Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
NEWT GINGRICH: MOON PRESIDENT
in 2014, triumphant Moon President Newt Gingrich (BOM) sees Earth explode
— This is the third consecutive cold opening about a republican presidential candidate, the last two of which have been huge misses, but this is a refreshing and creative change of pace, with Bobby’s Newt Gingrich being the moon president two years in the future. This is fun.
— Interesting seeing Bill do a Ronald Reagan impression.
— Bobby’s Gingrich, as his salutation to Nasim: “And may divorce be with you.”
— Some funny insane embellishments in how Gingrich’s presidency will go.
STARS: ***½
MONOLOGUE
audience members deny having been customers of former stripper host
— A nice confident entrance from Channing Tatum, even sliding down the banister of the stairs in front of the entrance door, which I’ve never seen a host do.
— Good appearance from Kenan as “Big Ronnie”, Channing’s guard.
— A funny overconfident delivery from Taran of “I’ll have you know we haven’t had sex in 10 years!”
— Not caring at all for the turn with Channing’s whole interaction with Fred.
— Andy gets a laugh with his usual, reliable goofiness.
STARS: **½
IT’S GETTING FREAKY WITH CEE LO GREEN!
Matthew McConaughey (host) & Colonel Nasty (BIH) counsel
— The second and final appearance of this sketch.
— Only three segments into the first episode after Paul Brittain’s mysterious mid-season departure, and SNL has already had to replace a role of his. One of the horn players in the band within this talk show sketch was played by Paul in the first installment, and Fred has now taken over that role, even wearing the same wig Paul wore.
— A good Matthew McConaughey impression from Channing, but like I said in a previous episode review, McConaughey impressions are a dime a dozen.
— Much like in a typical Justin Timberlake-hosted episode, we have female audience members screaming at practically everything Channing says and does.
— This is still a fairly fun installment of this sketch, but I’m not finding it to be quite as fun or enjoyable as the first installment. It’s probably for the best that SNL ended up retiring this sketch after only two installments.
STARS: ***
DOWNTON ABBEY
Spike TV promo for Downton Abbey is geared toward a young audience
— Between the ESPN Bowl Madness commercial from two episodes prior and now this commercial, Andy’s carving out a niche for himself lately as a solid voice-over of a certain style of SNL commercials, which is interesting in hindsight, knowing we’re in the final months of Andy’s SNL tenure.
— Funny concept of Spike TV advertising Downton Abbey in their usual “x-treme”, bro-type manner.
— A solid ending line, with the voice-over opting to call Downton Abbey “Fancy Entourage”.
STARS: ***½
NBC FOOTBALL PROMO
NBC’s Super Bowl coverage team utters eccentricities during a promo shoot
— A good laugh from Kenan’s random breastfeeding line.
— A lot of funny odd, disturbing revelations from each anchor before they all do their lower-head-and-then-slowly-raise-it bits, though the latter is getting a little too redundant for me.
STARS: ***½
SECRET WORD
Mindy Grayson & probed astronaut (host) are ineffectual
— (*groan*)
— Hmm, the “funny story” that Bill recounts to us (him telling his wife, in regards to her new pantsuit, “If I wanted to make love to a man, I’d join the navy!”) is something I can picture Kenan’s future recurring character, Reese DeWhat, saying during the usual parts of each Cinema Classics sketch where he recounts a rude thing he once said to his wife. That makes sense, given the fact that these Secret Word sketches are written by the same writer(s) who would write the Cinema Classics sketches (James Anderson and/or Kent Sublette). I’m not 100% sure about that, though, so please correct me if I’m wrong.
— Channing’s character, while a change of pace for this recurring sketch, isn’t quite working for me the way most of the characters played by SNL hosts in these Secret Word sketches do. Bill’s seriously the only thing holding this sketch together for me.
— Ugh, somebody shut this Mindy Grayson character the fuck up already. This character, who was already annoying to begin with, continues to get even more and more on my nerves with each passing installment of this sketch lately.
STARS: *½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Holocene”
WEEKEND UPDATE
Guy Fieri (BOM) presents some impractical Super Bowl party food ideas
Lana Del Rey (KRW) addresses negative reaction to her performance on SNL
— Seth, to Bobby’s Guy Fieri: “Guy, I’m excited for these recipes. Are you ready?” Bobby’s Guy Fieri: “I was born crazy!”
— Bobby’s always fun as Guy Fieri, and is elevating the okay material he’s been given in this commentary.
— Boy, Bobby’s delivery has suddenly started getting really stumbly during the portion of the commentary where he list off the many ingredients of a complicated meal. In his defense, he does have a lot of wordy dialogue in this portion.
— Ah, another instance of Update’s tradition of a tree frog joke always getting interrupted.
— Oh, turns out the interruption to Seth’s tree frog joke is caused by Kristen as Lana Del Rey, addressing the real-life backlash Del Rey received from her musical performances in the preceding episode. Interesting meta-ness here.
— So far, this Lana Del Rey commentary is basically SNL being preachy to us on why the internet is wrong in their heavy criticisms of Del Rey. I gotta say, though, SNL’s not wrong. And there are some laughs here from the points being made about the internet’s overreaction. I remember being very salty towards this preachiness from SNL when this originally aired, but now, I can see where they’re coming from.
— In one of the points Kristen’s Del Rey passive-aggressively makes about why the internet is wrong, she says she failed to reach the “high bar” set by previous SNL musical guests such as Bubba Sparxxx, Baha Men, and Shaggy. A funny line, but to nitpick, 1) Baha Men technically were never a musical guest, they were just uncredited special guests in one episode who randomly performed a brief snippet of their one hit during a going-to-commercial shot, and 2) are they seriously lumping Shaggy with Bubba Sparxxx and Baha Men??? Am I missing something? Since when is Shaggy a national joke? And I don’t recall his SNL performances being bad or ridiculed by viewers. From that same time period of musical guests (because SNL is apparently unaware that bad musical guests existed before and after the early 2000s), I’m sure SNL could’ve found a more ridiculous musical guest that deserves to be lumped with Bubba Sparxxx and Baha Men. Sisqo, anyone?
STARS: ***
BAT MITZVAH
neighbor (host) dances dirty with (NAP) at her bat mitzvah
— Some good laughs from the inappropriate wild dance moves that Nasim and Channing are doing, interspersed with appropriate tame dance moves that Nasim’s character’s mom taught them.
— Funny cutaway to Abby during the aforementioned inappropriate wild dancing.
STARS: ***½
RUBY TUESDAY
stocky Janet (BOM) hits on Tom Brady (host) on the eve of the Super Bowl
— I love Bobby’s opening line, when reacting to seeing Channing’s Tom Brady: “Oh, shut your moooooouuuuuth! Tom Brady at Ruby Tuesday?!?”
— Bobby has the ability to make a hacky “man in drag” role funny. I even laughed at him obnoxiously making raspberry sounds with his mouth while calling over the bartender.
— I think I recall there being a bit of controversy regarding Bobby’s character having the same name (Janet Peckinpaugh) as a real-life person who’s a congresswoman or something like that.
— Some funny oddball revelations from Bobby’s character about herself.
— Boy, SNL sure botched that freeze-frame on Channing, by accidentally freeze-framing on him too late when he started walking out of the shot to get ready for the next sketch (screencap below), AFTER he held a pose for a long time to allow SNL to do their freeze-frame on him.
STARS: ***
GO-TECHS FLEX
(host) & (KRW) amateurishly endorse Go-Techs Flex oddball exercise system
— Meh, this isn’t working much for me. Usually, I love random, bizarre humor, but the randomness and bizarreness of this particular commercial feels like it’s trying WAY too hard, and it feels like Kristen’s just playing a stock “zany character with a weird hairstyle” role that SNL loves typecasting her in during her later seasons.
STARS: **
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Beth/Rest”
BONGO’S CLOWN ROOM
retiring strip club deejay Tommy intros hardly-sexy male dancers
— An odd choice of a sketch to bring back, given the fact that Jason’s character was retiring from his job at the strip club in the first installment of this. And he’s retiring AGAIN tonight, a year later? I can’t complain, though, as Jason absolutely killed it in this sketch the first time, and I’m looking forward to another great performance from him.
— Has Channing danced in literally EVERY SINGLE SEGMENT he’s appeared in tonight (including the monologue)? Sure feels like it.
— Jason: “Got great news from my sister today: my nephew does not have ADHD, he’s just a little dickhead!”
— As usual for this sketch, tons of hilarious lines from Jason all throughout.
— Jason’s line about “that Sandusky fella” was so funny that it even caused Jason himself to crack up.
STARS: ****
GOODNIGHTS
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A better episode than I recall. (I remember kinda trashing this episode when it originally aired, and I think I ultimately deemed it to be the worst episode of this entire season.) It turns out this episode was decent and passable, but nothing special as a whole, with the only sketch I rated higher than three-and-a-half stars just being a retread (though a damn funny one).
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
RATED SEGMENTS RANKED FROM BEST TO WORST
Bongo’s Clown Room
Newt Gingrich: Moon President
Bat Mitzvah
Downton Abbey
NBC Football Promo
It’s Getting Freaky with Cee Lo Green!
Ruby Tuesday
Weekend Update
Monologue
Go-Techs Flex
Secret Word
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Daniel Radcliffe)
a slight step down
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
Zooey Deschanel