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.

TV Review: SNL merely average with sub-par host

Hey, Saturday Night Live still has new episodes this year! For some reason, I find this surprising. Because of their rigorous writing and rehearsal schedules, it always feels like they start later and finish sooner than every other show out there.

In an iffy season like this one, that isn't necessarily a bad thing. The best part of last night's show was the embed clip above, which was actually by one of the show's writers, not even a cast member. I definitely agree with his take on Girl Scout cookies; I could eat boxes of those god damn Thin Mints at any point of the year. (As a bonus, Seth Meyers and I apparently think alike - I wrote my blog earlier today about the Lane Bryant models before his thing on the Charmin bears with toilet paper stuck to their ass.)

Beyond Weekend Update, the only other skit I really enjoyed was the recurring one with Tina Funnylastname, the doorbell tone saleswoman. This time though, she was working on alarm clocks. Much like "What up with that?" and Astronaut Jones, the sketch is just so silly and weird that I can't help but laughing every time I see it. While Jenny Slate will probably still be remembered mostly for dropping an F-bomb on her debut show, I like this character of hers.

Beyond that though, the show was very meh. Gabourey Sidibe sucked as the host, which didn't really surprise me. Her, uh, unique look kind of limits what sort of skits and roles she can be in, so I was subjected to her as an angry black lady in an apartment complex and as a disgruntled federal worker. Also, she apparently studied for her hosting stint by reviewing nothing but Jimmy Fallon tapes, since she flubbed lines and cracked up laughing at several points.

If you didn't catch this episode, then I recommend you just watch Weekend Update and the alarm clock skit - it's about 10 minutes after Update - instead of subjecting yourself to the entire thing.

Grade: C-