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There is something so sharp-faced and tight-eyed about Anne Hathaway. Her skin is like porcelain, and I’m not necessarily saying that as a good thing. Also: Love and Other Drugs looks like THE WORST. So I was not particularly looking forward to this week’s episode of Saturday Night Live, and you can imagine my surprise when it turned out to be really good. Whoa! How did THAT happen? The Rachel Maddow cold open was blah (on that note: we live in an era of such smart and funny and insightful political comedy/commentary that perhaps Saturday Night Live can chill with their front-and-center attempts to satirize something they’re not very good at satirizing) and Anne’s monologue was very bad, but after that the show really went on a tear. Most of the sketches were enjoyable! Jay Pharoah did a really good Jay-Z impression! (Which he should have saved for the end of his bit, because his Drake and Biggie impressions were not nearly as good and kind of awful maybe.) And more!
So:
Penelope is back! Penelope is great!
Even the things that the show did that were pretty predictable and on the nose were just solidly done, like the TSA agent stuff, it’s like, yes, sure, but also, good job.
Or, similarly, the Black Friday sketch:
It kind of reminded me of the Gathering of the Juggalos parody, which, if you will recall, was a very good parody. Hey, speaking of Bobby Moynihan and great parodies, Guy Fieri on Weekend Update, you guys:
Can we talk about how crazy it is that Guy Fieri exists and yet you hear so few Guy Fieri jokes? What’s up with that? Just based on everything about Guy Fieri, we should really be hearing jokes about him constantly.
Also, let’s give it up for Fred Armisen this week, who really came through in both the Wizard of Oz sketch:
And the sketch about Kate Middelton meeting with the Queen:
That Queen sketch is so weird and funny and intense. It almost feels like something they would put near the end of the show. The last sketch of the night, the “Writer’s Sketch,” or whatever, was that thing about a soundtrack to a movie about horses playing baseball, which I thought was kind of a weird and off and boring sketch, but I will say that Andy Samberg as Robert Smith from the Cure, singing “Horsey horsey show me how you do that trick, the one where you play baseball,” is probably my favorite joke from the whole night and still makes me laugh, even right now I am laughing.
This Herb Welch sketch was good:
Man, just a really solid episode. Very unexpected. Here is a testament to how good this week’s episode was: they put a sketch up on-line that got cut from the show for whatever reason that they cut things, and even this deleted sketch is really good:
Anne Hathaway should probably get some of the edges on her face sanded down, and she try to get that gleam out of her eyes, you know, the gleam that says “I drink the blood of human sacrifices in order to maintain my youth.” But she should also keep hosting Saturday Night Live. Turns out she has a real knack for it. Who knew!
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I just found out this weekend that Florence is a woman. I genuinely could not tell from the one time I have seen a video for one of their songs, and that made me feel weird in the pants. So I’m glad to have that cleared up.
PARTY PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
“That’s right, coked-up rooster!”
I love you, timn. So much…
Ditto DSN.
HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHH
<3
what WAS that? i didn’t get the dude-vibe like many others did, but i did get the SUCK vibe. i felt very gabe asking myself, “is this what the kids are listening to these days?”
seriously? really? Florence is awesome. yes, as mentioned below the performance on SNL was a little off/pitchy, but if you listen to her album (which is so good) or see her live she is incredible. her voice is insane, and her music is fresh and original.
The Hannah Montana sketch was hilarious. I thought Anne Hathaway’s Katie Holmes was funny.
So, you were like on a show in the 1900s…
So, you may have heard, I’m sexy now!
I love Jason Sudeikis’s Billy Ray Cyrus too, but then again, I just love Jason Sudeikis in general.
The Katie Holmes sideways smile, talk out of the side of my mouth thing was spot on. Good work, Anne.
Bookworm, I agree…JSuds doing anything. Anywhere.
I think Vanessa Bayer’s Miley Cyrus impression is really good, like too good–like so good that when the sketch starts, I am laughing very hard for two minutes or so, but then by minute three I don’t know if I can take anymore because Miley Cyrus is SO ANNOYING.
But god I love it when she goes through her list of run-on questions. That is so great!
It’s pretty cool.
BNPG- Stefon Movies
New York’s hottest club is Fly. Club promoter Emmet Brown will have you saying where we’re going we don’t need roads. They have everything Libyan terrorists, corner drug store plutonium, human skateboards
“Human skateboards?” — Seth Meyers
I love Anne Hathaway so, so much. Princess Diaries was on this weekend, and I watched it (again). That said, Love and Other Drugs looks so very bad, and I will not see it, not even for Anne.
“I love Anne Hathaway so, so much.”
-You. And also Shakespeare.
He only gave her his second best bed
“I bet I could make a really funny pun out of her name, but I am too drunk to figure it out right now.” –Stephen Dedalus
Mans, I upvote pretty much every comment you make, just so people won’t realize that they’re all totally over my head.
FIND HIM! UPVOTE HIM!
The best bed was only for guests, it would have been like giving her, well, the guestroom bed. The second best bed was the marital bed. –humorless pedant
SHE’S PRETTTTTTTY!!!
-me, and Shakespeare
And Winwood, probably.
Yes.
“Gotta celebrate it.” – Shakespeare
Me too! She can do no wrong in my eyes. I’m going to “reluctantly” “be dragged to see” Love & other drugs. darn!
I kept looking at Bobby Moynihan’s wig on the Guy Fieri impression and thought something was wrong, but then I realized it was supposed to be the sunglasses that Guy always has on backwards.
So I didn’t watch SNL this weekend (I’m in bed with my ba-ba of Southern Comfort every night by 11:00) but judging by the clips it does look like this episode WAS NOT THAT BAD!!! That Guy Fieri sketch definitely had me LOLing IRL. Also, Diners, Drive-ins and Dives — known as Triple D in the biz — is like the best thing ever.
SoCo! Man, I used to have the hardest time finding that stuff in Italy. And an even harder time explaining that, yes, it IS surprisingly good when mixed with 7-Up, and no, I’m not just being a stupid American.
What I like about Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives is that for about 22 minutes I can vicariously eat fried EVERYTHING.
Yeah, that’s right. Sometimes I am vicariously living through THIS GUY:
This episode was very funny! And I hate Anne Hathaway so much, but it just happened like five days ago! I saw her on Regis and Kelly (I was watching for Emma Watson – shutup guyzzz!) and man oh man, she is very annoying. So I was not looking forward to this episode and then wham bam boom, it’s the best episode of the season. The Queen sketch made me pee my pants, whoops!
I read the sour AV Club review yesterday and thought, “No! I can’t be the only one who thought that was a good episode (maybe even the best of the season?)!” So thank you, Gabe and fellow monsters, for validating my opinion.
Uh oh! Now I have to take an unexpected swooning break.
Swoooooon.
I loved Anne Hathaway in the Black Friday skit, all hopped up on 4 Loco and talking a mile a minute.
And, in case anyone had any doubt about my appreciation for the Wizard of Oz after last week’s post about it, I’m a softy when it comes to Oz, and I love the things that nod to Oz well, and HATE the things that are terrible. That said, Just seeing the SNL cast doing their Oz impressions was great, then you throw in Fred Armisen as a Jewish New York weathervane that joins up— it was all so good. The only part that jarred me was when Hathaway started belting it out when she was singing, because I felt if I was there I’d be like, “That is very loud.” But it wasn’t bad singing. Also, she had a REAL DOG in her arms! That dog was so well behaved! And at one point it yawned and I was like, “AWwwwwwwWWwweeEE!”
I wasn’t planning to watch that clip, but you had me at “real dog”.
It must have taken forever to get into those costumes and that makeup! Also, worst Robert Osborne impression ever.
So there’s a book Salman Rushdie wrote for BFI about The Wizard of Oz you might want to find (I think it’s just called “The Wizard of Oz”).
I read it for a class called “Trapped in Oz: The Literature of Disinheritance and Exile”.
(Lots of Love)
I will be throwing that on my amazon wishlist now for me to have.
I think that what makes this week’s episode so strong was that it didn’t rely on too many old formulas or recurring characters. The whole thing felt less tired than usual, which was a very nice surprise. I didn’t know Anne Hathaway was even an actress anymore!
PS: Not even sure how they cut something like the Thanksgivies. That sketch is very solid!
If I were involved with SNL, I would read Videogum on Monday mornings, because even when this site acknowledges an overall vibe of suckiness, there is still such generosity afforded to a show that could easily be shamed for being a comedy institution squandering its resources on lackluster talent and bloated, lazy laurel-resters. Such kindness for the SNL people on here, even when not being so kind! I would find great comfort in that, as opposed to trying to wince my way through a comments section on, say, EW.com or something. Way to keep it positive, Videogum! (That said, I will admit to actually enjoying the Penelope sketch, and the TSA ad parody, and the Queen vs. Kate sketch. Weekend Update was depressing and that Horse movie soundtrack sketch had me actually laughing AT them instead of WITH them. Seth Meyers as Robert Smith must never happen again. Also: Did I really need these parentheses?)
I didn’t find Weekend Update depressing at all! It was a huge improvement from last week’s episode. Moynihan’s Guy Fieri was awesome, and Seth’s ripping apart of the Sarah Palin word and her being compared to Shakespeare was one of the best things of the entire night (although, I can understand any news about Palin being depressing)
Oh, and Andy Samberg was Robert Smith, not Seth Meyers.
Oh, oops! Never mind. He was fabulous! I had it all wrong: Seth Meyers as Alanis Morrisette should never happen again.
BWA HA!
Also, I will admit to enjoying the Seth rant about Sarah Palin, though it was more of a “this is moderately witty and deserving of my attention” buzz than a “oh HA HA HA LOL HA HA HO” kind of buzz. And that’s okay! Funny things don’t always have to produce laughter? I feel like I should have found the Guy Fieri thing funny because the rest of the world seems to think it was great, but I thought it was one of those things where one kinda cute gag gets stretched way past its capacity. Kinda like the old man newscaster sketch. I was giggling for thirty seconds, then I got the gag and realized it would be the same joke over and over for five minutes, then hit the little >> button on my clicker.
IRRISPOONSIBLE.
After suffering through a relentlessly (so far) mediocre season of SNL, I was also pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed this episode.
Even though Florence & The Machine seemed a little off-key or echo-y, she is super fantastic.
(Also: Hi. I’m new!)
Welcome! I like Feist, too!
Very solid Jay-Z impression, but does anyone think Jay Pharoah’s normal Jay Pharoah persona seems like a suburban dude impersonating an outer-borough black guy?
Agreed. I kinda felt his normal speaking voice was a strange mash-up of his Will Smith and Kanye West impersonations.
Also, I never want to hear him impersonate Biggie Smalls ever again. After he did Jay-Z, I was so impressed that when he was like, “Now I’m gonna do Biggie Smalls,” I got pretty excited, but then I was like please, Jay Pharoah: never again.
Why does Seth Meyers keeping calling him “Guy Fieti”?
I upvoted because I like your name.
Not to get all negative on an episode that I thought was actually one of the best of the season, but something has always bothered me about SNL:
What is up with the musical guests? The bands almost NEVER sound good on that stage. And it’s not as though the crew has had the musical guest sprung on them at the last minute. It’s not, for example, like the Herb Welch sketch where the sound gets kind of weird in places but you look past it because it’s a challenging scene to mic and this is live television. The bands are meant to be part of the draw of the show and they almost always sound terrible compare to one of their typical live performances.
That said, this week had me doing some serious lolling, so here’s hoping they keep it up!
This is one of life’s greatest mysteries, I feel. Probably close to 98% of the musical acts sound TERRIBLE on this show, even when it’s an artist known for playing good live shows. Maybe that stage just has, like, the worst acoustics in the world?
I just remember both Idioteque and National Anthem sounding great! Vampire Weekend’s Cousins sounded really good too, but I definitely know what you mean, Arcade Fire is one of those really big sounding bands, and they sounded like they were playing in a fucking field, amirite?
Also, Did anyone else notice Jenny Slate in the background of the Penelope sketch???
Studio 8H was originally home to the NBC Symphony Orchestra so it couldn’t be the acoustics. One of life’s great mysteries indeed.
“Andy Samberg as Robert Smith from the Cure, singing “Horsey horsey show me how you do that trick, the one where you play baseball,” is probably my favorite joke from the whole night and still makes me laugh, even right now I am laughing.”
AGREED.
I loved the Black Friday and Guy Fieri segments so much, I laughed over half the punchlines the first time I watched the episode so rewatching was in order. The Queen’s cockney accent also pretty much killed me. Good job this week, SNL!
Glad I’m not the only one who thinks Anne Hathaway’s too creepy to be human, huge, pasted on looking eyes are frightening.
Anyone else notice this caption?
I thought Anne Hathaway was good the last time she hosted too. At least I think so, I can’t remember. Was it her that did the Mary Poppins skit? Because that was great.
Herb Welch was probably one of the funniest skits of the season so far. Bill Hader is awesome.
I know I’m probably in the minority here, but I can’t stand Penelope. Or the Miley Cyrus Show. I find them both to be incredibly annoying and just not that funny. Like the premise is kinda funny on its own, but I can’t take either one for a four or five minute sketch.
hey does anyone know how/where you can view these clips if you’re NOT in the US? hulu be hatin on me.
Wow… just saw Love and Other Drugs last night. Should be called Boobs and More Boobs…
https://sites.google.com/site/leedsdigitalmarketing/course-pages/greatest-albums-of-all-time