[6.9/10] This one started out strong, but faltered quickly and even hit a couple of real nadirs there at some point. It’s a shame because despite some flubs, Octavia Spencer was a total delight, dripping with charm and commitment to the bit each time. The best thing to recommend her is the fact that she knocked the monologue out of the park without being (a.) a stand up comedian or (b.) turning it into an elaborate musical number or series of cameos. Her riffs on being constantly cast as a nurse in particular were a big laugh.
The cold open, which recast Jeff Sessions as Forrest Gump, was a nice way to address the news of the day sans Baldwin-as-Trump, finding a lot of great common ground to fuel the jokes. And having Spencer show up as her character from The Help was a little cheesy, but worked between the karmic fun of that famous pie and her winking “you don’t know me, I’m from another movie line.”
And the other really funny sketch of the night was completely apolitical. The Sticky Buns sketch had a classic comic setup with endlessly positive managers cheering on their absurdly incompetent employees in a training exercise. It’s the specificity of the details (all of the employees running with the “it’s Christmas!” conceit) and the consistent ridiculousness of the ways the employees messed up that kept this one humming.
Weekend Update also returned to being a strong point of the show after a couple of shaky outings. Jost & Che are back to their solid back-and-forth (Jost’s bit about his Irish family’s immigration punctuated with Che saying “at least they had a choice” was a real highlight) and even stuff like the U2/Pro-Bono joke was self-depricatingly terrible. Laura Parsons is usually a favorite of mine, but they may have tapped that well dry. But Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump were a winning segment. The conceit of Junior as cut from his dad’s prevaricating cloth and Eric as a childlike dolt who can’t help but blurt out the truth made for a great dynamic.
But after a while, the seams started to show. The pre-taped bits were a trio of solid premises with middling execution. “Youngblood” was probably the best of them, if only because it took the stuffing out of the “chess is a metaphor for life” bits in the likes of Luke Cage and The Wire and took it in an absurd direction, but it ran out of steam quickly. “TBD” was fine, and framing the need for a challenger to Trump from the right in terms of an inspirational movie is a solid enough tack, but SNL didn’t get anything out of it really. The same goes for “Girl at Bar,” which had the best premise – exploring how even “woke” guys can fall into typical skeevy behavior, but it exhausted its one joke pretty rapidly.
That’s true for a lot of sketches in this episode, where there’s a solid gag that the show would beat to death and not find any new direction for. Even the last sketch of the night, a gentle but amusing enough bit featuring Octavia Spencer as the CEO of Spencer’s Gifts, didn’t really have anywhere to go beyond that initial mild chuckle. The “Zoopolis” sketch was just an excuse to have the cast bust out a bunch of rapid-fire impressions, and while that’s entertaining enough (Melissa Villasenor’s insider impersonations of Kristen Wiig and Kate McKinnon in particular) there just wasn’t much to the sketch.
But hey, things could be worse. Chucky Chocolates was one of the worst SNL sketches I’ve ever seen, and I have seen some doozies. I’m sure they were going for a random offputting vibe, but nothing about it worked, and nothing about it was funny. It wasn’t edgy, it wasn’t anti-humor, it wasn’t anything but a poorly-thought out, undercooked sketch that represents a real low point for the show. And the “black people have names like pharmaceutical products” sketch was not only mildly offensive, but it had the same central joke as a sketch the show did in the early nineties. Yeesh.
Overall, this was an episode of SNL that had its moments and some great bits, but often squandered the talents of a superb host with subpar material.
(The random shots of McKinnon as Conway in her "kneeling" pose around the sets were also great, and my wife made fun of Father John Misty’s mustache.)
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2017-03-06T14:38:30Z
[6.9/10] This one started out strong, but faltered quickly and even hit a couple of real nadirs there at some point. It’s a shame because despite some flubs, Octavia Spencer was a total delight, dripping with charm and commitment to the bit each time. The best thing to recommend her is the fact that she knocked the monologue out of the park without being (a.) a stand up comedian or (b.) turning it into an elaborate musical number or series of cameos. Her riffs on being constantly cast as a nurse in particular were a big laugh.
The cold open, which recast Jeff Sessions as Forrest Gump, was a nice way to address the news of the day sans Baldwin-as-Trump, finding a lot of great common ground to fuel the jokes. And having Spencer show up as her character from The Help was a little cheesy, but worked between the karmic fun of that famous pie and her winking “you don’t know me, I’m from another movie line.”
And the other really funny sketch of the night was completely apolitical. The Sticky Buns sketch had a classic comic setup with endlessly positive managers cheering on their absurdly incompetent employees in a training exercise. It’s the specificity of the details (all of the employees running with the “it’s Christmas!” conceit) and the consistent ridiculousness of the ways the employees messed up that kept this one humming.
Weekend Update also returned to being a strong point of the show after a couple of shaky outings. Jost & Che are back to their solid back-and-forth (Jost’s bit about his Irish family’s immigration punctuated with Che saying “at least they had a choice” was a real highlight) and even stuff like the U2/Pro-Bono joke was self-depricatingly terrible. Laura Parsons is usually a favorite of mine, but they may have tapped that well dry. But Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump were a winning segment. The conceit of Junior as cut from his dad’s prevaricating cloth and Eric as a childlike dolt who can’t help but blurt out the truth made for a great dynamic.
But after a while, the seams started to show. The pre-taped bits were a trio of solid premises with middling execution. “Youngblood” was probably the best of them, if only because it took the stuffing out of the “chess is a metaphor for life” bits in the likes of Luke Cage and The Wire and took it in an absurd direction, but it ran out of steam quickly. “TBD” was fine, and framing the need for a challenger to Trump from the right in terms of an inspirational movie is a solid enough tack, but SNL didn’t get anything out of it really. The same goes for “Girl at Bar,” which had the best premise – exploring how even “woke” guys can fall into typical skeevy behavior, but it exhausted its one joke pretty rapidly.
That’s true for a lot of sketches in this episode, where there’s a solid gag that the show would beat to death and not find any new direction for. Even the last sketch of the night, a gentle but amusing enough bit featuring Octavia Spencer as the CEO of Spencer’s Gifts, didn’t really have anywhere to go beyond that initial mild chuckle. The “Zoopolis” sketch was just an excuse to have the cast bust out a bunch of rapid-fire impressions, and while that’s entertaining enough (Melissa Villasenor’s insider impersonations of Kristen Wiig and Kate McKinnon in particular) there just wasn’t much to the sketch.
But hey, things could be worse. Chucky Chocolates was one of the worst SNL sketches I’ve ever seen, and I have seen some doozies. I’m sure they were going for a random offputting vibe, but nothing about it worked, and nothing about it was funny. It wasn’t edgy, it wasn’t anti-humor, it wasn’t anything but a poorly-thought out, undercooked sketch that represents a real low point for the show. And the “black people have names like pharmaceutical products” sketch was not only mildly offensive, but it had the same central joke as a sketch the show did in the early nineties. Yeesh.
Overall, this was an episode of SNL that had its moments and some great bits, but often squandered the talents of a superb host with subpar material.
(The random shots of McKinnon as Conway in her "kneeling" pose around the sets were also great, and my wife made fun of Father John Misty’s mustache.)