Okay, here's my review. This show well exceeded my expectations and I got more out of it than I was expecting to. Casey Affleck was an enjoyable host despite only being known for dramatic roles and projects. He gelled well with the cast and the writers actually seemed to know how and when he could've been best used best. Sure, the writing was a little uneven and a lot of recurring premises got dug out of mothballs when they shouldn't have been, but hey...there have been worse Christmas shows in recent memory. Aside from Pete (who I hope is doing well if he isn't in rehab), Melissa (who is most likely not going to make it to the end of the season at this point), plus Leslie, Cecily and Mikey (which is very unusual for both of them at this point) the cast was pretty evenly balanced for airtime. Let's break it down shall we?
Another Trump Christmas - This was probably their strongest post election Trump piece. Kate and Alec were fine but really didn't give us anything new and weren't really the focus of the sketch. Beck put his Putin impression to his best use yet here. It was nice to see SNL finally start to get a firm grasp on tbe Russian hacking/interference scandal. Goodman as Rex Tillerson was a bit of out-of-the-box stunt casting and he was great here as well. It's alsk encouraging to see SNL start to go after Trumps' cabinet more and more each week rather than focusing all their energy on making Trump and KellyAnne look even more clownish (as if they needed SNL's help in that regard). Still, seeing Goodman make a cameo I couldn't help but wonder why HE wasn't hosting instead of Casey Affleck. Yeah, his last hosting stint wasn't all the great, but come on! He certainly deserves another chance! B-
Monologue - This didn't instill a ton of confidence in me for Casey Affleck as a host at firstt. He handled it well enough, but he seemed a little out of his element and the material meandered quite a bit. The true highlights were the Baldwin/Goodman walk ons and his stomping on the musical numbers. Kenan as Black Santa felt too tacked on for my liking. Also, I couldn't help but wonder why Casey had a full beard when every other (male) host in recent memory has had to be clean shaven. Did he actually need this for another live action film he is shooting currently and work it out with Lorne? Something tells me he may not be used much in this episode and this is going to be another episode that is densely packed with cameos. C+
Dunkin Donuts - This ad was funnier than it had any right to be mostly due to the efforts of Casey and this season's male featured players. Sure, it must've been the obligatory attempt at Boston humor considering the host is named "Affleck", but it worked nonetheless. B+
Robotic Worker Presentation - Was there a point to Armisen being a part of this sketch? I guess he's got a new penultimate season of Portlandia coming out next month to promote. Plus, Seth Meyers still has a show and still employs him and I guess SNL was lucky enough to catch him when he wasn't taking time off from it. I guess his presence here was appropriate enough since this whole sketch felt like a throwback to his Era of prominence as a cast member as it was blatant gay humor run into the cold, cold ground withour taking a second to think of what more they could trim fron this. If they were trying to make a statement on political correctness, they failed. I have to give credit to Casey, Kenan and Aidy here as they really played off of their surroundings well. Beck looked like he just walked off the set of a 1994 Duracell commercial and Kyles' wig looked like it was applied in too big of a hurry. C-
Jingle Barack - While this was clever, something felt strange about its execution. I realize it's a riff on Run DMCs' "Christmas in Hollis, Queens" but was it really that necessary to give a very 1986 aesthetic to something so obviously set in 2016? Anyway, a lot of individual jokes worked in spite of this. Plus, this was a decent use of Chance The Rapper outside of the musical guest slot but he didn't really seem like he was giving it his all. Adding Leslie as a Salt-N-Pepa-alike MC was an inspired touch. C+
Christmas Miracle - I don't see why they needed to recur this a third time in only two seasons but at least this, much like a lot of Kates' recurring sketches has a great streak of absurdist writing to it and is performed as reliably well as always. Plus, it's not totally a bad thing that the law of diminishing returns really helps reduce the corpsing. I'm tempted to say this sketch is becoming the next Debbie Downer but this sketch warrants return installments much more than Debbie Downer ever did. By this point in the show, it became pretty obvious that Casey's beard wasn't a big if an issue as Lorne may make it out to be with other hosts either because they wrote his parts around it or it was just incidental to every sketch he was in. C+
Update is improving ever so slightly. They still have plenty of good material. Jost is still on a bit of a hot streak and Che is making the best of what he is given. The lone commentary really killed this one. We didn't need to see Fred and Vanesas' "friends from growing up" bit anymore but they were both in the building during a week when Russia was in the news again so we should've seen this coming. I thought that they might have been planning to take this in a different direction when they mentioned Putin being a fan of Che but I spoke too soon. C+
New York Now - This Long Island nativity scene was possibly the weakest live segment of the night. It had Anderlette written all over it and it felt very derivative. It felt like a pinch of Coffee Talk, a teaspoon of Bronx Beat and a dash of Affleck chanelling Kroll and Mulaney in "Oh Hello" baked into a thin bare Nativity sketch premise crust with other attempts at lame regional NY type humor. Chance The Rapper didn't quite fit into this sketch at first but then having him drop a Hammer reference seemed oddly appropriate. . Plus, it felt like this was Cecily's first appearance of the night (which is strange at this point in the show) and if Mikey's part was what this was building up to, it was too weak of a payoff. D+
Hillary, Actually - This really pulled it's weight. The electoral college angle was topical enough to justify writing it (speaking of which, I'd be shocked if this wasn't a Kelly/Schnieder joint) and enough bizarro-Zuckeresque sight gags with the fold out cards and giant check to justify filming it rather than doing it live (they did this exact same thing in a live sketch with Pete and Amy Adams that got cut from dress two years ago). This was surprisingly enjoyable with what they added to it. B-
Christmas Bar - This sketch was a little repetitive and predictable and shticky for my liking but it was more watchable than it really had any right to be. I liked how they kept upping the stakes and adding to this. Normally, you could only see this type of "wild building on a trope" sketch on the recently departed Comedy Bang! Bang! IFC series but it worked surprisingly well in this setting. Casey performed his part well even if it wasn't too much of a stretch from the Boston role he played earlier. C-
Mrs. Claus And The Elves - I'm sure this is a bad sign, but I saw where this sketch was going the very second it started. I was hoping that it would be a little different since "Mrs. Claus" was the focus but I ended up hating myself for being right. This was definitely the most unwelcome recurring segment of the night and Casey Affleck was the host who added the least to it. It dragged on, but at least the ending was swift and abrupt. D-
Now, for my updated rankings of this season...
1. Dave Chappelle/A Tribe Called Quest
2. Tom Hanks/Lady Gaga
3. Lin Manuel Miranda/Twenty One Pilots
4. Margot Robbie/The Weeknd
5. Emily Blunt/Bruno Mars
6. John Cena/Maren Morris
7. Casey Affleck/Chance The Rapper
8. Emma Stone/Shawn Mendes
9. Kristen Wiig/The xx
10. Benedict Cumberbatch/Solange
Well, that was as good a note to end 2016 on as any. Next month, SNL rings in the new year with Felicity Jones as their first new host. I can't say I've seen her in anything big just yet, I've heard good things about her acting and can say with some confidence that I am looking forward to this episode. See you then!
No comments:
Post a Comment