SNL: Saturday Night Live

By Jesse In that (minor but funny) cloud sketch, January Jones was cast as a strange girl that Sudeikis put up with because she’s hot; she also played the object of Wiig’s affections in that reporter sketch, making this the second-most reused trope of the night. These sketches basically built arou...

By Jesse At fourteen years old and eight feel tall, Taylor Swift became, I assume, one of the youngest and most towering celebrities to ever serve as both host and musical guest of Saturday Night Live. This should not be such rarified air; if this chick can do it, they should occasionally force other...

By Marisa Personally, I have no use for Lady Gaga. She doesn’t do my kind of music, and I find her costumes/productions to be nightmarish in a Guillermo del Toro horror movie way.  (You know, the kind with fantastic creatures.) But she’s been inspiring a lot of good stuff out there in TV land, so let’s tak...

By Jesse At least The Rock Obama and the alien sportscaster killed the first time; I can understand the temptation to go back, even if the writers didn’t rise to the challenge. But that was far from the worst of the episode’s many returns to the well. As if to assure us that any funny voice Kristen Wiig co...

By Jesse After Arrested Development and Veronica Mars and Pushing Daisies, there were a few months there where I wasn’t watching some wonderful show with the knowledge in the back of my head that I wouldn’t get as many episodes as I wanted. My TV watching was pretty much divided between the safe but n...

By Jesse But she’s a likable performer, and clearly game: witness her monologue, which consisted of Barrymore playing up her own valley-girl inflection so that cast members, impersonating real and fictional members of the Barrymore acting dynasty, could parody her. Barrymore didn’t have a lo...

By Jesse In fact, Reynolds did fine all night; he just didn’t stand out much. His only real showcase was a weirdly dopey monologue about the difference between superhero movies and romantic comedies, which made him sound vaguely clueless about both. Elsewhere, he disappeared into a couple of elab...

By Dan In the wake of the much ballyhooed Jenny Slate controversy, Kyle examined indecency, SNL, the FCC and drew one conclusion — who cares? (TiFaux) As the third season of Mad Men rolls on, BuzzSugar’s got the rundown on what other projects the talented ladies of the show have lined up. (BuzzSug...

By Kyle In the long history of SNL, there is a surprising lack of profanity. I personally remember Norm MacDonald following a mid-sentence burp with a mumbled “What the fuck was that?” and making a joke about it the next week. I don’t remember it being big news, but there weren’t a lot of blogs back the...

By Jesse Which brings us to the actual season premiere, after two thoroughly amusing Thursday go-rounds complete with semi-departed cast member Poehler, who’s well on her way to logging more post-departure screentime in her first year off than some cast members get while actually on the show. Y...

By Dan Amy Poehler may not have won anything last night for SNL (although Kristin Chenoweth’s win was completely adorable and the most rewarding win of the night), but you can catch more of her tonight on Inside the Actor’s Studio. While I would love any opportunity to see an hour-long interview w...

By Maggie 30 Rock Flight Of The Conchords The Office Alec Baldwin, 30 Rock Steve Carell, The Office Tina Fey, 30 Rock Tracy Morgan, 30 Rock Rainn Wilson, The Office Jack McBrayer, 30 Rock Kristen Wiig, Saturday Night Live Amy Poehler, Saturday Night Live Jane Krakowski, 30 Rock

By Maggie I’m too disheartened to look this up, but it’s probably been at least a year (perhaps two?) since I wrote a proper “Tonight on the Tifaux.” Now is not the time to get into a whole thing, but it’s clear from the underwhelming season coming up that the TV industry is taking its time recovering fro...

By Dan SNL recently announced the addition of two new female cast members — a move that may or may not prevent them from stretching Kristen Wiig until she’s flat as a pancake. One of those cast members is none other than Jenny Slate, half of the comedy duo Gabe and Jenny.

By Jesse Justin Timberlake has become sort of the Paul Simon of this decade on SNL — their go-to musician whose music would not necessarily imply an affinity for sketch comedy silliness. If future generations won’t quite assume he was an actual cast member, as many people do with Steve Martin, they...

By Jesse And yet for all of the clumsiness of the episode, there were highlights: a smartly employed gimmick sketch about underage drinking; a strange riff on old movies with the underutilized Casey Wilson doing some fine physical comedy running alongside a train with Olympian power; and the tr...

By Jesse The inclusivity extended to what has become a Rogen SNL signature: a sketch in which he plays Rowlf the Dog due to his vocal aptitude for it. Last time, he sang a song with the Swedish Chef (Andy Samberg; why does it kind of figure that he’d be good at this?), Zoot (Fred Armisen), Janice (at the t...

By Jesse With former longtime cast member Tracy Morgan back for his first hosting gig, Saturday Night Live took a turn for the retro. I don’t really mean the agreeable if somewhat uninspired revival of Morgan’s Brian Fellows and Astronaut Jones character, which come from his early-aughts heyday...

By Dan On Paul Rudd’s hosting gig on SNL earlier this season and in the new Andy Samberg movie (also with Rudd), they tried to reap a lot of laughs from putting men in intimate situations (SNL: nude men painting each other, messy kisses between male family members; movie: a misinformed gay dude ki...

By Jesse I also liked the episode-ending sketch where Johnson played a lighthouse keeper trying to get busy with Kristen Wiig. It had nothing to do with his persona or anything, but lighthouse gags usually make me laugh, as do old-timey sea captains and tools on jetskis.

By Jesse Odd, then, that the show seemed to run out of material at the end. I don’t mean that the sketches floundered, like so many of last week’s. In fact, several of my favorite sketches happened post-guests and post-Update: the return of Will Forte and Bill Hader’s old businessman characters, Bal...

By Jesse Unfortunately, yikes, the show went south after that; this was one of the weakest episodes of the season. Cooper was right in the middle of it, not quite as blandly smarmy as he is in most movies, but not displaying the skill you might expect of a Wet Hot American Summer alum, either.

By Jesse Like Martin’s current career, his latest SNL hosting gig was weirdly divided, though it didn’t appear to be his fault. Many moments harkened back to classic Martin/SNL bits of yore: his monologue, for example, which was, wow, an actual comedy monologue with actual jokes. That monologue,...

By Jesse It was around this point that the show began to turn a little. The Gitmo going-out-of-business ad was quick and funny, the Digital Short was amusing as always, and lord help me, but I enjoyed Gilly, Kristen Wiig’s latest blatant grab for a tic-heavy recurring character. The sketch worked fi...

By Jesse With Amy Poehler actually gone for good — no more opening introduction, no more Update credit — it was finally safe, even necessary, for the new SNL girls to step out. Michael Watkins logged four sketches, most notably playing straight woman to Kristen Wiig’s unhinged Kathie Lee Gifford,...

By Jesse OK, this time for real: Amy Poehler actually bid farewell to Saturday Night Live on the Hugh Laurie/Kanye West episode. As with her surprise appearance the week before, it was a relatively low-key affair wherein she turned up to do Weekend Update and a popular character reprisal. For the la...

By Jesse Was this episode of Saturday Night Live Amy Poehler’s last? It wasn’t promoted as such, but it seemed that way even without the unofficial inclusiveness that greeted the departures of Will Ferrell, Jimmy Fallon, and Maya Rudolph. SNL rarely hypes a particular episode as this or that cast...

By Jesse McGraw performed more or less as expected, often playing way too broad, like maybe he got psyched for the gig by watching Blue Collar Hee-Haw Hour or whatever that show was called, though some of his performances were reasonably straight-faced. But a couple of the low points still took me b...

By Jesse You may have heard from various news outlets last week that Saturday Night Live recently hired two new, female cast members. If you hadn’t, you might not have noticed during Saturday’s Paul Rudd-hosted episode, unless you were paying close attention to the opening credits: that was one o...

By John Dexter fan does a real life copycat murder Oprah’s guest appearance dragged down 30 Rock’s ratings The Cleveland Show debuts fall 2009 Best 3 days ever?: 1/19 Bush’s last day, 1/20 Barack’s first day, 1/21 3 hours of Lost Bill Cosby likes The Huxtable Effect People really hate Toyota’s Sa...

By Jesse And lo, the show found its footing again; everything post-Update pretty much worked (except David Cook; if Coldplay can get three songs, couldn’t this guy be debited down to one?). “Night School Musical” was terrific — Samberg even remembered to sing through his nose at one point, which a...

By Dan I can’t imagine any fewer than 90 percent of the people working on SNL are anything but flaming liberals — liberals who flame hotter and brighter than all of the joints Andy Samberg has ever smoked. Very few people on that set probably plan to vote for last week’s guest star.

By Jesse After a sort-of week off that saw no new episodes of Saturday Night Live but two installments of Saturday Night Live Weekend Update Thursday Christmas May Day, the SNL crew returned for a round of triumphant… coasting. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the lengthy opening sequence cutting from T...

By Jesse Andy Samberg has never fancied himself an impressionist — he’s appeared in several sketches flaunting his supposed total lack of facility in this department — but damned if he doesn’t do an absolutely spot-on Mark Wahlberg. Between the above sketch and another excellent digital short,...

By Jesse The debate sketch fared less well, not only, I imagine, because it had to be created within about twenty-four hours, but because the Obama-McCain debate itself lacked any easy satirical hooks: few goofy turns of phrase and little embarrassing body language to allow Darrell Hammond (Mc...

By Jesse A common charge against Saturday Night Live is that its sketches go on too long, and that could certainly be selectively leveled against the James Franco episode. A mildly amusing (if deeply obvious) riff about “Agent 420″ seemed to go on forever, with two separate, elaborate sets employ...

By Dan The weekend is here, so that means Saturday Night Live is coming. Which is a relief, kind of, because as genius as that Tina Fey/Amy Poehler opener was, it’s kind of played out at this point. One more “I can see Russia from my house” joke and I’m taking hostages.

By Jesse Episode Grade: C+ I know a lot of people react to Saturday Night Live with vague dismissiveness: oh, is that still on? I haven’t really watched it since [Tina Fey/Will Ferrell/Adam Sandler/Dana Carvey/Eddie Murphy/Bill Murray/Chevy Chase] left. So while you can find breathless, fawni...