SNL - "Josh Brolin/Gotye"

Season 37, Episode 19

Ah, Josh Brolin. He’s hosted SNL once before, and though I only saw one sketch from that episode, I get the impression that he’s not the best host for a comedy show. Though I like him as a dramatic actor, he’s never struck me as all that funny. So this should be an interesting show, right?

Cold Open – “Good Riddance”: I’m not so sure that this was a sketch so much as it was a way for the show to retire a lot of the political impersonations that it probably won’t get to use all that much now that the GOP primary race is winding down. To that end, I’m even sure that the conceit behind this sketch was funny, but it was charming, and it did allow for some funny one-liners. Regardless, seeing the candidates gathering together, one by one, and singing that Green Day song that nobody can correctly remember the title to was certainly charming. Bonus points for the left turn with everybody ignoring Gingrich when he entered the bar.

Monologue: Let’s just move past Brolin’s line about how comedy is considered a career ending move for a dramatic actor, because that’ll just set me off on a rant, and instead focus on….what exactly? There was some random joke about how Brolin was a spokesperson for the nineties, and then some random joke about his starring role in Men in Black 3. But hey, at least we got Jay Pharoah doing his Will Smith impression, and that’s got to count for something. (Also, people really can’t be that excited for MIB 3, can they?)

Game of Thrones First Look: Sure, commenting on the abundance of nudity on HBO is a joke that’s both old and easy. However, given all of the discussion that’s been going on about the show’s continual use of sexpostion, it’s a joke that’s employed at the right time in order to have maximum impact. Samberg’s 13-year old producer was appropriately creepy/pathetic that the joke land, and the sketch was short enough that it avoided needlessly repeating itself.

(And of course here’s where they aired an ad for Men in Black 3.)

The Californians: This isn’t a real show, is it? Because a quick Google search didn’t turn up anything, and I don’t watch Soap Net. Even it’s not, I get the joke here about show’s set in certain places making too many references about the city in which the show takes place, so it’s not like the show needs to be real for the sketch to work. But the central joke does need to be funny, and this wasn’t. No amount of exaggerated facial expressions is going to change that.

America’s Next Top “Empire State of Mind” Parody Artist: Is this a thing worth mocking? I mean I figure there have to be some parodies of this song, but enough that this is something worth basing a sketch around. And really, it shouldn’t be, since anti-comedy like these purposefully unfunny parodies isn’t really the show’s strong suit. However, the real joke here was with Jay Pharoah’s Jay-Z, who’s so in love with his own song that he thinks every parody is brilliant. (That being said “New Uncle State of Mind” was the best of the bunch.)

Digital Shot – Laser Cats 7: It’s hard to know what to say about “Laser Cats” after so many iterations, other than it continues to be funny in it’s intentional cheesiness. (Intentionally bad drama is always better fuel for comedy than intentionally bad comedy.) However, the twist of having Steven Spielberg come in and spoof himself with a film that lifts from so many of his past movies was great, and it proved to be hilarious throughout.

Weekend Update: In addition to Seth Meyers doing his usual shtick, we got…. A “What Are You Doing” segment, which yes allows Meyers to just keep on cracking jokes, but in a more focused manner than just doing headline. The jokes were spotty, but it was nice to see this mainstay break things up just a little bit….And then Garth & Kath showed up once again to remind us that, yes, they still need to die in a fire.

Piers Morgan Tonight: Frankly, I’m surprised it’s taken SNL this long to cover the Trayvon Martin case, though I can understand them waiting to for an less-controversial angle to approach it from. What I’m not surprised by is the fact that the show brought back Taran Killam’s Piers Morgan for another round, given how strong the original sketch was. These “Piers Morgan Tonight” sketches work as another excuse for the show to cram a bunch of celebrity cameos in one sketch, sure, but there’s also an element of controlled chaos to them.

Slow-Mo Hallway: Mocking the “slow-motion walk as a sign of coolness” joke had been around since at least the 90s, but I was glad to see SNL put it’s own spin on the joke. The idea of a supernatural, slow motion hallway is certainly a weird idea for a sketch, but it’s one that works fairly well. It helps that the sketch found ways to subtly twist the joke with each iteration, and just watching all the work that went into making the acting and props work for this one was certainly fascinating.

Another Digital Short – Gotye: SNL has had its share of “meeting the celebrity backstage” sketches over the years, and almost all of them are based around the idea of hero worship, so I won’t pretend that this one is all that original in it’s approach. However, Samberg, Killam, and Gotye really threw themselves into this sketch, to the extent of the hero worship, and it was goofy and charming because of it. It was also a sketch with smart pacing, knowing when to get in then get out.

Booker T. Washington High Prom: This is an actor driven sketch if I ever heard one. Given that the sketch’s humor comes from just a bunch of lines being delivered about all these weird things going on at the prom that we don’t actually see, this sketch could have been very dry and unfunny. However, the delivery here was phenomenal, especially from Pharoah (I don’t blame him for breaking a couple of times). It also helped that there was a view different joke strains in this sketch, which kept any of the joke from growing needle.

Man, this was a strong episode for the show, and outside of “The Californians”, I don’t think that there’s anything here that I hated. Of course, this had very little to do with Brolin – he was buried in the sketched, just like every host seems to be these days – but he did well with what he was given.

Best Sketch (tie) – Piers Morgan Tonight/Booker T. Washington Prom

Runner Up – Slo-Mo Hallway

Worst Sketch – The Californians

In Three Weeks: Eli Manning does a bunch of sports-related sketches and tries to make us forget about Peyton's time on the show. Something tells me Rihanna will make the bigger impression. 

Quotes, Etc.:

“I’ve place your tip in this envelope. Give this to your husband. He’ll know best what to do with it.”

“I’ve crashed a lot of boys’ nights – especially when I come home early and unannounced.”

“I stated out with 9-9-9. And at the end I had 999 problems and a bitch was all of them.”

“And all of that aired on television, right after Rango. It’s HBO!”

“Next it’s the reining queen of parody songs, Ke$ha.”

“It’s the Space Nazi and Horn-Head!”

“Many who thought that the ‘Buffett Rule’ was ‘sing along with the chorus’.”

“He claimed to be immortal, and he recently died. That is literally a dead giveaway.”

“Pizza Hut is debuting a new pizza with hotdogs in the crust. It’s called the Rockbottom Supreme, and the box doubles as a suicide note.”

“If you listen to just my accent and not the words I say, you’ll think I’m rather intelligent.”

“Then there’s You Snooze, You Loose. That’s when you fall asleep, people can come into your house and kill you.”

“I reacted the same way I do every time I see my girl Coco’s ass: I say ‘damn’.”

“That why you gotta watch the whole episode.”

“I know! 46 days? That’s like half a marriage.”

“Only without the signing, and the dancing, and the acting. I’m a zero threat!”

“I sacrificed my testicles for the circus of life. They’re all the way up in my lungs now, but I do it for the arts. Yay!”

“We intentionally didn’t paint this part.” “We wanted you to see.”

“That might be okay if I liked iguanas. But that is the most stuck-up animal I have ever seen.”

“The owl has been making a nest in the vending machine. Please don’t disturb him by pressing C8.”