SNL Reviews: Seth Meyers/Paul Simon (10/13/18)

Cold Open: Kanye and Trump

Kanye West (Chris Redd) visits Trump at The White House.

• Jeez, these cold opens are getting harder to tell apart these days. I will give the show credit for not featuring Baldwin's Trump until three episodes into the season, but that doesn't make this sketch any better.

• What's the show's "biting" satire of Kanye? Uh....he tends to talk for too long, and he only cares about himself. That's about it...

1/5


Monologue

Seth Meyers tells a story about his time on the show.

• A solid monologue. The best thing about it was that it wasn't a stupid musical number or a questions from the audience thing. No interruptions, just Meyers telling a story. That is what a good monologue should be.

4/5


Sketch: Movie Talkback

At an awards show, the nominees all have complaints about the dumbest things possible.

• This was a surprisingly solid sketch, with lots of laughs throughout.

• It was so refreshing to see the show mocking liberals, something that has been occurring less and less as the show goes on.

• The only bad thing was that they made an "Adele Dazeem" joke. What year is this?

4.5/5


Commercial: Beta Force

• Probably the best commercial I've seen for a long time. Sorry about the short description, but I don't really remember a lot about this one.

4/5


Sketch: Thirsty Cops

Two police officers (Leslie Jones and Ego Nwodim) do stuff.

• This one was kinda boring. I liked Nwodim's performance in this, but she couldn't save the sketch from being a total failure.

2/5


Film: A Frightening Tale

Teenagers tell scary campfire stories.

• This segment was pretty well shot, but was lacking in the humor department.

3/5


Sketch: Cosby in Jail

Bill Cosby (Kenan Thompson) spends his first day in jail by annoying his new cellmate.

• Now THIS was a great sketch! I loved every second of it! Any sketch that has Kenan doing his Cosby impression is a winner in my book.

• Best line: "Turtle? I thought that was Quincy Jones!"

5/5


Musical Performance: Paul Simon and yMusic - "Can't Run But"

• SNL should book Paul Simon more often if it meant we got more awesome performances like this.

5/5


Weekend Update (featuring Baskin Johns and Seth Meyers)

• And now the show starts going downhill with this boring and uninspired WU. None of the jokes landed, and the anchors had this annoying tendency to laugh at their own material. And it wouldn't be Weekend Update without Michael Che's good ol' anti-white people jokes!

• There were two guest commentaries. The first one was by Heidi Gardner as someone named Baskin Johns, who I've never heard of. I hate it when they have impersonations of people who nobody knows or cares about. Those impressions are only funny to whoever wrote them in.

• The second guest commentary is by Meyers, who takes the time to bring back his old "Really" segment from when he was the Update anchor. There's just one problem; those segments were terrible, so why would we want them back in this episode?

1.5/5


Sketch: Bayou Benny's Liberal Lagniappe

A talk show where everyone speaks in obnoxious Southern accents.

• There is only one joke in this segment; "Duh-huh, Southerners talk funny! Please laugh!"

• This might be one of the worst sketches I have ever seen.

1/5


Musical Performance: Paul Simon and yMusic - "Bridge Over Troubled Water"

• A nice performance of a Paul Simon classic. I really need to check these yMusic people out sometime.

5/5


Sketch: Cuban Vacation

A couple returns from their Cuban vacation, and won't stop talking about it.

• I'm not gonna beat around the bush here. This was even worse than the talk show sketch. The only "joke" in this one was the couple's mispronunciation of Cuba as "Cooba". And it gets more annoying every time they say it. 

• I was not surprised at all to find out that James Anderson was responsible for this sketch.

0/5 (this one didn't even deserve a full rating)


Film: Trees

Pete Davidson and Chris Redd rap about trees. Al Gore cameos.

• Ummm….I guess this one's trying to make a statement about global warming...or something???

• I predicted that they were going to make an Al Gore reference as soon as I saw the subject matter. I was right, unfortunately. And, in case we didn't get the reference, Al Gore himself appears! Remember when they had celebrities make special cameos in sketches for an actual purpose? Those days are long gone.

1/5


Sketch: Halloween Gig

Treece Henderson (Kenan Thompson) performs his latest gig, Halloween style!

• This was an amusing way to end the night. I just love whenever Kenan has a role that requires him to speak really fast.

3.5/5



Conclusion: This episode wasn't perfect, but it's easily the best one since John Mulaney's. The first half was pretty strong, but the episode lost steam after WU, dragged down by the awful Cuba and talk show sketches.


Best sketches: Monologue, Paul Simon's performances, Cosby in Jail, Movie Talkback, Beta Force

Worst sketches: Kanye and Trump, Weekend Update, Bayou Benny's Liberal Lagniappe, Cuban Vacation, Trees