Season 38, Episode 11
Everybody's nerd-crush, Jennifer Lawrence, stops by to host, and The Lumineers twee it up on the musical stage.
Cold Open –
Piers Morgan Tonight: Apparently attempting to
take care of a huge chunk of current news in one fell swoop, this Piers Morgan iteration took on Lance
Armstrong, Manti Te’o, and (somewhat inexplicably) Jodie Foster. Now, the Morgan sketches tend to work best when
they ramp up the craziness in the guests and contrast that with Morgan’s calm
demeanor. So while I saw what they were trying to do here by keeping all of the
guests along a same theme – in this case, shocking revelations – none of these
guest felt crazier than the other, so this sketch lacked any sort of momentum.
Top that with the fact that Foster’s Golden Globe speech is nether sports
related or all that revelatory, and I was left somewhat underwhelmed.
Monologue: It often feels
as if the monologue is one of the least thought-through elements of any SNL episode, filled with some lazy/corny
humor. So colored me surprised when said corny humor actually sort of worked
for once. Having Lawrence riff on her Golden Globe win, here possible Oscar
wins, and (for some reason) Tommy Lee Jones’ stone-faced appearance at the
Globes it admittedly pretty lazy, but Lawrence was so charming here that she
gave all the corny jokes a sort of winking, knowing air that helped sell them.
That’s at least one good sign for the show to come.
Starbucks
Verismo:
Hey, do look whinging about the service at Starbucks? And do you like that whinging
to have a weird, unearned tint of racism? Then this is the sketch just for you!
Admittedly, some of the more specific humor of the sketch worked, but most of
it was too broad, and the sketch as whole just sunk.
Girlfriends
Talk Show: The
“Girlfriends Talk Show” isn’t a sketch I have much to say about, because it
hits at some tired humor, but the patter between Aidy Bryant and Cecily Strong
usually helps elevate it to serviceable levels. That being said, this sketch didn’t
really reach an actually conclusion more than it just…ended, and that end up
hurting the overall quality.
Hunger Games
Press Conference: Let’s look past the fact that doing a Hunger Games parody is both
fairly expected and lazy considering that the show did another parody last season. Even given those passes, this sketch didn’t really work. It’s not that
there weren’t some good ideas here – the reporter who was constantly hungry,
the one who normally covers the golf beat, and the continual ragging on Peeta
were all good – but this sketch didn’t really have a throughline, and that left
the jokes feeling a bit too random to work. Additionally, Lawrence was more or
less sidelined for the sketch – the de facto setting for hosts these days – but
the fact that she was playing the main character in this universe just made
that relegation stand out all the more.
The Hobbit Parts
2-19: Hey,
did you know that the Hobbit has been split into 3 parts? Oh, you did? And
you’ve made jokes about it? Okay, then maybe you should just pretend that this
sketch didn’t happen…
Johnny Two
Tones: Given
that this sketch gave us the hard sell in beginning about the restaurant having
purposely sardonic waiters, it was pretty clear that they would soon introduce
a character who was not that. That’s
just how these things go. Granted, Lawrence wasn’t bad in selling the crazy,
actually mean character that she was playing, but the whole thing was so
predictable that it couldn’t really produce any true laughs.
Weekend Update: In addition to
Seth Meyer’s usual shtick, we also got…Second-Hand news with Anthony Crispino,
which is definitely not my thing. This is the sort of segment where it feels
like the punchline (Anthony’s flubbed reading of the news) comes before the
set-up (where Seth sets him straight), and it just sucks all the air out of the
joke…And that was it. One guest segment. I’m sorry, didn’t the SNL writers have
a month off? Weren’t they supposed to come back refreshed, bursting with ideas?
Top Dog Chef: I wanted to like this one, I really did. I
like dogs, and I tend to be a sucker for dog-related humor. And the sketch came
out early with a killer gag about doorbells, one that seemed to be set up as a
throughline for the sketch (or at least pointed to a set of good, specific dog
jokes). Instead, the rest of the sketch was filled with some of the
easiest/laziest dog-related gags, and at least 3 groan-worth puns. (I kind of
blacked-out after the third one, so I may have lost count.)
Mad Early
Morning Radio Show: The first time this sketch aired, I wrote “this sketch shouldn't really work, since making fun of early
morning talk shows is another thing that's pretty old hat in sketch comedy.
However, Killam and Moynihan were absolutely charming douche-bag DJ's, to the
extent that I was lightly snickering throughout the whole thing.” I second that
emotion for Lawrence’s poorly-skilled rapper character, which allowed her to be
charming for the first time since her monologue. (Last time, I also wrote that
“lightly snickering throughout the whole thing [is] more than I can say for
most SNL sketches tonight,” which also still hold true.)
Danielle:
This
is a prime example of the sort of anti-comedy that SNL is just not capable of pulling off. While I get that the sketch
was supposed to be satirizing the terrible writing (and dubbing) of foreign
language, late night soft-core porn, the actual result was way too stilted to
actually engender any laughs. Maybe it should have been goofier, maybe it shouldn’t
have been as true to the source material, but it just didn’t work.
Civil
War Correspondence: Ah, a simple crass-meats-high-class juxtaposition humor
sketch. It’s not a bad way to do a sketch, but it’s also not a recipe for
top-notch hilarity, and at this point of the night, it just comes off as too
little, too late. And considering this is the last sketch of the night, I had
kind of hoped it would go a little weirder. But of course, weird is probably
what the writers were going for with the “Danielle” sketch, so maybe it’s a
good thing that they didn’t.
I…oh,
just fuck it. Lawrence was good, but the writing was terrible. The end.
Next Week: Adam Levine continues
his attempt at acting domination that he started over on American Horror Story, and white people finally discover Kendrick
Lamar.
Quotes, Etc.:
“Good
evening, I’m Piers Morgan, or as you may know me, the British Mario Lopez.”
“Man,
Lennay is going to be pissed…”
“Oh,
and I’m obsessed with girls…the show. I just love that show.”
“Up
next, we will have a heated debate on gun control with who else, Liam from One
Direction.”
“Yesterday,
he made me stand behind a portrait for five hours while he stared at me and ate
Caesar salad.”
“You
don’t even have David any more. He bit a baby and you guys had to put him to
sleep.”
“So
let me get this straight: In Spain, porn is just on TV?”
“Many
were eliminated, some ran away, and one had to be put down.”
“And
I’ll say this again: Nobody who rings the doorbell is there to kill you.”
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