January 20, 2007 – Jeremy Piven / AFI (S32 E11)

Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars

HARDBALL WITH CHRIS MATTHEWS
Obama-fearing Hillary Clinton (AMP) backtracks on Iraq stance

— This ends up being SNL’s final Hardball sketch.
— The Hardball sketch from earlier this season shook up the usual Hardball format, but tonight’s Hardball sketch PARTICULARLY shakes up the format. It’s 100% different tonight, right down to Darrell playing Chris Matthews in a very non-comedic, straightforward way (which makes his typical Chris Matthews delivery come off out of place).
— That goofy laugh from Amy’s Hillary Clinton is apparently an attempt from Amy to make her Hillary impression her own.
— Some funny lines, but I’m not caring too much for the sluggish pacing of this. This feels like it’s going on FOREVER. I seem to be in the minority in not caring much for this cold opening, as I remember a lot of my fellow reviewers back in 2007 gave this a positive review. I guess I’m just not a fan of SNL starting episodes with dull, slow-paced, long-winded, talky political cold openings (though there are some exceptions, I guess). How is that supposed to get me eager for the episode we’re about to see?
— A pretty good laugh from Amy’s Hillary smugly laughing off a criticism while saying “Heavens to Murgatroyd!”
— An okay sudden turn with Amy-as-Hillary’s angry, bleeped-filled rant, but I dunno, even THAT feels a little too forced and out of place to me.
STARS: **½

MONOLOGUE
host uses intimate table for two to connect with a female audience member

— Ooh, I like this out-of-the ordinary monologue premise of “host attempts an intimate connection with a random audience member”. However, I’m not sure Jeremy Piven is the right person to pull this off. Maybe it’s because I’ve always found something about him kinda off-putting, even long before he got Me Too-ed.
— Hmm, turns out Jeremy actually isn’t bad at all in this. He’s handling this expertly, and his offbeat dialogue to the audience member (a plant, I’m sure) is consistently making me laugh. Lots of fun stuff here.
STARS: ****

URIGRO
Urigro ensures that (JAS)’s urination will be forceful & voluminous

— A juvenile premise, but Jason is absolutely perfect for this, and this is being executed really well.
— I love Jason’s ending line, “This one’s a two-flusher.”
STARS: ****

NFL ON CBS
ill boy Danny Hoover’s (ANS) catchphrase irks NFL broadcasters in booth

— An okay execution of a fairly simplistic premise. This is the kind of thing that Andy is typically good at making work.
— Jeremy’s mean-spirited, angry rant complaining about Andy’s “terminal illness” being ADD is pretty funny.
— Good reveal of Andy’s ADD actually standing for Automatic Death Disease.
STARS: ***

TV FUNHOUSE
“Fun With Real Audio And Stuff” by RBS- cartoon chipmunks will rule in 2007

— Hmm, a bit of a change, with “Fun with Real Audio and Stuff”.
— Not too crazy about this chipmunk premise, but there are some laughs from the initial scene of Chipmunk President Bush.
— Okay, the chipmunk version of The Sopranos is actually really funny.
— Meh, not only is the farting underwater bit not working for me, but it’s going on WAAAYYY too long.
— This is the second consecutive episode where SNL has used that same stock footage of a squirrel water-skiing.
STARS: **

THE FIRST PERSON IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD TO DANCE
caveman (JAS) discovers dancing

— I remember when this originally aired, some online SNL fans, including myself, had a hard time telling which performer that was playing the dancing caveman in this sketch. I was only able to eventually figure out the performer was Jason because I noticed the performer resembled Dane Cook under those facial caveman prosthetics, and Jason typically already has a somewhat strong facial resemblance to Dane Cook (which some online SNL fans had pointed out when Dane hosted earlier this same season).
— Such a fun, random, and creative concept, and Jason is a blast in his discovery of dancing.
— Great escalation to the gag, with Jason now randomly pulling out glow sticks.
— The fact that there’s no dialogue at all in this sketch (not counting Don Pardo’s voice-over intro and outtro) is adding to its unique feel.
STARS: ****½

MACGRUBER
MacGruber’s (WLF) escape plan requires JoJo (host) to handle a dog turd

— Ladies and gentlemen, we have a major recurring character debut!
— Incredible theme song, sung by Will himself.
— Pretty funny line from Maya about how she can’t pick up the dog turd because she’s keeping count of how many seconds they have left before the bomb explodes.
— Amusing in hindsight to see how simple this first MacGruber short comes off compared to the concepts of the later MacGruber shorts. Still a very solid debut in its own right, though.
STARS: ****

TWO A-HOLES AT AN ADOPTION AGENCY
at an adoption agency, (host) deems A-Holes unworthy of becoming parents

— Another solid setting for these solid characters.
— Hilarious bit with the A-Holes bombarding Jeremy with non-stop questions during his phone conversation. I especially love Jason randomly asking “What’s your vertical? Can you get rim?”
— A very good laugh from the reveal that the A-Holes want their baby to look like Baby Gonzo.
— What the holy fuck happened at the end of this sketch? Did something go wrong? Why was there such a long, awkward pause, with none of the characters doing anything while just standing around and looking at each other, before the screen cut to the “Two A-Holes at an Adoption Agency” title screen? Did someone forget a line? Was the ending of this sketch re-written at the last minute, but Jeremy refused to read the cue cards, and thus, wasn’t aware of the last-minute change? Was the sketch scripted to end awkwardly like this? I WANT ANSWERS, DAMMIT! 😉
STARS: **** (despite that baffling ending)

MACGRUBER
JoJo refuses to contribute pubic hair to unlikely escape plan

— Will, after Jeremy refuses to cooperate when asked to find pubic hair: “Look, I would use my own, but I’m a shaver!”
— Somebody getting cut-off mid-sentence by a hard cut to an explosion never fails to crack me up each time it happens in these MacGruber shorts.
STARS: ****

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Love Like Winter”

WEEKEND UPDATE
Rich Little (DAH) will use impressions to embarrass George W. Bush

incredulous SEM & AMP say “Really!?!” to Michael Vick’s bonehead pot move

— Seth has been doing quite a number of controversial Islamic jokes lately.
— Darrell once again playing his earlier-era counterpart, Rich Little.
— Pretty fun to see Darrell doing vocal impressions of celebrities who we’ve never seen him actually play on SNL before (Ronald Reagan, Pee Wee Herman, etc.), and his topical jokes are amusing me.
— Meh, I could do without the turn in Darrell-as-Rich-Little’s Johnny Carson bit, with Amy poorly doing an Ed McMahon voice and laugh. It also reminds me of Michael McKean, as Robert Shapiro, doing a bad McMahon in that season 20 sketch with Dana Carvey as Johnny Carson cross-examining at the O.J. Simpson trial.
— Seth bitterly exclaiming “MOM!!” at the end of his joke about video games satisfying deep psychological needs and improving the players’ well-being feels like a precursor to a running joke that future Update anchor Colin Jost would occasionally do, only his punchline has him saying “Dad” instead of “Mom”. I prefer Jost’s version. Seth exaggerated his facial expression way too much during his “MOM!!” punchline tonight, making it come off corny and try-too-hard. Jost, on the other hand, always sells his “Dad” punchlines perfectly with a great deadpan, almost-sullen facial expression.
— The debut of Seth and Amy’s “Really” segment.
— Funny how the controversial marijuana-related Michael Vick incident that tonight’s “Really” is focusing on comes off very tame in hindsight compared to the dog-fighting controversy Vick would get into and become forever infamous for just later this same year (2007).
— Seth and Amy are on fire during this “Really” segment, and they’re making plenty of very funny and biting points. IIRC, some of the later editions of “Really” would be pretty tepid, tame, and flavorless, but tonight’s debut is killer.
— Meh, I’m kinda lukewarm on how Seth ended tonight’s otherwise-flawless “Really” edition with a corny “I know you’re a running quarterback, but throw your weed away!” That corny pun itself deserves a “Really?!?” reaction. (I’ve been using the word “corny” to describe Seth an awful lot in this review, which I feel bad about, because I typically like him as an anchorperson in these early years of his Update tenure. Amy is usually the far-worse offender in this Update era when it comes to cringeworthy corniness.)
— Ha, the running gag of SNL writer John Lutz being shown in a comical Update photo continues! (the fourth-to-last above screencap for this Update)
STARS: ***½

BLIZZARD MAN
Common [real] doesn’t want to share a stage with dweeby Blizzard Man

— A huge audio gaffe right out of the gate, as all of the dialogue is almost completely inaudible in the first 15 seconds of this sketch.
— Oh, apparently, Kenan Thompson is a cast member this season. He’s been appearing so little lately that I’ve honestly been starting to forget he’s in the cast. And why does it feel like most of his only appearances lately have been as a DJ?
— No audience reaction to Common? Maybe he wasn’t all that big yet in 2007. I recall an online SNL fan back at this time in ’07 having a theory that the reason for the audience’s non-reaction to Common’s cameo is because he facially resembles the then-recently-fired-from-SNL Finesse Mitchell so much that the audience may have mistakenly though he was Finesse. Meh, I personally think that theory’s a bit of a stretch, even if I can see a facial resemblance between Common and Finesse. Plus, let’s be honest: audiences probably already forgot what Finesse looks like even when he was still on the show.
— I love the extremely early 90s-looking 8-ball jacket Andy’s Blizzard Man enters in.
— I like the change of scenery for this Blizzard Man sketch, taking this character out of the recording studio. Unfortunately, SNL would end up going back to the recording studio setting for all of this character’s subsequent appearances.
— Hmm, even with the change of scenery, this sketch is still basically using the same script from the first installment of this sketch. It’s still funny, but I prefer the first one far more. If you’re going to make this sketch recurring, you need to change the script up more. (Unfortunately, as we now know, SNL would end up NEVER doing that, and they would instead just keep re-writing the same script in every single one of Blizzard Man’s subsequent appearances, right down to lazily having Kenan play the exact same record producer character every single time who gets blindsided by how bad Blizzard Man’s raps are, as if Kenan’s character hadn’t ALREADY been blindsided by how bad Blizzard Man’s raps were in previous installments.)
— There’s Kenan delivering what today is recognized as a Kenan Thompson trademark: him yelling a very stern “NO!” in reaction to something.
— Common’s delivery is coming off slow-paced and stiff in this sketch.
— I love Blizzard Man’s random Humpty Dance reference.
— The ending came off as a knock-off of the weak ending from that season 29 sketch with Colin Firth doing a flamboyant, lispy, gay-sounding accent when trying to sound American in a movie he’s doing.
STARS: ***

MACGRUBER
forget the escape plan, JoJo won’t touch a bucket of bum sperm

— Another case of “Early Installment Weirdness” regarding tonight’s inaugural MacGruber shorts: we don’t get new lyrics in the theme song of each MacGruber installment tonight like we do in subsequent SNL episodes that contain a MacGruber runner. Tonight, each MacGruber installment just has an increasingly shortened version of the same initial MacGruber theme song.
— It’s strangely hilarious how each MacGruber short has MacGruber and his friends still alive and completely unaffected by the explosion they endured at the end of their previous appearance, and also has them locked in YET ANOTHER control room that looks the exact same as the last control room they were locked in. I love that.
— Wow, this has got to be the shortest MacGruber short ever. I like how simple this was, though. It’s surprising brevity was part of what made it so funny.
— Surprisingly, these pre-taped MacGruber shorts are Maya’s ONLY appearances all night. She’s nowhere to be seen in any of this episode’s live segments.
STARS: ****

CRYSTAL FALLS TOWN COUNCIL
pixie (AMP) tries to stop shopping mall slated for Unicorn Forest site

— Jesus Christ, Bill is just NOW making his first appearance of the night? And in just a straight man role? (*sigh*) Man, SNL’s poor utilization of Bill in his early seasons hurts to watch. I can’t wait until we reach the point of Bill’s tenure where SNL uses him much more often and embraces him as an essential utility player.
— I love Jason’s character. Even the little character detail of him having a mustache is a solid touch.
— I really like how this oddball sketch feels like a spiritual successor to the delightfully-oddball Magic Fish Town Meeting sketch from the season 18 Luke Perry episode. Tonight’s sketch isn’t quite as good, but it’s still very solid.
— A fun use of most of this cast as an ensemble, with each performer getting their turn in the spotlight, one-by-one.
— I wanted to like that random ending with a Will Forte-voiced talking unicorn more than I did.
STARS: ****

NURSE NANCY
Scott Garbaciak (ANS) plays all roles in fatsuit flick

— A pretty funny and accurate spoof of comedy movies with an actor playing multiple characters, including a fatsuit character.
STARS: ***

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Miss Murder”

— Apparently, the audio issues from the beginning of the Blizzard Man sketch have returned, as AFI’s lead singer cannot be heard AT ALL at the beginning of this performance.
— Okay, the lead singer’s microphone has now finally gotten turned on.
— I think I spoke too soon, because even after the lead singer’s mic got turned on, the volume of it keeps going up and down all throughout this performance, making at least 50% of his singing barely audible. Yikes.
— I recall an online SNL fan back at this time in 2007, who was clearly not a fan of AFI’s music, saying SNL may have been doing us a favor with these audio gaffes during this musical performance.

LANSFORD BROTHERS & ASSOCIATES: HANGMEN-AT-LAW
hangmen-at-law Lansford Brothers (WLF) & (BIH) won’t botch an execution

— A fairly funny concept, and I absolutely LOVE this Forte/Hader pairing, an SNL duo that we deserved to see paired together much more often than we end up seeing in this SNL era. The only subsequent Forte/Hader pairings after tonight’s episode that I can think of off the top of my head are the “Fartface” sketches (the first of which I recall being a notorious and very poorly-received sketch, but is a huge guilty pleasure of mine, so much so, that I can quote pretty much that entire sketch by heart), and a suicide prevention sketch where Paul Rudd is a man about to jump off the ledge of a building. All sketches feature very fun chemistry between Will and Bill.
— Several funny lines from Bill throughout this.
— Yet another fun and hilarious performance from Jason tonight, this time as “Sammy Han-gar”. Jason has been killing it in tonight’s episode. If I chose an MVP for each episode in my reviews (please don’t ask me to start doing that), Jason would easily get my pick for this episode.
— For a host, Jeremy Piven seems to be absent from an unusual amount of segments tonight, though he was in all three of the MacGruber shorts. It also feels like in all the live sketches he’s appeared in, he’s played nothing but forgettable straight man roles, which is particularly strange to me after he proved his comedy chops in a monologue that a lot of hosts wouldn’t have been able to pull off.
STARS: ***

IN MEMORIAM
a photo of camerman Michael DiBari marks his passing

GOODNIGHTS

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IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A mostly good episode. A lot of four-star ratings from me throughout this review, though that’s partly because I rated each of the three MacGruber shorts separately, which is really going to make this review’s rating average make this episode seem better than it is. (I guess we should get used to that for episodes I review that have multiple MacGruber shorts.) Overall, not much to complain about in this episode, and a lot of really good stuff.

MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS

HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Jake Gyllenhaal)
a step up

My full set of screencaps for this episode is here

TOMORROW
Drew Barrymore becomes a five-timer