Monday Morning Quarterback: SNL Season 34, Episode 10

Posted by Jesse December 8th, 2008 at 10:02am In SNL

Was this episode of Saturday Night Live Amy Poehler’s last? It wasn’t promoted as such, but it seemed that way even without the unofficial inclusiveness that greeted the departures of Will Ferrell, Jimmy Fallon, and Maya Rudolph. SNL rarely hypes a particular episode as this or that cast member’s final appearance, but they’ve gotten far more conscious of it over the past fifteen years or so as the show has moved away from the mass-firing house-cleanings that used to happen every six or seven years. As such, I would’ve expected that a final round for Poehler would include not just Hilary Clinton and Weekend Update, but maybe a final appearance by Amber, the one-legged trash game show contestant, or some kind of bizarre personal favorite sketch that had been cut from dress a million times before.

But instead, Amy took a one-foot-out approach; clearly she had finished her tenure on the show pre-maternity, but came back to say “live from New York” and “here are tonight’s top stories” one more time. It wasn’t even a particularly good Update; in fact, offhand I’d say it was the weakest of the season. In fact, I would’ve assumed from tonight’s show that Amy had a few more episodes in her if not for her little solo wave at the end of the goodnights.

Without Poehler, Kristen Wiig steps fully into the role of the “star” female cast member. In the spotlight, Wiig sometimes slips into repetitive tics, but in this week’s episode she was spot-on. First she played a new sure-to-recur character, the sexy girl in the office who fails to fulfill her promise in hilariously off-putting ways; then she reprised Virgania Horsen, the awkward entrepreneur now offering an alternative mail service:

I love this character dearly, though I’m not sure why this was tagged as a “Digital Short,” except that it includes the intentionally cheesy computer graphics beloved by the Lonely Island folks.

On the other side of SNL’s female scene, this was the third episode featuring Abby Elliott and Michaela Watkins, and even without Amy in the sketches, they only found room in the lady-heavy Judy Blume sketch — feeding straight lines to Malkovich, as a misfit girl enumerating her many biological oddities. Hopefully they and the strong but underutilized Casey Wilson will get more showcases in the new year. Or, you know, next week.

With Malkovich’s Judy Blume turn, Wiig’s usual weirdness, and a fairly inexplicable and twistless sketch about twin brothers coveting a calculator, this was an episode based largely on low-key misfits, though I guess that could apply to a lot of stock non-political SNL material. Anyway, it mostly worked. I’m especially pleased to see Bill Hader’s recurring Vinnie Vedecci sketches find their own eccentric voice, rather than digging further into the original (and much-repeated) gag of an American star who doesn’t understand the Italian talk show host. The show has the cast, characters, and momentum to make episodes like this, Anna Faris, and Anne Hathaway the baseline; hopefully more solid-or-better episodes are on the way.

Episode Grade: B