Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
INAUGURATION NIGHT
Martin Luther King Jr. (KET) visits re-inaugurated Barack Obama (JAP) to ask about Beyonce
— An okay concept of Martin Luther King vising President Obama right after his inauguration.
— Kenan’s pulling this off pretty well.
— Kenan-as-MLK’s line about a first black magician gave me a good laugh.
— Nice segue to LFNY.
STARS: ***
MONOLOGUE
ANS, Cameron Diaz, Jerry Seinfeld [real] vie to be host’s comedy coach
— Good to see Andy Samberg in his first cameo after leaving SNL.
— Andy is as funny as ever here, especially his self-deprecating line, “I was in over 100 Digital Shorts as well as 3 live sketches.”
— Adam Levine, to Cameron Diaz, after she suggests he take his shirt off: “When you hosted, did you take your shirt off?” Cameron doesn’t answer that, but she actually did take her shirt off in at least one hosting stint, in the Woo The Musical sketch from her season 30 episode.
— Andy’s even managing to make some of the cheap homoerotic humor that he’s been given here come off funny.
— Jerry Seinfeld is fine here, even if this isn’t quite the way I’d prefer him to be utilized in a cameo.
— Blah at the non-comedic ending with Adam disrobing, not to mention how shamelessly unnecessary and pandering it came off.
STARS: ***
ROSETTA STONE
creeps (BIH), (BOM), (TAK) use Rosetta Stone to prepare for Thailand trip
— Is Bill intentionally doing a thinly-veiled variation of his John Mark Karr impression? He’s using the same voice and is even wearing what appears to be the same outfit.
— Pretty funny conceit with pervs wanting to use Rosetta Stone for their visit to Thailand.
STARS: ***
CIRCLE WORK WITH TRACY ALLSTAR & TODD ANTHONY
advice of (KET) & (host) comes from a homosexual perspective
— Boy, these James Anderson-written gay-centric sketches are so damn tired and cliched by this point of his tenure as a writer. Not that I’m sure there was ever a stretch of time where his gay-centric sketches were consistently good. He’s probably had a few isolated instances of writing actual good gay-centric stuff, but this sketch sure as hell ain’t one of them.
— Ugh at the part with Kenan slowly spelling out the whole “gay goose parade” statement.
— Very cute performance from Vanessa, who’s the only bright spot I’m finding in this mess.
STARS: *½
THE SOPRANOS DIARIES
The Sopranos Diaries reboots the mob drama in a 1980s high school setting
— Funny concept for a The Carrie Diaries spoof.
— I love Tim’s goofy, easy-going facial expressions as the principal.
— A laugh from one of the magazine reviews pointing out how implausible it is for these Sopranos characters to have been in high school in the 80s.
— From what little we can see of the sweater that Fred’s wearing under his blazer, it looks like the same sweater that was previously worn by both Chris Farley in the How Much Ya Bench sketch from season 19 and Bill in the Good Morning Meth sketch from season 31 (comparisons below).
— Funny reveal of a pole dancer having been on Tony Soprano and his friends’ cafeteria lunch table all this time.
— Showing how diminished Fred’s airtime has been this season in general, this pre-tape ends up being his only appearance all night. Certainly no complaints from me.
STARS: ***½
FIREHOUSE INCIDENT
drama queen’s (BIH) ex (NAP) leads him to shriek at his fellow firemen
— Hmm, between that Circle Work sketch and now Bill’s super effeminate character here, I’m sensing a theme in tonight’s episode.
— An extremely over-the-top performance from Bill to end all extremely over-the-top performances. But, dammit, he’s making me laugh my ass off. It helps that we pretty much never see Bill go THIS over-the-top, thus making it a novelty. It also helps if you imagine that this over-the-top performance is Bill basically channeling his inner Jim Carrey, and not channeling his inner Kristen Wiig (the latter of which I recall some online SNL fans implying back at this time in 2013, saying this felt too much like a typical annoying, over-the-top Wiig performance). Yet another thing helping this sketch is the fact that it thankfully never becomes recurring, because as much as I’m enjoying this as a one-time sketch, there is NO FUCKING WAY I would ever want this to become a recurring sketch.
— Ha, even the extremely-deep-voiced “Release the beating” (or whatever that voice said) at the beginning of the song that Bill dances to is cracking me up.
— The part with the dog attack is absolutely killing me. Man, this sketch is freakin’ INSANE.
— I love Bill’s way of saying the name “Rula” throughout this sketch.
— An actual punchline at the end. Not sure if it worked for me or not, though.
STARS: ****
YOLO
ANS, Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone [real], host & musical guest promote extreme caution; Danny McBride cameo
— The first Lonely Island Digital Short after its retirement with Lazy Sunday 2 in Andy’s final episode as a cast member.
— Ha, random Danny McBride sighting, snorting coke in a club.
— The usual fun and catchy Lonely Island song, funny visual accompaniment, and excellent production values, even if 1) this particular one is far from a classic, and 2) the presence of Lonely Island Digital Shorts wasn’t exactly missed this season, with all the strong short films SNL’s been doing without them.
— “There’s no such thing as too much Purell”? Boy, that lyric hits differently in 2020 than it did when I originally watched this in 2013.
— The visual of Andy randomly getting choked by a flying blanket gave me an especially good laugh.
— Nice interlude from Kendrick Lamar, and I especially like the brief cutaway to him dressed as a middle-aged financial advisor.
STARS: ***½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Swimming Pools”
WEEKEND UPDATE
Arianna Huffington (NAP) supports Hillary Clinton & women in combat
before the Super Bowl, emotional Ray Lewis (KET) sees divine influence
— Despite some funny lines, tonight’s overall Arianna Huffington commentary unfortunately wasn’t anywhere near as strong as usual. I did like the Wives With Knives bit towards the end, though.
— Meh, not much funny material in Kenan’s Ray Lewis commentary, despite a good performance from him.
— Hmm, interesting touch at the end after Seth’s sign-off, where Kenan returns to continue doing the Ray Lewis dance in front of the Update desk.
— The guest portion of tonight’s overall Update was pretty disappointing, and a few of Seth’s jokes didn’t do much for me either.
STARS: **½
RUMBLE
in a bar, host rumbles musically with Pat Monahan (TAK) & other crooners
— At the beginning of this sketch, did I just hear an off-camera voice cue an extra to leave by whispering “Go”?
— Pretty funny premise of a bar fight between Maroon 5 and Train.
— Good bit with the old guy who Taran’s Pat Monahan is trying to make look like him.
— I think I remember someone once saying that Aidy’s brief appearance being used as a human shield in this sketch was rather demeaning and was a sign that she wasn’t “making it” as a cast member.
— Jason’s entrance as Jason Mraz is hilarious.
— Adam’s timing is off during a lot of portions of this sketch, with quite a number of long delays before he speaks.
— Not sure how I feel about Vanessa’s intentional overacting throughout this sketch.
— Meh, I’m starting to get tired of all the entrances from various similar singers. This sketch in general is beginning to somewhat fizzle out for me, after having a promising start.
— Okay, Kenan is pretty funny right now as Darius Rucker, at least.
STARS: **½
CATFISH: THE TV SHOW
Nev Schulman (host) proves that (AIB) was duped by (JAP) online
— A laugh from the photo of Brian Williams’ head photoshopped onto a buff, shirtless body.
— Blah, I’m already sick of the smug demeanor that Adam’s using as the Catfish host, regardless of if it’s an accurate portrayal of the Catfish host or not (I’ve never seen Catfish, the movie nor the TV show). Those long pauses and self-amused laughing he keeps intentionally doing in character are just plain unfunny.
— During the “Coming up next” preview, I got a big laugh from Aidy’s whole “Is this reaction positive or negative? You can’t tell!” bit. While, as I said earlier, I’ve never seen Catfish, I’ve seen enough of certain other reality shows to know that Aidy’s “Is this reaction positive or negative?” bit is a spot-on spoof of “Coming up next” previews on reality shows in general.
— Another solid Aidy moment, as I absolutely love her exaggerated delivery of “Aw, dang! What the heck?!? I got Catfished!”
— There’s something about the pacing or atmosphere of this sketch that I’m not digging all that much.
STARS: **½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Poetic Justice”
ADAM AND JANET
after a concert, host is the latest unlikely conquest for stocky Janet
— The second and final on-air appearance of Bobby’s Janet Peckinpaugh character. There would later be a cut-after-dress-rehearsal installment from the following season’s Andrew Garfield episode that would be posted online.
— I like the extremely random Law & Order bit at the beginning of the apartment scene.
— Nice continuity with Bobby’s Janet mentioning having a previous encounter with Tom Brady, which is referring to her sketch from the preceding season.
— Like last time, Bobby’s managing to make this potentially-hacky-and-annoying drag role actually work for me. To me, this character is kinda like an actual funny version of Horatio Sanz’s Carol character. What’s NOT working for me is Adam’s performance, as well as his constant little ad-libs. Have I made it obvious enough by this point of my review how much I haven’t been caring for Adam as a host?
STARS: ***
BIDEN BASH
Joe Biden (JAS) is having an unextravagant inauguration bash in Delaware
— A fun-seeming showcase for Jason’s always-fun Joe Biden.
— Great bit with Jason’s Biden imitating Macho Man Randy Savage. Other than that, I haven’t been laughing quite as much at this commercial as I expected to. Jason’s trying his best with somewhat throwaway material that he’s been given.
STARS: **½
GOODNIGHTS
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A pretty blah-feeling episode as a whole, and easily my least favorite episode of this season so far. The fact that the only sketch that received an above-average rating from me was a very polarizing sketch centered entirely around an intentionally annoying, over-the-top performance (Firehouse Incident) kinda speaks volumes of this episode. Thinking back on it, however, I actually liked most of the stuff in the first half of this episode, aside from that Circle Work dreck. But once Weekend Update began, the show started to have an “off” feel that it sadly never really recovered from. Aside from the Janet Peckinpaugh sketch (and even that had its issues), I didn’t care too much for any of the segments in the second half of this episode, starting with Update. It also didn’t help that that was the half of the show where Adam Levine’s performances started kinda bugging me. I take it he’s better in small doses, as I usually find him decent in the brief sketch appearance or two he typically makes whenever Maroon 5 is the musical guest. Him as a full-on host of an episode, on the other hand? NO. Hell, even something about how his goodnights speech was oddly brief, overly generic, and didn’t thank the cast seemed a little off-putting, but I’m probably looking too much into that.
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
RATED SEGMENTS RANKED FROM BEST TO WORST
Firehouse Incident
YOLO
The Sopranos Diaries
Inauguration Night
Rosetta Stone
Monologue
Adam and Janet
Biden Bash
Rumble
Weekend Update
Catfish: The TV Show
Circle Work with Tracy Allstar & Todd Anthony
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Jennifer Lawrence)
a step down
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
Justin Bieber hosts in an apparent attempt to give this Adam Levine episode a run for its money in the “My least favorite episode of this season” department
Lol I still remember 14 year old me’s visceral disappointment when they announced next week’s episode. I hated Levine, but at least this episode had one of my favorite rappers as the guest. Next week’s episode was going to have the host and guest be a guy 14 year old boys were programmed to hate with every fiber of their being.
Yea this was a rough one. I think on average I’d rate it slightly higher than Lawrence’s, since that was consistently “meh” and this one at least had a couple highs (Sopranos, Yolo).
I remember liking the MLK open a lot more back in the day. The one thing I’ll give modern SNL (meaning S40-present) it that, because the cast and crew are more diverse these days, its FAR better at race humor than its ever been. The show obviously has CLASSIC racial sketches (White Like Me & Word Association are both obvious examples; White Like Me in particular is one of my top 10 sketches in the history of the show) but more often than not it didn’t have the best track record. Up until recently, the show could occasionally do amazing racial humor because it swung for the fences and really took chances, but that same attitude also gave us stuff like “chicken make lousy house pet” & Jimmy in blackface to do a Chris Rock impression. But the bigger problem to me is that these sketches just didn’t feel lived in; they felt like they were either written by white people or black people writing for white audiences, and I felt that with this Cold Open. Boy, I sure am making a name for myself with these rambling, frequently skipped over rants.
Jerry says he looks less Jewish than his name. I’m not exactly qualified to comment here, so I’ll just say some may have differing opinions. Also doesn’t Andy reuse that “Over 100 Digital shorts and 3 live sketches” line in his monologue in the Season 39 finale?
Put me in the camp that hates firehouse, which is unfortunate considering Bill’s my favorite cast member ever.
This was quite a rough episode for season 38’s standards (it would probably be just an average season 39 episode, but compared to s38’s insane winning streak it was quite lackluster) yet there are some really good pieces. Bill delivers an all time great performance in the firehouse sketch. The Sopranos Diaries sketch is quite fun, especially the library scene with Bobby as Tony and Kate as Carmela, and the lunchroom scene with the gang’s bizarre conversation about Return of the Jedi. The Catfish sketch, while sluggish in pacing, is a spot on parody of Catfish, especially Nev’s self indulgence.
Fun fact, during the clips of The Carrie Diaries during the Sopranos sketch, you can see in the bottom-right corner which website they took the clips from.
Also it’s weird seeing a Digital Short with this much money thrown into it. Even at their most epic, the shorts on the show NEVER felt this polished.
One final note from me: juvenile as it was, Seth’s condom joke got by far my biggest laugh from him so far this season, mainly from his delivery.
The next show is basically this era’s Steven Seagal episode.
Something about Levine even hosting at all feels weird. I get that he’s on The Voice and all, but it gives me the same feeling that I had with Jon Bon Jovi hosting where I’m just like “…but why?” Both similarly generic hosts that were better as small cameos, and even then it wasn’t fantastic or anything.
This period was a modern-day peak for NBC personnel (mainly Voice people) hosting or being MG, which Lorne may have felt he had to go along with considering the poor ratings of these years, but also reminds me of this passage:
https://decider.com/2020/07/31/nbc-entertainment-chairman-paul-telegdy-workplace-investigation/
”
Multiple sources also revealed that Telegdy clashed with some of NBC’s biggest producers, Law & Order creator Dick Wolf and longtime Saturday Night Live boss Lorne Michaels. Telegdy oversaw late night from 2011 to 2016, during which he reportedly urged Michaels to book NBC talent on late night shows, straining their working relationship. According to an anonymous source, Telegdy did not get along with Wolf, either. “There’s a certain way you deal with Dick and it’s respectful,” they said. “If you build trust, you can respectfully push back on things — and Paul never built that.””
Considering that of gigs and cameos from 3 different Voice judges, the best they managed to get was Wishin’ Boot, Lorne’s usual defensiveness on these matters was probably off the charts.
I hate that I can never bring myself to dislike the firehouse sketch. It’s not smart (even if I like a lot of the beats); it’s just loud, and abrasive, and aimless, and fully Anderson… and yet it’s a sketch that completely devastates me. Bill Hader is just perfect here, locked into such a stupid character but throwing himself at it as hard as he can as if he’s in the most brilliant sketch that was ever written. His screams, his dance, especially him rolling on the ground with a giant stuffed dalmation… it deserves to be on Bill’s highlight reel. I could never sell the sketch to someone who thinks it’s garbage, because that’s an equally valid opinion to have… but I can’t bring myself to ever share in that belief.
Outside of that, I feel like I’m nicer to this episode than most (I have nostalgia for the season in general, even NEXT EPISODE, though I think the worst of the season is probably Jennifer Lawrence). Most of the sketches have at least something fun about them even if Levine is a pretty weak host. I don’t think he comes across cocky or anything though; if anything, seeing how downtrodden he looks with his performance during the goodnights with his immediate head-shake makes me feel kinda bad for the guy and appreciative of the fun work that he was able to do here and there. (I think his acting in “Circle Work,” meh as it is, and the Catfish sketch are at least up to snuff.) Not a great episode worth watching all the way through, but watchable.
Really excited to see how the Bieber coverage is gonna go, though. He’s the biggest fucking dick of a host you could have, but there’s some sketches in there that I have a guilty fondness for. At least we get more insane dancing from Bill for the holiday season, though, which we can all agree is good.
I can’t criticize anyone who dislikes the firehouse sketch, or Bill’s performance in it, because on paper it’s the exact type of performance I should hate, but Bill’s full, complete commitment to sheer the-brakes-are-gone hysteria is very high entertainment for me. It’s not something he did very often, and even here he doesn’t perform the material in a way that feels self-indulgent or hammy to me. I have wondered at times if he felt the whole thing was poor and that he would need to just go into full tilt hysteria. If so I’d say he made the right choice (and as this did not become a “thing” for him, it serves well to the test of time as a fascinating curio piece).
I remember hearing that Firehouse Incident was written by Rob Klein and John Solomon, who also did the “he sucked one once” sketch the following year starring Cecily.
Good luck with the next show. The goodnights cap on SNL Archives (http://snlarchives.net/Episodes/?2013020914) really sums up how douchey and unlikable Bieber was all night (Kate’s facial expression also seems like she was showing her true feelings there). It’s also the beginning of a stretch in the season where the show was auditioning guest writers, which ultimately led to Michael Che getting hired full-time in May.
It’s amusing how little NBC talent host nowadays. The Good Place was fairly popular and had a number of bankable and rising stars and never once got a host in four years. Clearly now that ratings are on the rise and NBC staff aren’t on Lorne’s back they see no need to keep to that well in picking hosts.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe SNL repurposes an unused clip of Jason from Biden Bash in season 43’s “Message from the Democratic Party” commercial.
Firehouse Incident is definitely a guilty pleasure, perhaps a tribute to Hader’s ability to sell a weak sketch premise. If Fred had led this sketch (especially at this point in his run), I imagine it would have been tortuous to sit through, but I can’t seem to not laugh at the sight of Hader playing a character this over-the-top. And, honestly, there’s not really much else in the episode to choose from as a better entry for the night.
I too hated the Firehouse Incident sketch. It was one-note and the worse performance Bill has ever put it. It was also an insult to the LGBTQ community in my opinion. Bobby as the one who cheered him on made the sketch even worse.
I basically tuned out when the Maroon 5 vs. Train sketch came on. I had no more interest in watching the rest of this trainwreck.
Yeah, Clem, you’re a drama queen.
Firehouse Incident is fascinating because like other commenters have mentioned, it’s basically Bill trying to make a James Anderson sketch work through sheer force. Though if Bronwyn is correct in it actually being Klein/Solomon, then that’s a bit concerning because that entire sketch feels VERY Anderson, especially the part where Bill dances to club music for absolutely no reason and pronounces “iPod” as “ip-od.”