Monday Morning Quarterback: SNL Season 34, Episode 3

Posted by Jesse September 29th, 2008 at 10:30am In SNL

As we move into the final month of the presidential campaign, SNL seems to be ramping up its political content a bit, offering two political sketches in opening half-hour or so. It began with another killer Fey-Poehler Palin sketch, in which Fey again played the VP candidate as a grinning plain-folks yokel whose sunny incompetence flummoxes Poehler, this week playing Katie Couric (the dynamic is a neat reversal of the stars’ chemistry on Weekend Update and in Baby Mama, where Fey typically plays down-to-earth to Poehler’s more outsized personality). The Palin sketches must more or less write themselves, but Fey and company always manage to find the right point to veer into absurdity, as when Fey’s Palin earnestly asked for a lifeline to assist with an interview question. Somehow they made a Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? joke work.

The debate sketch fared less well, not only, I imagine, because it had to be created within about twenty-four hours, but because the Obama-McCain debate itself lacked any easy satirical hooks: few goofy turns of phrase and little embarrassing body language to allow Darrell Hammond (McCain) or Fred Armisen (Obama) the opportunity to really focus their caricatures of the candidates. Neither impression ranks among the performers’ finest, and so the debate sketch was essentially just a compendium of mostly-mild campaign-related humor.

Over on Weekend Update, Hammond revived his Bill Clinton impression, certainly one of the longest-running impersonations in the show’s history. Since Will Ferrell vacated the George W. Bush spot, bringing out Hammond’s Clinton has seemed desperate more often than not, especially in light of the show’s inability to find a permanent Bush impressionist (though I have a soft spot for Will Forte’s underappreciated ultra-whiny version circa 2004). But doing a bit in which Clinton can’t quite bring himself to actually endorse Barack Obama was timely enough, keeping the character from wandering into aimless self-parody.

Outside of the hit-and-miss politics, this was a straight-ahead, no-frills episode, almost entirely actually live, without any TV Funhouse, Digital Shorts, or pre-taped fake commercials. Though I’ll be curious to see if a Digital Short starring host Anna Faris turns up in the future, I was just as happy to see her rocking different variations on her dumb-blonde persona — even her monologue, predictably built upon said persona, was funny based on her off-kilter deer-in-headlights delivery, and served as an immediate reminder of her strength as a comic actress.

It can be difficult to tell how much input hosts have in the process of creating the show, but it seems like Faris has an affinity for old-fashioned situational sketches with simple two-or-four-character set-ups. Sometimes this approach can falter immediately, like the “my ex-boyfriend” sketch, which needed to have an amazing follow-through to reward its initial roteness, and, sadly, did not in any way. But more often than not, the one-shot simplicity out well: she and Jason Sudeikis effectively sold their sketch as a couple recapping their just-finished double date, and the rowboat-set, inexplicably and hilariously song-laden bit with Kenan Thompson as a hitman to Faris’s naïve witness was positively inspired:

Kenan was a major player throughout the episode, with a major role in fully half of the sketches. Between this and his Charles Barkley, he’s wearing down my resistance (at least partially forged, no doubt, from having a young sister who watched All That). He could wear it down even faster if he agreed to never do “Deep House Dish” ever again. The fake techno songs are almost always funny and at least lend an inherent element of variety not found in other recurring bits, but I never need to hear anyone say “b’okay” ever again.

Something else I don’t need to ever hear again: the siren call of nostalgic, English-born neo-oldies soul chanteuses. Usually when an artist I’ve read about but never really heard is on SNL, I welcome the opportunity to see what the fuss is about, but Duffy answered that question so quickly and decisively (very little) as to turn my curiosity into regret. This kind of empty, half-hearted imitation wasn’t interesting when Amy Winehouse was peddling it, and isn’t any more interesting (though it is somewhat less pathetic) coming from the scrubbed-clean version. The only interesting, by which I mean vaguely annoying, thing about Duffy was that her live voice sounded so much like the recording quality of an old sixties song, with its own built-in tinniness. Faris was definitely the MVBlonde of the night.

Episode Grade: B (note: may be inflated due to massive crush on Anna Faris)