Steve Martin is one of my comedy heroes, someone whose work I have appreciated on different levels since I was about ten years old, so I’m always thrilled to see him back hosting Saturday Night Live, even if his rate of appearance in the seventies (which, given the accompanying recurring characters and classic bits, has caused some layperson confusion as to whether he was actually a cast member; nope, never) has dwindled to a more cursory couple times a decade for old time’s sake.
Of course, it’s a little dispiriting that the motivating factor behind his two most recent appearances has been his Pink Panther franchise. In other words: hooray, a new Steve Martin SNL episode! But at what cost?
SNL’s Fred Armisen and Elizabeth Moss (aka the perma-frumpy secretary Peggy from Mad Men) are engaged. I had no idea they were even dating. So that’d be like Rose Byrne from Damages getting engaged to Justin Kirk from Weeds. Two great people who I didn’t realize existed in the same universe.
So obviously the Rosario Dawson episode of SNL is going to suffer greatly, to many eyes, for not living up to the Neil Patrick Harris episode, which seems to have elicited positive reactions from both fans and, perhaps especially, people who don’t particularly care about SNL (and which, fine, I could’ve maybe bumped up to a B, but was still too heavy on proficient but uninspired pop culture riffs for my tastes). But hear me out: what I liked about this admittedly mixed-bag episode was that it seemed a little more adventurous, trying weird conceptual stuff alongside crowd-pleasing impersonations of celebrities. Also, it gets major points for actually offering a musical guest I was interested to hear more of, not just catching me up on terrible radio songs that I hadn’t previously heard all the way through.
With Amy Poehler actually gone for good — no more opening introduction, no more Update credit — it was finally safe, even necessary, for the new SNL girls to step out. Michael Watkins logged four sketches, most notably playing straight woman to Kristen Wiig’s unhinged Kathie Lee Gifford, while Abby Elliott appeared in three and even got to say the “live from New York” bit.
Elliott’s impression of Rachel Maddow wasn’t much of one, though it probably wasn’t her fault that the sketch failed to find a satirical angle on Maddow herself. Her appearance felt more like an acknowledgement of her place in the cable-news landscape, with all of the jokes coming at the expense of Roland Burris (Kenan Thompson) and Governor Blagojevich (Jason Sudeikis, always at his best playing irrepressible and/or unrepentant jackasses).
The new year is upon us. And now we’ve got the hangovers and gym memberships and debt-free living self-help books to prove it. But at TiFaux, we’ve got our priorities in line.
Television first.
On that note, all this week we are going to look back at 2008 and examine the best of the year that was. And, in a cute little twist, we’re not doing our top five shows — we’re doing our top five anythings. This can be an entire year’s worth of one show, one actor’s performance, one funny joke, etc. We’re mixing it up so we don’t end up all saying that 30 Rock is amazing in different wordings.
I’m up first because I’m a control freak. So, here we go…
Glenn Close and Zeljko Ivanek win Emmys for Damages
This was a series whose first season ended in 2007, but I only watched it in 2008 — that’s why I’m including it on this list. It’s my blog so I can do what I want. But I will try to make it timely by saying that Close and Ivanek won well-deserved Emmys this year. Which is true.
It’s easy to single out the performances as the greatest thing about Damages’ first season — but I think that would be inaccurate. The great thing about Damages was not only the taut pacing and menacing tone, but just how uncommonly focused the storytelling was. This was essentially a season-long movie, intricately written and planned, and slowly rolled out bit by riveting bit.
Damages’ success is the result of several elements synergizing — the strength of the performances (Close’s venom, Rose Byrne’s sweet deadpan, Zeljko Ivanek’s anguished expressions), savvy directing and writing that packs both an intellectual and emotional punch. I have no idea what they’re going to do for the second season (starting Wednesday!!), but I’m totally on board.
SNL: Virgania Horsen’s Hot Air Balloon Rides
This was really a great year for women on SNL. Admittedly, there weren’t that many of them (a freakishly low number, in fact), but all of them emerged as stars. Amy Poehler came into her own as a playful and goofy sprite (see the Sarah Palin rap),Tina Fey re-emerged in her well-publicized star turn as the would-be veep and Kristen Wiig began to cement her status as the show’s rising star.
And my favorite thing Wiig has ever done remains this fake commercial from the (fabulous) Fey-hosted episode that was the first one following the strike. Virgania Horsen (who returned with a Pony Express commercial this season) is a mix of bizarre and oddly loveable, selling her hot air balloon rides with all the enthusiasm of an awkward fifth grader trying to give a rousing book report.
It’s all about delivery in this sketch (with some support from delightfully shoddy special effects), and Wiig nails it with the awful posture and stilted delivery.
The set design on Pushing Daisies
There’s a lot to love on Pushing Daisies — the tart dialogue, the adorableness of Kristin Chenowith and Lee Pace, and the fun storylines. But what ties everything together is the show’s wonderful technicolor aesthetic. The colors are bright and the sets aren’t restricted by realism. There’s so much packed into every shot — it’s truly a case of “more is more.” The look of the show (including the costuming) makes everything work — instantly allowing you to suspend your disbelief.
New horror series: Dead Set and True Blood
The two best series of 2008 (for my money) both had their flaws. Dead Set was a mini-series that didn’t even air on American TV (and I probably didn’t understand half the pop culture references). And True Blood revealed itself to be the slightly slow, sex-obsessed cousin of Six Feet Under.
But these two horror-inspired shows (zombies and vampires, respectively) were the best new series to emerge out of 2008 — a vast wasteland as far as new programming goes. Dead Set had a run of five episodes, but I’ll continue to watch True Blood for its campy sense of humor and the creepy mysteries of this alternate reality world (even though they killed off the only guy who had a good accent).
Lecherously watching men’s water polo during the Olympics
OK, this time for real: Amy Poehler actually bid farewell to Saturday Night Live on the Hugh Laurie/Kanye West episode. As with her surprise appearance the week before, it was a relatively low-key affair wherein she turned up to do Weekend Update and a popular character reprisal. For the latter, Maya Rudolph came on to send off the pair’s recurring Bronx Beat sketch. This sketch always goes on a bit, but its lengthiness actually feels true to the rambling believability of Poehler and Rudolph’s characters, and you could sense Poehler’s delight in nearly cracking up Hugh Laurie. Poehler has never slipped into the giggly self-satisfaction of say, Horatio Sanz and Jimmy Fallon cracking only each other up, but she always seems tickled when cracking through the resolve of professionals like Laurie or, in her old Regis & Kelly sketches, the usually poker-faced Darrell Hammond. Bronx Beat has never been one of my absolute favorites, but it is an inarguably well-observed and well-performed bit, owing almost entirely to Poehler and Rudolph’s skills; they’re simply two of the best SNL players ever.
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.
In contrast with last week’s Paul Rudd installment, I can’t say my expectations for the Tim McGraw episode of SNL were particularly high. I’ll just put it out there: I’m prejudiced against mainstream country singers. It’s cool; they do fine without me. Even more confusingly, McGraw wasn’t pulling double duty; past host Ludacris was the musical guest. Why the hell couldn’t Ludacris just host again?
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.
I’m not exactly sure why Ben Affleck hosted the most recent episode of Saturday Night Live. I don’t have much against the guy; apart from his late-nineties/early-aughts propensity for playing besuited tools in bad movies, the dude has appeared in some decent movies: Changing Lanes (the best of his suit movies), Hollywoodland, and the Kevin Smith oeuvre (plus, he was the bomb in Phantoms). He also directed a pretty terrific movie from last year, Gone Baby Gone. But he hasn’t appeared onscreen since early ‘07 and isn’t scheduled to turn up again until spring of next year.
In that sense, his hosting gig was a throwback to the show’s earliest years, when people just hosted for the hell of it, not because they had a movie coming out, a recent Oscar nomination and/or Olympic medal, or a hit show on NBC. Affleck’s non-promotional stop makes sense: he has a recent history with the show, this being his fourth time hosting since 2000, and his sixth appearance overall. It must be said, though, that Affleck isn’t exactly Steve Martin or Alec Baldwin in terms of his ability to slip right into the rhythms of the show as a surrogate cast member. He’s clearly game enough, but he was in over his head as an impressionist, doing a raspy, Eastwood-y imitation of Baldwin himself on a parody of The View (alongside Casey Wilson’s dead-on Jennifer Aniston), and, with a slightly better impression but a far worse sketch, an interminable Keith Olbermann — a drawn-out bit that felt about half an hour long.
Speaking of cute!
This was a series whose first season ended in 2007, but I only watched it in 2008 — that’s why I’m including it on this list. It’s my blog so I can do what I want. But I will try to make it timely by saying that Close and Ivanek won well-deserved Emmys this year. Which is true.
There’s a lot to love on Pushing Daisies — the tart dialogue, the adorableness of Kristin Chenowith and Lee Pace, and the fun storylines. But what ties everything together is the show’s wonderful technicolor aesthetic. The colors are bright and the sets aren’t restricted by realism. There’s so much packed into every shot — it’s truly a case of “more is more.” The look of the show (including the costuming) makes everything work — instantly allowing you to suspend your disbelief.