Cold Open: Spider-Man
Biden won’t stop connecting his important Omicron speech to the new Spider-Man movie.
• Our first appearance of JAJ as Biden in quite a while. I’m glad they’ve been spacing out his appearances more instead of featuring him in nearly every episode like they did with Trump.
• The comedic hook of this got old very fast. All of the random Spider-Man references annoyed me more than they amused me.
• Pointless “alternate universe Biden” bullshit from Pete.
• And, in case we didn’t know who Biden was referring to, Spider-Man shows up at the end!!!! LOL OMGZ SO FUNNYYYY!!! Gag me with a spoon.
Monologue
The host sings with Kate McKinnon.
• I already had no faith in this when the host mentioned she was in that shitty West Side Story remake, but then Kate McKinnon showed up and I nearly lost my lunch.
• Surprisingly, this is the first musical monologue we’ve gotten all season. All I’m going to say is that Ariana is no Madeline Kahn when it comes to singing “I Feel Pretty”.
• Only two sketches in and I already want to hurl.
Sketch: NBA on TNT
The panelists discuss a Nets vs. Kings game where the Kings are dealing with a COVID situation.
• Kenan’s Charles Barkley is one of his few good impressions. This should be interesting…
• I’m not too familiar with Ernie Johnson, but I like Moffat’s impression of him. They even gave him that dopey bow tie that Johnson wears.
• I laughed at Barkley’s “Shaq-Flu” pun. Honestly, I like any joke that takes the piss out of that awful video game.
• Bowen Yang as Yao Ming was hilarious. I’m not sure, but I think his voice might have been artificially deepened as well.
• The YouTube description of this sketch claims that the game they’re covering is between the Lakers and the Kings. In the actual sketch, it’s between the Nets and the Kings. Could the YouTube description be from an earlier version of this sketch?
• JAJ looks hilarious in his brief pictured role as the Kings’ equipment manager.
• A funny contrast where Mikey’s player character is shorter than the woman interviewing him.
• The best Yao moment is when he compares his giant hand with Barkley’s. I love the fake hand prop they used.
• For a sketch about basketball, which I have no interest in, this was pretty good. And I’m also surprised that my favorite character in this was played by Asian Terry Sweeney. See what wonderful things can happen when you let him play different characters?
Film: Urkel
The latest gritty sitcom reboot focuses on the exploits of Steve Urkel.
• This sketch was an apparent response to the announcement of a dark reboot of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
• As soon as the audience realized who this was about, they went into hysterics, myself included.
• I noticed that Urkel has a Goku poster on his door. I can totally see him as being an anime fan.
• Kenan’s Carl Winslow impression is a role he was born to play!
• DeBose’s voice in this reminds me of Cree Summer. Which is awesome, because I love Cree Summer.
• Urkel assaulting a guy and asking “Did I do that?” was brilliant.
• They even manage to make this a little heartwarming at the end with Carl accepting Urkel as a part of his family, concluding with the greatest line ever: “Family (bleep)ing matters!” Absolutely hilarious. One of the best sketches in recent years.
Sketch: Ron and Donna Lacatza’s Formal Emporium
The perfect one-stop shop for all your school dance needs.
• After the awesomeness that was Urkel trying to kill someone, it’s back to basics with another “funny voices” sketch. This time, it’s Pete Davidson and Sarah Sherman speaking in awful New York accents. It seems like they’ve been typecasting Sherman as Jewish stereotypes.
• I absolutely hate these “two people advertise a business they own” sketches, such as “Pat and Patti’s Knapsack Shack”, the “chandaleeuh” sketches with Fred Armisen and Scarlett Johansson, and all of the really bad ones we’ve been getting lately with McKinnon and Bryant. I wish they’d stop doing these, but it looks like that’s not going to happen.
Sketch: Press Conference
The new mayor of NYC, Eric Adams, holds his first press conference.
• Sometimes there are sketches that you can tell are gonna suck just by the way they begin. I’ve already brought up the examples with Disney and “We now return to”, and here’s another example: if a sketch starts with a news intro, it’s gonna be terrible.
• I cringed at the awful attempts at “urban” humor from the City Hall press secretary.
• I love all the airtime Chris Redd has been getting in this episode.
• Am I the only who thinks it’s kind of racist that they’re making a black politician act like a gangsta? The only thing that could make this even more stereotypical is if he was wearing gold chains.
• I absolutely hate it when SNL tries to make politicians seem “relatable” by making them act hip and cool. It’s like when your grandpa tries to get “with it” by spouting outdated rapper slang.
Musical Performance: “How Dare You Want More”
Weekend Update (featuring Elmo)
• Epic funny-time moment when Colin Jost tries to mock Republicans by saying that Jefferson Davis was one. Newsflash, idiot, Jefferson Davis was a Democrat. In fact, all of the politicians that supported the Confederacy were Democrats!
• Another sick anti-Catholic joke. Try telling these same jokes about Jews or Muslims and see what happens!
• I almost wanted to skip over reviewing this episode because I didn’t want to talk about the following commentary again. But I can’t do that to you guys, so I’m going to suffer through it, just to make you happy. Yay, me…
• Anyway…Chloe Fineman shows up as…*sigh*…Elmo. The voice she uses is so AWFUL and sounds nothing like him. They try to be clever by giving the costume arm rods like an actual Elmo puppet would have, but it doesn’t work as well with a real person.
• So, why the fuck is Elmo here in the first place? Surely SNL is no place for a puppet who’s supposed to be three years old, right? Well, in the week leading up to this episode, a clip of Elmo going ballistic at his friend Zoe’s pet rock Rocco went viral…for some reason. People make memes out of the dumbest things these days (see also: Among Us).
• I bet SNL thought it would be “cute” to cash in on all the memes and do a sketch about it, so we get a really really really BAD commentary where they bring out “Rocco” and Elmo Fineman gets angry. There’s no observations, no nothing. They just do the exact same bit from the show, with no variation. It honestly borders on plagiarism.
• As of late, SNL has gotten a reputation of being a “meme-killer”. When this aired, a bunch of people (who I am very thankful for) tweeted their displeasure at this awful sketch and the unfunny woman behind it, saying that SNL ruined the meme for them. Sure enough, I haven’t seen anything else about this meme since then, which I’m okay with because I didn’t find it that funny anyway. But I prefer memes over shitty SNL sketches by a wide margin.
• To sum things up, Chloe Fineman is now my least favorite cast member and this commentary encapsulates everything I hate about her.
Sketch: New Governess
In this Sound of Music parody, Maria hires a governess to take care of the children.
• Another odd discrepancy between the sketch and the YouTube description. It claims that this is about a widower (played by Kenan) hiring the governess, but the actual sketch is a parody of The Sound of Music where Maria is the one who hires the governess. Was this originally written for Kenan before they changed it at some point to a Sound of Music sketch?
• I would have liked to see the Kenan version (if it even exists), because Kate has nothing new to offer here. Her Julie Andrews voice is the same that she uses for all of the old-time female celebrities she plays.
• The song lyrics themselves are shit. I’d almost swear this was a Cinema Classics sketch because of how poorly written it was. Just you wait until next episode…
Musical Performance: “Chi-Town”
Sketch: Sappho
Some long-lost poems from the Greek philosopher Sappho are discovered and presented to a crowd at Cornell University.
• Rather odd choice to use Cornell as the setting.
• Mikey plugs the event’s sponsor: FAGE Yogurt. The slogan is “Be careful how you say it.” Wow, thanks for explaining the joke, Mikey!
• I knew exactly where this was headed when Mikey said that the poet was from the island of Lesbos. And seeing as Kate McKinnon shows up right after that…can you tell who wrote this sketch yet?
• Unsurprisingly, the poems all turn out to be lesbian poems. Yay, I predicted a joke again!
• I’m ashamed to admit that I laughed at a poem that says “I have of girls”.
• And they just keep piling on the obvious jokes, such as this one knee-slapper about a Rosie O’Donnell family cruise. Get it?!? Cuz she’s a lesbian!!!
• I thought this show was supposed to be progressive! Why are we getting lame stereotypical lesbian jokes that even Chelsea Handler would reject?
Sketch: Longhorn Steakhouse
Workers at a steakhouse try to make it through their shift while dealing with their demanding boss.
• Barf. Yet another “funny accent” sketch. Since this takes place at a steakhouse, the workers all have dumb Southern accents. And it gets more and more painful to listen to as it goes on.
Final thoughts: It’s been a while since we had an absolute clunker of an episode. There were a couple of good sketches in the first half of the show, but then that…THING…on Weekend Update happened, and the show never recovered.
Best sketches: NBA on TNT, Urkel
Worst sketches: Cold Open, Monologue, Press Conference, Weekend Update, Longhorn Steakhouse
Next review: Will Forte/Maneskin
No comments:
Post a Comment