Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
INAUGURATION NIGHT
Martin Luther King Jr. (KET) visits re-inaugurated Barack Obama (JAP) to ask about Beyonce
— An okay concept of Martin Luther King vising President Obama right after his inauguration.
— Kenan’s pulling this off pretty well.
— Kenan-as-MLK’s line about a first black magician gave me a good laugh.
— Nice segue to LFNY.
STARS: ***
MONOLOGUE
ANS, Cameron Diaz, Jerry Seinfeld [real] vie to be host’s comedy coach
— Good to see Andy Samberg in his first cameo after leaving SNL.
— Andy is as funny as ever here, especially his self-deprecating line, “I was in over 100 Digital Shorts as well as 3 live sketches.”
— Adam Levine, to Cameron Diaz, after she suggests he take his shirt off: “When you hosted, did you take your shirt off?” Cameron doesn’t answer that, but she actually did take her shirt off in at least one hosting stint, in the Woo The Musical sketch from her season 30 episode.
— Andy’s even managing to make some of the cheap homoerotic humor that he’s been given here come off funny.
— Jerry Seinfeld is fine here, even if this isn’t quite the way I’d prefer him to be utilized in a cameo.
— Blah at the non-comedic ending with Adam disrobing, not to mention how shamelessly unnecessary and pandering it came off.
STARS: ***
ROSETTA STONE
creeps (BIH), (BOM), (TAK) use Rosetta Stone to prepare for Thailand trip
— Is Bill intentionally doing a thinly-veiled variation of his John Mark Karr impression? He’s using the same voice and is even wearing what appears to be the same outfit.
— Pretty funny conceit with pervs wanting to use Rosetta Stone for their visit to Thailand.
STARS: ***
CIRCLE WORK WITH TRACY ALLSTAR & TODD ANTHONY
advice of (KET) & (host) comes from a homosexual perspective
— Boy, these James Anderson-written gay-centric sketches are so damn tired and cliched by this point of his tenure as a writer. Not that I’m sure there was ever a stretch of time where his gay-centric sketches were consistently good. He’s probably had a few isolated instances of writing actual good gay-centric stuff, but this sketch sure as hell ain’t one of them.
— Ugh at the part with Kenan slowly spelling out the whole “gay goose parade” statement.
— Very cute performance from Vanessa, who’s the only bright spot I’m finding in this mess.
STARS: *½
THE SOPRANOS DIARIES
The Sopranos Diaries reboots the mob drama in a 1980s high school setting
— Funny concept for a The Carrie Diaries spoof.
— I love Tim’s goofy, easy-going facial expressions as the principal.
— A laugh from one of the magazine reviews pointing out how implausible it is for these Sopranos characters to have been in high school in the 80s.
— From what little we can see of the sweater that Fred’s wearing under his blazer, it looks like the same sweater that was previously worn by both Chris Farley in the How Much Ya Bench sketch from season 19 and Bill in the Good Morning Meth sketch from season 31 (comparisons below).
— Funny reveal of a pole dancer having been on Tony Soprano and his friends’ cafeteria lunch table all this time.
— Showing how diminished Fred’s airtime has been this season in general, this pre-tape ends up being his only appearance all night. Certainly no complaints from me.
STARS: ***½
FIREHOUSE INCIDENT
drama queen’s (BIH) ex (NAP) leads him to shriek at his fellow firemen
— Hmm, between that Circle Work sketch and now Bill’s super effeminate character here, I’m sensing a theme in tonight’s episode.
— An extremely over-the-top performance from Bill to end all extremely over-the-top performances. But, dammit, he’s making me laugh my ass off. It helps that we pretty much never see Bill go THIS over-the-top, thus making it a novelty. It also helps if you imagine that this over-the-top performance is Bill basically channeling his inner Jim Carrey, and not channeling his inner Kristen Wiig (the latter of which I recall some online SNL fans implying back at this time in 2013, saying this felt too much like a typical annoying, over-the-top Wiig performance). Yet another thing helping this sketch is the fact that it thankfully never becomes recurring, because as much as I’m enjoying this as a one-time sketch, there is NO FUCKING WAY I would ever want this to become a recurring sketch.
— Ha, even the extremely-deep-voiced “Release the beating” (or whatever that voice said) at the beginning of the song that Bill dances to is cracking me up.
— The part with the dog attack is absolutely killing me. Man, this sketch is freakin’ INSANE.
— I love Bill’s way of saying the name “Rula” throughout this sketch.
— An actual punchline at the end. Not sure if it worked for me or not, though.
STARS: ****
YOLO
ANS, Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone [real], host & musical guest promote extreme caution; Danny McBride cameo
— The first Lonely Island Digital Short after its retirement with Lazy Sunday 2 in Andy’s final episode as a cast member.
— Ha, random Danny McBride sighting, snorting coke in a club.
— The usual fun and catchy Lonely Island song, funny visual accompaniment, and excellent production values, even if 1) this particular one is far from a classic, and 2) the presence of Lonely Island Digital Shorts wasn’t exactly missed this season, with all the strong short films SNL’s been doing without them.
— “There’s no such thing as too much Purell”? Boy, that lyric hits differently in 2020 than it did when I originally watched this in 2013.
— The visual of Andy randomly getting choked by a flying blanket gave me an especially good laugh.
— Nice interlude from Kendrick Lamar, and I especially like the brief cutaway to him dressed as a middle-aged financial advisor.
STARS: ***½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Swimming Pools”
WEEKEND UPDATE
Arianna Huffington (NAP) supports Hillary Clinton & women in combat
before the Super Bowl, emotional Ray Lewis (KET) sees divine influence
— Despite some funny lines, tonight’s overall Arianna Huffington commentary unfortunately wasn’t anywhere near as strong as usual. I did like the Wives With Knives bit towards the end, though.
— Meh, not much funny material in Kenan’s Ray Lewis commentary, despite a good performance from him.
— Hmm, interesting touch at the end after Seth’s sign-off, where Kenan returns to continue doing the Ray Lewis dance in front of the Update desk.
— The guest portion of tonight’s overall Update was pretty disappointing, and a few of Seth’s jokes didn’t do much for me either.
STARS: **½
RUMBLE
in a bar, host rumbles musically with Pat Monahan (TAK) & other crooners
— At the beginning of this sketch, did I just hear an off-camera voice cue an extra to leave by whispering “Go”?
— Pretty funny premise of a bar fight between Maroon 5 and Train.
— Good bit with the old guy who Taran’s Pat Monahan is trying to make look like him.
— I think I remember someone once saying that Aidy’s brief appearance being used as a human shield in this sketch was rather demeaning and was a sign that she wasn’t “making it” as a cast member.
— Jason’s entrance as Jason Mraz is hilarious.
— Adam’s timing is off during a lot of portions of this sketch, with quite a number of long delays before he speaks.
— Not sure how I feel about Vanessa’s intentional overacting throughout this sketch.
— Meh, I’m starting to get tired of all the entrances from various similar singers. This sketch in general is beginning to somewhat fizzle out for me, after having a promising start.
— Okay, Kenan is pretty funny right now as Darius Rucker, at least.
STARS: **½
CATFISH: THE TV SHOW
Nev Schulman (host) proves that (AIB) was duped by (JAP) online
— A laugh from the photo of Brian Williams’ head photoshopped onto a buff, shirtless body.
— Blah, I’m already sick of the smug demeanor that Adam’s using as the Catfish host, regardless of if it’s an accurate portrayal of the Catfish host or not (I’ve never seen Catfish, the movie nor the TV show). Those long pauses and self-amused laughing he keeps intentionally doing in character are just plain unfunny.
— During the “Coming up next” preview, I got a big laugh from Aidy’s whole “Is this reaction positive or negative? You can’t tell!” bit. While, as I said earlier, I’ve never seen Catfish, I’ve seen enough of certain other reality shows to know that Aidy’s “Is this reaction positive or negative?” bit is a spot-on spoof of “Coming up next” previews on reality shows in general.
— Another solid Aidy moment, as I absolutely love her exaggerated delivery of “Aw, dang! What the heck?!? I got Catfished!”
— There’s something about the pacing or atmosphere of this sketch that I’m not digging all that much.
STARS: **½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Poetic Justice”
ADAM AND JANET
after a concert, host is the latest unlikely conquest for stocky Janet
— The second and final on-air appearance of Bobby’s Janet Peckinpaugh character. There would later be a cut-after-dress-rehearsal installment from the following season’s Andrew Garfield episode that would be posted online.
— I like the extremely random Law & Order bit at the beginning of the apartment scene.
— Nice continuity with Bobby’s Janet mentioning having a previous encounter with Tom Brady, which is referring to her sketch from the preceding season.
— Like last time, Bobby’s managing to make this potentially-hacky-and-annoying drag role actually work for me. To me, this character is kinda like an actual funny version of Horatio Sanz’s Carol character. What’s NOT working for me is Adam’s performance, as well as his constant little ad-libs. Have I made it obvious enough by this point of my review how much I haven’t been caring for Adam as a host?
STARS: ***
BIDEN BASH
Joe Biden (JAS) is having an unextravagant inauguration bash in Delaware
— A fun-seeming showcase for Jason’s always-fun Joe Biden.
— Great bit with Jason’s Biden imitating Macho Man Randy Savage. Other than that, I haven’t been laughing quite as much at this commercial as I expected to. Jason’s trying his best with somewhat throwaway material that he’s been given.
STARS: **½
GOODNIGHTS
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A pretty blah-feeling episode as a whole, and easily my least favorite episode of this season so far. The fact that the only sketch that received an above-average rating from me was a very polarizing sketch centered entirely around an intentionally annoying, over-the-top performance (Firehouse Incident) kinda speaks volumes of this episode. Thinking back on it, however, I actually liked most of the stuff in the first half of this episode, aside from that Circle Work dreck. But once Weekend Update began, the show started to have an “off” feel that it sadly never really recovered from. Aside from the Janet Peckinpaugh sketch (and even that had its issues), I didn’t care too much for any of the segments in the second half of this episode, starting with Update. It also didn’t help that that was the half of the show where Adam Levine’s performances started kinda bugging me. I take it he’s better in small doses, as I usually find him decent in the brief sketch appearance or two he typically makes whenever Maroon 5 is the musical guest. Him as a full-on host of an episode, on the other hand? NO. Hell, even something about how his goodnights speech was oddly brief, overly generic, and didn’t thank the cast seemed a little off-putting, but I’m probably looking too much into that.
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
RATED SEGMENTS RANKED FROM BEST TO WORST
Firehouse Incident
YOLO
The Sopranos Diaries
Inauguration Night
Rosetta Stone
Monologue
Adam and Janet
Biden Bash
Rumble
Weekend Update
Catfish: The TV Show
Circle Work with Tracy Allstar & Todd Anthony
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Jennifer Lawrence)
a step down
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
Justin Bieber hosts in an apparent attempt to give this Adam Levine episode a run for its money in the “My least favorite episode of this season” department