SNL Alum Bill Hader returns to host, he is promoting his new film, The Skeleton Twins. He stars alongside with fellow SNL alum Kristen Wiig in the film, which has garnered some critical acclaim. Whenever a former cast member returns to the stage, things usually go pretty well. I had high hopes for Hader’s return, let’s see how the show went!



Cold Open – Kim Jong Un

Bobby Moynihan’s Kim Jong Un (with the same haircut as Brad Pitt in Fury) has always been a mystery. It is tough doing impressions of someone of a different ethnicity without coming off as slightly racist or weird. Moynihan’s Jong-Un reads a lot more like Moynihan doing himself as a despotic asian dictator. This impression is definitely missing something. Moynihan doesn’t try to do an Asian accent, which is probably for the best. The obvious way to play this character is to go down the path of pure weirdness, ala Team America – World Police. The Kim-Jong-Un sketches never really go too far down that particular path of comedy. These sketches always seem to be a bit.. safe. The premise of the sketch was that Kim Jong Un is an out of shape guy that forces everyone to believe that he is in shape! You can get a lot of physical gags out of a setup like that, but not much else. Thinking of similar comedic situations, a scene in Monty Python’s Life of Brian comes to mind, where the discussion of the friend in rome named “Biggus Dickus” is too much for one of the guards to handle. I think that the sketch could have done with a lieutenant that couldn’t handle Jong-Un’s falling all over himself. There wasn’t much nuance in the sketch here, just some physical humor and prop gags. Moynihan’s physicality as a comedic actor is top-notch, so there were some laughs here, but we could have added another layer in this sketch.

Bill Hader Monologue

Because Bill was at the show to promote Skeleton Twins I had a feeling that there just might be a Kristen Wiig appearance. I have never been a fan of musical pieces in monologues because they aren’t usually elaborate enough to be particularly funny. The set up with this monologue was Hader cannot sing, and Wiig goads him into it. Hader is reluctant to bring out his self described “Harvey Fierstein-eque” singing voice. Of course name-dropping Fierstein assured he would come up on stage, and everyone sang in their own special way to end the monologue. As musical monologues go, building a little sketch around the song goes a long way, and having Wiig up there with you to help sing doesn’t hurt.

Herb Welch: Virginity Pledge

When I told a friend that Hader was returning to host SNL this week, she said “I hope he does Herb Welch, I love that character!” I think that Welch was the perfect sketch to start the show. Things with Herb Welch are fun but familiar, and by god does Hader have that character down to a science. From the posture to the constant cutting back to the studio, Herb Welch is one funny guy. I would love to sit down and have a drink with that character. I have to give props to new cast member Pete Davidson for taking Welch’s microphone abuse well. I missed this cantankerous old reporter, and I liked this sketch.

Group Hopper (Young Adult Movie Trailer)

These fake trailers have all been pretty great so far this year. The trailer was a spot-on mash up of every young adult novel trope you can think of. With liberal dashes of “Divergent” ,”The Maze Runner”, “The Giver”, and pinches of the “The Hunger Games” and “Harry Potter”, the protagonist named “Thehero” has to fit in with a bunch of misfits and conquer the generic oppression from the king or queen (your choice). This is how you do satire! I like this approach to satire the “Clown Car” method, where you try to cram as many references and cliches as you can in three minutes. This trailer is probably going to be something you see passed around on the internet for a while. My favorite part about this sketch, besides the spot on Bill Hader/Effie Trinket, was Kyle Mooney’s constant “throw the dufflebag at the new recruit” move. It is the little things that made this trailer stand out. One of the things that SNL can do that other sketch shows can’t, is make completely up to date references week to week. (Just ask South Park how much fun this can be) If SNL wants to stay relevant they need to keep producing great stuff like this trailer. I don’t even have the space to go on about how excellent the production values were in this trailer. Top notch job from the writing to the acting to the production and the editing. This was the highlight of the night for me. (Other than maybe the Jan Hooks tribute)

Hollywood Game Night

So, this is the new “Celebrity Jeopardy” right? Heck, Kate McKinnon’s impression of America’s 2nd favorite lesbian, Jane Lynch even feels a bit like Alex Trebek did in those sketches. The rub with the sketch is pretty much the same as in celebrity jeopardy: everyone gets to do impressions and show us that celebrities are the biggest idiots on the planet. There were some old favorites here, like Bill Hader’s Al Pacino and Wiig’s Kathie Lee. I was very impressed by the new cast member’s impressions especially. Taran Killam’s Christoph Waltz and Beck Bennett’s Nick Offerman were excellent. Cecily Strong’s Sofia Vergara was pretty great too, but Vergara is a pretty easy target to hit impression-wise. Jay Pharoah was surprisingly the weakest of the bunch in this sketch, which probably gives more credit to everyone else’s impressions than take away from Pharoah’s. Highlights included Kathie Lee’s “Wine Cooler” which was an entire water cooler full of wine, and Al Pacino finishing the sentence “Frankly my dear I don’t give a…” with “A prostitute my home address”. I look forward to seeing this sketch again with the hopes that we can get some Celebrity Jeopardy moments in the future.

39 Cents

This was a pretty decent parody of those “feed the world” charity television ads. The host, Charles Daniels, portrayed by the self proclaimed king of playing old white guys, Bill Hader, asks the viewer for just 39 cents a day to feed these poor people. This seems reasonable enough. The villagers beg to differ, however. Jay Pharaoh whispers “Ask them for more!” and things snowball out of control from there. I think that this was a particularly smart premise that probably could have gone a little further. The idea is that these “poor people” can ask for their own damn money, and they certainly want a hell of a lot more than 39 cents. I think they could have done more with the stalking of the host in this sketch. I was expecting Hader to try to continue doing the ad only to be continually interrupted by Pharoah or Thompson or Zamata. Some quick cutaways would have added some pep to this sketch. Overall this ad was o.k. but lacked any real depth other than the initial idea of 39 cents being a little bit low of an amount to ask to help someone out of poverty.

Jan Hooks and Phil Hartman (Love is a Dream)

This was SNL’s tribute to the late great Jan Hooks who tragically passed away this week at a too-young 57. Hooks took a long break from comedy after leaving SNL for Designing Women. She returned in 2010 to play Jenna Maroney’s hilariously terrible stage mother in a series of episodes of 30 Rock. One of the most dynamic female performers during the golden age of 1986-1991, she recently lost a long battle with cancer. She will be missed, but she will be forever remembered for her excellent impressions and serious dramatic work in sketches like the one above.

Weekend Update

Weekend update was a bit off this week. A lot of the jokes really didn’t get laughs. Michael Che had an awkard delivery on an even more awkward joke about the stereotype that black people don’t tip at restuarants. Pete Davidson returned to do a bit more stand-up, but his sordid tale of gold-chain ownership wasn’t as funny as his bit two weeks ago. Stefon came in to save the day with another excellent segment on the night life of “New New York”. After waiting for aproximately 1 billion seconds of applause, Stefon got back to doing what he does best.. attempt to deliver insane jokes without laughing (and failing). For those that don’t know how Stefon is written, Bill Hader and John Mulaney write the jokes and plan out the segment, and before Bill Hader gets to see the final cue cards, Mulaney makes some changes. The entire point of Mulaney’s editing the sketch is to add jokes to get Bill Hader to laugh and break character. I am pretty sure that John Mulaney is the MVP of getting Bill Hader to break character. “If you are some dumb folks looking to get straight up murdered, have I got the place for you” and “Prozac Doobie Brothers” were my favorites.

Puppetry for Advanced Students

This sketch was first used when Seth Macfarlane hosted 2 years ago. Hader was the most memorable part, playing a veteran of the Grenada conflict named Anthony Michael Coleman using his puppet to act out his PTSD nightmares. I am glad that they were able to return to this sketch. Taran Killam filled in as the overly peppy puppet instructor, and Moynihan and Cecily Strong played the other students. I really enjoyed the lengths that this sketch went to with the PTSD premise, including an all puppet flashback to a day on the battlefield that ended so poorly. Killam tries to steer the puppet back to the happy world of puppetry by asking for a joke. Anthony Michael Coleman’s response “Here is a joke… God!” Bill Hader is amazing. Episodes like this really exemplify the weaknesses of the current cast and writers. With Hader on this week, the show felt like it was the way things should be. Something is missing from this cast.

Inside So Cal

Mooney and Bennett continue to bring us solid post-weekend update sketches. This is going to be a trend every week, get used to it. I am extremely pleased that the staff is letting Mooney and Bennett do their thing every episode with a late night slot in the show. Apparently this sketch has been done before, and these characters are borrowed from their pre-SNL work, but I think that this went well. I really am digging the style that these two are going for with their sketches. I have been saying this every week, but these two might just be the key to SNL’s future success. Their segments always feel new and different and very un-SNL, and I think that is a very good thing. Sometimes you have to go in a new direction to get things to work.

Cat in the Hat

“Jonathing!”

The Gossipy Coal Miner (Sketch Cut for Time)

I don’t know what it is about Bill Hader’s breaking character in a scene that works for me. There is just something about Bill Hader’s comedic earnestness that doesn’t get me frustrated at his corpsing. You can’t stay mad at this guy, and when he laughs.. you laugh with him. Bill Hader couldn’t handle that baby carrot prop.. and neither could I. Hader has always had issues breaking character in scenes, but somehow, when he does it.. I don’t hate it. Why is that? WHY!? Bill Hader is a comedy magician.

Wrap-up

Overall, this was a pretty excellent episode of SNL. Not unlike Anthony Michael Coleman’s brothers in arms in Grenada, Hader carried the rest of the cast on his back this week. This episode really hit home that the gap that Hader left in the cast has yet to be filled. There just isn’t anyone that does character work like Hader. Nobody can play an 80+ year old man like Hader did. Hader had incredible range on the show. Hader could effortlessly flow from cartoon caricature characters to down to earth serious characters in the span of an hour and a half. So, while this episode was an excellent watch, it didn’t do much to build my confidence of the current cast. Can they put together a great show without a sketch comedian hosting? The writers are going to get another softball in two weeks with veteran host Jim Carrey, but where will they go from there?

Over the past two years SNL has gone through an incredible shake-up with the cast. Veterans left, new comedians were hired, and bloggers complained about the casting decisions either way. There were many valid diversity concerns with the show, but I feel like some of the diversity hiring probably hurt the show overall. When you are building a cast for a show, you look for people who work together first! It is very early in this season, and it is very possible some of the newer cast members will come into their own. For every great Bill Hader character (Stefon) there was a great writer (John Mulaney). Do the team at SNL have that structure set up right now? You can see some rock solid ideas and execution coming from Mooney and Bennett during their weekly sketches, but I don’t see that type of cohesion coming from anywhere else in the cast. They need to build a better writing staff around the new cast members before we start to get some memorable SNL characters. Maybe the cast and writers can go on a “trust exercise” corporate retreat, or a ropes course? From what I can tell on the show things don’t seem to be clicking backstage right now.

We have had accusations of borrowing from groundlings sketches and youtube videos this year. This week, Michael Che’s joke on gay marriage was pretty funny, but it also was a Key and Peele sketch. This is kind of a disturbing trend of unoriginal ideas going on this year. I really hope these are co-incidences or co-thinking and not borrowing of jokes. I am willing to give the talented writers and cast of SNL the benefit of the doubt, but if we continue to see stuff like this week after week, we might need to take a step back and think.

Like I said before, the thing that SNL gets to do that all of the other sketch shows (Key & Peele, Portlandia) cannot do, is be topical week to week. They need to capitalize on their week to week flexibility, and build some consensus backstage if they are going to make a memorable 40th anniversary for the longest running live comedy show on T.V.! Every week a lot of things seem to be going right, but we are also seeing the equivalent of comedic treading water in sketches like this week’s cold open. My intuition leads me to believe that this extremely fresh cast is a bit gun shy about putting edgy or weird sketches on T.V., and that isn’t the way to make a memorable comedy show. Shoot those sketches first and let the FCC sort em’ out. With ratings dipping to an all time low… SNL needs to find its new identity quickly.