A ho-hum Saturday Night Live with the gorgeous Emma Stone

I didn't realize that Emma Stone was so tall, and had such great legs, until last night's Saturday Night Live. Also, there was a pretty funny sexual education skit in the final 30 minutes - It was much, much better than the lame ones with Kenan Thompson.

And hey, now that I think about it, there were several good moments in Weekend Update. It's silly, but I like the Stefon character. Furkels was great, and made me spit-take a bit. And Kenan was really good as that wacky "The rent is too damn high!" character. And the weird French dancing skit was something they would have done on an old school Saturday Night Live, and very effective.

As usual, anything Kristen Wiig was in made me recoil. And the opening monologue? I bet while Jay Pharoah was watching in the background, he was thinking, "Why does this Fred mother effer get to Obama?" That was long, drawn-out and not funny. Same thing goes with everything Wiig was featured prominently in. Another funny skit, the "my brother is awesome!" show, made that clear to me. Just start putting the new girls in every skit, Lorne Michaels.


Note: Sorry for the brevity of this entry, but I'm doing this, that and the other thing tonight - Packing for a two-day trip to New York, preparing for the initial high school newspaper edition of the year, planning for my site launch on November 1... Being an adult is tough work.

Denzel (and Jay Pharoah) make SNL tolerable

My buddy Tom and others have suggested a way to save Saturday Night Live that I'll sign off on - Just have Jay Pharoah in every skit. A blog at The Wall Street Journal is singing his praises (eerie fact: It's written by Christopher John Farley), and I will second them. He's only been in three skits so far, but he's been great in all of them. Much like when Eddie Murphy joined the show in 1980 and put it on his back, I think Pharoah should do the same with Andy Samburg.

The best skit this past Saturday featured Pharoah as a pitch-perfect Denzel Washington. He was immersing himself in his role as a worker at a customer service desk, and angryly cajoling a customer (a disappointing-as-host Jane Lynch) for trying to return a BLACK hand bag. "Is there something wrong with the color of this bag?" He completely nailed Denzel, and the clip is in the WSJ article linked above.

Unfortunately though, the rest of the show felt lackluster, as you can probably guess from my comment about Lynch. They showed glimpses of promise, like when they had a pretty funny skit about Glee...

... Only for the whole thing to be derailed with the inclusion of Gillie, the horrible character played by Kristen Wiig that almost nobody likes. (Sorry Picosita. And also, my 10-member anti-Wiig Facebook group can still be joined here!)

The skit was going along fine, not hilarious but still funny, until she came on my screen. I instantly cringed and found something else to busy myself for the next couple minutes. Once she made an appearance, the only other funny part of the skit was the introduction of gay Kurt's dad.

I don't understand the thinking on involving Gillie at all. By itself, Glee is incredibly easy to mock, and they were doing a good job of that. You simply don't need to include a tired Kristen Wiig character. Is it in her contract that she has to be in 10 skits per week? Does she give head writer Seth Meyers a handy each time she makes an appearance?

Anyway. Outside of that horrible-ness, there was a funny bit or two. The FB application for mom-proofing your profile was pretty good, even if it didn't make logical sense, since there are plenty of privacy tools already to keep people out of your FB. I was also a big fan of the New Boyfriend Show, featuring Samburg as a kid who interviews his mom's boyfriends in the morning... and who gleefully tells today's guest that he's on the 100th episode.

Saturday Night Live - Now more average!

Last night's Saturday Night Live was better than the season opener, which is somewhat surprising, given the differences in cast. Yeah, Bryan Cranston is an upgrade on Amy Poheler, but there weren't nearly as many celebrity cameos.

But in contrast to the opener, the ones they did have were used in one of my favorite skits, "What Up With That?" My friend Tom noted that it's a bad sign when it's on early in the show, which turned out to be true, but the actual skit with Morgan Freeman, Ernest Borgnine and Lindsay Buckingham was as awesome as usual to me. (p.s. Morgan, drop the earring. It looks weird.)

Unfortunately, the rest of the show was just average, outside of the opening with Andy Samberg as the departing Rahm Emanuel. Also, WUWT was the only skit to use Jay Pharoah, who seems like he had breakout potential. After his awesome Will Smith impression in the first week, how can you not use him more, Lorne Michaels? Heck, he didn't even get to do Obama, even though Fred Armisen's version really, really sucks.

Part of the reason why the rest of the show was average, though, and not bad, was because Lorne obviously got my memo from last week. Wiig was in less skits this week, which helped the overall quality. What did suck was that she was the "sexy girl" in a skit that also had Abby Elliott, which makes absolutely no sense. Oh, and also, in this skit she was gagging, burping and farting, among other fun stuff. Lovely.

So, with that in mind, there is still time to join my anti-Kristen Wiig group on Facebook! Nine people strong against her, woohoo!