This was a very fun episode that leaned a bit on old favorites versus new material, but was still almost uniformly enjoyable throughout. It was nice to see Morgan back in action and doing his schtick out there. As for the individual sketches:
The intro was some of the sharpest and funniest political writing the show has done in year. McKinnon has her Clinton down pat and made her into a character that she knows inside and out, and Larry David doing Bernie Sanders was perfect, especially mixing in some very Seinfeldian riffs. Even Alec Baldwin's brief takes on Jim Webb had a straight-laced conviction that made them hilarious. Great stuff.
The monologue was good enough. Tracy floated by on charm for the most part. I never really watched much of 30 Rock (I know, I know) so a lot of the bit was lost on me, but I did enjoy the riffs on NBC's failed shows.
The Family Feud sketch had a fun premise, but Kenan's character sort of overexplained the jokes without adding much to it, though I did enjoy his, "That means to stop, that's what that means." It was a good premise with a mixed bag in execution, but it got better as it went.
The Brian Fellows sketch was pretty good. The premise is one-note, but they way they played around with all the other characters' thought bubbles and messing with Brian's propensity to say his name, plus the "I Married a Monkey" unpredctiability of live animals gave this one a lot of life and fun.
Mitchell's fake cocaine was delightfully absurd and weird, and was nice stylistically as well.
I have to admit that, as I usually do, I fast forwarded through most of the musical guest segments, but in what I saw, Demi Lovato had good stage presence and a nice voice. I was pleasantly surprised.
In terms of Weekend Update, Jost and CHe are still super awkward out there. There were a lot of great lines, like "My email address has a 69 it, and it's a work email", "And the police put his ankles on a really high shelf" "I was taping that." But the delivery was very much off. The writing for this segment is clearly there, but I don't think Jost or Che have a comfort at the desk in a way to make it land. In terms of the "guest" segments, I'm not a big Tina Fey fan, but I enjoyed what was basically her standup routine about Playboy for its biting sense of humor. Similarly, the Willie character has never been my favorite, but I actually found this pretty funny here. Plus cross pollinating him with Woodrow and doing the "doo-doo pie song" was a fun way to work that character in without doing a whole sketch. And the "I have my degree right here" joke was dumb but totally made me crack up.
The "And on Our Way We Go" sketch seemed like a pretty generic "Tracy says weird stuff in a stuffy environment" sketch, but it kind of died on the vine after the Taran Killem reveal. Not a terrible joke or anything, but the rhythm of the sketch just broke off and never came back afterward.
The pretaped tango sketch was a fun, abusrdist subversion of the barfight dynamic with good production.
I also got a kick out of the "Where Jackie Chan?" sketch. It was a throwback to when all the sketches seemed to be talk shows. Classic 10-to-one sketch, full of enjoyable nonsequitor weirdness.
It took me about 15 seconds to realize that the riff on The Martian setup was an intro to an Astronaut Jones sketch, and it was a pleasant realization. There were about 5 seconds of actual new sketch, and they were nothing new or different than the originals, but I suppose it was a nice enough way to work the old favorite in without taxing Morgan too much.
Shout by RedouaneBlockedParent2015-10-18T15:56:10Z
I loved this SNL episode so much I want to take it behind a middle school and get it pregnant.