SNL: Hamm & Buble, together at last

Haven't written about "Saturday Night Live" for most of this season because, frankly, most of the episodes have been so terrible that it hasn't been worth the effort. But Jon Hamm's second appearance last night was in some ways even funnier than his first. Some thoughts on it (along with plenty of video links) coming up just as soon as I feel the wind blowing...

There was the requisite Don Draper parody (this time as part of a monologue depicting some his pre-Draper roles), and of course a sketch playing off his handsomeness Hamm as Scott Brown). But there were also weirder turns, like his work as the symbol of a gypsy curse in the Digital Short, or his random, disturbing testimonial in the middle of the already bizarre Closet Organizer ad. (I also liked the very low-key, late-in-the-show sketch where Hamm played a guy meeting the star of that ad.)

Not everything worked. The first post-monologue sketch was another one where they rode a Kristin Wiig tic into the ground, and I really wish they had left the "Greg is not an alien" sports talk show as a one-time thing. (Though Hamm did a decent Bill Hader impression in this one.)

The Digital Short's climax was the night's comic highlight for me, but a very close second was the inevitable sequel to Jon Hamm's John Ham, here with Hamm and musical guest Michael Buble opening the Hamm & Buble restaurant.

"SNL" is often only as good as its host, and in Hamm they've found a guy who's game for anything. Here's hoping his stints become an annual event.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

SNL: A new Slate?

I haven't written about "Saturday Night Live" this season because I tend not to get to the show for a day or two, and very little of it is good enough to be worth writing about. ("SNL" can be funny during non-election seasons; this one just hasn't been.)

I did watch a little of the January Jones episode last night, though, and other than noticing how much trouble she was having in the early sketches both reading the cue cards and keeping a straight face, the thing that struck me the most was that they did another Kathie Lee/Hoda "Today" sketch, with Jenny Slate replacing the fired Michaela Watkins as Hoda.

Now, I didn't like this particular recurring sketch - like much of the show these days, it leans too heavily on Kristen Wiig, who more and more seems like she's a perfect second banana being asked to carry a cast with no real alpha dog - nor was I incredibly broken up when Watkins got fired, but it seems like a major party foul to keep doing it without her. Actors leave the show and then other people succeed them as certain celebrity characters that the show has to do (presidents, movie stars), and sometimes we'll see a recurring sketch modified if somebody leaves (Rachel Dratch replaced Molly Shannon on "Delicious Dish," but playing a different character), but this is different. Hoda Kotb is too D-list for the show to need someone to play her; the point was that Wiig and Watkins had started doing this together, as these two women. Just plugging Slate into the same role Watkins used to play both says that the show felt the fourth hour of "Today" was important enough to keep doing, and that Watkins' contribution to the sketch was so minor that anyone could play the part.

"SNL" has been on so long, and replaced so many actors, that I'm sure there's been a similar circumstance to this over the years. But none are coming to mind at the moment, and I feel oddly put out by what they did here.

What do you think? Fair or foul? And has anyone been enjoying the show this season more than I have? Click here to read the full post

SNL: Will Ferrell's greatest hits

No time to do proper justice to the Will Ferrell-hosted "Saturday Night Live" finale, except to say three things: 1)It's a pleasure to watch Ferrell as either the comic center or straight man in a sketch, and you can tell how much the others enjoy playing off him; 2)The latest installment of Celebrity Jeopardy may be my favorite version of that ever, possibly surpassed only by the one that previously featured Norm MacDonald's Burt Reynolds (or, rather, "Turd Ferguson"); and 3)The closing sketch (not online for some reason, possibly owing to music rights) was another winner in the "let's try whatever weird idea we have" at 12:55 a.m." category.

Also, if this really was Darrell Hammond's last episode, as the hugs over the closing credits implied, which impression of his will you miss the most? Click here to read the full post

SNL: JT joins the Three-Timers Club

Spoilers for the Justin Timberlake episode of "Saturday Night Live" coming right up...

"And then he'll appear, again, and again -- many times a year."
"Won't that lessen the excitement, though, each time?"

With his second hosting stint (which introduced the world to "Dick in a Box"), Justin Timberlake established himself as the most promising "SNL" host in years. His cameos in the two years since have only built the anticipation for his third gig as host (though he also appeared in sketches several times as a musical guest before he first hosted). But at the same time, as that self-aware line from Saturday's funniest live sketch showed, the danger in Timberlake popping up so often is that it could become less special when he does it.

Saturday's episode was actually one of this season's stronger efforts (though I'd put it behind the Jon Hamm and Anne Hathaway episodes, at a minimum), but at the same time, I wish they'd given Timberlake more new material to do, instead of largely recycling all the characters he's developed in previous appearances. When he did his Weekend Update cameo in the Paul Rudd episode to run through what his next hosting gig might look like, he at least suggested doing James Dean and Michael McDonald impressions.

With the exception of the Digital Short, which I'll get to in a minute, all of Timberlake's recurring characters felt less funny than they have previously, whether it was The Barry Gibb Talk Show or the rapping sidewalk salesman. Not bad sketches, but the law of diminishing returns has set in.

(Then again, giving him a new character to play isn't always a cure-all. While Timberlake played a Target employee in his last appearance, the latest Target lady sketch featured him in a new, cross-dressing persona, and was about as funny as the Target lady herself is at this point -- which is to say, not at all.)

"Motherlover," the sequel to "Dick in a Box," was the one recurring bit I was happy to see. Considering the brilliance and popularity of the original video, you knew they'd have to do a follow-up, and I expected it to be both good and relatively different (as opposed to the "One: Cut a hole in a turkey..." joke from the Thanksgiving Update bit). I would say "Motherlover" was probably a better video (with Susan Sarandon and Patricia Clarkson throwing themselves into their cameos), and maybe a more interesting song, than "Dick in a Box," but the original was catchier, and the novelty of the characters and the subject matter made it more shockingly funny. Still, as good a sequel as you could hope to one of the show's most memorable sketches of the last decade (if not all time), and even the guys admitted, "This will be the second best idea we ever had."

But for me, the highlight of the episode was Timberlake's ancestor predicting his entire career while on a boat to Ellis Island. The execution of it (including Timberlake's passable Irish accent) was much stronger than we often get with these self-deprecating host bits (which usually come in the monologue), and I loved the idea of Timberlake's career as seen through the eyes of turn of the (20th) century immigrants, who assumed Timberlake was a woman, didn't understand why sexy would need to come back ("It will be gone, and he'll bring it back!") and were dazzled by the references to all his conquests ("Publicly, they'll claim to be virgins, but privately... he'll hit it").

There were a number of other good sketches with no Timberlake involvement, including the ad for the mom celebrity name translator, Elliot Spitzer & David Patterson turning into a New Jersey-bashing comedy duo, and Kirk, Spock and Spock suggesting the Trekkies (as William Shatner once famously did) get a life.

Again, a very good episode, but I guess my expectations were too high after last time, and I would have liked to see more new material. But Timberlake can come back anytime.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

SNL: Returning non-favorites

Hoo boy, last night's "Saturday Night Live" was bad. I don't blame host Zac Efron, as he was front and center for the one funny sketch, the inevitable "High School Musical" parody. The rest, though, seemed like a contest to figure out which is the least funny current recurring character: Obama/Biden, Kathie Lee on "Today," Gilly, the celebrity blogger, etc. Painful. Just painful, and not worth spending any more time analyzing.

Ah, well. At least the season closes out with Justin Timberlake and Will Ferrell as hosts -- though, the way the season has gone (with Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin bombing, while newbies like Jon Hamm and Anne Hathaway fronted the better episodes), those two aren't guaranteed laugh riots. Click here to read the full post

SNL: The Rock Obama rocks

Spoilers for the excellent latest episode of "Saturday Night Live" coming up just as soon as I once and for all abandon my dreams of a Hawaiian vacation...

Dwayne Johnson is, in many ways, the ideal "SNL" host. He combines the game-for-anything attitude that most pro athlete hosts bring to the show (think Peyton Manning hitting underprivileged kids with footballs, or Tom Brady sexually harassing people in his underwear, or, here, the musical monologue about how Hollywood has changed him) with the kind of versatility (at least, as versatile as a guy built like The Rock can be, like his Dennis Rodman impression in the "Celebrity Apprentice" promo sketch) you get out of the better actor-hosts.

Because of those two traits, and some decent premises to go with them, Johnson was at the center of one of this season's stronger episodes. It may not have had some of the highs of the Jon Hamm or Anne Hathaway shows, but it was more consistently funny throughout. And I don't think it's a coincidence that the few sketches that didn't work -- the Tim Geithner cold open (which had a decent idea but took way too long to get to it and then went on too long with it), another Jamie Lee Curtis Activia commercial -- didn't feature Johnson at all.

(One Johnson-less bit that did work: the return of MacGruber vs. MacGyver, this time actually playing off the rivalry instead of using it to sell a soft-drink. Or did the Pepsuber incident ruin the character for those people who didn't already hate him?)

The Rock Obama was the first really funny Obama sketch they've done in a long time (probably going back to the first Obama/Clinton debate bit), in part because they sidelined Fred Armisen for most of it in favor of Johnson (who did a nice blend of Armisen-as-Obama impression and '70s comic book Hulk impression), and because there was an interesting idea behind it. Also, you can kind of tell that the "SNL" writers are just as frustrated with Obama as Rahm Emmanuel was in the sketch, maybe not because he won't get angry, but because he won't give them any kind of personality quirk that's easy to parody.

(EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the point in the review where I have to remind you of this blog's No Politics rule. If you can't discuss the sketch and only the sketch, don't comment. Period.)

Johnson was mainly a straight man in "Gametime with Dave & Greg," which started off with what seemed like a lame presence (alien not-so-secretly co-hosts a sports-talk TV show) but embraced that premise with such insane abandon (helped by a great Bill Hader performance) that I laughed harder at that than any sketch in recent memory.

Johnson and Armisen as bitter entertainers at a Hawaiian hotel also seemed like a premise that could have gotten one-note quickly, but had enough variations within that note, plus the image of Johnson doing a good grass skirt dance, to carry it. And the lighthouse sketch was the sort of amusingly weird thing they can throw up at 12:50 a.m. just for the hell of it. (It also featured a classic element of live sketch comedy, dating back to Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca in "From Here to Obscurity": seeing actors try to keep a straight face when they're getting repeatedly doused with water.

The two best things in Weekend Update unfortunately aren't up. One was Seth Meyers' list of things Iran would have to apologize for before America apologized for "The Wrestler," proving once again that Meyers is often at his best when he's just getting mad. The other was the bit with Andy Samberg as Cathy from the comic strips, and then cameos by Justin Timberlake as Irving and Jessica Biel as Jessica Rabbit. (See, it's funny because they're both named Jessica...) Samberg's Cathy isn't as good as Tina Fey's Cathy ("Chocolate chocolate chocolate! Ack!"), but Timberlake was brilliant as usual, and I can't figure out why this one's not available on-line. (Though if you poke around on YouTube, you might find a version before the NBC legal team goes to work.) Unlike the Timberlake/Beyonce sketch from the Paul Rudd episode, there aren't any music rights issues at work.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

SNL: Jonas to the fourth power

Some thoughts on last night's disappointing episode of "Saturday Night Live" coming up just as soon as I go to Africa...

This season has featured guest-hosting appearances by Ben Affleck, Hugh Laurie, Steve Martin and now Alec Baldwin -- three of the most reliable hosts in the show's history, plus a sketch comedy master who killed in a previous "SNL" appearance -- and they've all been tremendously disappointing. Now, this season has also featured extremely promising first-time hosting gigs by Anne Hathaway, Jon Hamm and Neil Patrick Harris, so it's not like the series has entirely lost its fastball. But an Alec Baldwin episode -- complete with a Dan Aykroyd cameo -- should be a season highlight, shouldn't it?

The cold open with the Republican leadership being out of touch had a good idea, but the execution was off. The monologue with Jack McBrayer featured a twist on my least favorite monologue device, the questions from the audience. Then we got the inevitable Jonas Brothers sketch to keep the tweens from changing the channel, and at least this one allowed Baldwin to carry the full load, when much of the rest of the episode, like Steve Martin's, had him too much in the background. But I thought the Jonas Digital Short was the better of their two comedy appearances, as Andy Samberg and the Lonely Island guys are usually so good at parodying specific types of music like those early '80s hair metal videos.

Cougar Den needs to be put out to pasture, and only seems to come back because Cameron Diaz has attached herself to it. (The Vincent Price holiday specials, on the other hand, are still funny because of the oddness of the impression choices -- Fred Armisen's Liberace always makes me laugh -- so of course it's one of the few sketches from last night that isn't online.)

Weekend Update featured the inevitable Joaquin Phoenix parody (well-played by Jason Sudeikis), as well as the equally-inevitable return of Abby Elliott's Angelina Jolie and Kenan as the "Fix It!" guy. Diminishing returns, folks -- just because people laughed at something once doesn't mean you have to bring it back.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Never badmouth synergy!

I didn't want to do a post on this week's "Saturday Night Live" because it, coupled with the awful Steve Martin episode of "30 Rock," made me sad.

But then I saw one of the three "MacGruber" sketches air as a Super Bowl ad, and I saw Lynette Rice's post at EW about how Pepsi paid for the sketches -- all of which aired during the commercial breaks, as opposed to in between two other sketches the way "MacGruber" usually does -- and I was reminded again of why the SAG deal hasn't closed just yet. Does Will Forte get paid extra because of the Pepsi money? Because it aired again as an actual ad during the Super Bowl? Or does he just have to show up to tape them and be thankful he still has a job in this economy?

(If you care -- perhaps to see how the Pepsi plugs completely squandered the MacGruber/MacGyver meeting -- you can see the three sketches here, here and here. The middle one's the one that aired during the Super Bowl.)

Anyway, if you didn't say your fill about the ads (AdMeter ratings are out, and you know I found virtually all of the spots lame), the halftime show, or NBC's production last night, feel free to talk about that stuff -- and/or "SNL" -- here. Click here to read the full post

NPH + SNL = LOL?

I got a few e-mails from the East Coast last night telling me that Neil Patrick Harris had killed on "Saturday Night Live," so I spent the better part of this morning fighting the tour hotel's awful wi-fi connection to watch whatever sketches were available online. Unfortunately, it was a losing battle, and comedy is not designed to play with frequent pauses for buffering.

Of the sketches I was able to get through with minimal technical difficulties, I liked both the first and second half of the monologue but felt they should have picked one gag (Doogie vs. Fred Savage) or the other (NPH shuts down hecklers) instead of both, I got a kick out of the Save Broadway sketch but am wondering who played Annie (did they add a fifth female regular over the New Year's break?), am still amused by Sudeikis' hair whenever he plays Blago but thought that sketch needed to get to him sooner, got too frustrated with all the connection problems while trying to watch Frost/Other People to get all the way through and think NPH needed to show up much sooner in the Today show sketch. I've heard tell of a good Digital Short, but it's not online anywhere that I can find.

Also, Fran and Freba was the kind of sketch I wish they'd do more of these days -- no high-concept, no fake theme song or celebrity impressions, just two characters interacting with each other -- but the execution didn't work at all.

What did those of you who were able to watch the show under more optimal conditions think? Click here to read the full post

SNL: Blinded by the light?

Spoilers for the Hugh Laurie/Amy Poehler "Saturday Night Live" extravaganza coming up just as soon as I put the finishing touches on my Chanukah letter...

It's funny what happens when you don't get around to watching "SNL" for about a day. Had I watched the thing live, or even Sunday morning, I would have reviewed the episode as a whole: how disappointing it was given the brilliance of Hugh Laurie's first appearance(*), how the Digital Short was the worst ever (yes, even worse than Daiquiri Girl), how I was glad to see one final edition of Really? with Seth and Amy before Amy Poehler left the show for good, etc.

(*) I don't know if Hugh had as big a hand in sketch-writing as he did last time (which gave us brilliant bits like The Queen's Advance Man), but he definitely seemed willing to take a back seat to the cast this time. One of the few memorable moments of the episode, outside of Weekend Update, was seeing master sketch comedian Laurie struggling to keep a straight face as Poehler and Maya Rudolph kept riffing off each other in the final installment of "Bronx Beat."

But that was a whole news cycle ago, and now the only question seems to be whether the Governor Paterson sketch was insensitive to the blind.

And to that, my answer is this: Yes, and...?

It's a comedy show. At times a good comedy show, at times bad, but a comedy show. It makes fun of people for all sorts of reasons, some in good taste, some not. Hell, they've mocked the blind before, whether it was Ray Charles thinking he was hosting the show at Carnegie Hall, or the legendary Stevie Wonder camera commercial.

You could argue that those previous sketches featured actual blind people poking fun at themselves, where this was Fred Armisen playing blind, in the same way he plays black as Barack Obama. But where Armisen's Obama isn't funny because the writers don't know what to do with the character, his Paterson impression was a scream, possibly the funniest thing Armisen has ever done on this show. (Him disrupting Amy's goodbye was the highlight.)

It was absolutely, 100 percent mocking a man's disability (though they took other non-blindness pokes at Paterson), but I could name a half-dozen sketches off the top of my head that were just as vicious in mocking public figures, whether it was Claudine Longet accidentally shooting a bunch of skiiers, Belushi as Liz Taylor eating an entire chicken leg, Linda Tripp having lunch with Monica Lewinsky, Bob Dole on "The Real World" or basically everything they did to and with Sarah Palin this season.

Hell, I'd argue that if "SNL" isn't offending people at least once or twice a season, it isn't doing its job right.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

SNL: Live from New York, it's Justin Timberlake!

Thoughts on last night's "Saturday Night Live" coming up just as soon as I ask my doctor about my tolerance for cartoonish sound effects...

I know everyone's going to want to talk about Justin Timberlake's surprise appearance on Weekend Update and then his work in the sketch depicted above(*), but I want to start off by singing the praises of this week's Digital Short. Perhaps to an even more extreme degree than "SNL" itself, the Shorts can be very hit-or-miss, and "Everyone's a Critic" started off seeming like it would be one of the misses, relying on a pixellated male nudity gag that wasn't enough to justify the length. But then they unveiled the painting at the art auction, and... well, like Adam at Throwing Things, I can't remember the last time I laughed so uncontrollably at something(**). Just the perfect amount of over-the-top (if such a thing is possible), and the random "Raiders of the Lost Ark" homage in the middle gave the entire thing a great Zucker Brothers (circa "Airplane!") feel.

(*)I'm still trying to figure out NBC's strategy for which sketches to post online. You would think the Beyonce/Timberlake sketch would be a natural to go viral, but it's not up there, while lamer sketches like the kissing family are. Is it a music rights clearance issue? Or will it just randomly turn up online days and days later, like Giraffes! and Night School Musical from the Ben Affleck show?

(**) Actually, that's not true. I'd put the second half of "Everyone's a Critic" slightly behind the safe-sex riff from last night's Ricky Gervais HBO concert special, but in fairness, I first heard that one way back in July.

But, anyway, JT. I think we've already established that Timberlake's in the elite hosting pantheon with Steve Martin, Alec Baldwin, Christopher Walken and, if they ever do it again, Tom Hanks and John Goodman. So while it's a disappointment that he won't be pulling double duty for the Thanksgiving show, the idea of having him condense his entire appearance into a stream-of-consciousness monologue -- which sounded almost exactly like how you would expect the hypothetical episode to go, and allowed Timberlake to introduce a Michael McDonald impression -- was hilarious, and one of several extremely meta moments of the episode.

We also got Paul Rudd(***) doing a monologue about how disappointing it is to be hosting the show after the election, and even the cold opening with Joe Biden promising that he can be as gaffe-prone as Sarah Palin felt like the show's way of promising that they could be funny even without Tina Fey's Palin impression(****).

(***) Rudd was a disappointment as host, I thought, considering how funny and versatile he is in his movies. They primarily used him as the straight man in other people's sketches (like the scared straight bit with Kenan), and didn't even let him be one of the dancers in the Beyonce sketch, even though he showed in the otherwise forgettable (and straight-to-video) "I Could Never Be Your Woman" that he's a wonderful funny dancer.

(****) It also felt like an excuse to once again duck the show's problem with making Obama funny. How long can they hold off on bringing Fred Armisen out as Obama again?

I'm sure everyone who works on the show is bracing him or herself for the inevitable post-election round of "Saturday Night Dead" stories. Devoting so much airtime to various sketches commenting about the predictable nature of the show could have been their attempt to pre-empt those criticisms -- or, at least, to soften the blow by joking about it in advance. But a better -- albeit harder -- approach would have been to come back with a kick-butt episode that made it clear it wasn't just Fey carrying the show this season. Instead, we got a few highlights and a lot of dead air. Even the franchise's best seasons offer up episodes like that now and again; this one was just very poorly-timed.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

SNL: No one dies harder than John McCain...

Quick thoughts on last night's "Saturday Night Live" coming up just as soon as I enjoy some fine gold...

Ben Affleck and John McCain are two longtime friends of the show, in large part because they're game to do just about anything asked of them. Affleck in particular is so much more likable on "SNL" than he is in most of his movies that his acting career might have gone differently if he had taken a year or two off from films to join the cast.

But last night's Affleck/McCain team-up didn't quite live up to expectations. The opening sketch, with a cash-strapped McCain on QVC, trying to counter Barack Obama's network infomercial while selling campaign-themed tchotchkes, was hilarious -- particularly when Tina Fey, in her final appearance as Sarah Palin, went rogue -- but McCain on Weekend Update fell flat.

As for Affleck, after getting what seemed to be the shortest monologue in "SNL" history (can anyone think of a shorter one?), he got to further the Alec Baldwin parallels by actually playing Baldwin as a guest on "The View" in a sketch I didn't find very funny, but that my wife (who watches "The View") laughed a lot at. Affleck's Baldwin was pretty good, as was Casey Wilson's Jennifer Aniston and Kenan's Whoopi; they just didn't get much to do. And I think I would have enjoyed Affleck skewering Keith Olbermann a lot more if I hadn't recently seen and loved the very similar "Double meat, sir!"

In Roger Ebert full-disclosure style, I should say that I decided to go to sleep about a minute into the latest Target Lady sketch, and then watched whatever else was available on NBC.com this morning (including the German coat store ad and Kenan as an old man giving love advice). Did I miss anything good? How was David Cook?

And, with the election only a few days away, let me remind you all one last time: This is not a political blog. Talk about McCain only in the context of the show (i.e., whether you found it funny or not). Do not talk about policy, do not attack either candidate or each other, or I start deleting comments. Got it? Click here to read the full post

SNL: Jon Hamm's handsome comedy acting school

Spoilers for last night's "Saturday Night Live" coming up just as soon as I enjoy some ham in the john...

To Jon Hamm's annoyingly perfect CV -- charismatic, great actor, damned handsome -- we can apparently now add good comedian. If he starts playing in Hugh Laurie's band, something may have to be done about the guy before he begins his plans for world domination.

Hamm's episode didn't necessarily have the highs of the Tina Fey-as-Sarah Palin sketches, but it was one of the more solid 90-minute episodes they've done in a while, and Hamm proved to be a great sport and an even better mimic. His James Mason impression in the Vincent Price Halloween episode was brilliant, and his JFK (admittedly, an easier impersonation to pull off) in the "Solid as Barack" variety special was very good too.

(Speaking of Mason, I must once again ask a question that went unanswered the last time I raised it about a year ago: can anyone identify the comedian who does a bit in which he imagines Mason replacing Moe as leader of The Three Stooges? It's driving me nuts.)

For a show that even the monologue acknowledged is fairly obscure, "Mad Men" got a lot of love -- and, in some cases, did jokes that depended on (and, thankfully, got) the studio audience's knowledge of the series to work.

(For a counter-example of this, I think back to when John Travolta hosted right as "Pulp Fiction" was coming out and they did a long sketch mashing up "Welcome Back, Kotter" with "Reservoir Dogs," and it died because nobody in the theater appreciated Barbarino dancing to "Stuck in the Middle with You" while slicing someone's ear off.)

Of the two most explicit "Mad Men" sketches, I thought Don Draper's guide to picking up women was the funnier idea -- and also the one where Hamm seemed more in character, though that may just be because they had the time to get his hair done right for video, but not for a live show where he couldn't be greased down all night -- but the Two A-Holes shooting down a classic Don Draper pitch was funny in its own right. Will Forte's Pete Campbell sounded weird, and Bill Hader overplayed Salvatore's queenier qualities, but Hamm playing it straight worked, and on a meta level I loved the contrast between Elizabeth Moss trying very hard to fit in and be Peggy and John Slattery being unable to resist showing how amused he was to be there.

I also thought the sex criminal Halloween sketch was a good example of a strong premise that they introduced, told a few jokes about, then got out as quickly as possible (so quickly they didn't even bother to end the sketch, in fact) before it got overplayed.

Finally, I'm reluctant to bring this up because of how nasty and juvenile everyone tends to get whenever politics and this show are discussed -- and, as a reminder, play nice and talk about the show and not about the politicians, or each other, or I start deleting comments -- but after reading complaints here and elsewhere that the show was giving Joe Biden a pass on all his recent gaffes, I was amused to see not one but two sketches -- both the Obama variety show and the opening sketch with Biden and John Murtha saying crazy things -- mocking Biden.

What did everybody else think? And are you as bummed as I am that Amy Poehler (who gave birth over the weekend) likely made her final appearance ever on the show in the Don Draper's guide video? Click here to read the full post

SNL: Thursday night live, take three

Spoilers for the third and final Thursday night, pre-election "Saturday Night Live" thingee coming right up...

Took 'em three tries, but that one was solid just about all the way through. Maybe it was the fact that there was no debate this week and therefore they didn't have to be beholden to a format that hasn't worked much for the show lately, or maybe it was Will Ferrell cameo'ing in the show's best Dubya sketch in a long time, or maybe they just had better ideas this week, but this one was solid virtually all-around. (Outside of the predictable and predictably lame repetition of Keenan's "Fix it!" guy.)

Getting back to President Bush, Seth Meyers was on Bill Simmons' podcast a couple of weeks ago, and he talked about how the show really struggled to do Bush sketches in the wake of 9/11. Ferrell's impression hadn't changed, but people's willingness to laugh at it had. Seven years later, and the president reduced to either an afterthought or someone that both presidential candidates are attempting to run against the memory of, and Ferrell's Bush is funny again. It helped that he was paired with Tina Fey's continually brilliant Sarah Palin -- and that the writers seemed willing to be take a point of view in suggesting that Bush and Palin might be kindred spirits. Regardless of which side you're voting for, political comedy is always better when it has a specific point of view; the reason that last week's debate sketch was so lame, for instance, is that you could tell the writers had nothing to say, other than to keep invoking the name of Joe the Plumber early and often. This one was about something, it had bite, and it was a vast improvement.

Keenan aside, I liked most of the Weekend Update segments, whether it was Fred Armisen making fun of John King's interactive map on CNN, or the recreation of the first cell phone conversation, or, especially, Andy Samberg's "Jam the Vote!" Samberg's stuff always operates on such a strange wavelength that it either strikes you perfectly or it's a complete disaster. For whatever reason, this one clicked, and the moment when Andy asked for some crackers to settle his stomach, only to be handed the spicy hot dog that caused the problems in the first place, made me wheeze with laughter for a good 30 seconds. (It would have been longer, but my wife finally demanded that I press play so we could finish watching.)

Once again, I'm going to ask you to try to be civil here, and apparently I wasn't clear enough the last time, so I'll put it this way: Play nice. Talk about the show -- not the candidates, and not each other. Any comment I find to be the slightest bit questionable -- no matter what your party affiliation -- will be deleted, and if we get more than a few, I'm shutting down comments altogether. Are we clear?

Keeping that in mind, what did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

SNL: Palin vs. Palin

Brief thoughts on last night's cameo-tastic episode of "Saturday Night Live" coming up just as soon as I put a lobster on my face...

On paper, last night's show sounds like a can't miss: Sarah Palin goes face-to-face with Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin, Mark Wahlberg confronts Andy Samberg about the "Mark Wahlberg talks to animals", and then Palin shows up again on Weekend Update.

Unfortunately, very little of it worked. Palin did little more than show up, and while she gets points for being a good sport, she was stiff in the way that most politicians tend to be on the show (with her running mate a rare exception). (Fair is fair: Amy Poehler doing the Palin rap during Update while Palin raised the roof was the episode's biggest highlight, and Palin raising the roof during it definitely added to the fun.)

The danger in doing these cameo-heavy episodes is that the audience tends to ruin everyone's timing when they have the delayed realization that a Baldwin or a Marky Mark has shown up. Or, in the case of the Wahlberg v. Samberg bit, you could tell that only a handful of people in the audience had seen the original sketch, and their non-reaction to Wahlberg imitating Samberg imitating him sucked all the energy out of things. Ditto the audience not quite getting that it was Oliver Stone in the audience during Josh Brolin's monologue.

(Question: how many hosts in "SNL" history have been as badly upstaged by other guests as Brolin was last night? Not that the show was particularly good, but people are going to talk about Palin and Baldwin and Wahlberg, and most people are barely going to remember that Brolin was on.)

Also, while I loved the lady who loves surprises the first time, that's one of those sketches that shouldn't be turned into a recurring thing, and it didn't work at all last night.

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SNL: Thursday night live, take two

Quick thoughts on last night's Thursday "Saturday Night Live" primetime thingee (or whatever it's called) coming up just as soon as I say hi to my imaginary friend...

Not too good, I thought. In fairness, having the debate on Wednesday and a show on Thursday meant they had less than 24 hours to turn around virtually all their material, which is tight even by "SNL" standards. But they still don't really know what to do with either Obama or McCain, and at this point it seems like they're doing debate sketches just because they're expected to, and not because someone had a particularly inspired take on each debate. If they were going to center the whole thing around Joe the Plumber, I would have much rather seen them try to do some kind of sketch from his POV, either showing him during or immediately after the debate as he briefly became the most famous plumber in the world.

And while I like Seth and Amy, putting Weekend Update in such close proximity to "The Daily Show" -- especially in this DVR age where someone might watch Jon Stewart first, then "SNL" -- does the old warhorse no favors. Stewart's breakdown of the debate and, especially, John Oliver's breakdown of the media obsession with Joe were both much sharper than anything we got during the extended Update segment.

This is a brutal stretch for the "SNL" gang, as they've now presumably used up all their election material for the week and have to start over from scratch for Saturday night's show with Josh Brolin. But even factoring in degree of difficulty, last night's show was a disappointment.

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SNL: Thursday night live, take one

Some brief thoughts on last night's special Thursday edition of "Saturday Night Live" coming up just as soon as I give up on being a Cubs fan...

Even in a half-hour format, "SNL" winds up being uneven. (Like Lorne says, that word's going to be on the show's tombstone.)

There were some very funny bits in the debate sketch (McCain wandering in circles during Obama's answers and blocking the camera, Bill Murray pleading for a solution to the Cubs' misery) but the time limit joke was played out well before we got to the end. I recognize that this was, to most people, an incredibly boring debate that might have been harder to satirize, but the larger problem is that they still don't know what to do with Obama and only somewhat know what to do with McCain. It was an improvement on the first presidential debate sketch, but it was no "I can't believe I'm losing to this guy!"

Weekend Update, on the other hand, was terrific. "Really? with Seth and Amy" is always one of my favorite recurring Update bits -- again, Update is much funnier when the anchors are injecting their personalities into it instead of just rattling off one-liners -- and I liked that the AIG retreat forced them to take it up another notch with "Oh My God, Are You Serious?"

I believe this is the only one of the Thursday specials that's going to air in a week when the Saturday show is dark; I wonder how they're going to decide what goes where over the next few weeks.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

SNL: Not so atrocious

Some thoughts on this weekend's "Saturday Night Live" just as soon as I become Jane...

Everyone is, not surprisingly, talking about the vice-presidential debate sketch and how well Tina Fey continues to play Sarah Palin, and she's certainly nailed it. But I'm starting to feel diminishing returns with the impression, in part because nothing's going to sting quite as much as "I can see Russia from my house!" from the Palin/Hillary sketch, in part because Palin almost seems to be copying Fey at this point, rather than the other way around.

(The sketch also ran into the same problem "SNL" has had going all the way back to the 2000 election: the Democratic candidates, both presidential and vice-presidential, don't lend themselves as well to caricature because they don't have obvious physical or verbal mannerisms that can be easily and recognizably exaggerated. Even McCain's been a toughie, which is one of the reasons we're getting more of Palin and her Marge Gunderson accent than we are of the guy at the top of the ticket.)

But beyond that, this was the first episode of the season where I was glad I kept watching past the political sketches. It had the usual weird pacing choices, where some of the weakest sketches (dancing at the bar, people talking about the bailout) were near the front, while some of the funniest (Mary Poppins has a social disease, Mark Wahlberg talks to animals) didn't come until after Weekend Update. But the good sketches were very funny, as was Update. The bit where Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers went on a run of jokes about the world's fattest man getting engaged was particularly nice; Update always works best when the anchor or anchors inject their personality into it, and you could tell that Seth and Amy and the Update writers had spent a while coming up with all these punchlines and couldn't resist trying to get every single one of them into the show.

Hopefully, Anne Hathaway will wind up as a semi-regular host after this outing. The Mary Poppins impression wasn't that surprising, given that she's done a couple of movies with Julie Andrews, but she was good throughout; versatile and bright and more than willing to goof on herself with that monologue about having dated a con man. (It's not online anywhere I can see, but if you missed it, she went on about how her new boyfriend is a much nicer man: an African prince she met on the Internet, who's so interested in everything about her that he asks about things like her Social Security number and her mother's maiden name.) And she even got to cameo in the Digital Short.

Before I open it up, I'm going to make a simple request: when discussing a show that does contemporary political satire, it's impossible to not discuss politics in some way, but please try to keep it civil. I had to shut down one of the Letterman/McCain threads from a week and a half ago because it was getting ugly, and the latest "Mad Men" discussion is almost getting derailed by people noting the (physical) resemblance between Betty's dad and McCain. If people can't play nice, I may have to introduce a No Politics rule around here, and that means no more "SNL" discussion right along with it.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

SNL: Girls who wear Tina Fey glasses

So, as expected/hoped-for, Lorne Michaels was able to talk Tina Fey into popping into the "Saturday Night Live" season premiere for the part she was born to play: Sarah Palin. If you missed the sketch last night, you can see it on Hulu and at NBC.com.

We all knew that Fey and Palin were dead ringers physically, but she also nailed Palin's Marge Gunderson accent, then left it to Amy Poehler's Hillary Clinton to rip into the notion that her supporters should now vote for McCain because he put a woman on the ticket. ("Please, ask this one about dinosaurs!") It was one of the better recent "SNL" political sketches.

I haven't watched the rest of the episode yet and may not get a chance for a while, but I imagine that the opening sketch is the one thing people will want to talk about. So, what did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Sandcastles in the sand and (bleep)s in boxes

To cleanse the awful memories of Mariah Carey Night on "Idol" from my brain, I want to spend a few minutes talking about a much happier form of music: viral video parodies.

After the success of last year's amazing "Let's Go To The Mall" video from the beyond-brilliant "Slap Bet" episode, the "How I Met Your Mother" writers are going back to the Robin Sparkles well with next week's episode, which will feature another vintage '80s-style (but from the '90s, because the '80s didn't get to Canada until 1993) video, titled "Sandcastles in the Sand." friend Joe Adalian at Variety has some details about the video (including spoilers for some of the cameos), as well as the complete audio of the song. I've refrained from listening to it because I think it'll be much funnier in video form, but for those who can't wait to listen, have at it. (Please refrain from discussing either details from the Variety article or the lyrics in the comments here.)

Now, earlier in the week I was introducing Hulu to a friend who doesn't spend much time watching streaming video (i.e., she has a life), and after showing her how to find the latest episode of "The Office," we wound up watching, in quick succession, four of my favorite "Saturday Night Live" digital short music spoofs: "Lazy Sunday," "Natalie Raps," "Dick in a Box" and "Iran So Far." (Probably should have shown her "Roy Rules" while we were at it, but it didn't occur to me. Plus, like I said, my friend has a life.)

Originally, I was thinking of doing this post as a ranking of the best TV music spoofs, but I didn't have the heart to choose between Natalie Portman telling the little girl in the Amidala costume to suck her euphemism and Justin Timberlake demonstrating the three steps, or between Andy and Chris agreeing that Google Maps is the best and Robin rapping about Canada Day.

So, instead, to keep this post from just being an excuse to link to all the videos and audio above (not that there's anything wrong with that, and let's not forget "Ted Mosby Is a Jerk"), a few random observations:

• I guess being a rock (or rap) star remains the ultimate dream in Hollywood, no matter how successful you are in other fields. The "HIMYM" guys have their own band (and perform the show's theme song), and I'm sure Andy Samberg considers going on stage at a Timberlake concert to be the greatest moment of his career to date.
• As I've said before, making a song parody requires great musical chops as well as great comedy chops. Weird Al and the guys from Spinal Tap are all very strong musicians, and part of what makes all the above songs so funny is how catchy they are. "Iran So Far," in particular, sounds exactly like a song I might hear on the radio today, give or take the object of Samberg's lust.
• YouTube (and now copycat sites like Hulu) have obviously made these videos an easy marketing tool for the shows in which they appear, but at what point does the trend take a downward turn? Are we going to get tired of Robin Sparkles or yet another sexually inappropriate Digital Short, or is it simply a matter of them remaining popular as long as they're good?

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