Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
A MESSAGE FROM SOLANGE & JAY-Z
Solange (SAZ) & Jay-Z (JAP) spin their elevator fight
— The friendly Jay-Z/Solange voice-overs added to the video of their elevator fight is funny, especially the “foot five” part.
— Good part with the security cam footage of Bobby doing embarrassing things.
— Maya Rudolph, our first of an endless number of former cast member cameos tonight.
— Third consecutive episode with Sasheer saying LFNY. Granted, all the times she said it in these three episodes, she said it unison with one or more people (group LFNYs in general have become a trend in the last quarter of this season). Sadly, this three-episode run of LFNYs probably ends up being the high point of Sasheer’s notoriously-underutilized four-season SNL tenure.
STARS: ***
OPENING MONTAGE
— (*sigh*) The final episode with the legendary Don Pardo as SNL’s announcer, before he passes away that summer. Host Andy Samberg has the distinction of being the final name ever announced by Don in new audio.
MONOLOGUE
BIH tops ANS’s effort to surpass his impression tally; SEM & MAS cameos
— I wonder if this is the only time in SNL history where a celebrity (Justin Timberlake in this case) made their cameo appearance in the form of a photo. I feel like there was a previous time that may have happened that I’m forgetting.
— I love Andy’s little “I put on a suit to tell that joke” aside after his “And twiiiiiins!” line.
— Andy sure likes doing that “I’ve appeared in over 100 Digital Shorts and [insert small single-digit number here] live sketches” joke ever since he left the cast.
— Andy doesn’t say which website he learned that he did 23 fewer impressions than Bill Hader from, but I wonder if SNL Archives was the site. Then again, SNL themselves probably keep a record of stats like that.
— Our second former cast member cameo tonight, this time Seth Meyers, making his first cameo after leaving the cast earlier this season.
— Very fun concept of Andy doing a rapid-fire succession of impressions. This concept is perfect for Andy, and he’s doing lots of hilarious and clever impressions here.
— Our THIRD former cast member cameo tonight, and yeah, I’m gonna stop keeping count, because doing so is going to get exhausting, given what later portions of this episode has in store for me.
— I love the Andy Samberg impression that Bill Hader does.
— Whoa, of all the former cast member cameos in this episode, I honestly had no prior memory of this random Martin Short appearance.
STARS: ****
CAMP WICAWABE
preteens Cambria (AIB) & Piper (KAM) recap disobedience at Camp Wicawabe
— Kinda interesting how Kyle is playing a 6-year-old in this set-in-1990 sketch, given the fact that, in real life, Kyle actually was 6 in 1990 (as was I).
— Speaking of this sketch being set in 1990, uh…is there any particular reason why it’s set in that year? So far, there is absolutely NOTHING about this sketch that’s seems specific to 1990 nor any other year in the past. It makes no sense why this sketch couldn’t have been set in present day.
— Funny brief appearance from Cecily.
— While there are a few funny lines from the characters, and there’s a somewhat endearing quality to some of the more realistic aspects of Kate and Aidy’s child characters (e.g. them laughing at but not actually “getting” the more adult things that Andy’s character talks about), I hate the actual format of this sketch, and find it to be lazy. Thank goodness this sketch never becomes recurring.
STARS: **
WHEN WILL THE BASS DROP?
DJ Davvincii (ANS) & Lil Jon [real] kill fans
— Our obligatory Lonely Island Digital Short of the night.
— Some funny cutaways to cast members as wild audience members. I especially like some of the Bobby cutaways.
— Lots of pretty funny teases and build-up to Andy dropping the bass, such as the cutaways to the unrelated things he’s doing at his DJ table, like frying eggs.
— The sequence of audience members graphically dying when the bass finally drops is okay, but feels like a very inferior variation of the beautifully-dark-and-violent mass death sequence in the “Everyone’s A Critic” Digital Short from Paul Rudd’s season 34 episode. We even get a reprisal of the Indiana Jones/“Keep your eyes shut!” bit from that Rudd short.
— Not only is this pre-taped short the ONLY appearance that Noel, John, Brooks, and Mike make in tonight’s entire episode, but 1) their roles in this short are all bit parts with no lines (except for one quick line that Noel gets), 2) this ends up being the FINAL appearance that all four of those performers make as cast members, as all of them get fired after this season, and 3) half of them are playing characters who die in this short. After Noel, John, Brooks, and Mike were all extremely underused for most of this season, this is the ultimate final insult to them. For shame, SNL. You go through all the trouble of hiring so many new cast members at the beginning of this season and give them special focus in the season premiere, making a huge deal about them, only to immediately and unjustifiably discard most of them for the remainder of the season, then give them the ultimate middle finger in the season finale before firing them that summer. Just….(*sigh*) there aren’t enough words from me that can express the disgracefulness of the way this season handled what they themselves said was supposed to be a “rebuilding year” in terms of working in the new group in the cast. Rebuilding year, my ass.
— After the announcement of Noel, John, Brooks, and Mike’s firing that summer, I remember some online SNL fans jokingly saying that this Digital Short must’ve been SNL’s way of killing off all four of those fired featured players (though, again, only about half of them actually play characters who die in this short), almost like some kind of variation of the famous “cast party set ablaze” ending of the infamous season 11, or the “cast members get gruesomely killed one-by-one in a polar bear cage” ending of the infamous season 20. (The even sadder thing is, I recall reading in the dress rehearsal report for this season 39 finale that was posted online back at this time in 2014 by FeaturingEmilyPrager [a frequent commenter on this blog] that the Legolas/Taco Bell sketch that’ll be airing later in this episode had a running gag cut out after dress rehearsal in which Andy’s Legolas, in a fury, occasionally throws sharp weapons at random Taco Bell patrons, killing them. All, or maybe just some, of those patrons were played by featured players who would end up getting fired after this episode, which means that, between the “When Will The Bass Drop?” Digital Short and that Taco Bell sketch, the about-to-be-fired-from-SNL featured players were originally going to get killed off TWICE in this episode! My goodness. However, my memory of FeaturingEmilyPrager’s details about that aspect of the Taco Bell sketch is very fuzzy, so I may have some facts wrong. We’ll see when he re-posts his dress rehearsal report in the comments section of this review.) I remember fellow SNL blogger/reviewer Bronwyn Douwsma once accurately titled this episode “the ‘Fuck You, Newbies’ episode”, as a very spot-on way to sum up this episode’s horrible treatment of the featured players, treatment that’ll get even more horrible later in this episode when you see the cavalcade of cameos that takes away even more airtime from the featured players.
STARS: ***½
CONFIDENT HUNCHBACK
Quasimodo (ANS) swaggers through a 1482 Paris saloon
— This appears to be a variation of the Rude Buddha sketch that Andy did in the season 37 Lindsay Lohan episode, right down to having a very similar opening title sequence.
— Speaking of the opening title sequence, the theme song is catchy, though I can’t help but notice how similar the melody of it sounds to the theme song from the Girlfriends Talk Show sketches.
— Andy is fun in this role, which he was born to play.
— The ending was kinda weak.
STARS: ***
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Digital Witness”
WEEKEND UPDATE
darkness creeps into Bruce Chandling’s unfunny summer comedy routine
Nicolas Cage (ANS) thinks he’d be a better Ant-Man than Paul Rudd [real]
— This would end up being the final Update of Cecily’s short-lived tenure as Update anchor.
— A nice bookend to this season, having Kyle’s Bruce Chandling do an Update commentary for the first time since his debut in this season’s premiere.
— Like last time, Kyle is great at pulling off these hacky jokes as Bruce Chandling. I also like the new touch he’s added to the character this time: that eye-roll he does after each punchline.
— Also like last time, the sudden turn with Bruce Chandling getting depressed and reflecting on himself in a gloomy manner is very solid. In fact, it’s even better here than when they did it earlier this season. During this “Chandling gets depressed” part tonight, I love this particularly dark line from him: “Grim Reaper’s knockin’ at the door……..and I kinda wanna answer it.”
— Ugh at all of Cecily’s usual corny punchlines and “character voice” punchlines tonight. I will absolutely not miss seeing her as an Update anchor after tonight’s episode.
— Holy hell, that huge fivehead on Andy’s Nicolas Cage tonight…
— Second consecutive Update with a guest referring to Colin as “Seth”.
— We’re getting the usual funny lines from Andy’s Nicolas Cage, but I dunno, I’m having a hard time getting excited about this segment. I guess I’m STILL of the opinion that they should’ve officially retired this “Get In The Cage” segment after the memorable and solid one where the real Nicolas Cage was paired up with Andy’s Cage. You just can’t continue the segment after something special and definitive like that. There are other ways they could’ve used Andy’s Cage impression tonight without bringing “Get In The Cage” back.
— Overall, a characteristically meh way for the Cecily Strong/Colin Jost era of Update to end. Bring on the next era!
STARS: **
AFFECTIONATE FAMILY
the Vogelchecks are initially put off by Michael Sam’s draft-day kiss
— (*Stooge stares at his laptop screen in a speechless manner for an entire minute upon seeing the resurrection of this wretched recurring sketch, and, after suffering through seeing an overlong applause break for each individual cameo in this, flips his laptop upside down with one angry swipe of his hands and then walks out of the room while saying, “That’s it, fuck this, I’m leavin’!”, Will Ferrell-style*)
— With each passing overlong applause break that each cameo in this sketch is met with, I can just picture a little bit of John Milhiser dying inside.
— Ugh, during his typically-annoying “I guess that’s what makes us…….Vogelchecks” speech, Fred Armisen openly starts breaking HARD for no apparent reason, and giggles his way through the rest of his speech. Bill seemed to be the cause of this breaking, judging from how Fred initially breaking is followed by Bill being heard mumbling ad-libbed statements throughout the rest of Fred’s speech, in an apparent attempt to keep Fred laughing. As if I needed a reminder of how annoyingly Fallon & Sanz-esque Fred and Bill became with their frequent unprofessional, inside-joke-y breaking together in their final season as cast members.
— Maya particularly hamming it up here.
— (*Stooge watches the ridiculous sequence with each Vogelcheck member passing air to each other via their mouths, and responds to that by ripping his own eyeballs out*)
STARS: *
WAKING UP WITH KIMYE
wedding planner (ANS) describes Kanye West (JAP) & Kim Kardashian’s (NAP) upcoming nuptials
— This ends up being Nasim’s final big showcase before leaving the cast that summer. I’d rather her final showcase be something more exciting than seeing this sketch once again. I liked this Kimye sketch in its first installment, but it’s meh as a recurring sketch.
— Jay’s Kanye: “What do they always say to you in Italy?” Nasim’s Kim: “Leave!”
— I have nothing to say about the rest of this sketch. It pretty much just came and went for me.
STARS: **
HUGS
ANS, Jorma Taccone & Pharrell Williams [real] sing about being cuddling Lotharios
— A second Digital Short tonight, this time a traditional Lonely Island music video, complete with Jorma and Akiva.
— Hmm, I had no prior memory of this short having a Maya cameo as Oprah and a Pharrell Williams cameo as himself. In fact, I remember almost NOTHING about this short from my previous viewing when it originally aired.
— I’m currently about halfway through this short, and I can now see why I had almost no prior memory of it. This short feels way too generic and by-the-numbers for a Lonely Island music video. Sure, this is well-produced and performed, but what does that matter when the actual humor and entertainment level is blah?
— I did get a good laugh just now from Pharrell’s great delivery of the lyric, “I just wanna hug your mama in a Subaru hatchback.”
— Overall, meh.
STARS: **
LEGOLAS FROM ‘THE HOBBIT’ TRIES TO ORDER AT TACO BELL
what the title above says
— An okay concept, feeling like it’s in the tradition of similarly-titled celebrity-tries-to-do-a-simple-task sketches from Andy’s era as a cast member, such as the Andre The Giant Chooses An Ice Cream Flavor sketch.
— A predictable but amusing ending line from a shaking-his-head Jay: “White people…..”.
— A short, simple, and decent sketch, if unmemorable.
STARS: ***
BLIZZARD MAN
during a recording session, 2 Chainz [real] vouches for Blizzard Man
— With the return of Blizzard Man, we of course also get the unnecessary return of Kenan playing the same technician character he plays in every installment of these Blizzard Man sketches who acts like he’s never seen Blizzard Man before and didn’t expect his rapping to be so bad. (*groan*)
— I had remembered tonight’s “Fuck You, Newbies” episode containing so many former cast member cameos, but had forgotten that it also throws almost as many non-SNL-alum cameos at us.
— For some reason, something about 2 Chainz’s laid-back, friendly way of telling Blizzard Man, “Get in the booth, fool”, made me laugh.
— As usual, they’re doing absolutely NOTHING new with the formula of this recurring sketch. The same-old same-old stuff. Sure, we had gotten a somewhat long hiatus from this formulaic recurring sketch, but even with that, there’s still way too much of a stale, unexciting, been-there-done-that feel to tonight’s return of this recurring sketch. It’s too old hat by this point.
— There’s SNL relying on that ol’, lazy “spinning newspaper headline” ending trope once again, which I know is the type of endings these Blizzard Man sketches always used to have back in the day, but even with that in mind, this particular headline ending still came off lazy and half-assed.
STARS: **
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Birth in Reverse”
BVLGARI
separated twins (ANS) & (KRW) & vacuous ex-porn stars endorse Bulgari
— Ah, here’s Andy in a walk-on with…….Kristen Wiig?!? OH, COME THE FUCK ON, SNL! Wasn’t that unwatchable Vogelchecks sketch enough Wiig for one night? Not to mention all the other cameos from former cast members hogging up roles that need to be going to the in-danger-of-getting-fired featured players who have unfairly gotten no final chance tonight to try saving their SNL tenures, and are instead stuck watching this entire episode from their dressing rooms.
— Also, such a lame decision to cast Kristen in a male role for no good reason.
— Vanessa: “With a watch, you’ll never have to stop a stranger on the street to ask him, ‘Are you my dad?’”
— Cecily: “You’ll feel like you’re an Egyptian queen, like Cleomydia.”
— (*groan*) Kristen apparently hasn’t gotten rid of her giggles from the Vogelchecks sketch, as she’s openly laughing her way through some of her lines in this sketch, and looks strangely uncommitted to this character.
— The Andy/Kristen portions are ruining this sketch for me, and it’s already been sad enough that Vanessa and Cecily haven’t been having anywhere near as many killer lines as they usually have in this recurring sketch.
— Overall, easily the weakest installment of this sketch, and an underwhelming way to close out this season.
STARS: **
GOODNIGHTS
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— Aaaaaaand the season ends in a whimper. A truly poor and disappointing finish to the season. This episode started out decently if unnoteworthy (aside from the strong monologue), but felt like it got gradually worse as it went on, especially as so many gratuitous cameo appearances increasingly and frustratingly dominated this episode, to the detriment of the actual cast (a precursor of more recent years), who already had to fight for airtime all season long even without the cameos, due to how extremely overstuffed this season’s cast is. Even more frustrating was how the SNL alums making cameos tonight (minus Martin Short) are 1) all people who had been cast members within the last few years prior to this (and in Seth Meyers’ case, just earlier this same season), as if enough time had passed between then and 2014 for SNL to justifiably do a “late 00s/early 10s reunion” episode filled with cameos from an era that LITERALLY JUST FUCKING HAPPENED, and 2) a number of the alums from that era ALREADY make cameos way too frequently as it is, to the degree that you forget they even left the cast (Fred and Kristen, I’m lookin’ in your direction…..oh, and you, too, Amy Poehler, even though you weren’t in this particular episode), thus making their presence in this “reunion / nostalgia-fest” episode even less special-feeling. As a host, Andy Samberg, who certainly wasn’t the problem I had with this episode, deserved a much better episode than what he was given.
— Another disappointing thing about this episode is that I remember it was an underwhelming way to end my original 2000-2014 stint as a reviewer of newly-aired episodes. Lousy, refusing-to-let-go-of-the-recent-past episodes like this made me happy back at this time in 2014 that I was retiring from reviewing. Recently, I’ve had some people warn me that, based on the quality of SNL’s current 46th season, the final episode I review in my current SNL project will probably be a disappointing and unexciting note for me to end on. But after having already gone through the disappointment of this frustrating Andy Samberg episode being the final episode of my original reviewing stint, I feel like there’s nowhere to go but up in terms of what SNL has in store for me in the final episode I review in my current project.
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
RATED SEGMENTS RANKED FROM BEST TO WORST
Monologue
When Will The Bass Drop?
Confident Hunchback
A Message From Solange & Jay-Z
Legolas From ‘The Hobbit’ Tries To Order At Taco Bell
Weekend Update
Waking Up With Kimye
Blizzard Man
Hugs
Camp Wicawabe
Bvlgari
Affectionate Family
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Charlize Theron)
a big step down
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS ENTIRE SEASON, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
HOW THIS OVERALL SEASON STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING SEASON (2012-13)
a mild step down
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
Season 40 begins, with host Chris Pratt, two new additions to the cast, a revamped Weekend Update with a new co-anchor joining Colin Jost, and a new replacement for Don Pardo as SNL’s announcer. After spending the past 14 seasons of this SNL project reviewing episodes that I already covered in my original stint as a reviewer, I’m excited that the remainder of the seasons I’ll be covering in my current SNL project will be ones that I’ve never reviewed before and, in the case of the episodes from December 2018 to whenever I complete this project, episodes that I’ve never even seen before. (For those who don’t know, I’ve been on an ongoing hiatus from watching new episodes after the Steve Carell episode from season 44.) And as for the episodes between May 2014 and December 2018, I’m eager to re-watch them because I don’t remember a lot of them all that well anymore. The reason for that is because, back when those seasons originally aired, since I no longer had to worry about analyzing new SNL episodes or feverishly taking notes during the show now that I was retired from reviewing, I went into season 40 and the next two or so seasons afterwards with such a lax and “casual viewer” attitude that it caused the more average or forgettable portions of the show to completely pass by me, to the degree that, today, I no longer have much or ANY memory of them, whereas I still have a vivid memory of practically everything from the 2000-2014 years that I covered in my original reviewing stint.