Monday Morning Quarterback: SNL Season 34, Episode 1
Posted by Jesse September 15th, 2008 at 10:01am In SNL
I know a lot of people react to Saturday Night Live with vague dismissiveness: oh, is that still on? I haven’t really watched it since [Tina Fey/Will Ferrell/Adam Sandler/Dana Carvey/Eddie Murphy/Bill Murray/Chevy Chase] left. So while you can find breathless, fawning recaps of Gossip Girl episodes all around the internets, I haven’t seen much in the way from episode-to-episode Saturday Night Live coverage (even the wonderful Onion AV Club has pointedly only covered the recent full-season DVD releases from the first few seasons, treating the current show with a passing shrug usually afforded to NCIS or The Tonight Show). But someone out there must be watching the show besides my comedy-nerd friends, because it’s routinely the highest rated thing on Saturday nights — an admittedly minor achievement, though still noteworthy given that it airs at 11:30, when people are supposed to be either out partying or falling asleep.
I’m an unabashed fan of the show, and I follow it like a sports team: there’s good games and bad games, good seasons and bad seasons, great teams and teams that never come together, but I’m always rooting for them. The show isn’t as groundbreaking or exciting as it used to be, but it’s also the only show of its kind on network TV. As such, I think it’s worth examining on a weekly basis, which I’ll attempt to do throughout the just-begun 34th season. So let’s begin.
Expectations are often high for the SNL season premiere: a fresh start from whatever stumbles (or hard-to-top triumphs) of the previous season, plus catch-up for the entire summer. But just as often, the first show back is wobbly, lacking the rhythm the cast may establish or re-establish after doing a few shows in a row, and overly dependent on familiarity. To some degree, this was the case with the first show of Season 34: we got a lot of the show’s most tired sketch formats (the fake talk show, the fake game show, the restaurant with unusual or terrible service) and the first half saw no fewer than three recurring characters, only one of which could be remotely justified.
That one was also the least obvious reprisal, though the sketch remained more or less the exact same as previously performed by Peyton Manning: Will Forte playing the mustachioed coach of a losing high school team (first basketball; now, with Phelps, swim) trying to motivate his athletes through the power of dance. It wasn’t particularly inventive, but then, it wasn’t really last time, either; the bit’s strengths are its oddball simplicity, and Forte’s unflagging enthusiasm.
Elsewhere, though, the repetition was less welcome. Kristen Wiig reprised her ugly-intense-prepubescent routine, hammering away at the sketch’s pointless catchphrase (an aggrieved “I SAID ‘WE’!”). Wiig is terrifically talented, but she has a weakness for hackneyed recurring characters based entirely on funny voices, like Penelope the One-Upper and the Target Lady; she can get laughs from the audience just about no matter what, so it’s really up to the writers to have the discipline not to do these sketches eight times per season.
Over on Weekend Update, Fred Armisen spent his only significant screentime of the evening doing yet another round as his stammering “political comedian” Nicholas Fehn; it’s a clever bit with absolutely no reason to turn up four or five times. Actual politics were less present than you might expect following four months of campaigning, smearing, and conventioneering; Tina Fey returned for the opening sketch, as expected, to play Sarah Palin alongside Amy Poehler’s Hilary Clinton, but after that funny opening bit, any real satire was left for some fairly predictable Update gags.
One recurring character that may prove more flexible is Kenan Thompson’s Charles Barkley, who has popped up in various sundry sketches over the past few years, and finally got his own with “The Charles Barkley Show.” Anything that gets Kenan away from his signature shtick — yelling and nonsensically mispronouncing words — is excellent, and his Barkley’s congenial, low-key weirdness is the perfect vehicle.
On the other hand, newcomer Bobby Moynihan’s waiter character was appearing for the first time, but by the end of the sketch (which went out on an admittedly strong exit line) it felt like the third or fourth. Rephrasing a sentiment — in this case, that the character smells pepper — is an inefficient way for the writers and performers to convince themselves that they’re not doing a mindless catchphrase.
Along with Barkley and Kristen Wiig’s ad for jar gloves, one of the episode’s highlights was another Digital Short from Andy Samberg and company. Take a look:
It starts out slow, and I thought for a minute or so that Samberg and his Lonely Island boys were just doing yet another intentionally cheesy eighties video parody, but like his underappreciated movie Hot Rod, the short progresses into (deeper) absurdity, rather than repeating an obvious joke. Though he’s not exactly the rangiest performer in the cast, Samberg gets a lot of cred for spending his time on these things and not grotesque catchphrase delivery system.
As disappointing as some of this material was, I have to point out that the show was working with a perennial handicap: the athlete host. Phelps seems like an awfully nice guy who nonetheless couldn’t be goaded past a halting, sales-meeting-skit-level delivery (he’s also not as good a dancer as Peyton Manning). Hopefully next week James Franco’s newly rediscovered comedy chops can bring everyone back up to speed. If you see that pepper guy again before the end of October, you’ll know all is not well.
Episode Grade: C+
I feel much the same way about SNL so I’m glad you’ll be doing this!
Overall I felt like the jokes were particularly mean-spirited. The bits that worked were mostly what you mentioned: the Tina Fey opening, that bizarre Samberg video, and the very last sketch — the Michael Phelps diet. Everything else was cruel, starting off with the Quiz Bowl sketch, which seemed like it could’ve been guest-written by Aaron Sorkin and not in a good way (we’re finally seeing his controversial “Crazy Christians” and it’s heartless and obvious!). I was disappointed — athletes don’t have to be terrible hosts (take Peyton Manning, whose show was pretty great).
I still remember the Deion Sanders and Nancy Kerrigan episodes from my adolescent years, and shudder, so I usually have low expectations for athletes even though the last few (Manning, Tom Brady, Lebron) were actually pretty good.
I thought the Quiz Bowl thing was funny at first, but went absolutely nowhere. I was waiting for the turn or the second level or anything else that would make it not a knock-off of any number of “people giving ridiculously wrong answers” sketches they’ve done before, but… no dice. Of all the summer news to build a belated sketch around…
Or LeBron James, who did very well in last season’s opener.
I really hate Fred Armisen’s political comedian. He is awful. But I have enormous amounts of respect for Amy Poehler for performing when she looks like she’s about to pop. God, that kid’s going to be funny.
I don’t know about the Space Olympics sketch — I thought it was uncomfortably unfunny. It did pick up halfway through (in that it sort of “found” the joke), but even then it was only funny because of the scale of the production.
On the other hand, the Palin/Clinton opener was amazing — particularly La Fey’s line reading of “I don’t know what that is” in response to the Bush Doctrine.
“Yes! I just DIDN’T WANT IT ENOUGH!!” [maniacal laughter]
That killed me. But I found it amazing they didn’t have any sketches directly about Obama or McCain in the episode. Or Cindy. Maybe Amy can’t play Cindy until after she has the baby?
I did laugh out loud during the Charles Barkley sketch when they were waiting for Usain Bolt to come in because, like everyone else in the audience, I was wondering who could possibly play him, since Kenan is, um, the only black cast member. Seriously, a whole summer and the only new cast member they could find is the pepper guy?
Whenever people talk about the best athlete hosts of SNL, I always feel compelled to speak up for Johnny Mosley. That never-ending-dinner-roll sketch still makes me laugh.
The Space Olympics short is actually funnier *because* it takes over a minute to get to the main joke.
The pepper guy is a UCB mainstay… but I can think of some funnier UCB mainstays they could’ve gone with (though who knows who auditioned). From what I’ve heard, a pre-30 Rock Jack McBrayer auditioned a few years ago, and didn’t get it.