[8.8/10] When Dave Chappelle hosted, I talked about how the stand-ups tend to be some of my favorite SNL hosts because they bring their own sensibilities to the program in a way that actors and other celebrities don’t always. As a fan of Louie and Louis C.K.’s stand up, it’s a treat to see the marriage of C.K.’s style and SNL’s whether that means getting bits of his stand-up or just off-the-wall, weird sketches that match his tone.
It also makes for a reliably good monologue! Giving Louie a mic and 5-7 minutes means you’re going to get some funny stuff, and whether it’s him turning a “why did the chicken cross the road” joke into a loony racial commentary, or a safe but funny bit about animals, or an amusing, self-deprecating examination of white privilege and class privilege through hectoring a hotel staff about laundry, Louie is 100% in his element up there, and it shows.
But there were also some sketches that were downright weird in a way that felt perfect for C.K.’s sensibilities. The sketch where a 53-year-old man hires a clown for his birthday had that combination of absurdity and awkward realism that were the trademark of Louie. By the same token, his long non-ad for “sectionals” had an Adult Swim vibe of random humor that kept leaning into the strangeness of the premise in delightful ways. Both were highlights. Even “Soda Shop” where Louie plays a 40 year old married man perving on a teenager in a 1950s soda fountain played by Cecily Strong gains strength from the contrast between the prosaic setting and goofy Bye Bye Birdie-esque problem at the center and the dark underbelly of the material. It’s all good stuff.
Even the sketches that felt more traditionally SNL -- standard scenario with one weird detail -- seemed like they had his fingerprints on them. The post-monologue sketch with Louie as a prosecutor who wins cases with his wonderful eyelashes didn’t really go anywhere with its one-joke premise, and kind of dragged on, but is at least veering into kind of odd territory. The same thing goes for the 10-to-one sketch, where C.K. and Kate McKinnon portrayed reenactors playing 1913 Polish tenement-dwellers. The sketch mostly gets by on the audience laughing at, and the pair corpsing over, Louie’s terrible attempt at a Polish accent, but there’s the germ of potent commentary in their slander of Italians as a dig against the romanticizing of the past.
The political humor was much more of a mixed bag. The opening sketch has a solid idea behind it -- Trump hurting the interests of his biggest supporters without losing any support, but it’s hamfisted stuff with the force of its blows muted on that account. The same thing goes for “Scott” -- the pretaped bit that poked fun at slacktivism, but in a predictable fashion without any real twists or novelty to the gags.
They’re both contrasted with the episode’s excellent satire of the tonedeaf qualities of the recent, controversial Pepsi ad. The sketch plays hide the ball a little bit, letting Beck Bennett’s face as he hears his friends’ and neighbors’ reactions to the ad sells the problems better than a more direct commentary ever could. That said, I can’t beat the drum for subtlety too loudly when the Bill O’Reilly sketch, which featured Alec Baldwin pulling double duty, wore its points on its sleve and yet was still very funny from the specificity of Baldwin’s (unexpectedly great) impression of O’Reilly and the sheer ridiculousness of the way he was avoiding the elephant in the room.
Weekend Update had a good outing, less because of the mini-stand-up bits that Jost and Che perform, but because they had some particularly good setup-punchline gags that really tickled my funny bone. It’s a totally apolitical gag, but Jost’s line about Gorsuch’s conformation making it even more awkward for Merrick Garland to once again tell his family about his “busy day at the Supreme Court” cracked me up. And Kate McKinnon as the sculptor who made Ronaldo’s wonky statue was inspired, with her various descriptions of her artistic achievement being consistently hilarious.
Overall, it was a very funny episode that had some trouble in the early going between the more obvious political material and a semi-dull eyelashes sketch, but found its footing quickly and then was off to the races.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2017-04-10T18:19:38Z
[8.8/10] When Dave Chappelle hosted, I talked about how the stand-ups tend to be some of my favorite SNL hosts because they bring their own sensibilities to the program in a way that actors and other celebrities don’t always. As a fan of Louie and Louis C.K.’s stand up, it’s a treat to see the marriage of C.K.’s style and SNL’s whether that means getting bits of his stand-up or just off-the-wall, weird sketches that match his tone.
It also makes for a reliably good monologue! Giving Louie a mic and 5-7 minutes means you’re going to get some funny stuff, and whether it’s him turning a “why did the chicken cross the road” joke into a loony racial commentary, or a safe but funny bit about animals, or an amusing, self-deprecating examination of white privilege and class privilege through hectoring a hotel staff about laundry, Louie is 100% in his element up there, and it shows.
But there were also some sketches that were downright weird in a way that felt perfect for C.K.’s sensibilities. The sketch where a 53-year-old man hires a clown for his birthday had that combination of absurdity and awkward realism that were the trademark of Louie. By the same token, his long non-ad for “sectionals” had an Adult Swim vibe of random humor that kept leaning into the strangeness of the premise in delightful ways. Both were highlights. Even “Soda Shop” where Louie plays a 40 year old married man perving on a teenager in a 1950s soda fountain played by Cecily Strong gains strength from the contrast between the prosaic setting and goofy Bye Bye Birdie-esque problem at the center and the dark underbelly of the material. It’s all good stuff.
Even the sketches that felt more traditionally SNL -- standard scenario with one weird detail -- seemed like they had his fingerprints on them. The post-monologue sketch with Louie as a prosecutor who wins cases with his wonderful eyelashes didn’t really go anywhere with its one-joke premise, and kind of dragged on, but is at least veering into kind of odd territory. The same thing goes for the 10-to-one sketch, where C.K. and Kate McKinnon portrayed reenactors playing 1913 Polish tenement-dwellers. The sketch mostly gets by on the audience laughing at, and the pair corpsing over, Louie’s terrible attempt at a Polish accent, but there’s the germ of potent commentary in their slander of Italians as a dig against the romanticizing of the past.
The political humor was much more of a mixed bag. The opening sketch has a solid idea behind it -- Trump hurting the interests of his biggest supporters without losing any support, but it’s hamfisted stuff with the force of its blows muted on that account. The same thing goes for “Scott” -- the pretaped bit that poked fun at slacktivism, but in a predictable fashion without any real twists or novelty to the gags.
They’re both contrasted with the episode’s excellent satire of the tonedeaf qualities of the recent, controversial Pepsi ad. The sketch plays hide the ball a little bit, letting Beck Bennett’s face as he hears his friends’ and neighbors’ reactions to the ad sells the problems better than a more direct commentary ever could. That said, I can’t beat the drum for subtlety too loudly when the Bill O’Reilly sketch, which featured Alec Baldwin pulling double duty, wore its points on its sleve and yet was still very funny from the specificity of Baldwin’s (unexpectedly great) impression of O’Reilly and the sheer ridiculousness of the way he was avoiding the elephant in the room.
Weekend Update had a good outing, less because of the mini-stand-up bits that Jost and Che perform, but because they had some particularly good setup-punchline gags that really tickled my funny bone. It’s a totally apolitical gag, but Jost’s line about Gorsuch’s conformation making it even more awkward for Merrick Garland to once again tell his family about his “busy day at the Supreme Court” cracked me up. And Kate McKinnon as the sculptor who made Ronaldo’s wonky statue was inspired, with her various descriptions of her artistic achievement being consistently hilarious.
Overall, it was a very funny episode that had some trouble in the early going between the more obvious political material and a semi-dull eyelashes sketch, but found its footing quickly and then was off to the races.