Chris Rock and alien from outer space Prince were on SNL this week, how did they do?
Cold Open – The Kelly File
Another Ebola sketch…. hooray. Thankfully, with the midterm elections in recent memory the Ebola news reports have died down considerably. SNL’s writers need to find something else topical to write about. I get it, this Ebola pandemic fear-mongering is hilariously stupid, these sketches are beginning to lose the “hilariously” part or hilariously stupid. Kate McKinnon did some great physical work here portraying that middle aged nurse you wish you didn’t have to talk to while waiting for your doctor. As much as I love McKinnon, I wouldn’t touch any of those thousand loose M&M’s she touched with her bare hands. This was blah. What was the point? Chris Christie is a blowhard jerk? I like Moynihan as Chris Christie, but they haven’t done much with the character. Let’s go crazy with the characterization of Christie, the real man is bombastic enough himself, almost to a greater to degree than the impersonation. Turn the character up to 11 Bobby.
Chris Rock Monologue
Boston Marathon jokes, 9/11 jokes, gun control jokes. Chris Rock, as always, was not afraid to talk about touchy subjects during his monologue. Great comedy comes from truth, and Rock spoke from truth, but man was this monologue hard to watch. But, with Chris Rock being the professional comedian he is, he slowly won me over. I warmed up significantly to his comedy as the monologue continued on. I need to calibrate to “Chris Rock humor” mode. His topics ranged from refusing to visit an unfortunately place freedom tower sunglass hut, to gun control and online death threats. No sacrosanct subject was left untouched. You could tell the audience was definitely afraid to laugh at first, but they, like me, slowly warmed up to his charms. I love stand up monologues, and Chris Rock is an old pro, so this segment was pretty good. This was one of the highlights of the night. (Not that it took much this week to make the highlight reel)
Vlog
This sketch had a lot of smart ideas, but as the scene unfolded it was clear the point was to have more fun with the video filters than with the content or writing. This basic premise was that Janelle (Zamata) is a 15 year old girl with a dance instruction vlog, creepy dudes online watch her, and Teddy (Mooney), her loser friend-zone friend, hangs around. They had a lot of big ideas with this sketch (Online creeps, friend-zone friend, out of touch dad) but they didn’t pick a clear path, and the end product was a directionless muddled mess of a sketch. Were we supposed to feel bad for the friend? Was Chris Rock’s character that out of touch? Was Janelle that naive? They ended the scene with a bunch of quick visual gags with Chris Rock. What was this? The end of the sketch just kinda died out. They could have gone to some really interesting places with these premises… if they would have focused on one. Heck, if they wanted to play up the youtube gag parts, they could have had a live comments stream playing on a sidebar, or have Zamata open creepy packages sent from her fans.
Go Probe Commercial
This was a solid commercial parody. Go-Pros are totally the tool of the over-the-hill extreme sports enthusiast right? I will bet every silicon valley bro goes out to the mountains every weekend with like 10 of these 300 dollar gizmos strapped to their bodies. Rad dude! You look like an asshole! Nobody gives a shit how much you like mountain biking. Don’t get me wrong, I love Go-Pros though, as they have lead to a great increase in youtube videos of people beefing it on their weekends and paid vacations. Nerds who are bad at extreme sports + more cameras = a great YouTube renaissance of skateboard accidents. In this sketch I enjoyed the nod to your “grandpa’s colonoscopy”, and the committment that Killam, Bennett, and Mooney had to their characters. One of my favorite moments was when Killam jumped a spin jump off of a scale in front of an unimpressed nurse, or when Beck Bennett told the nurse to “drop in” to his colon. Great stuff.
How’s He Doin’
How is Obama doing lately? On this fake television program, on too early for football and too late for church, the black voting public wonders. This is apparently a series of sketches (I recently started re-watching the show) You bloggers wanted a diverse cast? You definitely have a ton of African American comedians on the show now, as they were able to fill the entire cast for this sketch. Unfortunately this particular scene was a pointless panel sketch. Basic premise is that Barack Obama can do no wrong among his voter base. This is kind of a tired cliche’ now. The premise and the set up were very simple, as was the execution. This was a bore. The sketch almost turned the corner into the territory of “stupid things white people do” with the jokes about dog adoption, but the script steered the sketch back to the original boring premise. I would have liked to have seen more of lambasting of the latte-drinking dog owner, and less of the “Black people sure love Obama” gags.
Weekend Update
EBOLA IS A THING GUYS! Have you heard about Ebola? People are going crazy about it! This week’s Update jokes were standard, with a few gems. Jost and Che continue to do a fine job of delivering the punchlines week to week, and they seem to be settling into a nice rhythm together. Though Che looked a little off his game, that might be because Colin Jost is just so on point every joke, it is tough to compare that perfect execution. Colin Jost was manufactured in some comedy factory somewhere to deliver late-night style two-line jokes, eerie precision, like a Timex watch or an atomic clock. Pete Davidson (Resident Young Person) returned to talk about the horrors of STD’s, and texting your dick pic to your mom for review. Everyone knows that nurse/doctor relative we all bombard with stupid health questions (but maybe not penile selfies). His segment was more of his prepared stand up bits, and like the first two times it was very funny. Katt WIlliams (Jay Pharaoh), and Shug Knight (Kenan Thompson) visited weekend update to discuss their latest arrests. Pharoah’s Katt Williams impersonation is just perfect here, from the voice to the mannerisms he is a Kat-doppleganger. SNL has an extremely gifted mimic in Pharaoh, it is a shame how underused he is some weeks. I think I have solved every one of Kenan Thompson’s impressions, do a decent accent and then speak nonsense that is tangentially related to the person you are impersonating. It works, and is funny, pretty much 90% of the time, and that ain’t bad.
Shark Tank
I don’t even want to talk about this sketch. Uggh. The Sharks’ impressions were all fun, but god this premise was half-baked. This whole affair felt off and it looked like it was awkward up there for Mooney and Rock as well. I cringed a few times during this one. This was a really dumb idea. If you are going to make fun of serious issues like ISIS, you have got to be more absurd, otherwise it feels a bit too real, and ISIS is really bad for real.
Swiftamine
Dr. David Doctor introduced us to a product that we didn’t really know we needed until last week. We all have caught ourselves nodding our heads to the likes of “Firework” or singing in the shower to “Call Me Maybe”. This product is a cure to the sudden vertigo caused when we realize that, you know, actually I kind of like this song. As we all near that big 3-0 or big 4-0 we start to realize that there is no reason for us to dislike inoffensive pop music. Taylor Swift and Katy Perry songs are fun! Man, if 21 year old me met the me from now, I would get punched in the face for being such a sellout. 21 year old me was an idiot and a virgin. He sucked, he also had a ponytail. That virgin part starts to make a lot more sense now… looking back. We all secretly like to party in the U.S.A. and we know it. My favorite part of the commercial parody was Aidy Bryant’s slo-mo explanation of the swift-ness of the song on the stereo to Leslie Jones. Aidy Bryant was underused this week. I like her physicality, she knows how to own her voice and her body type to great comedic effect.
Anniversary Sketch
Lisa Left-eye lopez this sketch to the ground please. This was probably the worst SNL sketch I have ever seen. I am sure there are plenty other stinkers out there, but I cannot think of one that was worse at this time. This sketch was completely dead, and the audience seemingly slept through it. Was this written by writers? I want to see the script to this one. This scene had more logic holes than a college freshman’s psych 101 paper. Who was Zamata playing? Her chracter’s relationship to Rock and Jones was never addressed or acknowledged. I like to imagine that she was a complete stranger squatting in the upstairs of their house. Apparently this sketch was written by Chris Rock’s writing team. This was a disaster. Thanks to the holiday weekend festivities, I watched the Hulu version of the episode and didn’t get to see the live version of this sketch… which included a 10 second pause as Jones left the scene early and clearly was told backstage to go back out onstage, where she searched for the correct cue card for her line. This is agonizing to watch. I don’t know if Chris Rock’s writing team handed this one in late, but it was a steaming pile of shit that both Rock and Jones were completely unprepared to perform.
This sketch failed scene writing 101.The staging was atrocious (two characters standing in front of a couch talking to eachother), the acting was horrible (Jones and Rock spent most of the time nervously fiddling with their costumes), and when the lines weren’t being flubbed, the jokes fell completely flat. Chris Rock’s jokes in this one were Dad-joke bad, and Leslie Jones’ zingers felt like they came from an earlier era of comedy. It is hard to think that the guy that set twitter aflame with his edgy monologue could want jokes like this written for him? A guy still owns CD’s? I don’t know if this sketch was supposed to be a commentary on growing old in this new age, or if it was just being played straight.
I am not going to sugar coat this for Leslie Jones, this was bad. Beyond the sketch being bad, she was very bad in it. She looked like that minor league batter brought up to the majors in the playoffs to cover for an inured player. She even had that horrible stage fright “deer in the headlights” moment we have all seen in a live high school performance of Grease. I have praised some of her work on the show this year, but that was all in the pre-taped bits. This sketch showed me that she is clearly not ready for live sketches. Maybe she would have benefitted from spending a few more months down in the minors (writing room) to work on her game time execution. Her promotion this year felt reactionary towards blogger comments about the show’s lack of racial diversity. I appreciate Jones’ humor, but I don’t know if she was ready to go live on Saturday night in front of millions just yet. Let’s hope that the issues with this sketch weren’t Jones’ but Chris Rock’s writers. This could be nothing more than opening night jitters, but I am worried for Leslie Jones. I want her to succeed, she seems very talented. Just like at any job, it is ok to make mistakes, but it isn’t ok to make a habit of them.
Bank Robbery
Some very polite robbers hold up a downtown bank, and as the heist continues the absurd lengths the bandits go to calm their hostages keeps going further and further. As with many of the pre-taped bits this year, the production values were off the charts. No other sketch show has the post-production skills of SNL, this looked like a motion picture set, it was very cool. My favorite moment in the sketch was when Kyle Mooney and Bobby Moynihan had a Civil War teaching moment with a captive child. Bobby Moynihan’s costume reveal had me laughing loud enough to wake my neighbors. This is my pick for sketch of the night by far. Aidy Bryant’s scream-takes were a fun gag, but I could have used a comedic third scream-take. Bennett and Moody continue to deliver funny absurd sketches that I adore. Keep giving these two more air time!
Women in the Workplace
God I love Kate McKinnon. I know I sing her praises every week, but that woman deserves a lot of praise-singing. Cecily Strong and McKinnon’s accents were just perfect. Couple those accents with some excellent facial work and physicality, and you have two funny characters. This was a sequel to the 2013 sketch (When Melissa McCarthy was on), and it was even funnier the second time around. I really appreciated the little touches in this sketch. The different chair turns to the taped segment, the absurd host names, and the ending with the diverse boyfriends. This sketch teaches us all an important lesson: the only way to deal with diversity in the workplace is to out-diverse your co-workers. Be prepared to become a wheelchair lesbian and go through with it, both of it. Nothing more diverse than that. Aidy Bryant’s quick turn as the Lesbian girlfriend got a smile out of me. I appreciated the one sided kiss between her and Bayer, excellent commitment to the gag. This was the live sketch of the night for me.
Wrap-up
I Don’t usually mention the musical guest, but Prince was god-like on stage. He took us on a journey from the land of funk to pop to soul to some Jimi Hendrix style guitar solos and every other important musical genre in between. This was incredible, and it outshined almost every sketch in the episode.
Musical guests have been such an integral part of SNL’s past, and have lead to some memorable pop culture moments (Sinead o’ Conner, Ashlee Simpson, to name a few). People were talking about Prince Monday morning, and rightly so. Musical segments are one of SNL’s strengths, and show-stopping appearances like this one are what makes this sketch show unique.
Leslie Jones really had a bad night tonight. Besides the awful “The Couple” sketch, her lines and delivery in the “How’s He Doin” sketch didn’t blow me away either. When she was promoted to the main cast, I was initially leery about her ability to perform on stage. She is no doubt an extremely funny comedian, writer, and stand up entertainer, but I am worried that she isn’t really the type of person suited to sketch comedy. We have seen this story play out time and time again on SNL, where an excellent stand up comedian just couldn’t cut it as a sketch performer. (Gilbert Gottfried, Janene Garafolo, Jay Mohr, etc.)
There have been a crazy amount of bloggers shouting at shows for having un-diverse casts. This is officially an internet thing now. Can I shout about how removing the lime skittle ruined the diversity of my favorite candy? Will Big Candy listen to my pleas? This is a blog.. so they should right? It is important to have diverse casts in comedy shows. No matter your race/creed/sexual preferences funny is just funny. Diversity is important, but hiring people based on what some people wrote online about you is a bad idea. You can’t create great comedy by listening to what your audience wants, you need to be able to guess what your audience wants, or even show them something they didn’t know they wanted.
Hell… where are the Asian American comedians on SNL? What about the Hispanic sketch comedians? We have a lesbian cast member, but where is the gay male sketch comedian? Diversity doesn’t just mean “hire a black person”, that is just as stupid and tone-deaf as having a token black friend. It is also important to avoid a BK Kids’ club situation.
Aidy Bryant did a lengthy interview with the Daily Beast about her experiences on the show. It is a good read, and if you like Aidy Bryant, it is nice to find out that she is definitely as cool as she seems. In that interview she did mention that the cast and crew are aware of the burgeoning SNL review community online. My suggestion to the workers at 30 Rock. Don’t read the reviews, don’t hire or promote people because of what people online are saying, and as Taylor Swift said “The players gonna play, play, play, play, play, and the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate,” Shake it off SNL, and do the show your way. I think I need some Swiftamine right now. Where is Dr. David Doctor?
Join me in 2 weeks as Woody Harrelson returns to SNL to host with Kendrick Lamar as the musical guest. Woody Harrelson last hosted over 20 years ago. Who wants to bet there will be a Hunger Games sketch?
Kid Vid 4 Lyfe