Okay, here’s my review. This was a rather middle of the road
show in terms of this season. It was one of the strongest shows just in terms
of cast performances rather than writing. In terms of writing, I would say this
show started out really strong and then quickly ran out of steam. Even the
sketches that were good just felt like they established a good premise early on
and then just repeated the same jokes over and over again. This show also tried
to pack in so much topical humor on events of the past two weeks and succeeded
with very little of it. Also, I find it a bit odd that they included two casual
throwaway gag references to Colorado in the same show. Still, the cast really
hit it out of the park with their performances. Good to see everyone get a lot
of airtime as well, but I’m not too crazy about Armisen coming back so strong.
Anyway, here it is.
Triumph Cruise - This cold open is a strong candidate for
best of the season. Everybody did well with their part and Cecily and Jason did
a great job as leads. It was nice to see Cecily and Tim get more airtime at the
top of the show and I did like Jay’s second self-reflexive moment in a little
over a year. It's also nice to see they can do a topical open without resorting
to a lame speech straight to the camera. It's also nice to see they tried to
work the LFNY line into the sketch instead of lazily tacking it on to the end.
Also, does anyone find it a weird coincidence that the name of the ship is “Triumph”
and most of the news story seems to revolve around errant feces? A-
Why was Hader impersonating Don Pardo this week?
Monologue - This was a little disappointing. The only real
highlight was Taran as casual Hitler. When Waltz mentioned making
"humorous observations" about his homeland, I was expecting him to do
some bizarre standup routine but they kind of ruined it by tacking on a musical
number (what was with that weird interaction between Fred and Cecily, BTW?)
Besides, it was already lacking any direction to begin with. I was expecting
more from a song titled "Smile, Damn You, Smile". It should've been a
lot darker than it was. C-
What Have You Become? – At first, this seemed like it was going
to be great. It's not often these days that you see a real conceptual sketch
which a lot of writing went into. Hader and Bryant were especially good in
this. Then, after Jay and Kate came in as relatives it started to get a little
repetitive. Still, Waltz was great at the end as well. Even though this sketch
seemed to be written to just play to Waltz's strengths, I could easily see any
host taking his part. Also, it’s obvious that they must have either put the
dress rehearsal version online or just fixed the audio gaffe because the hulu/nbc.com
version features the audience chanting the title whereas the live version didn’t.
B-
Papal Securities - This was a decent fake ad. It was a fresh
take on the Pope resigning. It's nice to see SNL stepping up with the topical
humor this week. I particularly liked the "No Other Testimonials
Available" gag and Waltz as Benedict being placed in various everyday
suburban settings. C+
Tippy - I didn't know what to make of this new Nassim
character until it also became pretty repetitive. It reminded me of something
Cheri Oteri would've done in the mid to late '90s. I wasn’t inclined to look
this up at the time I wrote this and I’m still not after others have been kind
enough to do it for me. A lot of nbc.com commentors are complaining that this is a ripoff of an old Jim Norton bit but that's a whole different story. It was endearing and quirky enough the first time
before Nassim kept moving around the room, but I just can't see them recurring
this. C-
Djesus Uncrossed - This was another great filmed piece. It accurately
captured the ultra-violence of Tarantino's films and the ridiculous historical
"creative liberties" he's taken with them recently and highlighted
them in a sharp satirical context. Taran and Christpoh were particularly good
here. This has to be the ballsiest piece SNL has done in decades. I can already
see some relatively ignorant people online commenting on SNL's unacceptable
blasphemy, saying their corrupting America's youth and how they plan to stage a
boycott and filing FCC complaints. Surprisingly, this didn’t take place on
hulu or nbc.com, but some looney out there posted
a bible verse in the comments of the cruise cold open. Hell, more people were upset over the Tippy/Jim Norton connection than this. Still, even this
suffered from too much repetition. B-
Jamarcus Brothers - This record ad wasn't anything special.
It reminded me too much of when Kenan and Maya Rudolph were "T.T and
Mario" in the Jason Bateman/ Kelly Clarkson episode from 2005. Still,
Waltz was great in it (especially during the final song with him and Kenan) and
I liked Cecily's sultry performance. This was a decent night for her. C+
Update was all over the place. Seth's first few jokes before
Taran's commentary were good, but the rest were forgettable. Speaking of which,
Taran as Marco Rubio was a little disappointing. I felt he played it far too
broad and they did the exact type of humor I would expect them to (having Rubio
detail what he ate/did just before his speech that gave him drymouth) but he
still made the most out of it. Kate's commentary as a Russian woman was also
just okay while being rather predictable. It felt way too long and just as
unfocused as Kenan's Ray Lewis commentary. Stephen A. Smith was decent, but is
another repetitive bit that doesn't really need to be recurred, but it is a
decent night for Jay and all the FPs. Thankfully they kept this shorter than
the other Update commentaries even if it ended rather abruptly. B-
Regine - They're recurring Fred's drag character from the Daniel
Craig episode? Goddammit, WHY?!? As soon as Fred made his entrance, I
immediately tuned out and started thinking I was a little hard on Update.
What's worse is that Fred was sprawling around and playing this as broad as
broad can be, you know causing Hader to break. This very nearly drags this show
down past Renner as the worst of the season, but maybe I'm jumping the gun
here. F-
FOX and Friends VI - I really don't think they needed to do this
again, but Bobby is still funny in this and Vanessa had some funny lines. Hader
as Ted Nugent was good, but his impression wasn't. I kept mentally comparing Hader's
performance to Nugent's cameo on The Simpsons last year and Hader sounded a bit
off. Still, he had good lines and I liked the bit about crazy people's eyes.
Fred's part seemed really tacked on and the England Burger King Horse meat is
kind of old news by now but I did like Fred's line about American stereotypes.
I also liked the "backwards" Obama speech. Also, this sketch might
have benefitted from Waltz having some kind of role in it instead of being
conspicuously absent. He could’ve easily filled Fred’s role (probably with some
difficulty anyway) and even his take on Ted Nugent might have been interesting.
C+
Dimitri’s Letter - This sketch was the best sketch of the
night by far. It's really the first thing I genuinely laughed at in the entire
show. This was more effective at playing to Walt's performance strengths than
the game show sketch and the whole cast performed well in it (especially
Cecily). B+
I can't say I'm looking forward to Kevin Hart hosting next
month, but I guess a performance of "Thrift Shop" on SNL would be
interesting to watch. Sure, Hart seems like he would do well in sketches but I
find him to be quite overrated and not terribly funny. It's nice to get the
occasional stand up monologue when a comedian hosts, but I really don't care
for Hart's stand up at all. Still, I will go into this show with an open mind.
Once again, I leave you with my updated my rankings of this
season’s episodes form best to worst.
1. Martin Short/Paul McCartney
2. Seth MacFarlane/Frank Ocean
3. Louis CK/fun.
4. Anne Hathaway/Rhianna
5. Christina Applegate/Passion Pit
6. Christoph Waltz/Alabama Shakes
7. Bruno Mars
8. Daniel Craig/Muse
9. Jaime Foxx/Ne-Yo
10. Jennifer Lawrence/The Lumineers
11. Joseph Gordon-Levitt/Mumford and Sons
12. Justin Bieber
13. Adam Levine/Kendrick Lamar
14. Jeremy Renner/Maroon 5
Have a great fortnight!
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