Seth Rogen is a funny man. He has been in some of my favorite recent comedy movies, so going into this episode I had high expectations. That’s right, the ever dangerous high expectations. They seemingly always end in disappointment.
I was pleasantly surprised this week. It certainly wasn’t the best episode of the season, but there were some good sketches, and more importantly there weren’t that many terrible sketches.
Let’s break it down….
Cold Open: A nice cold open this week. It was a clever idea that I thought was pretty funny. Armisen’s Obama impression seemed to be a little off, but the skit was funny enough for me to overlook it.
Monologue: I’m so glad they made Paul Blart jokes in the monologue, because I’ve been wondering about the existence of two mall cop movies released so close together.
The Fast and the Bi-Curious: Usually I rail against the cheap gay jokes, but this was based on a pretty clever play on words, so I have to give it some props.
Save the Funnies: It looks like SNL was trying to capitalize on the success of the “Save Broadway” skit from earlier in the season. It’s a shame that several of the jokes seemed to be directly lifted from that earlier sketch. It’s always great to see Samberg as Cathy, though, and the far side and politcal cartoon were pretty funny.
Vinny Vedecci: What can I say? I always find these Vinny Vedecci skits half funny and half stupid, and vaguely racist (guess what? Italians eating meatballs is not funny). This installment was no different. I thought the bearman jokes got pretty old pretty fast, but Bobby Moynihan was pretty funny as the little kid.
Digital Short: I just don’t get these most of the time. Random/bizarre humor has never been my favorite, but I know a lot of people love it. If you’re one of those people, I’m guessing you loved this too. It went a little too far for my taste.
Phone Voices: This was sort of a stupid skit, but the highlight was definitely Hader doing the Gizmo voice.
Musical Guest: Phoenix: I think it’s really cool that SNL has morphed from a venue for huge artists to a showcase for lesser known and indie bands. I suppose they’ve always mixed it up a bit (including this year), but it seems like there have been a lot of indie bands this year.
Weekend Update: That was quite the tirade about Obama and the Queen. Nice job, Seth. The Blagojevich bit fell a bit flat for me; I think his story has played itself out. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen Jean K Jean. I think we can go longer until the next time. The Madonna bit made up for any of the other bits, though. It was so funny, seeing “Madonna” and “Jolie” go at it over the “freakiest” exotic baby. It was spot on.
Office Mistake: This was a silly, and ultimately very funny little sketch. It was all about reaction shots, and they were all gold.
Milestone High: Ugh, this was not funny. Not funny at all. Pretty much the only stinker of the night though.
Honky Tonk: Did anyone else have trouble understanding the lyrics of the crazy honky tonk songs in this sketch? I think that’s where most of the humor was and I could only make out about half of them. Or maybe this just wasn’t a funny skit at all.
Muppets Hit and Run: Wow, those costumes are… awesome. They were probably the highlight of the odd skit.
The digital short is from The Lonely Island’s album Incredibad. In fact a few of the digital shorts are from it. You should check it out, it’s pretty funny.
Awesome episode – best of the season for me so far. I haven’t laughed at almost every skit of SNL for such a long time and what made this great was me never needing to fast forward.
Problem with Honky Tonk was the total repeat of the Jonah Hill episode of this. Honestly what’s up with that? Simply re-cycling a whole skit? Twice? (Save the funnies – even though that one was funny because of the “Peanuts” part). Jonah Hill laughed through the whole thing on his episode that’s what made it funny back then. This time this was just filler. But at least it wasn’t crappy boring.
Phoenix was great – it’s really nice to see that after Jonas Brothers they actually had some music talent on the show. And it had this live feel to it. Real live performance not like that Coldplay sh*t.
My two fav skits of the night: Digital Short and Fast and Bi-Curious.
Seth Rogen is a funny man. He has been in some of my favorite recent comedy movies, so going into this episode I had high expectations. That’s right, the ever dangerous high expectations. They seemingly always end in disappointment.
The digital short is from The Lonely Island’s album Incredibad. In fact a few of the digital shorts are from it. You should check it out, it’s pretty funny.
Awesome episode – best of the season for me so far. I haven’t laughed at almost every skit of SNL for such a long time and what made this great was me never needing to fast forward.
Problem with Honky Tonk was the total repeat of the Jonah Hill episode of this. Honestly what’s up with that? Simply re-cycling a whole skit? Twice? (Save the funnies – even though that one was funny because of the “Peanuts” part). Jonah Hill laughed through the whole thing on his episode that’s what made it funny back then. This time this was just filler. But at least it wasn’t crappy boring.
Phoenix was great – it’s really nice to see that after Jonas Brothers they actually had some music talent on the show. And it had this live feel to it. Real live performance not like that Coldplay sh*t.
My two fav skits of the night: Digital Short and Fast and Bi-Curious.
Great Show.