Saturday Night Live

Ok, Gov. Christie's New Jersey sign language interpreter cracked me up.

It was fantastic tonight. That's what having Louis CK as guest host does, I guess!

The hotel bill sketch was very Pythonesque. Me likey.

I giggled way more than I probably should have at the Australian Screen Legends sketch.

Lincoln. "Who wanted to kill him? The whole country from the middle on down."

The new girls are getting a lot to do.

Mary Lincoln nagging Abe to ensure he had the theater tickets cracked me up! "I just don't want to arrive at the theater and find out we can't get in."

They do keep on topping themselves this season, don't they? With the exception of the final sketch, I can't think of a single bit that I didn't enjoy on some level last night.

The new three women are great -- don't miss Wiig at all. I hope they keep spreading out the work and don't turn any one of them into Wiig 2.0.

Liked pretty much everything tonight except, of course, Rihanna. Hated her songs, hated her outfits (what was that Mickey Mouse shoes with camo thing anyway?). And the greenscreen garbage on the first song was awful.

Aside from a complaint about the staging - I would have had the two "stars" face the rest of the team instead of the audience - I thought the "McDonald's" sketch was the best. The "American Gothic" one snuck up on me - Anne really had the timing on crossing and uncrossing her eyes down and it sent my wife into crazy hysterics.

I might have found the "Homeland" sketch a tad funnier if I actually watched the series, but it was still pretty solid.

The weakest sketch of the night was probably the opener, and even that made me laugh.

I thought it was going to be a rerun because Rihanna's already been a musical guest this year. I hope I can find a torrent of the show somewhere cuz I'm curious as to how Anne fared. She strikes me as someone with excellent comic timing!

I really loved the episode. Usually there are one or two skits that I just don't care about but this one was pretty funny all the way through and had a good use of the whole cast.

Hrm, we thought this one was a bit of a dud. (And I like Anne Hathaway.) The Ellen skit went on forever.

Yeah, this one fell flat for me, too. It meandered. Part of it is that I find Anne Hathaway really naturally grating, so she lost me in the monologue -- I just can't with her. She was good as Katie Holmes, and the Homeland sketch had funny bits, but it felt more like a mean-spirited jab at Claire Danes' acting (by the writers, not by Anne) than anything else. (And I think Claire Danes is great on Homeland, so... for me that sketch only worked because Hader's Mandy Patinkin is so uncanny. It was lazy writing; Kenan Thompson had nothing to do and they resorted to having him only say things that were obvious "duh" lines explaining all the jokes.)

So, yeah. The American Gothic sketch was a funny idea. I thought Rihanna sounded awful. And I can't deal with Hathaway even though I love how her hair looks all of a sudden.

I liked a bunch of them -- I am too much of a Les Mis nerd not to have appreciated the monologue, and for whatever reason the opener really tickled me. The MILK. "Dad, I'm only 38 years old!" (The Karl Rove part didn't work though.) I also thought the McDonald's one was funny (if long), and the "Girlfriend Talk" one. And Ellen.

I didn't like the Homeland sketch much though. I don't watch it, but I am certainly familiar with Claire Danes, and Hathaway's imitation didn't do much for me. The whole sketch just sort of sat there, like they decided they should do one but didn't really have any ideas beyond "Homeland, amirite?"

However, I would watch an entire show of Taran Killam and Kate McKinnon. MVPs for me.

I fast-forwarded Rihanna. However, in the latest edition of I Am Old And Curmudgeonly And Wish For Various Individuals To Get Off My Lawn, I must say I am NOT A FAN of this new thing of letting the music acts have a giant video screen thing behind them. You're on SNL. You can't just sing the song on the regular stage? Oh, the song doesn't hold up without a lot of distracting electronic shit behind it? Oh, OK then.

I think a lot of why I'm enjoying this season so much more than others is that there's no Kristen Wiig sketches dragging down the show. Almost all of her characters were uncomfortable or repetitive bits and even the ones that weren't painful to watch were very low-energy slow humor. Not having two or three sketches per week that completely stop the momentum of the show is helping tremendously. Plus, Taran Killam's breakout is also helping because his humor (even when it's repetitive like Wiig's) is faster paced.

And since I didn't comment on it at the time, I thought the Bruno Mars skit with the Pandora intern was so crazy good. He was pretty good in general but that was amazing.

I fast-forwarded Rihanna. However, in the latest edition of I Am Old And Curmudgeonly And Wish For Various Individuals To Get Off My Lawn, I must say I am NOT A FAN of this new thing of letting the music acts have a giant video screen thing behind them. You're on SNL. You can't just sing the song on the regular stage? Oh, the song doesn't hold up without a lot of distracting electronic shit behind it? Oh, OK then.

Ohmygod, that was the WORST.

I am a bit behind but I must say I miss Darrel as Trump ( as much as I love Sudeikis)

Raised by wolves wrote:I think a lot of why I'm enjoying this season so much more than others is that there's no Kristen Wiig sketches dragging down the show. Almost all of her characters were uncomfortable or repetitive bits and even the ones that weren't painful to watch were very low-energy slow humor. Not having two or three sketches per week that completely stop the momentum of the show is helping tremendously.

Agreed. Even though I like her, in many ways, I was THOROUGHLY ready for her to be gone from the show. I was spending every sketch going "Ugghhh, Wiig." And then "All right, I'm not being fair, she's funny. This impression she's doing is good. She IS funny. I can see why they give her so many sketches. And she's obviously charismatic. And she wrote Bridesmaids. No wonder they want to hang onto her. ...Is this over YET? ARGH NO she's just annoying. I am justifying my annoyance with the following evidence. ...OK, that was funny I guess. She really is talented. ...Does she have to do the same face every time? IS THIS EVER GOING TO END?" Like, I was working way harder than I should have been to enjoy the stuff she was in, or justify to myself why I wasn't enjoying it. Now I don't have to WORRY about it. Because it's just regular funny, not "I should find this funny!" funny.

To expand on that, they don't really have a "star" right now that they have to sort of build sketches around. And I think that helps. It feels like an ensemble, not like everyone has to feed straight lines to Penelope or Surprise Lady or Kathie Lee Gifford or Gross Sexy Girl or Gilly or Tiny Hands Lady or whatever Wiig character is the showpiece. I feel like the closest thing they have right now to a character like that is Stefon and...Stefon is awesome. (Please stay awesome, Stefon.)

Forgot to mention though: the allergy commercial at the end was BAD. I can see why they didn't put it in the usual spot after the monologue. Not only was it clumsy and not funny, it was mean, and not in an incisive, "the truth hurts" way, just in a clumsy way. There's humor to be found in the fact that SOME people exaggerate allergies or whatever for attention, but this made it sound like a gluten allergy was just something that crazy attention whores have. It was super tone deaf and they just didn't find it or whatever the term is. I don't think it should have aired, honestly, but it looked like they were short on material at the end when they seemed to be telling Anne to keep talking.

I love Stefon, and the fact that every episode results in him cracking is even more hilarious

I found this episode lacking, too. Especially the political stuff; I feel like ever since the Daily Show/Colbert happened SNL has been like "Fine, you have it, we're not even gonna try."

I did like the Homeland parody, though.

I may have watched the Mokiki Does the Sloppy Swish video about ten times since Saturday.

Edited to add the video! It's contagious!

I had completely forgotten about that. And yes... that was insanely brilliant.

Mokiki was the high point of the night for me.

Jeremy Renner can sing! And that was the only bright spot last night. The Avengers skit was so flat and awkward and the Californians has never been funny. The only skit I liked was the last one where Jeremy couldn't recognize his brother.

TiffanyNichelle wrote:Jeremy Renner can sing! And that was the only bright spot last night. The Avengers skit was so flat and awkward and the Californians has never been funny. The only skit I liked was the last one where Jeremy couldn't recognize his brother.

Yeah, he doesn't usually do much for me, but I'll admit him singing New York State of Mind is pretty damn attractive.