Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
CHINA PRESS CONFERENCE
creditor Hu Jintao (BIH) preps to be shafted by USA & Barack Obama (FRA)
— OH NO. Why are they doing a reprise of this fairly unbearable cold opening from the preceding season’s Joseph Gordon-Levitt episode?
— Bill takes over the Hu Jintao role that Will Forte played in the aforementioned previous installment of this cold opening.
— I see Bill’s ability to make his fake Italian gibberish in those Vinny Vedecci sketches sound real has not carried over into his fake Chinese gibberish in this cold opening. His idea of sounding like he’s speaking in Chinese is to LITERALLY just say “kaow kaow kaow kaow” the entire time. Ridiculous. I rarely, if ever, criticize Bill Hader, but oof, this is definitely not one of his shining moments.
— Wait, are you fucking kidding me?!? They’re LITERALLY doing all of the exact same unfunny things from the previous installment of this cold opening, right down to Nasim’s “WHEN SOMEONE IS DOING SEX TO ME!!!” yells right before Bill suggestively bends over towards Fred’s Obama. How the hell do you make that into a recurring sketch? Such laziness. Even calling this cold opening a cheap rewrite would be too generous, because if I didn’t know any better, I’d swear this cold opening is LITERALLY (sorry for overusing that word in this review) using the exact same script from the previous installment of this, with absolutely no changes. Sure feels like it.
— (*sigh*) It feels like I’ve been watching this cold opening for 10 fucking minutes! This is endless and INSUFFERABLE.
— Oh, come the fuck on. Now Bill’s going one step further than Will Forte did in the previous installment of this, by pulling his pants down when bending over during one of the way-too-many “WHEN SOMEONE IS DOING SEX TO ME!!!” parts. This sketch’s desperation to get laughs is so pathetic.
— Overall, my god, did I hate this. One of the worst cold openings I have ever reviewed in this project of mine.
STARS: *
MONOLOGUE
host & tabloidites Dina Lohan (KRW) & Ke$ha (ABE) sing variant of “Class”
— Is it just me, or is Scarlett Johansson’s voice higher-pitched and smoother here than usual? Or maybe I’m just used to her deeper, huskier voice from more recent years. Are cigarettes to blame for her voice getting deeper and huskier over the course of just a few years?
— I like the fake-out with Scarlett saying “The movie Due Date opened last week”, which receives the usual audience applause whenever a host namedrops a movie or TV show of theirs, only for Scarlett to then say “I’m not in it, but I’m excited about it.” They’ve done a similar joke with some other hosts in their monologues, but it always gets me, and Scarlett’s delivery of the joke was good.
— (*sigh*) Another musical monologue this season? We’re only six episodes into this season, and this is already the THIRD musical monologue. After how extremely salty this episode’s cold opening made me, this isn’t the type of monologue I need to lighten my mood.
— Come to think of it, all three of Scarlett’s monologues up to this point of SNL’s run have been musical, and I believe her next monologue after this (from her 2015 hosting stint) is yet another musical one.
— Abby’s Ke$ha impression isn’t working for me at all. Doesn’t sound anything like Ke$ha. Surprising, given what a good impressionist Abby usually is.
— Overall, a typical meh musical monologue.
STARS: **
MTV: MATERNITY TELEVISION
slate of natal programs indicates MTV now stands for maternity television
— An okay concept with a preview of pregnancy-related MTV shows.
— Kinda interesting seeing Scarlett in the My Super Sweet 16 scene, given the fact that she previously starred in a spoof of that show in her season 31 episode.
— Jay’s Nick Cannon impression is funny.
— The comically brief and simplistic Cribs scene with Vanessa was hilarious.
— The usual fun appearance from Bobby’s Snooki.
STARS: ***
THE MILLIONAIRE MATCHMAKER
Patti Stanger (host) pairs a mousy nerd (VAB)
— I don’t think I’ve ever heard Vanessa use that high-pitched froggy voice in any other sketch during her entire 7-year SNL tenure. She almost sounds like a Kristen Wiig character here.
— Solid performance from Scarlett, even if she can do this kind of brash New Yorker role in her sleep (she seems to play a brash New Yorker at least once in EVERY hosting stint of hers, though I’ve yet to see her most recent hosting stint from season 45, and thus, I don’t know if she does any brash New Yorker roles in that one).
— Nothing else to say about this overall sketch, but it was okay.
STARS: ***
THE MANUEL ORTIZ SHOW
Latin flair punctuates a paternity controversy
— Ohhhhh, god.
— I’m currently almost two minutes into this, and as you can imagine, I am completely stone-faced.
— Bill finally gave me my first laugh of this sketch, with his delivery of “So this is whyyyyyyyy!”, along with his frozen open-mouthed facial expression right after that line.
— Ooh, I like Nasim’s delivery here. Her energetic, fiery delivery feels almost out of place in this tepid, by-the-numbers sketch.
STARS: *½
UNSTOPPABLE
Denzel Washington (JAP) & Chris Pine (TAK) have training day
— Great to see another showcase for Jay’s spot-on and fun Denzel Washington impression. I also love this pairing of him and fellow newbie Taran.
— A great smug smirk on Taran-as-Chris-Pine’s face after his put-down to Jay’s Denzel just now: “Where’d you learn trains, old man – from inventing them???”
— The “BOOM!” that Jay’s Denzel suddenly yells right before the train crash was hilarious.
— Not sure the ending with the train crashing into the Chrysler Building worked for me, but it didn’t taint the quality of this short for me.
STARS: ****
HOLLYWOOD DISH
host’s answers are manipulated during her interview with Hollywood Dish
— Another recurring sketch tonight that I never cared for. These Hollywood Dish sketches are just an annoying Wiig/Hader mugfest. (Yeesh, that’s two times in this episode review that I’ve had something negative to say about Bill Hader, one of my absolute favorite cast members of all time.) Thankfully, this ends up being the final installment of this sketch.
— As usual in this recurring sketch, the only laugh I’ve gotten in tonight’s installment so far is from when Kristen and Bill make their interviewee say or do something intense and exaggerated that makes them look insane.
— In this installment, during the usual part of these sketches where Bill spits/throws food all over Kristen during one of his shocked reaction shots, both Kristen and (especially) Bill break. Bill usually always breaks during that part in the dress rehearsal version of these sketches, some of which SNL has replaced the live version of with in reruns.
STARS: **
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “We Used To Wait”
WEEKEND UPDATE
reconciled George W. Bush (JAS) & Kanye West (JAP) now like hanging out
even before the fire, Carnival Cruise passenger (VAB) was very aggrieved
— Jason’s George W. Bush impression makes its first appearance in over two years, and this ends up being its final appearance. Feels odd seeing him on Weekend Update for a change.
— A pretty funny and solid Kanye West impression from Jay (though I kinda prefer current cast member Chris Redd’s Kanye impression). Jay’s been having a good night, with quite a lot of his impressions being showcased.
— The basic concept of Vanessa and Fred’s commentary as well as their characters is strangely reminiscent of a (very forgettable) Update commentary that Rachel Dratch and Chris Kattan did together in the season 28 Robert DeNiro episode, though I guess there’s enough differences between both versions.
— Vanessa is very good here as a ranting old Jewish(?) lady.
— One BIG difference between the aforementioned Dratch/Kattan commentary and this Bayer/Armisen commentary is that this has a much better punchline, with Fred responding to Seth’s “You let her [Vanessa] sleep for three days?” question by saying a deadpan “Wouldn’t you?” The punchline of the Dratch/Kattan commentary, on the other hand, was a lame, lazy, and cheap vomiting gag.
STARS: ***
ST. KAT’S MIDDLE
(KET)’s broken knee outmatches fellow teens’ positive vibes
— UH-OH. Here’s a very notorious sketch that this episode is probably most remembered for, and is a sketch that I and certain other people have always absolutely despised.
— Holy hell. Yep, it turns out this sketch is just as unbelievably horrible and one-joke as I had remembered, and is bringing out Kenan’s worst Nickelodeon-level hammy tendencies, this time complete with EXTREME FACIAL CLOSE-UPS.
— Thanks to how germophobic our current COVID pandemic has made me, I now can’t help but kinda wince seeing Kenan constantly pressing his face (including the side of his mouth) against that dirty-ass floor throughout this sketch.
— When party music was supposed to play when Taran turned on the radio one of the times Kenan’s character was being forced out of his wheelchair, they accidentally played the doom-and-gloom dramatic music that’s supposed to play during Kenan’s various face-on-the-floor rants, before quickly switching it to the party music. That audio gaffe is sadly more amusing to me than the intended comedy of this sketch.
— This…this…just…how does a sketch like this make it on the air?!? Was the writer(s) of this sketch just dicking around and intentionally wrote a bad piece, just as a goof to see if it would somehow make it past dress rehearsal? That’s the only explanation I can think of for how this sketch came to be. I’d sure hate to think the writer(s) penned this thinking it was legitimately good.
— I can actually understand why some people would find an enjoyable, guilty pleasure, “So bad, it’s good” quality to this sketch. If you’re one of those people, more power to you. I wish I could have the same “So bad, it’s good” viewpoint, but nope. No dice. This sketch just ain’t for me AT ALL.
— When this originally aired, I remember thinking it felt very much like a typical disastrous sketch from season 20, and I pictured Chris Farley in Kenan’s role, and imagined that the extreme close-ups of Farley with his face pressed against the floor would’ve had him doing his badly-overused-in-season-20 screaming shtick, with him yelling his season 20 catchphrases like “SON OF A BITCH!”, “SHUT YER PIEHOLE!”, and calling an unhappy-looking Janeane Garofalo-played character a stupid whore (the latter complete with misguided wild laughter and applause from the audience), instead of the dialogue that Kenan’s yelling here (“GO AWAY!”, “LEAVE ME BE!”, “YOU DON’T LISTEN!”, etc.). As strange as what I’m about to say may sound, I find it more fun to imagine this sketch as a horrible season 20 sketch than I find it to watch the actual season 36 version of the sketch. Very reminiscent of how, when I reviewed the awful Big Wigs sketch from the season 32 Jaime Pressly episode, I had far more fun imagining it as a bad season 6 sketch and theorizing which season 6 cast member would’ve played which role.
— Even the minor fact that, when the audience starts applauding as the sketch ends, Kenan can be seen IMMEDIATELY dropping character, getting up from the floor, and walking off the set (while having a look on his face that almost suggests he’s thinking “Well…THAT happened”), instead of waiting for the camera to fade to black, just adds to the “disastrous sketch” atmosphere of this, as well as the unprofessional “season 20” vibe. Kinda reminds me of how Kenan would later react at the very end of another sketch that I’ve seen some people consider disastrous: a sketch from the season 40 Dakota Johnson episode in which Kenan plays a surgeon dressed as Worf from Star Trek. (I personally don’t have any real opinion of that sketch, mostly because I remember very little of it, but we’ll see how I’ll react to it when I eventually review it.) When that sketch fades to black at the end as the audience is applauding, Kenan, apparently thinking his mic was turned off, can be heard dropping character and saying “Cue that applause” in a relieved, jokingly-kinda-bossy manner, as if he was not happy with the sketch he had just performed.
— Overall, this sketch was just as fucking horrible as I deemed it to be back when it originally aired.
STARS: *
WHAT WAS THAT?
student (ANS) & musical guest excoriate United Nations
— Something about the way Andy’s voice cracked when he whine-yelled “The Khmer Rooouuuuge?!?” made me laugh out loud.
— So far, I don’t know why this short is supposed to be funny, but Andy’s musical whining is strangely amusing me.
— Not sure what the point is of Arcade Fire taking over this short. Their appearance in this is doing nothing for me, even if it has a fun atmosphere.
— I love how one word in Arcade Fire’s song got bleeped out when I can barely even understand a word they’re singing in this short anyway. They could’ve left that bleeped-out expletive uncensored and I wouldn’t have even caught it.
— That’s it??? The whole Arcade Fire bit is the end of this short??? Another Digital Short this season that ended on a poor note, much like the I Broke My Arm short. At least everything else in that I Broke My Arm short was pretty solid. The pre-ending portions of this What Was That short, on the other hand, were just odd, despite how much Andy’s whiny delivery consistently tickled me.
STARS: **½
A TREAT FROM PAULA DEEN’S KITCHEN
Paula Deen’s (KRW) Big Ol’ Soakems sop oil from her butter-heavy recipes
— An okay portrayal of Paula Deen from Kristen.
— That sudden bleeped-out expletive from Kristen’s Deen came out of nowhere.
— This overall sketch kinda just came and went, but was okay enough, I guess. There wasn’t anything I found particularly bad about it.
STARS: ***
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)”
STARS OF TOMORROW
peppy tweens (host) & Laura Parsons (VAB) declaw drama
— Great to see newbie Vanessa has been getting so many big roles in this episode. This is also the debut of her soon-to-be-recurring child actress character, Laura Parsons.
— Funny scenes with Vanessa and Scarlett’s characters each acting out heavy, dramatic iconic movie scenes in that cheesy child star delivery of theirs, though Vanessa is by far outshining Scarlett in that department. I’m sure this is a character Vanessa had been doing before SNL, judging from how polished and established Vanessa is instantly coming off in this role.
— A particularly funny scene with Vanessa and Scarlett both acting out the famous “I wish I knew how to quit you” scene from Brokeback Mountain together.
STARS: ****
MIKE’S BUSTERIA
Mike & daughter Lexi ballyhoo ceramic busts’ inherent class
— The fourth and final installment of this recurring sketch. Very odd how this installment is buried all the way at the end of the show, given how much earlier in the show the previous installments aired in their respective episodes.
— Meh, “ceramic busts” doesn’t sound anywhere near as funny in exaggerated New York accents as previously-advertised products in this recurring sketch like “maww-ble cahhh-lumns” or “pawww-celain fountains” did.
— Wow, the audience is DEAD during this sketch. Can’t say I blame them, though, as the usual routines in this recurring sketch have a tired feel tonight. Not even Scarlett’s usual “Look at this one, or that one” routine is getting much of a reaction from the audience, and they usually react BIG to that in these sketches.
— Overall, nope. This sketch did NOT work. A sad, hollow end to an otherwise fairly fun and harmless recurring sketch.
STARS: *½
GOODNIGHTS
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— Despite two solid pieces and some average things, I find this to be a weak episode as a whole. There were a few too many annoying recurring sketches and some exceptionally bad pieces, mainly that fucking wretched cold opening and the notorious St. Kat’s Middle, two of the most anger-inducing things I’ve reviewed in a long time.
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
RATED SEGMENTS RANKED FROM BEST TO WORST
Stars Of Tomorrow
Unstoppable
The Millionaire Matchmaker
Weekend Update
MTV: Maternity Television
A Treat From Paula Deen’s Kitchen
What Was That?
Monologue
Hollywood Dish
The Manuel Ortiz Show
Mike’s Busteria
St. Kat’s Middle
China Press Conference
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Jon Hamm)
a big step down
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
Anne Hathaway
The train running through the Chrysler Building clip in Unstoppable is actually a clip that was used in the trailer for Inception, which is why it works for me, just out of randomness. Also, the Unstoppable sketch is one of my favorites from this era, as it’s so good at sending up the action movie trailer cliches from this era, with a side of Jay’s Denzel.
St. Kat’s Middle, to me, is the Freddy Got Fingered of SNL sketches. It is such a bizarrely joyless, random, obnoxious mess…and yet I can’t help but laugh at it just out of spectacle. Kenan yelling inches from the camera as an audience wonders why to laugh is the kind of comedy you’d expect from some highbrow art piece, or like a Tim&Eric, anti-humor kind of thing. It’s so bizarre, and it being on SNL at all just makes it this oddity of a sketch.
As bad as this show is, I vaguely remember ScarJo’s S40 show being worse.
I think Scarlett does a New York-ish accent (sort of) in a singing elf sketch in her S45 episode. S45 is her first not to have a musical monologue, I believe. I remember some fans saying that it took her six times to get a good episode. I don’t think that’s entirely true (I enjoy a great deal of her first episode, even if it’s not a knockout), but I do think that much of the time her episodes are used as easy weeks for the writers and cast.
Vanessa is one of my favorite cast members of the ’10s and she would have been a natural in any era. She is simply pure joy put onto the screen – you want to watch her and you feel happy when you are laughing with her. I say this as a disclaimer because I am not a big fan of these Laura Parsons sketches (I prefer her Update appearances, especially the first one that was election-themed). They combine many things that annoy me about this period of the show (which seems to fade after the 13-14 cast crashes into a wall) – the “up” acting, the general annoyance that comes with too much of actors trying to do deliberate bad acting or play child characters, and the whole “hey kids, let’s put on a show!” feel that seems mostly focused on a young demo. This one I would not have minded as much if it hadn’t been so long – the Brokeback Mountain portion drags on to the point where you just zone out at extended dead line readings, whether intended or not (it doesn’t help that the ‘bad’ acting here isn’t a world away from many of Scarlett’s overall performances). The cuts to the adults don’t really work for me either – Bobby and Kristen give performances which seem out of place with the overall material. And the ending with Bobby saying “gaymazing” several times is very flat – it feels like someone just wanted to work that word into a sketch.
Speaking of Vanessa, her performance in the Millionaire Matchmaker sketch reminds me a great deal of Kristen’s in the office threesome sketches. Makes me wish the characters had met. The other notable part of this is the fun bit where Taran and Vanessa are basically playing the same character. Knowing they became and still are good friends makes this more pleasant to watch.
@Jordan pretty much said it all for me regarding the St. Kat’s Middle sketch – I don’t think it was intended as anti-comedy, but somehow the excruciating repetitive nature veers in that direction of its own free will. This sketch gave me a ton of new respect for Kenan because I don’t think most cast members, of this or many other seasons, could have managed to keep this afloat as well as he does. It’s the same beat again and again and again, in such a brutal, humiliation fashion – it’s like Lars Von Trier making a film with James Anderson. If this is Anderson, then it reaffirms my view that Kenan is one of the few who can manage to interpret his vision (whatever that vision may be…).
I have to admit I enjoy this Hollywood Dish. I think they finally got the format fine-tuned here. The breaking from Bill and Kristen adds to the fun for me, rather than just the mostly dull “crazy” roles they have in the first two installments. Scarlett also seems to be in her element, with a very committed, energetic performance (even her hair gets into the act). I’m glad this was the last of the series.
The most notable part of the Sweet Sixteen and Pregnant thing is probably that it’s where Scarlett and Colin Jost first really met.
https://www.elle.com/culture/celebrities/a30784988/scarlett-johansson-colin-jost-relationship-timeline/
Put me down for “thumb’s up” on St. Kat’s Middle! I think I’m just a sucker for when a camera direction “goes outside the box” like Kenan’s close-ups. Also, the third beat of Kenan turning against the group worked for me.
(At least better than the other sketches churned out during this s36 slog-fest….)
The great thing about Mulaney hosting is that each time he hosts the show puts out 2-3 videos of him waxing nostalgic about his time as a writer. One of them has a quick still of Scar Jo, Bill & Kristen rehearsing What’s That Name, the sketch was cut but there is almost always a little Easter egg in those videos.
The main problem with St. Kat’s Middle is that it’s five minutes long. Show me a 3-3.5 minute sketch where a dummy gets launched through the air during the trampoline bit, I’d be on board.
Maybe with Kenan flying in the air like a superhero. That would have been better than him lying on the floor.
I did like Kenan’s delivery of “I thought it was reckless!” in St. Kat’s Middle, which is also pretty much the only part the audience gleamed onto. That sketch felt like a bad version of The Story of Everest from Mr. Show (the one where Jay Johnston keeps falling over and knocking down the shelf every time he tries to tell a story.)
I think this season marks the beginning of an interesting time for the digital shorts, in that they become far more hit and miss. Jorma left after S35 to work on the MacGruber movie and just in general to do other stuff, and Akiva leaves at the end of this season. They both would come back to help Andy with shorts occasionally, but this marks the beginning of the Lonely Island not all working on them together, and Andy having to sometimes come up with them alone. He’s spoken before about how even when working with other directors on them, they were still seen as ‘his thing’ so he was sorta running them alone rather than as a 3 (or at least a 2). Near the end of his run, more next season than this one, he said he was so burnt out on the show that he just started cutting them really short, or making them pretty dark or abstract just to try and make himself laugh, which is pretty evident near the end. I’m not sure if the short from this episode was affected by Jorm leaving etc. but it seemed relevant to bring up that unfortunately the shorts will drop in quality over these two seasons (unless they are music from their album – such as the incredible jack sparrow short still to come)
SNL alum Melanie Hutsell does the definitive Paula Deen as far as I’m concerned. Used to be more of them out there (i think from Funny or Die) but I guess the best known clip is when she did the impression on Deen’s show to her face.
The Paula Deen sketch wasn’t good. I forgot about it until reading this review. It was one-note with the same joke repeatedly. Kristen could not make this funny at all.
Didn’t care for the monologue and cold open. I can see why some online users at the time thought S36 was going to be another S20. Man, did the show go overboard on musical monologues.
Put me in for “thumbs down” on St. Kat’s. That sketch was brutal. One of the worst have ever seen on the show. I didn’t get the Disney Channel bumper at the beginning as I thought it was supposed to be a parody of that network’s sitcom. The joke got lost.
The whole episode was forgettable, which to me, sums up most of S36.
It’s a terrific crash, ladies and gentlemen! It’s smoke, and it’s flames now … and Kenan’s face is crashing to the ground, not quite to the mooring-mast. Oh, the humanity! I can’t talk, ladies and gentlemen. Honest, Kenan’s just laying there, a mass of smoking wreckage. This sketch is the worst thing I’ve ever witnessed!
Chalk me up as one who Used to hate St. Kat’s middle with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns, but then that hatred cooled down by about 900 of them. Yes, it deserves every last bit of reputation for being Bad (also, for the record, the S20 sketch it reminds me of was George foreman as the Incredible hulk, only w/o the writers copping out at the end); and yet, this has become one of those fascinating case studies over time where people would look at a sketch like that and wonder–not unlike certain podcasts–How did This get made, let alone make it to air?
Also, the thought occurred to me; Sketch, or no sketch, what kind of “friends” would just let one who’s wheelchair-bound just suffer like that over and over in spite of their intentions? That’s just cruel.
With Kenan still in the cast, there’s always hope for an inevitable sequel to the St. Kat’s sketch. And it wouldn’t surprise me if the original writers are also still there.
St. Kat’s is a very Season 20-level fascinating kind of bad. It’s lousy, but it’s lousy in a deeply interesting way. It’s trying for…something. Lord knows what, but it’s really trying. I’ll give it credit for that.
The rest of the episode is just another brand of dire. Doesn’t Johansson have another episode that just eats shit? I think her last episode was decent enough, but she really seemed to go 0 for 5 in those first few. That said, Vanessa’s child actor character is perfect. Too bad her sketch couldn’t have been a solo piece.
I did like the bit in the Stars of Tomorrow sketch where the child stars ended up in the “Raisin’ in the Sun” play, especially with them in the cast photo. That was a funny visual.
I think I mainly remember Kristen’s Paula Deen and the first appearance of Vanessa’s Laura Parsons which I might have been amused by…
Hey Stooge. They Should LEAVE IT BE In The Writer’s Mind Instead OF On The Show ! They Should SPIT This SKIT Out OF The Show ! They Should NOT BEND OVER And Have This SKIT In The Cold Open OR Even In The Show !
I remember not liking several of the sketches but I liked how Scarlett seemed to demand screen presence and felt very comfortable hosting.
I mostly remember Millionaire Matchmaker for good reasons and The Wheelchair sketch for terrible reasons.
This episode has a special place for me, b/c I actually saw it Live at Studio 8H. I’ve been trying for at least 10years and finally got tickets. The show was not great and I agree with the star reviews. The best part part was after end credits. Arcade Fire performed a mini-concert and played 2 songs. The audience at stage level for up from their seats and cast and crew and guests rushed the stage. Quest love was even spotted. It was a great feeling. My wife and I felt like we were treated to a special underground show. None of this was televised and the viewing audience at home would never have known.
St. Kat’s is no masterpiece, but I thought it was okay as a dark parody of hokey Disney sitcoms.
Hey I’ve never commented before but I’ve been reading your reviews for quite some time and have been loving them and find these to be the zenith of SNL reviews.
Anyways this episode I watched a couple of days ago and I found it to be very solid, and I agree that its weird that after this Jon just stopped hosting.
Oops said this is the wrong review lol.