Monday Morning Quarterback: SNL Season 34, Episode 8

Posted by Jesse November 17th, 2008 at 10:10am In SNL

You may have heard from various news outlets last week that Saturday Night Live recently hired two new, female cast members. If you hadn’t, you might not have noticed during Saturday’s Paul Rudd-hosted episode, unless you were paying close attention to the opening credits: that was one of the only moments where you could catch a glimpse of Abby Elliott (daughter of former cast member Chris) or Michaela Watkins. They had a few other walk-on parts throughout the show, but Rudd’s go-round was a boys-club affair, with tons of face-time for Bill Hader (five sketches plus a short film) as well as plenty of Andy Samberg (three sketches plus his Digital Short), Jason Sudeikis and Will Forte (three apiece). Even the established women were on the backburner; Kristen Wiig was more or less gone after the first half-hour, and perpetually underused Casey Wilson was barely visible at all.

This isn’t an inherently bad thing; Hader, Sudeikis, Forte, and Samberg are all hilarious. But despite the wonderful Rudd, most of the sketches were thin and silly, and not in a good way. The episode started out well enough, with an amusing Joe Biden opening and Rudd’s subsequent monologue about a post-election comedy vacuum, and how it will be filled by exciting new impressions like Wiig’s Janet Napolitano. I was even willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the excessive-kissing-family, even though “people do something to weird out a guest” is a tired sketch format, because committed performance triumphed over the lazy writing.

But the episode just kept going down the one-joke path, with the mildly clever but ultimately dead-end sketch about the untalented songwriters and, worse, Kenan Thompson’s now-recurring “scared straight” character. This is exactly the kind of thing Thompson should stay the hell away from: an idea-free caricature who shouts through the nonsensical formula of claiming a movie plot as part of his life story and then making a prison-rape joke. Bring back the Charles Barkley show!

To best honest, even the surprise Justin Timberlake cameo felt lazy to me. He came on Weekend Update to apologize for canceling his hosting gig next week and leaving us with an unholy alliance between Tim McGraw, Ludacris, and T-Pain (apology accepted? I might have to wait and see), and though his two-minute recap of his hypothetical episode was breathlessly energetic, it was also mostly callbacks to other SNL sketches, some of which outright suck. In fact, since Timberlake won’t be hosting next week, I’ll take this opportunity to ask how the hell that “Omeletteville” sketch (reiterated later as “Homelessville” and then tonight, only briefly, as “Turkeyville”) somehow got christened a modern sketch-comedy classic. Actually, I’m pretty sure I know: the continued, apparently endless shockwaves of that initial surprise that Justin Timberlake isn’t a complete douchebag.

I mean, look, I’m happy about that, too. Timberlake seems like a funny, game performer with a sense of humor about himself and pretty decent taste all around. His second SNL gig was way better than his first, and he’s been good in a couple of movies. But Timberlake’s escape from boybandland doesn’t make “Omeletteville” funny any more than it made FutureSexLoveSounds album of the year (you know, two years ago, when it actually came out; I clarify because Timberlake has been acting like it just dropped more or less since then). And although I chuckled at his Update performance, it seemed an awful like Timberlake was saying, look, it turns out I can’t do the show next week, but I’d still like to get some YouTube attention if it’s all the same to you.

Right after Update came the Timberlake/Beyonce backup-dancer sketch which, again, was mildly amusing, but also sadly dependent on an overworked SNL formula: someone (in this case Beyonce) has to keep calling “cut” because other performer(s) in the movie/commercial/music video shoot are screwing it up. Seeing Samberg, Timberlake, and Moynihan gyrate in lady-style onesies was kinda funny, but the sketch itself was pretty amateurish: the dancers didn’t have even remotely defined characters, and even their goofy moves felt like a last-minute free-for-all.

There were highlights: I’m a fan of the recurring four-dude-singalong routine (and bro-for-all-seasons Rudd was natural fit there), and I enjoyed the character work in a couple of late-show sketches: Forte and Hader as low-key suicide watchers, and Hader and Rudd as a mookish gay couple. These sketches weren’t flat-out hilarious, but they trafficked in behavior a little more interesting than “one to four people act really weird.”

(There was also a typically excellent Digital Short, which I’ve linked above partially because it was awesome, and partially to avoid being the jillionth TV blog to link to Timberlake.)

Continuing with the human behavior theme, the last bit of the night was a short film called “Clearing the Air,” with Rudd, Hader, and Armisen engaging in conversational tics and stutters. Apparently the “Noah” of the film-by credit was Noah Baumbach of Kicking and Screaming and The Squid and the Whale, and Baumbach also, per Fred Armisen’s blog, directed that “New York Underground” short a few weeks ago, also with Armisen and Hader. “New York Underground” was negligible, but “Clearing the Air” was amusing enough. Mainly I’m happy to see Baumbach returning to semi-improvised roots, as his collaborative, barely-released, pseudonym-credited comedy Highball is one of my favorite movies ever.

And speaking of behavior, Beyonce’s newest songs are no “Crazy in Love” or “Irreplaceable,” but “Single Ladies” is getting there, and her dance moves on that one were superlative. Maybe she should let Sasha Fierce do her acting for her, too.

Episode Grade: C, which makes me sad, because Paul Rudd was the most comedically experienced host of the season so far apart from maybe Anna Faris.