Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
OSAMA BIN LADEN VIDEO WILL
the final wishes in Osama Bin Laden’s (FRA) video will won’t be fulfilled
— Oh, Lord help me, another translator cold opening. On top of that, that makes this 1) yet another Middle Eastern leader Fred has played this season, and more specifically, 2) the SIXTH consecutive episode with Fred playing a Middle Eastern leader.
— Of all the choices SNL had in how to do their opening spoof of that week’s huge news of Osama Bin Laden’s death, it’s so lazy of them to have it be a damn translator cold opening.
— The Dakota Fanning stuff is awful and unfunny.
— As you can imagine, I am completely stone-faced during this typically-bad translator opening. None of this tripe is making me laugh.
— Blah, such a lame “ironic” ending comment from Fred’s Osama about how “America will never catch me”.
— Yet another thing I’m sick of seeing Fred do is say LFNY every week. This is the third or fourth consecutive episode with him saying LFNY.
STARS: *
MONOLOGUE
pregnant TIF & MAR plus their fetuses (KRW) & (KET) are a singing quartet
— A pregnant Tina Fey. Unless I’m forgetting someone, I believe Tina’s the first person in SNL history to host while THIS visibly pregnant.
— TV.com’s trivia notes for this episode in their SNL episode guide (link here) claim that, when making her monologue entrance, Tina trips down the staircase, then quickly recovers by grabbing onto the railing. I’m pretty sure that factoid is incorrect. There’s no visible part at all where Tina trips on the stairs, and I always assumed she intentionally grabbed onto the railing, especially given the fact that, while holding onto the railing, she walks down the stairs sideways (screencap below).
I’m pretty sure walking down the stairs sideways while holding onto the railing is what pregnant women do for safety reasons. I think I recall seeing my mother regularly do that many years ago when she was pregnant with my sister.
— Pretty funny bit regarding Tina’s “most famous impression” (which turns out to be a Sling Blade impression). It also makes me wonder if she wrote Billy Bob Thornton’s monologue from season 27.
— Now we get a cameo from a pregnant Maya Rudolph, something that current SNL viewers in 2020 are used to regularly seeing, minus the pregnancy.
— (*sigh*) The second consecutive musical monologue in a season very oversaturated with musical monologues.
— Tina at least has funny lines during her spoken dialogue in the mid-song interlude. Maya has some fairly amusing lines during that part, too.
— A decent turn with Tina and Maya each singing a duet with their respective fetuses.
STARS: **½
GOP 2012 UNDECLARED CANDIDATES DEBATE
Sarah Palin (TIF) & Donald Trump (DAH) debate undeclared GOP candidates
— Ah, there’s that Shepard Smith voice from Bill that I always love.
— The debut of Jason’s Mitt Romney impression.
— There’s tonight’s obligatory appearance from Tina’s iconic Sarah Palin impression.
— Darrell Hammond makes his first cameo since his various season 35 cameos. No comment from me on the fact that he’s playing Donald Trump as an undeclared presidential candidate.
— A solid unsettling, threatening message from Kristen’s Michele Bachmann into the camera.
— As expected, good lines from Tina’s Sarah Palin, even if there’s nothing classic here.
— Blah, the Trump dialogue in this is so by-the-numbers.
— Bill’s closing line: “I’m Shepard Smith, and I’m a silly little catfish.”
STARS: ***
BELOW THE WAVES
mermaid (TIF) & fauna under the sea react to Osama Bin Laden’s corpse
— A good setting for the topic of Osama Bin Laden’s death. Why couldn’t THIS have been SNL’s obligatory cold opening spoof of Osama’s death instead of that incredibly lame and tired translator cold opening? Well, aside from the fact Tina, in her pregnant state, might not have had enough time to do a quick-change between the cold opening and monologue, but if that were the case, then a cast member could’ve played her role in this instead.
— I’m guessing legal reasons prevented SNL from doing a direct Little Mermaid parody here, which is why they have to use knock-off songs and character names.
— I really like Paul’s performance as a drunken seahorse.
— Fred is pretty funny as a conspiracy theorist manta ray.
— An overall fairly short and simple but pretty good sketch.
STARS: ***½
JACK SPARROW
Michael Bolton’s [real] movie obsession pervades song
— Odd technical gaffe at the beginning.
— A very famous and well-loved Digital Short.
— Increasingly hilarious lyrics and memorable visuals of Michael Bolton obsessing over various iconic movie characters.
— Bolton’s performance is excellent here, and he’s selling this great concept perfectly.
— Solid ending.
STARS: *****
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Lights”
WEEKEND UPDATE
The Devil isn’t pleased that Osama Bin Laden has joined him in Hell
Moammar Gaddafi’s Two Best Friends From Growing Up (FRA) & (VAB) badmouth him via sotto voce
Stefon presents some inappropriate places to take mom on Mother’s Day
— A particularly strong joke from Seth about, in regards to Osama Bin Laden’s death, Barack Obama being the first black person in history to have to prove he killed someone.
— Coincidentally, Jason’s The Devil character has appeared in these past two Tina Fey-hosted episodes.
— When revealing NBC is the only TV station in Hell, I love The Devil innocently asking “Hey, whatever happened to Outsourced???”
— Didn’t care for the reveal of The Snapple Lady being The Devil’s mother. They could’ve picked someone funnier and more fitting for that.
— Another good overall commentary from The Devil, though I didn’t find myself laughing quite as much as I did at his preceding commentary.
— OH, NO. The debut of Fred and Vanessa’s “(insert name here)’s Two Best Friends From Growing Up” routine, which I’ve always absolutely hated. This continues the trend of every other Update these past few months having a horrible commentary from Fred.
— I’ve gotten so beyond sick of seeing Fred play Moammar Gaddafi for so many consecutive episodes that even merely seeing Fred talk about Gaddafi while playing a different character (as is happening here) is enough to give me chills.
— Ugggghhhhh, I absolutely DESPISE the main joke of this Two Best Friends From Growing Up commentary. And if I hate it this much in its first appearance, imagine how I’ll feel about the subsequent appearances of this bit.
— Very lame joke from Seth about how many times men think about sex per day. Even the audience knows it’s a lame joke, judging from their lack of response.
— Another instance of this Update giving me chills, as the things Seth is saying during his intro of the next Update commentary initially made me almost certain he’s introducing a godforsaken Garth & Kat commentary, until I realized that’s impossible because Fred already appeared in this Update as a different character. (Then again, Tim Kazurinsky and Chris Kattan previously had one instance, respectively, of doing two separate Update commentaries as two different characters in the same Update, or Saturday Night News in Tim’s case.)
— Ah, it turns out that what I was initially afraid would be a Garth & Kat intro instead turns out to be a Stefon intro. Far more welcome.
— My biggest laugh in tonight’s Stefon commentary has been from the deep and sassy voice Bill uses when saying the club name “SPIIIIICY!”, a memorable Stefon moment.
— The story arc of the growing dynamic between Seth and Stefon continues, with 1) the kiss on the cheek Stefon quickly gives Seth (a precursor to a much bigger kissing moment between them the following season), and 2) Seth agreeing to bring Stefon home to meet Seth’s mom.
STARS: ***
BIRTHING SEMINAR
natural childbirth video of (BIH) & (MAR) creeps out expectant couples
— Maya seems to play quite a number of characters named Leilani.
— What’s with that dumb and unfunny non-sequitur gag with the giant VCR and VHS tape?
— Jason, regarding the insane amount of pubic hair that an about-to-give-birth Maya has: “She can try any position she wants, that baby’s not comin’ outta there without a weedwhacker.”
— When Kristen makes her entrance in the birthing video, an off-camera Tina exclaims a seemingly-comical line that we can’t hear clearly, due to her mic being turned off by mistake. The same thing happened to Fred at one point towards the end of the Below The Waves sketch earlier tonight.
— The questioning of if the devil made this birthing video is interesting, given the Update commentary from The Devil that Jason just did before this sketch.
— A laugh from Bobby all of a sudden being into the birthing video, due to Maya and Kristen’s homoerotic birthing posture with each other.
— Boy, this is one bizarre hell of a sketch. While I usually encourage weirdness from SNL, it unfortunately turns out that I’m finding this particular sketch as a whole only mildly amusing at best. I’m not finding myself laughing anywhere near as much as this sketch wants me to.
STARS: **½
SLEEPOVER
at a sleepover, Bedelia prefers her mom’s company to that of her peers
— Nasim’s Bedelia character makes her first appearance in a year, and this ends up being her final appearance, despite her still being a fairly-new character.
— For some reason, in this installment of this recurring sketch, Tina’s character isn’t wearing glasses, which she wore in the first installment.
— Even though I really like this Bedelia character, and I usually find her sketches to be solid and refreshingly slice-of-life, there’s a tiny bit of a tired feel in tonight’s installment, especially in the usual beats these sketches always hit. I’m still enjoying this installment well enough, but I think I’m starting to see why they retired this character so early.
STARS: ***
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Your Song”
PREGNANT IN HEELS
Rosie Pope (ABE) coordinates (TIF)’s chic childbirth
— When this originally aired, I remember some online SNL fans were put off by how Abby sounded like she was speaking in a mentally-challenged voice. Then it was pointed out by someone that the real-life woman who Abby’s playing here really does talk like this.
— When the camera first showed Taran in that gray wig, I honestly thought that was Chris Parnell in a wig for a quick second.
— Jay’s airtime continues to take a hit these past few episodes, as his appearance in this pre-taped piece is the only thing we see of him all night.
— I’m not finding myself laughing much here.
— The “celebrity appearance in the ultrasound” bit was fairly funny, at least.
— Overall, maybe it’s because I have no familiarity with the reality show this was spoofing, but I was meh on this. That was also my reaction to the pre-taped Deidra Wurtz piece Abby starred in earlier this season. Given how underused Abby is and the fact that I generally like her as a performer well enough, I really wish I could like these pre-taped Abby Elliott showcases a lot more than I do (and I’m aware that I’m apparently alone in not caring for the Deidra Wurtz piece).
STARS: **
GOOGIE RENE’S SLIGHTLY DAMAGED PROM WEAR BARN
Googie Rene’s store offers soiled formalwear
— Much like Bedelia, Googie Rene makes his third and final appearance here.
— As usual, I’m getting some laughs from Kenan’s off-beat characterization as Googie Rene.
— Overall, eh, turns out there wasn’t anything to really say about this sketch. This wasn’t too bad, but, kinda like Bedelia, this was probably the right point to retire this character, as they’ve done all they could with these sketches and it had a bit of a tired feel tonight.
STARS: **½
HALLMARK “MOTHER” COLLECTION
Hallmark’s Mother’s Day collection has greeting cards for Norman Bates wannabes
— Great to see the underused Paul Brittain starring in a solo commercial. Lately, he’s been slowly moving out of the Bit Part Hell that he was stuck in for most of this season.
— A very funny and disturbing Norman Bates-esque reveal of Paul acting as his own mother. Solid performance from Paul here.
STARS: ****
GOODNIGHTS
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A middling episode. The quality especially took a dip for most of the post-Weekend Update half, though the Hallmark commercial and the slightly-disappointing-but-still-decent Bedelia sketch balanced it out somewhat.
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
RATED SEGMENTS RANKED FROM BEST TO WORST
Jack Sparrow
Hallmark “Mother” Collection
Below The Waves
GOP 2012 Undeclared Candidates Debate
Weekend Update
Sleepover
Googie Rene’s Slightly Damaged Prom Wear Barn
Monologue
Birthing Seminar
Pregnant In Heels
Osama Bin Laden Video Will
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Helen Mirren)
a step down
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
Ed Helms