cecily as Update co-anchor, I was IMMEDIATELY very onboard with that idea, having been familiar with some of Michael’s stand-up and his then-current stint on The Daily Show. However, I was very unhappy with the decision to have Colin remain on Update as co-anchor, as I strongly disliked him on Update the preceding season and felt that Michael was solid enough of a comic to do Update himself. Then when this episode aired, I was so ridiculously biased towards Michael and against Colin that I was very eager every time it was Michael’s turn to do an Update joke, whereas I would have a very dismissive, “Ugh, THIS guy…” attitude every time it was Colin’s turn to tell a joke. One of the things I liked back then about Michael as a new Update anchor was that I got a “Norm Macdonald/Dennis Miller hybrid” vibe from his anchorman approach, which had me excited, because (as I mentioned a little earlier) Norm and Dennis are my personal all-time favorite Update anchors. Now that I know in hindsight how Michael’s tenure as anchor would end up going, I’d say that the Norm comparison I initially made back at this time in 2014 was fairly spot-on, but not quite the Dennis comparison, even though Michael DOES have a similar laid-back, smug-in-a-likable-way, “Hey, I’m just gonna be me” approach that Dennis had. (YMMV on me describing Dennis as “smug in a likable way”, given how unlikable I know some SNL fans find him to be when watching his old Updates nowadays.) Anyway, back in 2014, I went through this season’s first few Updates feeling that Michael was knocking it out of the park while Colin was dead weight. However, Colin would gradually grow on me over the first few months of this season, to the degree that, by about December, I was absolutely fine with him as an anchor and felt that he complemented the already-good Michael well and that they both made a great team. And, as I said earlier, their Update era is now among my all-time favorites.
STARS: ***½


IN MEMORIAM
a photo of DOP marks his passing


BOOTY RAP
at a bar, shy (AIB) & (host) get to know one another with sexy rap lyrics

— Oh, no. I remember absolutely HATING this sketch when it originally aired, especially Aidy’s constant singing of the term “BIG FAT ASS!”
— In my current re-watch of this sketch so far, I will say that Aidy at least did a convincing job selling her first “swaggy” delivery of the term “BIG FAT ASS!” However, it still didn’t make me laugh at all. In fact, it kinda reminds me of the issues I had with the pop culture-centric Cialis Turnt commercial from earlier in this episode.
— Now it’s Chris’ turn at attempting “swaggy” singing, which is doing even less for me than Aidy’s did.
— Yeah, this sketch in general is NOT for me. When this originally aired, I looked at both the Cialis Turnt commercial and this Booty Rap sketch as pandering to the young crowd and trying too hard to be “hip” (I have these exact same problems with a similar sketch from the next season premiere, where host Miley Cyrus plays a modern-day rapping girl in a school dance from the 1950s), and I worried if it was a bad sign of what this new season might have in store for me. During pretty much all of my adult years, I admittedly have lived under a rock when it comes to current pop culture, mainly in music (as shown by the fact that I didn’t get the Harlem Shake reference in the season 38 Justin Timberlake episode I reviewed fairly recently), and stuff like the Cialis Turnt commercial and this Booty Rap sketch, and the lack of amusement I have towards them, always make me feel old and out-of-touch with the audience that recent SNL seasons sometimes seem to target themselves towards, even though I was only 30 years old when this episode originally aired.
— Blah at the ending of this sketch being the ol’ corny “Everybody dances” trope.
STARS: *½


BAD BOYS
sitcom drama tropes reign as (host) runs with the wrong crowd

— The first on-air installment of Beck and Kyle’s recurring nameless 80s/90s sitcom pastiche. A previous installment from the preceding season’s Andrew Garfield episode was cut after dress rehearsal and subsequently posted online.
— Only one minute in, and I am absolutely loving this spoof of typical 80s/90s sitcoms. Every little thing about this short is perfectly and hilariously nailing so many tropes from 80s/90s sitcoms (particularly “Very special episodes” of said sitcoms), with that lovable Good Neighbor absurdist touch added in. I also love how all of this is bringing me back to my 90s childhood, where I ate up corny sitcoms like this.
— The increasingly random and out-of-place establishing shots are very funny, especially the shot of a fantasy-looking castle (the fourth-to-last above screencap for this short).
— A very funny quick bit with one of the child actors getting the door shut on him when trying to leave through the door with the other child actors, resulting in him panickedly exiting the shot through the fourth wall.
— I remember being disappointed to see this short get a poor reception among online SNL fans when it originally aired. It made me feel at the time like I was the only one who liked this short. I’m glad to have recently seen appreciation for this short from a few SNL fans.
STARS: ****½


NFL ON CBS
players state their crimes while introducing themselves

— I love Michael’s delivery of the “at the Ohio State University” portion of his line. When this sketch originally aired, it initially had me assuming Michael was going to be a regular sketch performer in addition to doing Update, instead of being confined to Update like I had seen Colin be the preceding season. I was thrilled by the idea of Michael being a regular sketch performer, but then I saw the Update-only Colin also appear about a minute later in this sketch, and then I became confused, wondering “So are Michael and Colin only in this sketch because it requires all of the male cast members, and thus, Michael ISN’T going to be a regular sketch performer after all?” That question of mine turned out to be correct, as Michael (and Colin) would go on to rarely make non-Update appearances over the years, with Michael usually only doing so whenever an additional black performer is needed for a sketch that all of the other black cast members are already appearing in.
— Jay: “I punched a mailman. That’s federal, baby!”
— A great use of Colin’s comically-bland natural delivery, having him say an enthusiastic-but-monotone “And I’m the punter. Tax fraud!” That line wouldn’t have come off nearly as funny had any other performer delivered it. By the way, it feels so odd seeing Colin in a sketch after my recent re-watch of season 39 got me so used to him only appearing on Update.
— The concept of this sketch is very fun and topical, with NFL players one-by-one stating their crime during the introductions, made even more fun by how Chris and the cast members are playing multiple roles through quick costume changes. This is definitely the better of tonight’s two sketches about the NFL controversy going on at the time.
— Pete continues to come off as a total natural in his first episode and also be very funny and likable. When this episode originally aired, so many online SNL fans, including me, were VERY impressed by how Pete came off in this first episode of his, especially given his very young age at the time. He was the talk of the town on online SNL boards after this episode originally aired, with even some of the saltier SNL fans on those boards giving him lots of acclaim, saying stuff like “This kid is so ready” and glowingly declaring that he is “definitely part of the future.” I even made a prediction back at this time that, based on his comedic style and demeanor in this episode, Pete was going to be the young Norm Macdonald of modern-era SNL (odd how both of this episode’s new cast members, Michael and Pete, reminded me back then of Norm). I ended up being horribly wrong in that prediction about Pete. But even now having that knowledge in hindsight and knowing how much I would gradually go on to strongly dislike Pete over the course of these next few years (and, no, not just because he didn’t live up to my initial Norm Macdonald comparison, which is a comparison that I now admit was unfair to Pete and was expecting too much from someone so young) to the degree that I cite him as one of the main things responsible for driving me away from SNL in late 2018 and causing me to go on a (still in effect) hiatus from watching new episodes, I’m still finding myself impressed by him in my current re-watch of this first episode of his. He’s having a damn good first showing. As I enter his tenure in this SNL project of mine, I’m going into it open-minded, hoping to gain a higher opinion of his general tenure than I used to have. (It also helps that I hear he’s actually been doing much better on the show in the current 46th season, and has been putting a lot more effort into his performances.) There have been a number of cast members who I used to not care at all for, but have grown on me in my re-watch of their respective tenures during this SNL project of mine (don’t ask me who those cast members are, as I plan on mentioning them in one section of my special final post after I officially complete this SNL project). I’m hoping Pete can be one of those cast members.
— Why is Chris using the same fey, lispy, southern-accented voice for EVERY different football player he’s playing? It is making me laugh, though, just because it works in the fun and rapid-fire style of this sketch.
— Showing once again tonight how much she needs to be a part of the cast pronto, Leslie Jones absolutely STEALS this whole sketch with her hilarious brief appearance, which gets a huge audience reaction. When this originally aired, it just furthered my and other SNL fans’ opinion that Leslie not being in the cast while Sasheer is in the cast is a huge mistake on SNL’s part. In fact, not only are both of Leslie’s appearances in this episode far more noteworthy than ANYTHING Sasheer does in this episode, but Leslie’s Update appearance earlier tonight occurred before Sasheer even made her first appearance of the night! Nowadays, having recently started to find a likability in Sasheer during my re-watch of this SNL era while still acknowledging that SNL wasn’t the right venue for her talents, I now just feel bad for how underused Sasheer was in this episode and how overshadowed she was by someone who wasn’t even in the cast at the time (Leslie). Back on the topic of Leslie, after SNL would finally make Leslie a cast member a little later this season, I admittedly would go on to have mixed feelings on her tenure as a cast member (though I would always like her as a person), but even re-watching tonight’s episode while having that knowledge, I still can absolutely understand why I and everyone else were clamoring at the time for SNL to add Leslie to the cast, kinda like the aforementioned fact that I can still enjoy Pete’s strong debut in this episode even with the knowledge that he went on to be a cast member I strongly disliked.
STARS: ****


MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest & The Weeknd [real] perform “Love Me Harder”


VIDEO GAME
video game focus group dislikes incongruous eroticism of Puzzle World 6

— Poor, poor Sasheer.
— I have mixed feelings on the raunchy, romantic turn that Chris and Vanessa’s scene is taking. Something about that turn feels a bit cliched for SNL, and it’s not making me laugh all that much here.
— Listening to Pete’s voice throughout this first episode of his reminds me that an online SNL fan mentioned at some point this season that Pete has pretty much the exact same voice as Gilbert Gottfried’s real voice in season 6 (years before Gilbert adopted the “screechy voice” persona). Yeah, even today, long after I’ve become very familiar with Pete’s voice, I can still hear the Gottfried similarity in his voice now that I’m listening for it.
— Yeah, as the eroticism of Chris and Vanessa’s scenes goes on, I’m caring less and less for this sketch.
— Pete’s great night continues, as he got a pretty good laugh from me just now with his delivery of an unhappily-muttered “Ohh, man….” as it’s his turn to play the off-putting video game.
— The ending of the Chris/Vanessa portions of this sketch is actually good, with the “Ghost” reference.
STARS: **


GOODNIGHTS

IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— An underwhelming season premiere. There were some positive points, as well as some promising and exciting new things & people introduced tonight, but the amount of things I liked were far outnumbered by the amount of things I didn’t like. There was also a bit of a sloppiness at certain points of the show, sloppiness that I would normally cut SNL some slack for in a season premiere, as it’s understandable that there would be some rustiness from SNL immediately after a long summer break. However, I recall this mild sloppiness actually continuing for quite a while this season (which is just one of the things that sparked A LOT of comparisons that some online SNL fans made between this season and the notorious season 20), sloppiness that wouldn’t stop until about December. We’ll see if my memory of that is correct or not.


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


RATED SEGMENTS RANKED FROM BEST TO WORST
Bad Boys
NFL on CBS
Weekend Update
Action Figures
Marvel
State of the Union
Monologue
Video Game
Cialis Turnt
Booty Rap
Animal Hospital


HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING SEASON (2013-14)
a mild step down


My full set of screencaps for this episode is here


TOMORROW
Sarah Silverman

Posted on

May 17, 2014 – Andy Samberg / St. Vincent (S39 E21)

Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars

A MESSAGE FROM SOLANGE & JAY-Z
Solange (SAZ) & Jay-Z (JAP) spin their elevator fight

— The friendly Jay-Z/Solange voice-overs added to the video of their elevator fight is funny, especially the “foot five” part.
— Good part with the security cam footage of Bobby doing embarrassing things.
— Maya Rudolph, our first of an endless number of former cast member cameos tonight.
— Third consecutive episode with Sasheer saying LFNY. Granted, all the times she said it in these three episodes, she said it unison with one or more people (group LFNYs in general have become a trend in the last quarter of this season). Sadly, this three-episode run of LFNYs probably ends up being the high point of Sasheer’s notoriously-underutilized four-season SNL tenure.
STARS: ***


OPENING MONTAGE
— (*sigh*) The final episode with the legendary Don Pardo as SNL’s announcer, before he passes away that summer. Host Andy Samberg has the distinction of being the final name ever announced by Don in new audio.


MONOLOGUE
BIH tops ANS’s effort to surpass his impression tally; SEM & MAS cameos

— I wonder if this is the only time in SNL history where a celebrity (Justin Timberlake in this case) made their cameo appearance in the form of a photo. I feel like there was a previous time that may have happened that I’m forgetting.
— I love Andy’s little “I put on a suit to tell that joke” aside after his “And twiiiiiins!” line.
— Andy sure likes doing that “I’ve appeared in over 100 Digital Shorts and [insert small single-digit number here] live sketches” joke ever since he left the cast.
— Andy doesn’t say which website he learned that he did 23 fewer impressions than Bill Hader from, but I wonder if SNL Archives was the site. Then again, SNL themselves probably keep a record of stats like that.
— Our second former cast member cameo tonight, this time Seth Meyers, making his first cameo after leaving the cast earlier this season.
— Very fun concept of Andy doing a rapid-fire succession of impressions. This concept is perfect for Andy, and he’s doing lots of hilarious and clever impressions here.
— Our THIRD former cast member cameo tonight, and yeah, I’m gonna stop keeping count, because doing so is going to get exhausting, given what later portions of this episode has in store for me.
— I love the Andy Samberg impression that Bill Hader does.
— Whoa, of all the former cast member cameos in this episode, I honestly had no prior memory of this random Martin Short appearance.
STARS: ****


CAMP WICAWABE
preteens Cambria (AIB) & Piper (KAM) recap disobedience at Camp Wicawabe

— Kinda interesting how Kyle is playing a 6-year-old in this set-in-1990 sketch, given the fact that, in real life, Kyle actually was 6 in 1990 (as was I).
— Speaking of this sketch being set in 1990, uh…is there any particular reason why it’s set in that year? So far, there is absolutely NOTHING about this sketch that’s seems specific to 1990 nor any other year in the past. It makes no sense why this sketch couldn’t have been set in present day.
— Funny brief appearance from Cecily.
— While there are a few funny lines from the characters, and there’s a somewhat endearing quality to some of the more realistic aspects of Kate and Aidy’s child characters (e.g. them laughing at but not actually “getting” the more adult things that Andy’s character talks about), I hate the actual format of this sketch, and find it to be lazy. Thank goodness this sketch never becomes recurring.
STARS: **


WHEN WILL THE BASS DROP?
DJ Davvincii (ANS) & Lil Jon [real] kill fans

— Our obligatory Lonely Island Digital Short of the night.
— Some funny cutaways to cast members as wild audience members. I especially like some of the Bobby cutaways.
— Lots of pretty funny teases and build-up to Andy dropping the bass, such as the cutaways to the unrelated things he’s doing at his DJ table, like frying eggs.
— The sequence of audience members graphically dying when the bass finally drops is okay, but feels like a very inferior variation of the beautifully-dark-and-violent mass death sequence in the “Everyone’s A Critic” Digital Short from Paul Rudd’s season 34 episode. We even get a reprisal of the Indiana Jones/“Keep your eyes shut!” bit from that Rudd short.
— Not only is this pre-taped short the ONLY appearance that Noel, John, Brooks, and Mike make in tonight’s entire episode, but 1) their roles in this short are all bit parts with no lines (except for one quick line that Noel gets), 2) this ends up being the FINAL appearance that all four of those performers make as cast members, as all of them get fired after this season, and 3) half of them are playing characters who die in this short. After Noel, John, Brooks, and Mike were all extremely underused for most of this season, this is the ultimate final insult to them. For shame, SNL. You go through all the trouble of hiring so many new cast members at the beginning of this season and give them special focus in the season premiere, making a huge deal about them, only to immediately and unjustifiably discard most of them for the remainder of the season, then give them the ultimate middle finger in the season finale before firing them that summer. Just….(*sigh*) there aren’t enough words from me that can express the disgracefulness of the way this season handled what they themselves said was supposed to be a “rebuilding year” in terms of working in the new group in the cast. Rebuilding year, my ass.
— After the announcement of Noel, John, Brooks, and Mike’s firing that summer, I remember some online SNL fans jokingly saying that this Digital Short must’ve been SNL’s way of killing off all four of those fired featured players (though, again, only about half of them actually play characters who die in this short), almost like some kind of variation of the famous “cast party set ablaze” ending of the infamous season 11, or the “cast members get gruesomely killed one-by-one in a polar bear cage” ending of the infamous season 20. (The even sadder thing is, I recall reading in the dress rehearsal report for this season 39 finale that was posted online back at this time in 2014 by FeaturingEmilyPrager [a frequent commenter on this blog] that the Legolas/Taco Bell sketch that’ll be airing later in this episode had a running gag cut out after dress rehearsal in which Andy’s Legolas, in a fury, occasionally throws sharp weapons at random Taco Bell patrons, killing them. All, or maybe just some, of those patrons were played by featured players who would end up getting fired after this episode, which means that, between the “When Will The Bass Drop?” Digital Short and that Taco Bell sketch, the about-to-be-fired-from-SNL featured players were originally going to get killed off TWICE in this episode! My goodness. However, my memory of FeaturingEmilyPrager’s details about that aspect of the Taco Bell sketch is very fuzzy, so I may have some facts wrong. We’ll see when he re-posts his dress rehearsal report in the comments section of this review.) I remember fellow SNL blogger/reviewer Bronwyn Douwsma once accurately titled this episode “the ‘Fuck You, Newbies’ episode”, as a very spot-on way to sum up this episode’s horrible treatment of the featured players, treatment that’ll get even more horrible later in this episode when you see the cavalcade of cameos that takes away even more airtime from the featured players.
STARS: ***½


CONFIDENT HUNCHBACK
Quasimodo (ANS) swaggers through a 1482 Paris saloon

— This appears to be a variation of the Rude Buddha sketch that Andy did in the season 37 Lindsay Lohan episode, right down to having a very similar opening title sequence.

— Speaking of the opening title sequence, the theme song is catchy, though I can’t help but notice how similar the melody of it sounds to the theme song from the Girlfriends Talk Show sketches.
— Andy is fun in this role, which he was born to play.
— The ending was kinda weak.
STARS: ***


MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Digital Witness”


WEEKEND UPDATE
darkness creeps into Bruce Chandling’s unfunny summer comedy routine

Nicolas Cage (ANS) thinks he’d be a better Ant-Man than Paul Rudd [real]

— This would end up being the final Update of Cecily’s short-lived tenure as Update anchor.
— A nice bookend to this season, having Kyle’s Bruce Chandling do an Update commentary for the first time since his debut in this season’s premiere.
— Like last time, Kyle is great at pulling off these hacky jokes as Bruce Chandling. I also like the new touch he’s added to the character this time: that eye-roll he does after each punchline.
— Also like last time, the sudden turn with Bruce Chandling getting depressed and reflecting on himself in a gloomy manner is very solid. In fact, it’s even better here than when they did it earlier this season. During this “Chandling gets depressed” part tonight, I love this particularly dark line from him: “Grim Reaper’s knockin’ at the door……..and I kinda wanna answer it.”
— Ugh at all of Cecily’s usual corny punchlines and “character voice” punchlines tonight. I will absolutely not miss seeing her as an Update anchor after tonight’s episode.
— Holy hell, that huge fivehead on Andy’s Nicolas Cage tonight…
— Second consecutive Update with a guest referring to Colin as “Seth”.
— We’re getting the usual funny lines from Andy’s Nicolas Cage, but I dunno, I’m having a hard time getting excited about this segment. I guess I’m STILL of the opinion that they should’ve officially retired this “Get In The Cage” segment after the memorable and solid one where the real Nicolas Cage was paired up with Andy’s Cage. You just can’t continue the segment after something special and definitive like that. There are other ways they could’ve used Andy’s Cage impression tonight without bringing “Get In The Cage” back.
— Overall, a characteristically meh way for the Cecily Strong/Colin Jost era of Update to end. Bring on the next era!
STARS: **


AFFECTIONATE FAMILY
the Vogelchecks are initially put off by Michael Sam’s draft-day kiss

— (*Stooge stares at his laptop screen in a speechless manner for an entire minute upon seeing the resurrection of this wretched recurring sketch, and, after suffering through seeing an overlong applause break for each individual cameo in this, flips his laptop upside down with one angry swipe of his hands and then walks out of the room while saying, “That’s it, fuck this, I’m leavin’!”, Will Ferrell-style*)
— With each passing overlong applause break that each cameo in this sketch is met with, I can just picture a little bit of John Milhiser dying inside.
— Ugh, during his typically-annoying “I guess that’s what makes us…….Vogelchecks” speech, Fred Armisen openly starts breaking HARD for no apparent reason, and giggles his way through the rest of his speech. Bill seemed to be the cause of this breaking, judging from how Fred initially breaking is followed by Bill being heard mumbling ad-libbed statements throughout the rest of Fred’s speech, in an apparent attempt to keep Fred laughing. As if I needed a reminder of how annoyingly Fallon & Sanz-esque Fred and Bill became with their frequent unprofessional, inside-joke-y breaking together in their final season as cast members.
— Maya particularly hamming it up here.
— (*Stooge watches the ridiculous sequence with each Vogelcheck member passing air to each other via their mouths, and responds to that by ripping his own eyeballs out*)
STARS: *


WAKING UP WITH KIMYE
wedding planner (ANS) describes Kanye West (JAP) & Kim Kardashian’s (NAP) upcoming nuptials

— This ends up being Nasim’s final big showcase before leaving the cast that summer. I’d rather her final showcase be something more exciting than seeing this sketch once again. I liked this Kimye sketch in its first installment, but it’s meh as a recurring sketch.
— Jay’s Kanye: “What do they always say to you in Italy?” Nasim’s Kim: “Leave!”
— I have nothing to say about the rest of this sketch. It pretty much just came and went for me.
STARS: **


HUGS
ANS, Jorma Taccone & Pharrell Williams [real] sing about being cuddling Lotharios

— A second Digital Short tonight, this time a traditional Lonely Island music video, complete with Jorma and Akiva.
— Hmm, I had no prior memory of this short having a Maya cameo as Oprah and a Pharrell Williams cameo as himself. In fact, I remember almost NOTHING about this short from my previous viewing when it originally aired.
— I’m currently about halfway through this short, and I can now see why I had almost no prior memory of it. This short feels way too generic and by-the-numbers for a Lonely Island music video. Sure, this is well-produced and performed, but what does that matter when the actual humor and entertainment level is blah?
— I did get a good laugh just now from Pharrell’s great delivery of the lyric, “I just wanna hug your mama in a Subaru hatchback.”
— Overall, meh.
STARS: **


LEGOLAS FROM ‘THE HOBBIT’ TRIES TO ORDER AT TACO BELL
what the title above says

— An okay concept, feeling like it’s in the tradition of similarly-titled celebrity-tries-to-do-a-simple-task sketches from Andy’s era as a cast member, such as the Andre The Giant Chooses An Ice Cream Flavor sketch.
— A predictable but amusing ending line from a shaking-his-head Jay: “White people…..”.
— A short, simple, and decent sketch, if unmemorable.
STARS: ***


BLIZZARD MAN
during a recording session, 2 Chainz [real] vouches for Blizzard Man

— With the return of Blizzard Man, we of course also get the unnecessary return of Kenan playing the same technician character he plays in every installment of these Blizzard Man sketches who acts like he’s never seen Blizzard Man before and didn’t expect his rapping to be so bad. (*groan*)
— I had remembered tonight’s “Fuck You, Newbies” episode containing so many former cast member cameos, but had forgotten that it also throws almost as many non-SNL-alum cameos at us.
— For some reason, something about 2 Chainz’s laid-back, friendly way of telling Blizzard Man, “Get in the booth, fool”, made me laugh.
— As usual, they’re doing absolutely NOTHING new with the formula of this recurring sketch. The same-old same-old stuff. Sure, we had gotten a somewhat long hiatus from this formulaic recurring sketch, but even with that, there’s still way too much of a stale, unexciting, been-there-done-that feel to tonight’s return of this recurring sketch. It’s too old hat by this point.
— There’s SNL relying on that ol’, lazy “spinning newspaper headline” ending trope once again, which I know is the type of endings these Blizzard Man sketches always used to have back in the day, but even with that in mind, this particular headline ending still came off lazy and half-assed.
STARS: **


MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Birth in Reverse”


BVLGARI
separated twins (ANS) & (KRW) & vacuous ex-porn stars endorse Bulgari

— Ah, here’s Andy in a walk-on with…….Kristen Wiig?!? OH, COME THE FUCK ON, SNL! Wasn’t that unwatchable Vogelchecks sketch enough Wiig for one night? Not to mention all the other cameos from former cast members hogging up roles that need to be going to the in-danger-of-getting-fired featured players who have unfairly gotten no final chance tonight to try saving their SNL tenures, and are instead stuck watching this entire episode from their dressing rooms.
— Also, such a lame decision to cast Kristen in a male role for no good reason.
— Vanessa: “With a watch, you’ll never have to stop a stranger on the street to ask him, ‘Are you my dad?’”
— Cecily: “You’ll feel like you’re an Egyptian queen, like Cleomydia.”
— (*groan*) Kristen apparently hasn’t gotten rid of her giggles from the Vogelchecks sketch, as she’s openly laughing her way through some of her lines in this sketch, and looks strangely uncommitted to this character.
— The Andy/Kristen portions are ruining this sketch for me, and it’s already been sad enough that Vanessa and Cecily haven’t been having anywhere near as many killer lines as they usually have in this recurring sketch.
— Overall, easily the weakest installment of this sketch, and an underwhelming way to close out this season.
STARS: **


GOODNIGHTS

IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— Aaaaaaand the season ends in a whimper. A truly poor and disappointing finish to the season. This episode started out decently if unnoteworthy (aside from the strong monologue), but felt like it got gradually worse as it went on, especially as so many gratuitous cameo appearances increasingly and frustratingly dominated this episode, to the detriment of the actual cast (a precursor of more recent years), who already had to fight for airtime all season long even without the cameos, due to how extremely overstuffed this season’s cast is. Even more frustrating was how the SNL alums making cameos tonight (minus Martin Short) are 1) all people who had been cast members within the last few years prior to this (and in Seth Meyers’ case, just earlier this same season), as if enough time had passed between then and 2014 for SNL to justifiably do a “late 00s/early 10s reunion” episode filled with cameos from an era that LITERALLY JUST FUCKING HAPPENED, and 2) a number of the alums from that era ALREADY make cameos way too frequently as it is, to the degree that you forget they even left the cast (Fred and Kristen, I’m lookin’ in your direction…..oh, and you, too, Amy Poehler, even though you weren’t in this particular episode), thus making their presence in this “reunion / nostalgia-fest” episode even less special-feeling. As a host, Andy Samberg, who certainly wasn’t the problem I had with this episode, deserved a much better episode than what he was given.
— Another disappointing thing about this episode is that I remember it was an underwhelming way to end my original 2000-2014 stint as a reviewer of newly-aired episodes. Lousy, refusing-to-let-go-of-the-recent-past episodes like this made me happy back at this time in 2014 that I was retiring from reviewing. Recently, I’ve had some people warn me that, based on the quality of SNL’s current 46th season, the final episode I review in my current SNL project will probably be a disappointing and unexciting note for me to end on. But after having already gone through the disappointment of this frustrating Andy Samberg episode being the final episode of my original reviewing stint, I feel like there’s nowhere to go but up in terms of what SNL has in store for me in the final episode I review in my current project.


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


RATED SEGMENTS RANKED FROM BEST TO WORST
Monologue
When Will The Bass Drop?
Confident Hunchback
A Message From Solange & Jay-Z
Legolas From ‘The Hobbit’ Tries To Order At Taco Bell
Weekend Update
Waking Up With Kimye
Blizzard Man
Hugs
Camp Wicawabe
Bvlgari
Affectionate Family


HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Charlize Theron)
a big step down


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


HOW THIS OVERALL SEASON STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING SEASON (2012-13)
a mild step down


My full set of screencaps for this episode is here


TOMORROW
Season 40 begins, with host Chris Pratt, two new additions to the cast, a revamped Weekend Update with a new co-anchor joining Colin Jost, and a new replacement for Don Pardo as SNL’s announcer. After spending the past 14 seasons of this SNL project reviewing episodes that I already covered in my original stint as a reviewer, I’m excited that the remainder of the seasons I’ll be covering in my current SNL project will be ones that I’ve never reviewed before and, in the case of the episodes from December 2018 to whenever I complete this project, episodes that I’ve never even seen before. (For those who don’t know, I’ve been on an ongoing hiatus from watching new episodes after the Steve Carell episode from season 44.) And as for the episodes between May 2014 and December 2018, I’m eager to re-watch them because I don’t remember a lot of them all that well anymore. The reason for that is because, back when those seasons originally aired, since I no longer had to worry about analyzing new SNL episodes or feverishly taking notes during the show now that I was retired from reviewing, I went into season 40 and the next two or so seasons afterwards with such a lax and “casual viewer” attitude that it caused the more average or forgettable portions of the show to completely pass by me, to the degree that, today, I no longer have much or ANY memory of them, whereas I still have a vivid memory of practically everything from the 2000-2014 years that I covered in my original reviewing stint.

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May 10, 2014 – Charlize Theron / The Black Keys (S39 E20)

Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars

A MOTHER’S DAY MESSAGE FROM MICHELLE OBAMA AND HILLARY CLINTON
Michelle Obama (SAZ) & Hillary Clinton (VAB) spar before Mother’s Day

— (*sigh*) One of the last times we’ll ever hear Don Pardo’s voice introducing a sketch.
— Speaking of lasts, this ends up being the last time Vanessa plays Hillary Clinton.
— Some funny tension between Sasheer’s Michelle Obama and Vanessa’s Hillary.
— This is the most front-and-center we’ve ever seen Vanessa’s Hillary (all of her previous appearances were rather brief), giving me a better chance to assess her impression. I see what she’s going for in the voice she’s using, but something just feels wrong with how the voice is coming out, especially when her voice starts getting gradually loud and shouty halfway though this cold opening. I can understand why SNL would re-cast this role the following season.
— Great slam from Vanessa’s Hillary to Sasheer’s Michelle regarding childhood obesity being the “toughest” issue Michelle has tackled as First Lady.
STARS: ***


MONOLOGUE
TAK, CES, KAM, SAZ, BEB, KET sing, which is the one thing host can’t do

— Ugh, there’s the use of that tired “Carlin line” (a.k.a. when a host sarcastically says a variation of “I did such a great job hosting [insert large number here] years ago that they couldn’t wait to have me back”, which originated with George Carlin in his season 10 hosting stint).
— I love that they show a clip of the Gemini’s Twin sketch from Charlize Theron’s first episode, because 1) I always like whenever a new SNL episode shows a clip from an older episode, and 2) Charlize’s first episode is a very significant one for me, as it’s the very first SNL episode I ever reviewed, during my original 2000-2014 stint as a reviewer of newly-aired episodes. Currently reviewing this season 39 Charlize Theron-hosted episode is very significant for me, too, because it’s the second-to-last episode I ever reviewed during my aforementioned original stint as a reviewer. (Yes, Charlize Theron indeed hosted both the first AND penultimate episode of my original reviewing stint. A crazy coincidence. Imagine if a similar coincidence ends up happening when I complete my current SNL project. The only realistic scenario I can see for that is if Paul Simon, who hosted and musical guested SNL’s second-ever episode, which, obviously, is the second-ever episode I reviewed in my current SNL project, hosts and/or musical guests one of the last episodes I review in this project. In fact, that would actually be two full-circle endings for me, because, believe it or not, Paul Simon also happened to be the musical guest in Charlize’s first episode, which is, again, the first episode I ever covered in my original stint as a reviewer. So many eerie coincidences.) Reviewing this season 39 Charlize Theron episode right now is honestly giving me an emotional and nostalgic feel, remembering the special, huge feeling I had back at this time in 2014 when I was about to retire from reviewing after 14 long years. This also makes me realize just how far I’ve come along in this current SNL project of mine.
— An okay premise for a musical monologue, but I don’t care for the style of the monologue song itself, and there’s not much funny stuff happening during it.
— Okay, the quick bit with Beck right now is pretty solid.
STARS: **


COME DO A GAME SHOW WITH YOUR MOM, IT’LL BE FUN, YES IT WILL!
(KAM) hosts a Mother’s Day game show with her kids (BRW), (KYM), (host)

— When Kate’s kids are all saying their opening greetings in unison, I laughed at how Kyle’s line during that is a quickly-delivered, whiny, monotone “I don’t wanna be heeerrre.”
— Just a mildly funny sketch so far, but it’s relatable and Kate is doing a very solid job in the lead role.
— A funny side role for Aidy.
— A good comically-brief appearance from Bobby as the father.
STARS: ***


GIRLFRIENDS TALK SHOW
passionate drama teacher (host) coaches Morgan

— Blah, there goes the obligatory, very tired “Aidy and the guest each say a different thing in unison when revealing a topic on the show “ trope.
— I’m really enjoying Charlize’s drama teacher performance here. I’m finding it amusing AND very believable.
— A very weak “My boyfriend’s crazy” story from Cecily tonight.
— Aidy doesn’t have as many funny moments as she usually does in this recurring sketch, though I do like her character’s wild, desperate delivery when trying to say “Well, that’s our sexy show” in a sexy manner during the conclusion of this sketch.
STARS: **


DRAGON BABIES
retired police officer (MOB) voices animated protagonist of Dragon Babies

— The most in-character we’ve ever seen Mike. He’s doing such a great job here, and his cop voice is fantastic.
— Very fun chemistry between Mike and Cecily.
— Great understated, controlled frustration in Taran’s director character during his interview portions of this short.
— I love the comically-uncomfortable moment with Mike somberly disclosing a story about once shooting an unarmed guy. Yet another Mike O’Brien short that adds in a comedic sense of melancholy.
— Overall, Mike does it once again with yet another very strong short. His shorts are so damn good that there’s no wonder why SNL let him continue doing them and starring in them the next few seasons when he’s not even in the cast anymore.
STARS: ****½


DATING SEMINAR
pelvic thrusts & sound effects accompany dating advice of Heshy & (host)

— The second and final appearance of this character of Nasim’s.
— For some reason, they changed Heshy’s surname. In this character’s previous sketch, her surname was Al-Fahi, and now it’s Farahat.
— Like last time, Nasim’s timing is excellent when making gestures to the various sound effects right on cue.
— Pretty fun addition of Charlize, playing against type as a frumpy character. I remember that, when this originally aired, I interestingly got a Mo-Collins-from-MADtv vibe from Charlize’s characterization here. I still kinda see it a little during my current viewing of this.
STARS: ***


MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Fever”


WEEKEND UPDATE
retiring SNL lampoonee Barbara Walters [real] gives tips for success

this year’s crop of graduates leads Drunk Uncle to fear for the future

— On a related note to me saying earlier in this review that I always like whenever a new SNL episode shows a clip from an older episode, I love the montage of SNL’s Barbara Walters impersonators over the years. Sadly, Michaela Watkins gets snubbed from this montage, for obvious reasons.
— A laugh from Barbara Walters demonstrating her “real voice”.
— I can’t find anything at all to say about the rest of Barbara Walters’ commentary. She’s at least coming off likable here. At certain parts, her timing is slow, awkward, and frail, but I can cut her some slack for that, given her age.
— A rare interaction piece between Cecily and Colin.
— The extremely random “Breaking Nudes” segment was a very funny little piece of absurdity.
— Drunk Uncle, in a random non-sequitur grumbling: “Jew Kids On The Block!”
— Ugh, is it necessary to have Colin carry on Seth Meyers’ tradition of always responding “That’s not anyone” whenever Drunk Uncle says “That’s not me”? It was tired enough when Seth did it.
— I love Drunk Uncle’s “What do you call a fish with no eyes?” joke. No idea if that’s an original joke from SNL or not (that joke is probably an oldie that I had just never heard before), but Drunk Uncle’s delivery of it was very fun.
— Drunk Uncle’s singing of “I Believe I Can Fly” is probably my favorite out of all the “Drunk Uncle butchers a hit song” moments that have occurred over the years.
— Some SNL fans seem very confused as to why Cecily says “No, no noooo!” to Drunk Uncle in a weird, growly voice towards the end of his “I Believe I Can Fly” singing, but I’m pretty sure that Cecily was imitating one part of the real “I Believe I Can Fly” song. I honestly don’t remember that song having a growly “No, no noooo!” part in it, but I’m guessing it’s in there.
STARS: **½


BIKINI BEACH PARTY
dead whale explosion interrupts teen fun of Bikini Beach Party movie

— I have mixed feelings towards the conversation between the girls. There’s some funny lines in that conversation, but some of the other lines in it that are intended to be funny are typical James Anderson/Kent Sublette-style bad randomness.
— A very memorable and priceless visual of the dead whale exploding an insane amount of blood and guts all over Charlize and Taran. I remember how much this visual absolutely FLOORED me when it originally aired.
— Kenan’s at the point of his SNL tenure where he can do almost no wrong for me, but his appearance in this sketch is unfortunately one of the instances where him hammily chewing the scenery actually doesn’t work for me. I really dislike that voice and delivery he’s using here, and it feels completely wrong for this sketch.
— Blah, it’s very unnecessary and harmful to this sketch to repeat the “blood-and-guts explosion” gag right after the first one. The second instance of that gag got nowhere near as many laughs from me nor the audience.
STARS: Very difficult for me to figure out what rating to give this. The first “blood-and-guts explosion” gag ALONE deserves a high rating, but 1) the scenes prior to that were iffy for me, 2) I hate how they repeated the “blood-and-guts explosion” gag to far less comedic effect, and 3) Kenan annoyed the living hell out of me. For now, I’ll rate this ***, but I might change my mind later on.


MUSICAL GUEST INTRO

— Not only is it fun how a blood-soaked Charlize from the preceding sketch carries over into this musical guest intro, but this is actually the second consecutive year in which something like this occurred in the penultimate episode of a season. Season 38’s penultimate episode had Kristen Wiig (that night’s host) and Aidy both introducing the musical guest while still covered in blood from the Acupuncture sketch that preceded it. At this time in 2014, I wondered if SNL was intentionally trying to make this a new annual tradition for every penultimate episode of a season. That could’ve been fun. But alas, the “tradition” stops here. I can’t remember if the following season’s penultimate episode (Reese Witherspoon / Florence + The Machine) has any sketches that involve blood in any way, but either way, that episode doesn’t contain any instances of a sketch carrying over into the host’s introduction of the musical guest.


MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Bullet in the Brain”


WHISKERS R’ WE
Barbara (KAM) & (host) show cats available for adoption

— This soon-to-be recurring sketch makes its debut.
— Charlize again playing against type tonight as an unattractive character.
— A good offbeat performance from Charlize.
— Some funny lines from Kate when disclosing each cat’s strange quirks.
STARS: ***½


TOURISTS
in NYC, foreign visitors ask passers-by for assistance

— I love the exaggerated American accent that Kyle’s foreigner character tries to say American expressions in.
— I’m loving the low-key approach to this, and I like the format with the cutting from one foreigner’s scene to another’s, and how each foreigner’s scene differs from each other’s.
— Funny subversion in Bobby’s scene, regarding directions to Arbalato Street.
— Charlize once again playing against type as a frumpy character, this time going the whole nine yards by donning a fat suit.
— A very funny initial facial reaction from Beck when finding out he’s in New York instead of Chicago.
STARS: ****


GOODNIGHTS

— Much longer goodnights than usual tonight. Probably one of the longest the goodnights have gone on in an episode from recent years.
— Poor John Milihiser is getting far more facetime during these goodnights than he regularly gets in actual episodes. (He was nowhere to be seen in tonight’s episode prior to these goodnights, and, showing how good-natured and likable he apparently is, he doesn’t even look upset by that, and is instead looking like he’s genuinely having a lot of fun interacting with others onstage during these goodnights, as seen in the third above screencap for these goodnights.)

IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— An okay episode, though it’s yet another season 39 example of pre-taped shorts standing out far more than the actual live segments. Also, reviewing this episode just now felt significant, emotional, and nostalgic for me, for reasons mentioned in my review of the monologue. And this hosting stint of Charlize Theron’s was an improvement over her previous one, which typecast her in an awful lot of “Hot girl gets lusted after by horny men” roles.


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

plus the first instance of this:


RATED SEGMENTS RANKED FROM BEST TO WORST
Dragon Babies
Tourists
Whiskers R’ We
Come Do A Game Show With Your Mom, It’ll Be Fun, Yes It Will!
Bikini Beach Party
Dating Seminar
A Mother’s Day Message From Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton
Weekend Update
Monologue
Girlfriends Talk Show


HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Andrew Garfield)
a slight step down


My full set of screencaps for this episode is here


TOMORROW
Season 39 comes to an end, with host Andy Samberg. It’s the final episode for five-year cast member Nasim Pedrad, the final episode for first-year featured players John Milhiser, Mike O’Brien, Noel Wells, and Brooks Wheelan, the final episode that Cecily Strong co-anchors Weekend Update, the final episode for announcer Don Pardo, and the final episode I reviewed during my original 14-year reviewing stint.

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May 3, 2014 – Andrew Garfield / Coldplay (S39 E19)

Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars

PRESS CONFERENCE
mistress (SAZ) & Dennis Rodman (JAP) stand up for Donald Sterling (BOM)

— Very funny line from Taran’s Adam Silver gloating that he received more high-fives from black people this week than any other time in his life.
— Interesting voice from Bobby as Donald Sterling, who has some good lines here.
— Jay’s Dennis Rodman impression has improved from the previous time he played him, though I keep hearing a bit of Will Smith in his voice this time.
— All of Kenan’s “Look……….”s and “Come on…….”s during his speech are cracking me up, and is exactly the type of thing Kenan always knows how to make funny. It would’ve been funnier, though, if his scene consisted of him literally only saying “Look……….” and “Come on…….”, and then walking off without having said anything else.
STARS: ***


MONOLOGUE
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 co-stars Emma Stone [real] & AIB advise host

— I always forget Andrew Garfield is British until I hear him speak in his real voice.
— Another monologue where the premise is the host being upstaged by a cameo. Normally, I’d gripe about this like I did in my review of the preceding episode’s monologue, but at least this particular Emma Stone cameo makes sense in terms of the host, and Emma is always good on SNL, and thus, I can’t really complain about her presence here.
— Good bit regarding Emma assuring Andrew that the SNL Band laughs at anything during monologues, only for them to be stone-faced when Andrew does a bad attempt at a joke.
— A pretty funny clip of Aidy’s blink-and-miss-it appearance in the new Spider-Man movie.
STARS: ***


STANX
odor lock technology of Stanx expandable underwear contains (BEB)’s farts

— Season 39’s penchant for juvenile humor strikes ONCE AGAIN. Since I actually found some of this season’s juvenile humor pieces to be surprisingly not bad (e.g. the Jim Parsons elevator sketch), I’ll remain open-minded towards this commercial.
— A very blah sight gag of Beck’s Stanx wear constantly inflating while he’s farting in a laid-back demeanor. Certainly not a great sight gag to base an entire commercial around.
— Ha, an actual funny conclusion with Beck’s apartment exploding when he removes his Stanx after it contained his farts all day.
— I love both Beck’s intentionally cheesy delivery and (especially) facial expression when saying “Thanks, Stanx!” (the last above screencap for this commercial). He’s one of the only performers who could sell a line like that.
STARS: *½ for the first two-thirds of this commercial, ***½ for the last third, **½ for this commercial altogether


CELEBRITY FAMILY FEUD
Justin Timberlake (host) dominates matchup of musicians

— Odd how the first installment of this sketch had Justin Timberlake playing that night’s SNL host, Jimmy Fallon, and now the second installment of this sketch has tonight’s SNL host, Andrew Garfield, playing Justin Timberlake. Does this mean that, in the next installment of this sketch, someone will play Andrew Garfield? (I already know in hindsight that the answer is no.)
— Another display of Nasim’s love for playing short men.
— Kenan’s Steve Harvey, to Noel’s Reba McEntire: “I seen your sitcoms. They are to white people what The Wayans Brothers are to black people – we’ll watch it…but we ain’t gonna TELL nobody about it.”
— A good Drake impression from Jay, and, as I mentioned in a recent review, I always love when a cast member impersonates a then-recent host, as I always like to assume that said cast member developed that impression from having worked with that host for a week.
— Not the most spot-on Timberlake impression in terms of voice or physical mannerisms, but Andrew’s at least doing a spot-on spoof of Timberlake’s penchant for being a screenhog who’s in love with himself.
— As usual, Kenan’s Steve Harvey has tons of hilarious lines throughout this sketch, especially “Show me ‘Fiddlin’ with ya giblets’!”, a line that has stuck in my memory over the years.
— Taran’s singing as Russel Crowe is priceless, as is the fact that it alone receives three Family Feud “X”s.
STARS: ***½


OLIVER TWIST
self-centered woman (CES) horns in on Oliver Twist’s (host) gruel query

— I’m not caring for Cecily’s character, nor do I care for that…that voice she’s doing. I remember, when this sketch originally aired, this was around the time I came to the conclusion that SNL was spreading Cecily too thin this season, pushing her too much, and starring her in lots of lousily-written big character showcase pieces, some of which she herself co-wrote with James Anderson and Kent Sublette. I remember all of those things caused me (and certain other online SNL fans) to kinda turn against Cecily at this time and worry that SNL was making the same mistake with her that they previously made with Kristen Wiig, in terms of overusing her, misusing her talents, and giving her lots of lousily-written big character showcase pieces. Over the following seasons after this one, where SNL stopped pushing her as the new “star” of the cast, Cecily would slowly win me back, to the degree that I now look at her as being a very valuable and underappreciated utility player, one with a timeless quality that feels like she would’ve fit into a lot of SNL eras, such as the prestigious late 80s era. However, even looking back at season 39 nowadays, I still feel this season wasn’t always the best use of Cecily’s talents, especially not with her Weekend Update anchoring gig and how bad some of her big character showcase pieces were, including this sketch.
— I laughed at Kate’s quivery-voiced, British-accented delivery of “I do the whippings!”
— Cecily finally got a laugh from me, when saying, during her claim that she’s not afraid to give people whippings, “And FYI, I whip the face!”
— The bit regarding Cecily eating all of Andrew’s soup fell very flat.
— Welp, folks, this ends up being John Milhiser’s final live role on SNL. And, being completely on-brand with his general airtime this season, his role in this sketch is a very small one with only one line. (*sigh*) Even though there are two episodes remaining this season, John does not make a single live appearance in either of them. He’s completely absent in the penultimate episode, and in the season finale, he (and all of the other featured players who get fired after this season) only appears in a non-speaking bit role in a pre-taped Lonely Island Digital Short that he dies in. Poor, poor John. He has one of the saddest SNL tenures I’ve ever witnessed. So much potential completely wasted by SNL.
STARS: *½


THE BEYGENCY
(host), (Kiefer Sutherland), (Mary Lynn Rajskub) are targeted for dissing diva Beyonce

— A famous Chris Kelly/Sarah Schneider-written pre-tape that went very viral back at this time in 2014 and was considered a season highlight, deservedly so, in my opinion. I recall this short being a masterpiece.
— A very funny exaggerated dark turn after Andrew confesses he’s not crazy about Beyonce’s “Drunk In Love” song.
— Dramatic exchange between Taran and Jay’s agent characters: “It’s time to go to work.” “Work with an ‘e’?” “Of course.”
— After the tense “I like most of her music!” “MOST?!?” exchange between Andrew and Bobby, I love Bobby immediately whipping out a shotgun and aiming it at Andrew.
— Even the cameos in this are fun, with Kiefer Sutherland and Mary Lynn Rajskub playing their “24” characters. I especially love how, after calling one of Beyonce’s songs “the only good one!”, they’re both immediately shot in the back of the head by two bullets from off-camera. That also results in an absolutely hilarious muted, long, high-pitched scream from Andrew.
— Everything about the movie trailer aesthetic this is going for is absolutely perfect, from the way it’s shot, to the acting, to everything else.
— A particularly classic part with the hilarious visual of Taran and the other manly agents doing the Single Ladies dance in unison.
— A solid comically-unsettling performance from Kate. Even though it’s just a small role, it’s Kate McKinnon performances like this that made me start to realize back at this time in 2014 that she seemed to be on her way to becoming my personal favorite member of the then-current cast. It turns out, she would indeed go on to become my favorite then-current cast member the next few seasons (seasons 40-42), which feature her at her peak.
— The audience applause at the end of this short is so enthusiastic and premature that it drowns out Kate’s ending line, “(singing) Who run the world? (speaking) She does.”
— Overall, this short absolutely still holds up for me.
STARS: *****


MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Magic”


WEEKEND UPDATE
Olya Povlatsky expects Russia-Ukraine tiff will make her life even worse

large-framed LEJ figures she would’ve been in demand during slavery

Jebidiah Atkinson has nothing nice to say about Tony Awards & theatre

— Lots of meh Update jokes so far tonight, from both Cecily AND Colin. (Usually, it’s just Cecily who gets the worst jokes.)
— Kate’s Olya Povlatsky character is always so fun and likable, but I hope they’re not starting to rely a little too frequently on her.
— Even SNL’s overused “foreigner makes dated pop culture-references because their country is decades behind on American pop culture” trope is made funny in this Olya Povlatsky commentary, with the solid Full House bit.
— I like Olya Povlatsky’s facial reaction to Cecily telling her the very tame “problems” that make Americans say “F my life.”
— Cecily’s “George Clooney engaged” joke is one of her stronger Update jokes this season.
— A very noteworthy moment right now, as we get our very first Leslie Jones SNL appearance, back when she was just a writer on the show.
— It feels really significant hearing Leslie Jones’ distinctive voice for the first time in my SNL project. Just one of those special moments that makes me realize I’ve officially reached a certain big SNL period/era. This also occurred when I first heard the comforting voice of Phil Hartman and Bill Hader (and a few other cast members who I can’t remember right now) when I reviewed their respective first episode.
— Ah, there’s our very first “Leslie hits on Colin” moment, which already feels fully-formed even in this first instance of it. I especially love the back-and-forth between Leslie and Colin during the second “Who would you pick…?” question she asks him.
— Leslie is so good here that she’s actually bringing out some personality in Colin, which is rare to see in these early days of Colin’s Update stint.
— A particularly memorable part of Leslie’s commentary, in which she demonstrates how frequently she would’ve had “superbabies” in the slavery days: “Shaq! Kobe! LeBron! Kimbo Slice! Sinbad!”
— Leslie, at the end of her commentary: “Can a bitch get a beef bowl?!? CAN A BITCH GET A BEEF BOWL?!?”
— Leslie absolutely knocked it out of the park in this overall commentary. She definitely made her presence known right out of the gate. One of the most impressive SNL debuts I’ve ever seen a performer make. I recall thinking back at this time that Leslie displayed far more comedic prowess in one appearance than Sasheer did in the entire second half of this season (I find Sasheer more likable in my re-watch of this season, even though I still find there’s too much of a blandness to her as an SNL performer, and I feel that SNL just wasn’t the right venue for her talents), and that a standout performer like Leslie being stuck in the writers’ room while the unmemorable and less-funny (to me back in 2014) Sasheer got to be in the cast was akin to 10 years prior where standout performer J.B. Smoove was stuck in the writers’ room while the unmemorable and less-funny Finesse Mitchell got to be in the cast. Leslie’s onscreen debut in this episode would not only go on to be much talked about (including some controversy caused by the slavery subject matter Leslie focused on), but would lead to her making more uncredited onscreen SNL appearances early the following season, which themselves would be so well-received that SNL would finally add her to the cast four episodes into that season.
— The punchline to Colin’s “Cheerleading has been made an official high school sport” news story being him saying “……Dad” in a defensive manner is something that would go on to be a running punchline he’d use over the years. As I said in a previous review, Seth Meyers was actually the first Update anchor to use that punchline, years prior to this.
— Cecily and Colin’s Update jokes have been improving over the course of tonight’s Update, after a bad start. Even Cecily’s corny “loaded potato” joke was the good kind of corny, and I especially like her jokingly-smug “You’re welcome” ad-lib afterwards.
— Jebidiah Atkinson!
— Jebidiah Atkinson, on the play Of Mice And Men: “The only thing slower than this play was Lennie…and at least someone put him out of his misery!”
— As usual in these Jebidiah Atkinson commentaries, we get a fantastic ad-lib from Taran at one point, this time when correcting himself after his “Tony/Tommy” slip-up.
— Jebidiah Atkinson, on the play Annie: “Sing as loud as you want, honey – your parents ain’t comin’ back!”
— Jebidiah Atkinson, on the play that Abraham Lincoln was attending when he got shot: “It may not have gone over that well in the orchestra…but it KILLED in the balcony!”
— I absolute love how Taran ends tonight’s Jebidiah Atkinson commentary by saying “Can a bitch get a beef bowl?!?”, as a callback to how Leslie Jones’ commentary ended earlier in this Update.
— Tonight’s overall Update was easily the best one of this troubled Update season so far.
STARS: ***½


SPIDER-MAN KISS
host & Emma Stone [real] kiss awkwardly on The Amazing Spider-Man 2 set

— Not one of the funnier premises for the ol’ SNL trope of “someone has a very difficult time doing a very simple thing during the filming of a movie/commercial/etc.”, but Andrew and Emma’s performances are somewhat fun.
— Taran’s a solid straight man here.
— Seeing Andrew, Emma, and Chris Martin onscreen together makes me realize that the last time both Andrew and Emma appeared together on SNL prior to this, when Emma hosted in season 37, Coldplay was the musical guest in that episode, too. Interesting coincidence.
— Aaaaaaand we go the cheap “men kissing each other for an easy, unnecessary laugh” route. As unfunny as that certainly is, I will at least say that Chris Martin is coming off very game and natural here, making me wish SNL gave him better material than this and that damn Garth & Kat commentary from the aforementioned season 37 episode that Emma hosted.
— What’s with Jay’s extremely goofy, muggy facial expression when he briefly re-entered the sketch to hand Chris Martin a blonde wig (the third-to-last above screencap for this sketch)? Even the way he handed Chris Martin the wig was done in a very silly, exaggerated manner. Was all of that Jay’s unscripted attempt to make something out of a nothing role? If so, the way he did it feels kinda unprofessional, but I’m probably making too big a deal out of nothing.
— Aaaaaaand to make this sketch even worse after that “men kissing each other for an easy, unnecessary laugh” turn, we close this sketch with an always-lazy “spinning newspaper headline” ending, one that somehow manages to be even weaker than usual. Man, this sketch really went to hell after a tepidly-written-but-affably-performed first two-thirds.
STARS: **


WEDDING
best man (host) expresses love for bride (CES) at her wedding reception

— I laughed out loud at Kenan’s shocked delivery of “Aw, dayum!” when Andrew confesses he’s still in love with his ex, Cecily, who’s the bride at this wedding ceremony.
— I love the very-realistically uncomfortable turn this sketch takes when Cecily breaks Andrew’s heart by disclosing that she doesn’t reciprocate his love and, in fact, barely even knows him. Andrew is great at pulling this uncomfortable turn off while his character tries to remain jovial.
— Oh, an absolutely priceless reveal that Andrew is the best man of this wedding, and now has to give a toast RIGHT AFTER his embarrassing moment where he confessed his love to the bride and then got his heart broken by her.
— Another absolutely priceless reveal, where we find out that the maid of honor, who’s standing next to Andrew right now after all the things he had just said about the love he has for the bride, is actually HIS WIFE. Wow.
— Man, this sketch is keeping the hilarious shocking reveals coming. This is amazing.
— Yet another line delivered excellently by Kenan, this time at the end of this sketch when Andrew tries to go back onstage once again after the announcement of the garter toss: “HEY, HEY, BOY, SIT YO ASS DOWN!”
— Overall, a forgotten and underrated masterpiece. And, would you know it, much like tonight’s other masterpiece, The Beygency, I’m pretty sure this Wedding sketch was written by Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider (though I’m not sure if that was ever confirmed, so my apologies if I’m incorrect), further proving that those two are by far the MVPs of SNL’s then-current writing staff, and should’ve been promoted to head writers much earlier than they ended up being (which turns out to be in season 42, and ONLY season 42, because they both end up leaving the show after that season, which further proves my point that SNL waited too damn long to make those two head writers).
STARS: *****


MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “A Sky Full Of Stars”


THE BIRD BIBLE
Rerun from 3/1/14


GOODNIGHTS

IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— This episode contained three very noteworthy segments (The Beygency, Wedding, and Leslie Jones’ onscreen debut), all of which are season highlights and bolstered the quality of what was an otherwise average episode. Andrew Garfield was a likable host and did a particularly strong job in the Wedding sketch. He even came off very endearing during his goodnights speech.


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


RATED SEGMENTS RANKED FROM BEST TO WORST
The Beygency
Wedding
Weekend Update
Celebrity Family Feud
Press Conference
Monologue
Stanx
Spider-Man Kiss
Oliver Twist


HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Seth Rogen)
a step up


My full set of screencaps for this episode is here


TOMORROW
Charlize Theron

Posted on

April 12, 2014 – Seth Rogen / Ed Sheeran (S39 E18)

Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars

COACHELLA
at Coachella, Paul Ryan (TAK) & Jeb Bush (BEB) attempt cool conservatism

— Hmm, I wasn’t aware that Beck’s Jeb Bush impression debuted this early in his SNL tenure.
— A decent premise and a fairly fun and out-of-the-ordinary setting for a political cold opening.
— I’m surprised to see this end already. I had remembered this cold opening showcasing more republicans than I saw here. Maybe I was getting parts of this cold opening confused with a very similar cold opening the show would later do in the following season’s Reese Witherspoon episode.
STARS: ***


MONOLOGUE
Zooey Deschanel, James Franco, Taylor Swift [real] interrupt host

— Decent bit with Seth Rogen’s relatives having his trademark laugh.
— Of the three Seth Rogen monologues over the years, this is the second one with a Wu-Tang Clan reference. Seth clearly must be a fan.
— Kinda funny seeing Zooey Deschanel now standing in almost the exact same spot that Noel stood in a minute prior, given the resemblance that Noel and Zooey naturally have to each other (plus the fact that Noel has a Zooey impression in her repertoire, which SNL let her briefly display earlier this season). During the goodnights at the end of this episode, we’ll even see Noel and Zooey standing close together, eerily looking like they could be sisters, and even wearing somewhat-similar outfits (screencap below, with a circle I added pointing out where Noel and Zooey are).

— Wait, that non-speaking, blink-and-miss-it walk-on that Zooey made ends up being her WHOLE cameo??? What was the point of that?
— Another celebrity cameo. I don’t like where this monologue is going.
— Never mind my earlier comment questioning what the point was of Zooey only showing up to make a wordless, five-second cameo, as she’s now come back and has some lines.
— Yep, and here’s yet another pointless, corny cameo. Blah. Feels like I’m watching something from a more recent season. And these cameos in this monologue don’t even have anything to do with the established premise of Seth reading from his journal, which just randomly gets abandoned halfway through this monologue to focus on cameos.
STARS: **


DRUG SAFETY
Shallon reverses D.A.R.E. representative’s (host) say-no-to-drugs spiel

— Predictably, this goes the exact same route as the previous two installments of this sketch. However, the crack subject of tonight’s installment is admittedly more inherently funny than the van and fireplace subjects of the previous two installments, and is making this pretty fun, even if I feel it doesn’t measure up to the first installment, due to the derivative feel.
— I love Bobby’s happy delivery of the line “The hero of our story!” when Seth says he’ll play the drug dealer of this scenario.
STARS: ***


CNN PREGNANCY TEST
drawn-out CNN pregnancy test frustrates potential parents (BEB) & (VAB)

— A pretty funny topical premise of a CNN pregnancy test.
— A good slow burn from Vanessa and Beck throughout this, in regards to all the false alarms from the pregnancy test. Vanessa’s always so good at playing characters who force themselves to smile while slowly getting impatient towards something.
STARS: ***


STEAKHOUSE
(AIB)’s pair of broken arms draw attention at (CES)’s birthday dinner

— I’m currently two-and-a-half minutes into this sketch, and I haven’t enjoyed anything so far. In addition to bad writing, this James Anderson/Kent Sublette-written sketch is featuring some of their absolute worst tendencies as writers: every character speaking in an exaggerated southern accent, the pointless decision to give a character a very specific, standout, dissonant hairstyle (Aidy, who’s character actually blatantly calls attention to her hairstyle at one point, for no good reason), and the random decision to throw in exaggeratedly effeminate gay men (the waiters played by Brooks and John) who have nothing to do with the rest of the sketch.
— Aaaaaaand now, to further prove my point about how this features Anderson and Sublette’s worst writing tropes, the focus of this sketch turns to a very unnecessary and unfunny big ol’ fart gag. Yep, it’s now safe to say this sketch is a bonafide dud.
— Not even the usually-reliable Aidy can do anything to save this in her lead role, especially not her helplessly giggling out of character after the fart sound effect. I’d like to think she’s just giggling because that fart sound effect made her fully come to the realization of what a stupid, stupid sketch she’s stuck in.
STARS: *


MONSTER PALS
(MOB) & (James Franco) undergo surgery to look human

— Great random concept for a Mike O’Brien short.
— The grunt-filled conversation between the two monsters at the bar is hilarious.
— I love the very realistic feel that Taran’s “Can’t just go around grabbing people, man. Gotta watch that” line gave to the end of the bar scene.
— A very funny line from Mike’s monster character when seeing the movie Monsters Inc. playing on a screen in a store window: “They took a lot of liberties on that one.”
— I absolutely love the sequence with Mike’s monster character searching for his friend among real New York citizens on the street, and I like the hint of pathos in this scene (and throughout this short in general, actually). Mike is always so great at adding pathos to his short films.
— Funny ending with Mike’s now-human-looking monster character admitting he chose this mediocre new face of his because it was cheaper.
— Overall, another excellent Mike O’Brien short.
STARS: *****


BLUE RIVER DOG FOOD
inferior kibble makes (host)’s wife (CES) crazy

— I recall not liking this sketch at all back when it originally aired, and I also remember subsequently being baffled to see this sketch go on to be considered pretty much a classic among a number of SNL fans. I’ll go into this sketch with an open mind in my current viewing, so I can hopefully understand what all the hoopla is about.
— Great delivery from Cecily of the line, “Bend over, Pat, they wanna get that ass!”
— A damn good angry outburst from Seth towards Cecily.
— Cecily is selling the hell out of this intense role. Definitely a standout performance from her.
— They’re overdoing the cutesy close-ups of the dog, though I guess that works as a comedic contrast to Cecily’s insane ranting.
— Solid ending.
— Overall, as I hoped, I’ve finally come around on this sketch, even if I still don’t find it to be quite a five-star classic like a number of SNL fans seem to. The rating I’m about to give this sketch is still very impressive, though, especially coming immediately after the five-star-rated Monster Pals short.
STARS: ****½


MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Sing”


WEEKEND UPDATE
Samsung endorser David Ortiz (KET) acts as spokesman for other brands

Jacob talks about Passover symbolism & slowly warms up to CES

— I know it’s starting to become cliched for me to point out how ridiculously corny both Cecily’s Update delivery AND jokes have been lately, but man, I absolutely HATED her cheesy delivery of the punchline to that Kathleen Sebelius joke. (*sigh*) I just have to keep telling myself, only a few Updates left until the Cecily Strong era of Update is thankfully over…
— Showing how stiff and undeveloped as an anchor Colin is in these early Updates of his, when his Kim Jong Un voting joke is followed by an off-camera Cecily quietly asking Colin, in a comedic ad-lib, “Did you vote for him?”, Colin doesn’t even acknowledge that ad-lib of Cecily’s and instead just continues blandly and stiffly staring at the camera while moving onto the next Update joke. If this was about a year-and-a-half later or beyond and that was Michael Che ad-libbing the “Did you vote for him?” question, Colin would’ve easily played along with that ad-libbed question and gave it an answer.
— The debut of Kenan’s memorable David Ortiz impression.
— A very likable and funny performance from Kenan here, and the ads that his David Ortiz is doing are stupidly hilarious.
— Colin finally shows some personality, where, after the audience has an “Ohhhh!” reaction to his harsh punchline about Katherine Heigl now working at Duane Reade, Colin humorously ad-libs “Probably just researching a role!”, though part of me doesn’t like how that kinda felt like Colin copping out and basically telling Katherine Heigl, “No hard feelings.” I’m probably looking too much into that, though.
— Colin and Cecily have actually been having a few strong jokes tonight among all the clunkers they have. The clunkers still outnumber the strong jokes, though.
— Cecily, at the beginning of her introduction of the next guest commentary: “This Monday marks the first night of Passover. ” Oh, no. I can already tell from that statement of Cecily’s that it means she’s introducing a Jacob commentary, with Jacob doing the same thing he does in EVERY SINGLE COMMENTARY OF HIS.
— At least tonight’s Jacob commentary starts with an interesting interaction between him and Cecily, where Cecily assures him not to worry about Seth Meyers no longer being here, as she and Jacob will get along just fine. But of course, that’s immediately followed by Jacob launching into his same-old same-old routine.
— Cecily’s at least more far more fun and charming than Seth Meyers was at asking Jacob questions throughout Jacob’s commentary.
— An okay moment with Jacob quickly wiping away a tear when Cecily asks him how he feels about Derek Jeter’s upcoming retirement. That’s a good continuation of the minor story arc in these Jacob commentaries, where it’s established that he’s a Derek Jeter and Yankees fan.
— This overall Jacob commentary surprisingly didn’t turn out too bad, as they at least finally did some different things with the formula, and, like I said earlier, Cecily had a much more charming chemistry with him than Seth Meyers did.
STARS: **½


ENGAGEMENT PARTY
(CES) broaches cousin’s (host) gay experience at his engagement party

— I already don’t like the nature of this character that Cecily suddenly barges in playing.
— It’s now a minute-and-a-half later, and not only have I still yet to laugh a single time, but this sketch has gotten really uncomfortable, and not uncomfortable in a funny way. I also really don’t like the cheap attempt at laughs by using a disclosure about a past gay experience as the main “joke” of the sketch, nor do I like how it’s supposed to be “funny” that Seth’s character is ashamed that he sexually experimented with a man once, and we end up getting no resolution to that shame of his. Practically everything about this sketch’s script, premise, and execution is off-putting.
STARS: *


UNDERCOVER SHARPTON
Al Sharpton (KET) clumsily participates in 1983 FBI mob sting operation

— A very funny opening credits sequence, and the concept of Kenan’s Al Sharpton ineptly working in an undercover drug bust is promising.
— After the aforementioned opening credits sequence, the actual sketch itself that follows the credits is letting me down. It’s so boring that, after a while, a lot of it has become white noise to me, despite Kenan’s efforts.
— A poor ending.
STARS: *½


MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Don’t”


A VERY SMOKY 420
non-pothead (KYM) revels in holiday weed tradition

— I love how this is featuring Kyle’s trademark weirdness being turned up to 11. His weirdness is proudly at its most unleashed and unfiltered here.
— Kyle is an absolute riot here with his made-up 420 holiday traditions and nonsensical songs.
— Given how well I remember this season’s Good Neighbor shorts, I’m kinda surprised that I had no previous memory of Beck’s appearance in this. This is also the third consecutive Good Neighbor short in which Beck either doesn’t appear or only appears in a brief walk-on.
— I got a huge laugh from how Seth’s “Could you…not use my last name?” line is immediately followed by his last name being suddenly removed from the chyron of his full name that’s been displayed onscreen ever since he made his entrance.
STARS: ****


HERMAN & SONS
Herman (host) & Sons (KET) are making their sperm bank into a yogurt shop

— I kinda like the random subversion with the “Sons” part of the “Herman & Sons” company name turning out to be the surname of one of the company owners, Eugene Sons.
— Aidy steals this sketch with her hilarious brief appearance, squealing in excitement while running past the camera with a shopping cart full of sperm samples.
— A juvenile but funny concept of turning a sperm bank into a yogurt shop. Like a lot of juvenile premises this season, this is being executed surprisingly decently.
STARS: ***


GOODNIGHTS

IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— Kind of a hard episode to figure, but my gut feeling sorta says this was one of the more “meh” episodes of this season. While this featured a strong one-two punch of Monster Pals and Blue River Dog Food airing back-to-back, and also featured a great oddball Kyle Mooney short airing towards the end of the show, this episode also featured two of the worst sketches of this entire season (Steakhouse and Engagement Party) and a very weak Al Sharpton sketch that squandered a promising concept. This episode’s remaining segments not mentioned in my preceding sentence all ranged from just average to mediocre. So yeah, kind of an all-over-the-place episode, one that ultimately left me with an unexcited feel. Possibly adding to my unexcited feel is the fact that it seems like with each passing hosting stint, Seth Rogen is more and more forgettable. He was pretty much a non-entity as a host tonight, as the writers gave him very few chances to stand out, mostly sticking him in generic, dull straight man roles that could’ve been given to any host. Even his monologue was written to have everyone else getting the laughs except him. Why waste a comedian in these types of non-comedic roles, even as polarizing as his comedy usually is?


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


RATED SEGMENTS RANKED FROM BEST TO WORST
Monster Pals
Blue River Dog Food
A Very Smoky 420
CNN Pregnancy Test
Herman & Sons
Drug Safety
Coachella
Weekend Update
Monologue
Undercover Sharpton
Steakhouse / Engagement Party (tie)


HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Anna Kendrick)
a step down


My full set of screencaps for this episode is here


TOMORROW
Andrew Garfield

Posted on

April 5, 2014 – Anna Kendrick / Pharrell Williams (S39 E17)

Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars

GM HEARINGS
new General Motors CEO Mary Barra (KAM) can’t recall ignition switch woes

— Lots of funny lines from Kate, especially the escalating ridiculousness and immaturity in her responses.
— Feels so odd seeing Mike being cast in this particular context.
— A great LFNY subversion, with Taran cutting off Kate’s LFNY and calling her out on using it as a means to escape answering a difficult question. This isn’t the first time SNL ever used this LFNY subversion, but it’s always fun whenever they do.
STARS: ****


MONOLOGUE
host sings “Belle” variant to share her SNL excitement with cast members

— Another musical monologue, but it’s understandable here, given Anna Kendrick’s musical theater background.
— Very funny little bit with Kate musically questioning Vanessa’s attempt at a Scottish brogue.
— This is being well-executed for a musical monologue, and has a charming, catchy, and pretty fun atmosphere.
— The visual of the entire cast lined up onstage together during the conclusion of this monologue is noteworthy, as 1) seeing them lined up in that manner really makes you realize how gigantic this season’s cast is, and 2) this visual brings to mind the memorable moment where the also-gigantic season 17 cast is lined up together onstage in the conclusion of the legendary Not Gonna Phone It In Tonight cold opening with Steve Martin. Also, seeing this entire season 39 cast together in this manner makes me wish this season got more of this kind of mileage out of having such a large cast, mileage that season 17 was good at getting out of their large cast.
— Ha, during the aforementioned full-cast musical number in the conclusion of this monologue, Mike is noticeably doing a half-assed attempt at making it look like he’s singing in unison with the rest of the cast. He’s barely even moving his mouth. I also noticed something similar earlier this season in Tina Fey’s monologue, where Mike barely even moved when he and the rest of the new featured players were doing silly dances. Either these things are yet another sign of how ill-fit Mike is as a live TV performer, or he must just have a Norm Macdonald-like aversion to performing full-cast singing/dancing numbers.
STARS: ***½


FOX & FRIENDS
Neil deGrasse Tyson (KET) discusses climate change

— Surprisingly, this is the first time we’re seeing this sketch all season. It hadn’t appeared since May of the preceding season.
— I guess showing how long it’s been since this sketch last appeared prior to this, real Fox & Friends co-host Gretchen Carlson left the show and was replaced with Elisabeth Hasselbeck at some point during the hiatus of SNL’s Fox & Friends spoofs. In an apparent attempt to keep the great chemistry that Taran, Vanessa, and Bobby always had in previous installments of this sketch, SNL makes the right decision to keep Vanessa in the group by having her play Hasselbeck, instead of them giving that role to another performer.
— The usual hilarious dimwitted comments delivered affably by Bobby’s Brian Kilmeade.
— I love Vanessa-as-Hasselbeck’s obliviousness to the fact that her husband was intentionally watching porn in the anecdote she tells.
— The traditional list of fact corrections that these Fox & Friends sketches typically end with is noticeably scrolling by in a slower speed than usual tonight, perhaps because SNL wants viewers to have a better chance of catching each fact correction without having to pause their screen.
STARS: ***½


DONGS ALL OVER THE WORLD
women fly globally for penis; Icona Pop cameo

— This dongs concept isn’t bad, I guess, but yeesh, the execution of it feels so flat and ineffective. This ain’t working.
— I do at least find the melody of the song to be very catchy. I just wish the lyrics themselves were actually funny or entertaining.
— Okay, we now get an actual decent interlude during the song, with Aidy and Vanessa’s awkward conversation.
STARS: **


THE LITTLE MERMAID
Ursula (AIB) doesn’t want Ariel’s (host) unmelodic pop singer voice

— This has been a musical-heavy episode so far.
— Not only do I love the voice Aidy’s using as Ursula, but I also like how unintentionally Julia Sweeney-esque it sounds at certain points.
— A very awkward music miscue on SNL’s part when Anna’s supposed to sing her first song, causing her to helplessly laugh a little. Aidy eases this awkward tension with a decent ad-lib until the music is cued up correctly.
— Solid execution from Anna of the various badly-sung pop songs, even if this is the type of humor that usually doesn’t do much for me. I’ve never been as big on this sketch as a number of SNL fans seem to be, but I still find the sketch to be fine.
— I love the following exchange between Anna’s Ariel and Aidy’s Urusla, after Ursula disapproves of Ariel’s choice to sing one particular song: “It’s okay. It’s Iggy Azalea, and she’s white!” “Now…I meant that because…she’s better than you, but…I guess…now we know you’re a racist.”
STARS: ***½


FLIRTY
shy (KYM) struggles to ask neighbor (VAB) out on a date

— This is the first time a Beck/Kyle short has aired in the pre-Weekend Update half of the show, possibly because the humor in this is more mainstream than their usual shorts.
— Such charmingly awkward and funny interactions between Kyle and Vanessa. The execution of this is fantastic, and I love the tender, slice-of-life feel this is giving to an SNL era that’s usually devoid of tender, slice-of-life pieces.
— Vanessa’s acting is particularly great and very believably romcom-ish. I particularly like how understated her growing frustration towards Kyle’s constant reluctance to ask her out is.
— A funny kiss fake-out.
— A big laugh from Beck coming in out of nowhere and bluntly asking Vanessa, “Do you wanna have sex with me right now?”, and then, after he’s told “Yes”, casually saying “I guess I’ll just go get set up and give myself a boner.”
— Such a lovely moment when Kyle finally asks Vanessa on that date.
— Excellent ending with Kyle’s very charming reaction to Vanessa accepting his offer to go out. I especially love the freeze-frame the screen does on Kyle’s jump when he’s mid-air.
— An overall perfect gem.
STARS: *****


MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Happy”


WEEKEND UPDATE
Angela Merkel (KAM) is tired of being responsible on the world stage

BRW warns that excess drinking can lead to unexplained butter in pants

George R.R. Martin (BOM) is behind schedule because he’s out of ideas

— Ugh, I see this is yet another Update where Cecily is saddled with a lot of corny punchlines and “character voice” punchlines. Much like the preceding episode’s Update, Colin has the better jokes of the two anchors tonight, despite him having not yet found his voice as Update anchor.
— Much like in her Olya Povlatsky commentaries, Kate is always fun and likable in her commentaries as Angela Merkel.
— (*groan*) Speaking of corny punchlines that Cecily is saddled with, is SNL freakin’ kidding me with that “horse jail” punchline that Cecily delivered just now? That’s a punchline I could’ve come up with when I was 10 years old, and that’s certainly no compliment from me.
— The second and final stand-up Update commentary Brooks does as himself.
— This “butter prank” routine was a somewhat well-known comedy routine of Brooks’ that he previously did at various venues. It’s a funny story, so I can’t complain about him doing it once again here.
— What’s this? An actual interaction piece between Cecily and Colin? Up until this point, I thought SNL forgot that the concept of Update co-anchors interacting with each other existed.
— I do feel this Cecily/Colin interaction piece had a strong ending, delivered well by Cecily.
— Aw, man, now even Colin’s letting me down with some Cecily-esque bad, corny, childlike punchlines, like that awful “hawks/library” joke.
STARS: **


LES JEUNES DE PARIS
(host)’s cups accompany (TAK) & “Louxor, J’Adore”

— Surprisingly, this is the first appearance this recurring sketch has made in over two full years. This also ends up being its final appearance. I wonder if they only brought it back tonight because Anna possibly requested it, as I can picture her being a fan of previous installments she may have seen of this sketch.
— Showing how many changes have occurred in SNL’s cast since the last time this recurring sketch appeared prior to this, Cecily has now replaced Kristen Wiig’s station ID voice-over that this recurring sketch always opens with, John has replaced Paul Brittain’s regular role as one of Taran’s character’s friends, and Noel has replaced Abby Elliott’s regular role as one of the host’s character’s friends. Noel in particular seems perfectly cast as a French youth, as she looks very natural in that role.
— I like the reference/homage to “Cups (When I’m Gone)” that Taran and Anna do.
— This sketch is fun as usual, even if it’s just going the usual route that this recurring sketch typically goes in instead of doing something vastly different with the formula like the last installment prior to tonight’s installment did, in which they did a brilliant mash-up with the movie The Artist. I’m not complaining about the return to the old formula, though, since we had such a long hiatus from this recurring sketch in general.
— A very funny Chris Tucker/Ruby Rhod appearance from Jay at the end.
STARS: ****


FIELD TRIP
Principal Frye reprimands misbehaving students during zoo field trip

— Another recurring sketch tonight that’s making its final appearance.
— Jay-as-Principal-Frye’s reports are funny as usual.
— Anne is very solid in her upbeat delivery when quoting rude things the off-camera students are saying to her.
STARS: ***½


MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest & Hans Zimmer [real] perform “Marilyn Monroe”


BIG JOE
Big Joe’s (TAK) bone disease leaves him unable to free (BOM) from rocks

— Ah, a sketch that’s always been a guilty pleasure of mine. I’m aware that many SNL fans feel (or at least felt back at this time in 2014) that this is a very dumb sketch with a bad, thin script. I can understand that viewpoint, but man, Taran absolutely sells this sketch for me BIG-TIME. Everything about his performance here slays me, from his mere look, his deep-voiced southern-accented delivery, and more. I especially love his delivery of the line “He gon’ DAHH (die).”
— When Anna easily lifts a rock, I laughed at Taran’s Big Joe nervously saying, “I-I loosened that one, *I* get credit.”
— Between these past two episodes, SNL seems to be phasing Noel into the “little girl” roles that Nasim would usually get, possibly because they realize by this point that Nasim will be leaving after this season to do John Mulaney’s then-upcoming sitcom. (Speaking of Nasim, it feels like she’s completely disappeared from the show these past two episodes, after having a boost in airtime for a majority of this season. I mean, she’s been in these past two episodes, but she’s completely invisible in them. Perhaps the reason for that is she’s possibly been very busy filming episodes of Mulaney’s sitcom.) However, as we know now, this decision to phase Noel into the type of roles Nasim used to get would turn out to be for nothing, as Noel ends up going out the door with Nasim that upcoming summer, thanks to SNL firing her along with most of her fellow newbies.
— Love the sequence with sunrises and sunsets constantly passing while Big Joe is in a frozen position while struggling to lift a large rock.
— Showing what a musical-heavy episode this is, even this sketch has a song thrown in at the very end.
STARS: ****


AUDITION
(host) & off-key sister (VAB) want to be backup singers for musical guest

— Our obligatory spoof of Pharrell’s famous hat.
— Tonight’s musical theme continues once again.
— Uh, where exactly is this Anna/Vanessa musical number going??? What’s the main joke? If the main joke is supposed to be Vanessa’s bad singing, she’s not making her bad singing comical enough. In fact, she doesn’t even sound all that horrible, which is hurting the alleged joke of this sketch.
— And now to make me like this sketch even less, we get the use of the ol’ SNL trope of the camera doing cutaways to each straight man character having a frozen shocked look on their face while witnessing something odd. They subvert that a little here by having the “frozen shocked looks” sequence end with a shot of Pharrell actually smiling and bopping his head to the music, but even that’s an overused SNL trope.
— I did get a laugh just now from Taran rudely asking, “Did one of you not get enough oxygen in the womb or something?”
— The running gag with Kenan and Taran’s magically-appearing Pharrell Hats isn’t doing anything for me.
— Was that ending even an ending???
STARS: *½


NCAA TOURNEY BEST OF THE WHITE GUYS
Caucasians in NCAA Basketball Tournament are lauded

— Making fun of the lameness of white basketball players is far from an original concept, but the idea to present that in an mock-exciting, hyped-up NCAA commercial is a funny idea, and it’s being executed well.
— The various NCAA white guy tropes being glowingly advertised, such as “Checking into a blowout”, are all funny.
STARS: ***½


GOODNIGHTS

IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A good episode with a likable and fun atmosphere, which even managed to make the heavy musical focus come off acceptable. Anna Kendrick contributed well to the likable and fun atmosphere of this episode.


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


RATED SEGMENTS RANKED FROM BEST TO WORST
Flirty
Les Jeunes de Paris
Big Joe
GM Hearings
Monologue
The Little Mermaid
Fox & Friends
Field Trip / NCAA Tourney Best Of The White Guys (tie)
Weekend Update
Dongs All Over The World
Audition


HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Louis C.K.)
a slight step down


My full set of screencaps for this episode is here


TOMORROW
Seth Rogen

Posted on

March 29, 2014 – Louis C.K. / Sam Smith (S39 E16)

Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars

HEALTHCARE.GOV MEETING
Barack Obama (JAP) seeks social media virality to promote HealthCare.gov

— Yikes. The (very pointless) audience applause that usually occurs whenever someone starts speaking at the beginning of cold openings of recent years seemed to be completely miscued on a timing delay tonight, leading Jay to awkwardly pause for a few seconds while waiting for the obligatory applause, then when we finally do get the applause, only about 20% of the audience do it, which then leads Jay and Taran to awkwardly break out into a giggle, then pause a little longer before finally going on with the script. Oof. All of this just shows how pointless and annoying it is for SNL to have the audience applaud at the beginning of every cold opening. For the life of me, I will NEVER understand why SNL made that a requirement.
— Even though she’s just playing a normal character, Noel is reminding me of Zooey Deschanel here, probably partly because of the hairstyle.
— Even with no lines, Brooks is doing very funny physical acting as Harry Styles.
— Funny delivery from Kyle as the pope.
— Some amusing sob stories from Taran, especially the heart-literally-made-of-gold one.
— Ah, the return of Kate’s hilarious Justin Bieber impression that debuted earlier this season.
STARS: ***½


MONOLOGUE
host does stand-up about existence of God & existence of God’s wife

— Didn’t care for that “white noise is noise for white people” opening joke, which was surprisingly hacky for a Louis C.K. joke. Thankfully, he just treated it as a quick throwaway joke and immediately moved on to another topic.
— I love the “I’m, like, literally starving” voice Louis does.
— A very solid bit about men being worse than women, especially Louis analyzing the “She got her feelings hurt” comment that he quotes from someone.
— I like Louis getting further mileage out of the ditzy, lispy voice that he used earlier during the “starving” bit by now using it as an example of how he can’t do impressions.
— I wonder if that’s a real audience member who, while off-camera, answers some of Louis’ questions in a short back-and-forth exchange Louis is having with her. When the camera finally does briefly cut to that audience member (after she’s already finished speaking), there’s no lighting on the portion of the audience we see (the second above screencap for this monologue), which I kinda like, as it gives this audience interaction of Louis’ a raw, genuine feel, like something you’d see in one of his stand-up specials.
— This God/heaven material is fantastic, and feels a little in a George Carlin vein, which I love.
— Yet another very strong bit, this time with Louis questioning the logic behind giving the name “wifebeater” to a certain type of shirt.
STARS: *****


BLACK JEOPARDY!
white contestant (host) questions tenor of game show

— The debut of this well-liked recurring sketch.
— I love Kenan smugly introducing himself as “Alex Tre-BLACK!”, then lightheartedly laughing and saying “Nah, I’m just playin’. I’m Darnell Hayes.”
— Solid black-centric humor here. While the humor feels very stereotypical, it’s working here, especially with how it and Louis’ whitebred answers comically contrast with each other. Plus, the fact that a black person (Michael Che) co-wrote this sketch helps the stereotypical aspect of the humor come off more acceptable.
— A huge laugh from Michael Vick being Louis’ answer to the dogs question. Even funnier that the actual answer turns out to be Sarah McLachlan.
— When Louis’ answer to the question from the “White People” category is revealed to be correct, Kenan gets a great line towards Louis: “The truth is, we would’ve accepted ANY answer.”
— Solid ending.
— While this overall Black Jeopardy debut doesn’t measure up to some of the later installments (particularly the well-loved installments with Tom Hanks and Chadwick Boseman), this was still strong.
STARS: ****


BABY BOSS
Mr. Patterson’s employee (host) spoon-feeds his resignation to his boss

— Beck is still great at this body-of-a-baby routine, as well as his ability to seamlessly go back-and-forth from doing wild baby mannerisms to acting like a straitlaced, mature boss, but they didn’t have to put this character in the exact same office setting that he previously appeared in in his debut. This seems like a character that would be better off having a different occupation in each installment. Lots of comedic potential there.
— Great bit with spit-up coming out of Beck’s mouth after Aidy compliments him on being a handsome man.
— Love the part with Louis and Beck demonstrating their old fraternity handshake.
— Despite my gripes towards SNL reusing the office setting from the first installment of this sketch, this follow-up installment is still turning out very funny, and they’re managing to make this routine still come off fresh.
STARS: ****


JOS. A. BANK
disposable Jos. A. Bank clothing is suitable to replace paper towels

— A very funny random use of Jos A. Bank suits.
— I particularly love the suit dispenser that Vanessa demonstrates.
— Vanessa is absolutely perfect as the spokesperson.
STARS: ****


MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Stay With Me”


WEEKEND UPDATE
Stephen A. Smith (JAP) is a close friend of March Madness principals

— (*groan*) Another one of Jay’s one-note Stephen A. Smith commentaries. I’m so tired of this routine, which wasn’t funny the first time.
— Even the audience is barely laughing at Jay-as-Smith’s angry rants tonight.
— Oof, Cecily has some really corny jokes tonight. Some absolute groaners, almost comparable to ones that Charles Rocket and Gail Matthius regularly received in the dire Weekend Updates from season 6. Not helping the horrid jokes that Cecily’s been stuck with tonight is her forced and hammy delivery of them (as seen in the first and fourth above screencaps for this Update). Colin is actually faring much better than Cecily tonight, despite still being a pale shadow of his future, more-developed Update persona.
— That’s it? That’s the whole Update? Wow, an unusually short Update. Sure could’ve used an actual good guest commentary to give this very weak Update a much-needed boost. Some of Colin’s jokes were the ONLY thing keeping this Update from receiving the lowest rating I gave to an Update since the dreadful Fey/Poehler era of this segment.
STARS: **


MR. BIG STUFF
passerby (host) rejects women’s musical appellation of “Mr. Big Stuff”

— An interesting and entertaining format to this.
— Throughout the song, I’m really liking Louis’ detailed objections to being called “Mr. Big Stuff”. And after the song stops, I especially love his big monologue about his unappealing personal qualities.
STARS: ****


DOCTOR’S OFFICE
doctor (MOB) verifies that butts don’t contain Darth Vader action figures

— Good execution of a juvenile premise.
— Speaking of sketches with a well-executed juvenile premise, Kenan is playing the same janitor character that he played two episodes prior in the Elevator sketch from the Jim Parsons episode, at least according to SNL Archives (seen here), presumably because both sketches feature Kenan wearing the exact same janitor uniform with the “Reggie” nametag (side-by-side comparison a little below), which is probably just an example of SNL cutting corners by reusing the same costume rather than the writers intending for Kenan’s janitor character in both sketches to be the same person.

— Funny visual of Kenan mopping carpet.
— Mike is a solid straight man here, further proving how much more in-his-element he is in short films than in live sketches (the latter of which he does not appear in tonight).
STARS: ***½


PRIVATE EYES
detective (host) & partner (VAB) gaily negotiate pajama-clad sex

— When the loud background music first kicked in during the middle of a conversation Vanessa and Louis are having, I worriedly thought for a second that we were getting ANOTHER musical sketch tonight, which I certainly didn’t need a second helping of (as much as I liked the Mr. Big Stuff sketch). Thankfully, it turns out that the background music in this sketch didn’t lead to singing.
— A very strange concept and approach to this sketch. I am liking Louis’ intentionally stilted delivery of his lines, just because it’s Louis, of all people, delivering it.
— As this sketch progresses, the very odd dialogue and approach is really growing on me. And in addition to the funny novelty of seeing Louis, of all people, delivering lines like this, this sketch is also helped by Vanessa’s charming and solid performance.
— Bobby’s (who’s surprisingly making his first appearance all night here) brief scene adds to the intentional weirdness and stilted-ness of this sketch.
— Speaking of weirdness, we get a noteworthy unscripted bit at the end, where, after reading the strange-sounding line “I love you, no” off the cue card, Louis openly drops character and asks an amused “What?!?” in response to the oddness of the line he just read. I have absolutely no idea what in the world that was all about (did he misread “I love you, no” off the cue card, or did they put “I love you, no” on the cue card at the last minute to intentionally throw Louis off, because they knew it would get a funny reaction from him?), but it was certainly amusing.
STARS: ***


DYKE & FATS
Chicago policewomen Dyke (KAM) & Fats (AIB) embrace their salient traits

 

— A famous and highly-regarded piece.
— Hilarious reveal of the Dyke & Fats title, as well as the full names of the Dyke & Fats characters: Les Dykawitz and Chubbina Fatzarelli.
— A very fun and amusing opening credits sequence. This mid-2010s SNL era seems to be really good at recreating the look and spirit of the opening credits of 1970s/80s cop shows (one of my favorite TV genres), as the following season has that great “Blazer” pre-tape (where Taran plays a rogue cop who always goes out of his way to only punch black people).
— An actual very funny and well-done approach to spoofing lesbian and overweight stereotypes, and this is definitely one of SNL’s best uses of Kate and Aidy’s chemistry.
— Excellent twist with the negative, offended reaction Dyke & Fats have to Louis referring to them by their nicknames, and how that abruptly turns out to be the end of this sketch. And the “Created by Kate McKinnon & Aidy Bryant” closing credit, as well as the fact that this Dyke & Fats episode itself turns out to be far shorter than its lengthy opening credits sequence, gives this an Astronaut Jones feel.
STARS: *****


MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Lay Me Down”


CHRIS FITZPATRICK FOR ASB PRESIDENT
Chris Fitzpatrick (KYM) presents his high school class president platform

— Another trunk piece that Kyle has brought to SNL from his YouTube days.
— This perfectly captures the spirit of “edgy” teens, in that always-funny, intentionally stilted, low-budget Kyle Mooney way.
— I love the use of disturbing stock footage during the scene transitions. There’s an especially funny detail of one of the car crash clips having a GettyImages watermark.
— Lots of funny personal qualities that Kyle’s Chris Fitzpatrick is disclosing about himself.
STARS: ****


ROMANTIC SPEECH
crazy talk pervades (host)’s reconciliation with ex-girlfriend (AIB)

— Louis’ extremely random, insane non-sequitur lines to Aidy are cracking me up. I’m enjoying the absurdist approach to this sketch.
— One part I’m “meh” about is the running bit with Louis pronouncing “man” as “mang”, as it’s not making me laugh anywhere near as much as the rest of his oddball lines.
STARS: ***½


GOODNIGHTS

— A particularly generous and very sweet goodnights speech from Louis, even namedropping Phil Hymes (SNL’s lighting director for many years) at one point when complimenting Hymes’ great work on the lighting of the studio.

IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— Easily the best episode since the first third of this season. SNL is now 2-for-2 in damn strong Louis C.K.-hosted episodes. Two solid hosting stints in, and Louis is becoming more and more comfortable AND comforting as a host, and I always find it fun on SNL to see him occasionally attempt something way out of his element, such as the Private Eyes sketch tonight and that Polish immigrant play from his later 2017 episode. It’ll be interesting to see if the streak of Louis C.K.-hosted episodes being strong continues after this. I recall loving his aforementioned 2017 episode, but I’m kinda having a hard time remembering half of the stuff from his 2015 episode off the top of my head.


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


RATED SEGMENTS RANKED FROM BEST TO WORST
Dyke & Fats
Monologue
Jos. A. Bank
Black Jeopardy!
Mr. Big Stuff / Chris Fitzpatrick For ASB President (tie)
Baby Boss
Romantic Speech
Doctor’s Office
HealthCare.gov Meeting
Private Eyes
Weekend Update


HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Lena Dunham)
a big step up


My full set of screencaps for this episode is here


TOMORROW
Anna Kendrick