Monday Morning Quarterback: SNL Season 34, Episode 5

Posted by Jesse October 20th, 2008 at 10:40am In SNL

After a sort-of week off that saw no new episodes of Saturday Night Live but two installments of Saturday Night Live Weekend Update Thursday Christmas May Day, the SNL crew returned for a round of triumphant… coasting. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the lengthy opening sequence cutting from Tina Fey playing Sarah Palin at her first conference to the real Palin backstage with Lorne Michaels, Alec Baldwin, and, briefly, Mark Wahlberg, was fun enough. But the parade of guest stars came with jokes practically pre-written, and they were virtually all about Saturday Night Live itself (with a few nudges at Palin, and, for good self-deprecating cross-promotional measure, Fey’s 30 Rock).

The familiarity continued from there; Oliver Stone popped up during host Josh Brolin’s monologue, and Wahlberg re-appeared to confront Andy Samberg about his beloved-by-everyone-but-Wahlberg impression a few weeks back, and attempt to prove himself a good sport. Wahlberg was game enough, like Palin, but after a week of awkward consternation or mock-consternation or whatever was going on there, the appearance felt like, well, when Palin or Obama or McCain appears for a cameo: a calculated, PR-managed bid for good-sport status.

Even in sketches without extra-special guest stars, we got lazy recurring characters. Kristen Wiig reprised Sue, the woman who ruins surprises with her neurotic enthusiasm, first seen on last season’s Christopher Walken episode. Not only is this a textbook case of a recurring character with absolutely no capacity for variation, the new sketch couldn’t even manage to repeat itself correctly: the physical humor that made the first version work was blunted, underplayed, and strangely wan for being the sketch’s only joke. I’ll often laud an SNL player for really committing to a bit, and Wiig’s performance here was a good example of what it looks like to not particularly commit. Wiig, no stranger to running characters into the ground, also contributed another Suze Orman sketch, OK but uninspired.

In short, the show’s first forty minutes or so were composed largely of SNL congratulating its audience for having watched SNL before. However, let me be clear that the three MacGruber sketches are completely exempted from this distinction, as I will never, ever get tired of MacGruber (Will Forte has the uncanny ability to come up with inexhaustibly hilarious recurring characters; see also the now-retired Falconer and, later in this very episode, politician Tim Calhoun; see below). I’ll also grant an exemption to Amy Poehler and Josh Brolin’s ad for “I’m No Angel” perfume.

Let me also be clear that once Weekend Update hit, the show did an about-face and started delivering material on par with MacGruber and “I’m No Angel.” There’s long been a myth about the last half-hour of SNL — that it’s where they stick a lot of dead-end, go-nowhere, not-even-ready-for-post-primetime sketches. I remember this being sort of true throughout the first half of the nineties, but since the Will Ferrell era, the last half-hour has become a breeding ground for some of the show’s most experimental and rewarding work. Some post-Update sketches still bomb, but many others flourish after the casual viewers have gone to bed.

Some sketches do both: the Will Forte/Bill Hader “fartface” routine bombed with the audience but was all the more weirdly fascinating for its straight-faced insanity. An ever-so-slightly warmer reception greeted Josh Brolin’s bit as a foliage-loving executive, a slow-building sketch with a terrific ending. “Narc School” was also pretty hilarious. The only elements of familiarity in the show’s final forty minutes were (a.) the snooze-inducing musical stylings of Adele, who really is another white British neo-soul chanteuse and who I thought we agreed were banned from my ears forthwith and (b.) the occasional resemblance to Kids in the Hall sketches, which is always welcome. Brolin may not have particularly stood out in this crowd, but I must commend him for his willingness to play weird businessmen and dudes with bitchin’ moustaches. And also for not being a British neo-soul chanteuse.

Episode Grade: B-

TiFaux editors Maggie and Kyle were in the audience for this audience; how did it play in person, guys?