Ryan Phillippe presided over a Saturday Night Live that found the actor gamely attempting to get laughs in a lot of gamey sketches.
The show signaled its intentions starting as early as the opening monologue, which featured Phillippe interacting with familiar characters such as Kristen Wiig’s Target store lady and Kenan Thompson’s “What Up With That?” host D’Andre Cole.
One of the best moments of the night occurred near the top of the show. The “ESPN Classic” sketches with Jason Sudeikis and Will Forte are currently among my favorite recurring features. Forte’s clueless Greg Stink (“I do not know what any of those words mean”) and Sudeikis’ silver-tongued Pete Twinkle are a terrific team, with Sudeikis always wringing fine vulgarity from a sponsor. This week, it was “Today’s Sponge Contraceptive Device.” Among the slogans I can print: “Put a baby blocker in your lady locker!” Congrats to Phillippe for getting the character-name Olivia Newton Cougar Mellencamp.
And an episode of “Hip Hop Kids” entitled “We Are Straight Up Trapped in a Bear Cave, Yo,” was a nice little children’s-show parody teaching valuable lessons such as, “You need to stop getting figurative and start getting literal.”
After these, however, SNL began its uneven descent into a mediocre night. A real commercial for the upcoming MacGruber movie, starring Forte as well as Phillippe, looked as though it might be funny if it can be sustained for feature length. And these days, SNL has trouble sustaining a premise for more than three or four minutes, as the “Teen Talk,” “I Got This!” game show, and “Mort Mort Feingold, Accountant For The Stars” sketches proved. (Although in that last one, Bobby Moynihan may have finally found his dream role: playing Susan Boyle. Not that there’s much of a future in that.)
Andy Samberg couldn’t quite make his Digital Short sustain its premise for its relatively brief length.
It was also odd that the late-in-the-show “Under-Undergound Rock Records” segment culminated in what, in other weeks, might have been its own Digital Short, with Phillippe and Bobby Moynihan as an Insane Clown Posse parody act.
The night’s oddest sketch involved Phillippe, Hader, Sudeikis, and Forte as four suburban guys sitting around drinking beers and admitting to doing terrible things that culminated in a rare thing on SNL: a surprise-twist ending, in which the men were revealed to be members of a sort of Tea Party-type organization, brandishing anti-Obama placards. Gee: suddenly-political and unfunny.
The week also featured Kristen Wiig-overload — she seemed to hover around most of the segments, few of them in major parts, leaving one to wonder once again, couldn’t Abby Elliott or Jenny Slate have handled a few of her non-trademark-character roles?
On a night when sex jokes ruled (child-abusing “Father Swim Coach Scoutmaster,” the “Shake Weight” commercial featuring women going “all porno with a gym weight”), host Phillippe came off like a nice guy stuck hosting during a week when SNL looked as though it was straining to fill out 90 minutes.
Music guest Ke$ha… well, her two performances played out like a cross between an idea-drained Lady Gaga and Andy Samberg doing music spoofs.
Did you enjoy SNL more than I did this week? If so, what struck you as funny?
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The Larry King opening was unwatchable. I turned it off midway through.
I agree. They could have done so much more with the Larry King sketch and, instead, once again, we’re treated to Kristen Wiig doing a completely unreal and unwatchable Bjork imitation. And did you notice in the monologue that both the the “D*ck in a Box” and “Wat Up With Dat” characters got great applause and no applause at all for the Target Lady? Lorne Michaels, now even your in-studio audience is letting you know they’re sick of Wiig. Pay attention please!
Wiig’s Target Lady character was the first one up – the audience didn’t know it was one part of the overall gag …sheesh…don’t need to be a screenwriter to figure that one out!
Wiig was in her Target Lady costume, so they should have recognized her. It didn’t matter that she was first. Target Lady is a recognizable character that has been on the show more often than both the the “D*ck in a Box” and “Wat Up With Dat” characters.
Never been a big fab of Wiig
I agree, that Larry King sketch was terrible, but I stuck around and watched most of the show. It was incredibly disappointing, not funny, and even boring. SNL used to be edgy, crazy, wild and fun. It is none of those things anymore. It CAN be but the focus needs to be changed from repetative characters and the quick easy “joke-mention” of whatever scandal is in the news to finding the outrageous in life and skewering that.
Ditto except I had recorded SNL so I fastforwarded through that god-awful skit.
The Shake Weight commercial was better than Ken is giving it credit for.
Yeah, that one was one of the few bits that was actually funny.
and the Mort Mort Feingold skit was also much better than Ken indicates. Ken must have other issues on his mind this week.
The Shake Weight commercial was hilarious! The girl in the pink shirt, she has to be in on it. Cracked me up.
SNL sucks now. It hasn’t been good for years. Why is it still on? The political stuff is the only good skits everything else is garbage.
What about last season? At the time, it got rave reviews. Probably one of the most consistent seasons in ages.
But SNL revisionism is a time honoured tradition. It always used to be better when someone else watched it. I do think this season has been weak…but the “hasn’t been good in ages” is tiring to hear.
“SNL sucks now” has been repeated endlessly, since the original cast left in 1980.
Even a broken clock is right two times a day. Yes, “SNL sucks now” has been repeated for thirty years, but it really does suck now – because the writing sucks. Troll the Internet to find good writers, and leave the shmucks who graduated from Harvard Lampoon alone!
Sorry, but I thought Wiig’s Bjork was the funniest part of the episode.
I thought it was hilarious too. My coworkers that don’t know who Bjork is didn’t think it was funny at all so maybe that’s why some people didn’t get it.
No kidding.
KEN TUCKER: re “a week when SNL looked as though it was straining to fill out 90 minutes.” SHOW ME A WEEK IN THE LAST 30 YEARS WHEN IT WASN’T STRAINING TO FILL 90 minutes.
This show has always needed 4 less cast members, a Latino cast member, and 30 less minutes, but at that time of night, what else’s NBC gonna put on?
“Shut that C**ts mouth before I F*ck Start her head” may be the only funny thing Ryan Phillipe ever said. ever. ANd then punched Sarah Silverman, which is what everyone wants to do….all the time.
I wish they’d make Ryan a flavor of the Duncan Hines brownie husband. I’d be sucking that caramel center out the right way.
Hannah, that was way funnier than anything on SNL!=…LOL!
ugh! Ryan USED to be attractive, 100 years ago before he screwed up his marriage to Reese Witherspoon. But I now see why it failed: he’s too in love with himself. His body looks “enhanced” and his acting is the real 90-lb. weakling! He was actually GROSS to watch. Add that Ke$ha crap to the mix, and it was a total waste. The only saving grace were Forte and Sudekis (as usual)
What are you talking about? He’s never looked better.
Badger …you need to get a new prescription.. he looks great.
I thought that Ryan looked great. I don’t ever remember him looking better.
Anyone notice how deep his voice is now, coinciding with the beefed up body? Can you say Steroids. That said. I thought it was one of the best of the season. The Hip Hop Kids sketch I thought was actually the closest thing to vintage SNL I have seen in a while.
Quit practicing on your brother.
One of the worst SNL shows in a long time. It was a waste of space on the DVR.
I caught the ICP parody and thought it was funny… but not as funny as the actual song.
I had high hopes for it once I got to watching it on the DVR. Too bad it seems like a stinker.
You know if Ken Tucker doesn’t like it then it must be truly horrible… he usually thinks SNL is good no matter how bad it is.
“Yo, you got served Zig Zag.” LOL! XD
This show was unwatchable. This cast is unwatchable. And did you really say “Congrats to Phillipe for getting the name Olivia Newton Cougar Mellencamp”? You are a total moron and have no business reviewing comedy.
Agreed!
okay maybe it wasnt the best episode htey have had, but at least they are trying. i thought the first 3 or 4 sketches were great, and ke$ha did a great job. no they arent as funny as they were 5 years ago but they are still making people laugh out there. i also think the cast is great. and Steve Higgins, at lease people are saying their opinion, dont criticize them for liking something. Do u professionally review comedy? even so, let people say what they want!
“ke$ha did a great job”
HAH
I actually laughed loudest at Ke$ha’s first performance, and it wasn’t supposed to be funny. The arbitrary patriotic costume and the horrible, repetitive choreography really did border on parody. Did she really look embarrassed, or did I just feel embarrassed for her?
I’m ashamed I sat through Kesha. I’ve never seen/heard her before and thought I’d be open-minded. I paid for that mistake twice now: Kesha and Justin Bieber? Back to back? Do they have ANY idea who actually watches this show regularly?
You guys clearly know nothing about Ke$ha. Those performances were exactly what she wanted them to be.
She was awful!
It’s pretty obvious he has not watched SNL before this year. A majority of these sketches were reoccurring but hadn’t been done in a really long time (the hip hop kids used to have Amy Poehler in it). I think SNL was relying on some really old ones which were never that good in the first place (such as the 4 suburban yet disturbing guys)
So someone’s a moron if they found something funny and you didn’t? That’s sound logic
Ke$ha’s performances were the funniest parts of the night.
“Did anybody stop tho think that maybe we’re the aliens?” Made us all laugh out loud unintentionally.
As bad as SNL has been lately, it’s effing Gone with the Wind compared to Kesha. My God, who buys that crap?!
Kesha was so far into ridiculous territory that she came out the other side. I actually found myself enjoying it in a “so bad it’s good” sort of way.
Which was completely her intention.
True Dat.
Was she trying to be a parody?
total agreement! really the only thing I laughed at was Ke$ha .. is she for real?
It’s kind of sad how badly she wants to be Lady Gaga, and how hard she fails at it. She seems to think that pretending to be drunk all the time in some way adds to any performance, and it looks like she hires middle school talent show participants to do her choreography.
Last night sorta reminded me of when Sandler,Spade and those guys use to be on there.Not much imagination and alot of bathroom humor.I’m not against bathroom humor but it can be overdone easily.
Kristen Wiig is on the show way too much but that’s been going on for a long time.It just didn’t start happening last night.
The fat blond chick has a voice that makes me mute her when she talks. They need to find some funny ladies ASAP
who are you talking about? i can’t come up with one fat woman who is on SNL.
Do you mean Abby Elliot? She is not fat, but her voice is annoying.
Yeah Abby. She not fat but there is something about her about her that makes her look bigger then what she is.
Her A-Jolie impression was decent…
Abby Elliot isn’t fat, nor is she blond. She’s been a redhead for quite awhile. She is also funny and should be used more.
Ryan is truly a gorgeous man- that body is incredible- and he seems intelligent and articulate and poised- but he could not save this show. I gave up during the kids trapped in a cave- usually I last at least until after the news. It was like the writers did not come in to work this week. At all.
“On a night when sex jokes ruled…”
In sharp contrast to Tina Fey’s appearance last week (think “Lady Business”), the night’s sketches seemed to come down particularly hard on women, with little to no awareness (of the sort Fey brings to her commentary) that this was taking place. A few “highlights:” women are paranoid and weak (the commercial for home security), women are pornstars (Shake Weight DVD), strong women are essentially fugly men (ESPN), women provide an alien social influence (i.e. bringing out the mom in the “I Got This” sketch). Add to this almost anything mentioned in the “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” sketch + a few of Seth’s comments in Weekend Update, and the fact that Sudeikis’s hilarious ad spots, while hilarious, continuously mock and undermine feminine products (and their female consumers), and you have a pretty serious trend. I have no problem with a little gender humour, but these jabs were so unoriginal and so unnecessary. The most generous portrayal of a female character on the night? Arguably Bjork in the opening sketch. That is, perhaps, concerning.
Second that. The tone was so completely different and jarring…not sure I liked it. While Tina’s SNL had some sweet moments (the whole sketch about liking your parents too much wasn’t that funny, but it was a cute idea) and some hilarious ones (brownie husband), this one was strange. SNL needs to get its act together, STAT. Ladies just being normal ladies can be funny, too.
You missed the point of the home security commercial, but otherwise, yeah, it seemed like a regression from last week, certainly.
The home security commercial aired before. It’s not new.
While I wouldn’t make any kind of argument that some of the bits you mentioned actually featured cutting social commentary and were even funny, I think you missed the point with a few of those.
The alarm commercial was satire. It was a satirical take on an actual commercial that plays up the “helpless female” angle. So in that way it was ironic: It made its point by exaggerating, by being a caricaturization of, the scare tactics of what is a possibly insulting commercial. (I mean, that commercial was a fraught comment on paternalistic attitudes: Fear all men, yet here I am, a man, showing you are ethos/credibility: all our operators are men in button-down shirts who will take care of you.)
It’s possible that you could make a similar argument about the Shake-Weight send-up (in this case it pokes fun at males who unnecessarily sexualize many things), although I’d admit that maybe the boy’s club at SNL was maybe trying to have it both ways there.
are/our
. . . yeeeesh . . .
I agree. But satire always walks a fine line between critiquing the matter at hand, and recreating it (while potentially re-emphasizing its original pretences). I guess what I’m saying is that SNL’s acknowledgment of these “paternalistic attitudes” came more than a shade too close to reinforcing them, in this and other sketches. It was a tone I couldn’t help but note throughout the entire show Saturday night.
Agreed. I think they’re forgetting the other half of the population watches, too, and are getting tired of the bashing trend. I’ve held onto the hopes that SLN will get better this season long enough; it’s turned into a bad frat party. There will be an extra hour and a half block on my DVR this weekend.
Pamela,
Were Sudeikis’s spots, which you desribed as hilarious ads, hilarious? (so asked the Redundancy Department of Repetition)
But more to your topical point, if you don’t like where SNL is going (i argue that it’s been there and progressed and regressed almost every season), don’t watch it. FOX offers a show at the same time as SNL, and i think the hostess will satisfy your tastes.
SNL hasn’t been funny since Dennis Miller left. We give them 5 minutes to be funny before flipping the channel. We haven’t made it past the 5 minute mark in years.
You are way out of touch. SNL wasn’t great last night, but the past decade has been among the funniest in the shows history. Kristen and the Lonely Island guys are geniuses.
SNL wasn’t at its best last night, but it people were saying it sucked years ago, and now we consider it classic. It still IS one of the funniest shows on television.
Who’s Dennis Miller? I only remember as far back as Jimmy Fallon, who I consider to be among the more talented guys to have ever been on SNL.
Dennis Miller??
While I agree that SNL is no longer funny… um, no.
Ah, the classic “SNL hasn’t been good since [my pet favorite cast member] left” argument.
I like it!
You’d be better off watching the last 15 minutes. Sometimes that’s where they hide the best stuff.
i totally agree. i was caught off guard by how much i enjoyed the insane clown posse spoof. i was cracking up!
Denis Miller hasn’t been funny since Dennis Miller left..
Dennis Miller is a comedian? No wonder he’s on Fox News.
I fell asleep at some point….
Hannah, I see what you did there.
I think this season the only episode that was great was the one with Taylor Swift on it. All of the others have stunk. There are funny people on that show….why are their talents being wasted?
I agree that the Taylor Swift show was one of the best of the season. But the Tina Fey one had some good moments too. Although I’m a Kristen Wiig fan, I also agree they are using her way too much. The sketches are just horrible or reused old ones with nothing new added this season. I think it’s time to find some new writers. Also time to use Abby Elliot more.
Probably a Wiig overload last night because she was hardly on when Tina was on.
and Kristen is truly fearless – she just does not always get decent material to work with…
abby elliot is not funny. they do use kristen a lot but with good reason. she is the only actual funny women on there. i liked casey wilson she was funny
Last night’s show was pretty bad. At some point I figured the writers were on some sort of drug, because most of the sketches made NO sense nor were they funny. I’m so sick of Wiig, and I feel most of the skits that come out are uninspired.
Oh, and Kesha? Horrible, terrible, crazy, and totally cannot sing.
so what, you still got to look at ryan which us enough for me
I don’t think Bob cares about looking at Ryan, nor I. I wanted some comedy.