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!
a) I love how Ernest Borgnine smiled through the ENTIRE skit.
ReplyDeleteb) Kristen Wig is awesome. I'm not sure we can be blog-friends anymore.
c) Jay Pharoah as Will Smith was awesome last week, but in other rookie love, I thought the Miley Cyrus skit was like, pretty cool.
@ Red:
ReplyDeleteA) That was pretty funny. He's awesome in this really, really bad movie that Mystery Science Theatre 3000 did, Merlin's Magical Store, or something like that. It's supposed to be a movie for kids, but it features a bunch of horrific deaths.
B) Pffttt! We can still be blog friends, but apparently not FB friends ;_;
C) I think it's too early to tell on the others besides Jay. He hit it out of the park as Will Smith, whereas the others have just shown promise. (And the new girls are very attractive, at least.)
Steve, you totally nailed it - I used to love "What's Up With That" when it used to be that obscure sketch they'd air after 12:30am. But when it's the second sketch into the show, you know it isn't going to be a particularly strong episode.
ReplyDeleteI also thought the Miley Cyrus sketch was unnecessarily the leadoff sketch. It was a great Miley impression, but I didn't find it that funny at all. Oh well, things can only get better right?
@ Ian - To be fair, that was my friend Tom's theory, and yeah, it is totally spot on. It can't support the #2 sketch spot on a show; it's kind of like how Bengie Molina was the Giants clean-up hitter last year.
ReplyDeleteI thought the same about the Miley sketch. The girl doing it was a good impression, but they didn't really give her that much in terms of the funny to say.
Haha, I didn't rule out FB friends! Did you?
ReplyDeleteJane Lynch on SNL is going to be a-maz-ing!
@ Jen - Well, more from the perspective that I run a FB group all about her sucking, haha. You can add me on FB if you want though, Red. I'm Stephen Greenwell, URI 2007.
ReplyDeleteI have high hopes for Lynch on Saturday Night Live. Normally, people with acting chops like hers do really well on the show. Bryan Cranston was pretty decent last week.