Saturday Night Live

hey just remembered that jerry sandusky gilette ad. was there a joke in that, besides "hey what if jerry sandusky was in the gilette ad"?

i think that was basically it. i thought it was pretty hilarious.

partially because Sudeikis as Sandusky was fucking incredible

those teeth

also loved the siren sketch

totally fell asleep for large parts of this though

i guess i was just disappointed because sandusky and that gillette ad are such rich veins of material that it's a shame they couldn't come up with anything more than "hey what if sandusky was in that gilette ad for no apparent reason"

siren sketch was great, dancing sudeikis always appreciated

in the gillette ad, there's a shot where three women look appreciatively at the four men, and i had a terrible sinking feeling that they were going to cut to sandusky getting a corresponding look from a child. I half-wondered if that WAS the intent originally and then they decided they couldn't possibly air it.

haha i had the same thought

well not 'haha' exactly

very strong episode, even if Applegate was just doing her Wiig impression

I sorta feel like the fake talk show format is the only way Lorne will greenlight new sketch ideas anymore. Like I can totally see the writers pitching the sketch as, "something about how first world problems it is to complain about shitty iPhone apps". And Lorne being all, "ehhh, I don't know". And the writers say, "what if we framed it as a talk show?". Lorne responds, "Brilliant! Run it".

Yes, probably

i had a terrible sinking feeling that they were going to cut to sandusky getting a corresponding look from a child. I half-wondered if that WAS the intent originally and then they decided they couldn't possibly air it.

this definitely happened, only question is whether they got as far as planning to shoot it, I'd like to think they stopped themselves before booking a child actor.

tech talk skit was not at all acceptable btw

Okay, let's call a goddamn moratorium on the overused song-as-monologue trope. Seriously. Stop it.

That debate cold open was fantastic, though.

I thought the debate opening was pretty good; I'm still getting used to Jay Pharoah, and I think Sudeikis has been funnier as Romney. The questioners were good.

Did they let Bruno Mars write that Haters sketch? Ugh.

LOUIS C. K. hosting!!!!! Had this been announced before?

Who's this mulatto fop singing on my television set

Well. This episode sure has taken a quick turn towards unwatchability.

I liked the Sad Mouse thing.

Wow, Stefon moved to tears.

hader to the rescue

Yeah, Sidney Appelbaum more than made up for Bruno Mars.

lol'd like twice, terrible ep

cant wait 4 louie

Yeah, it only got good when Bruno Mars was marginalized or absent altogether. Some high highs but overall the worst episode I've seen in a long time. Like in several years.

who would've thought that bruno mars would produce something horrifyingly terrible

Was Kenan even there this week?

Just in the opening monologue.

Good to see Aidy Bryant finally get some airtime, though. And the Donkey Punch The Vote sketch at the end was funnier than about 90% of the rest of the show.

I still think Sad Mouse was sweet, if not really funny. Also, Stefon. Also, the debate cold open.

The rest...what a disaster for NBC.

Why do they gotsta ruin my Louis C.K. experience with fundot at the musical guest? This is why we can't have nice things.

Their last good musical guest was Meat Loaf in 1981, so who cares.

who would've thought that bruno mars would produce something horrifyingly terrible

Oh, I predicted garbage from the day it was announced, but I live to be proven wrong and pleasantly surprised (a la Seth MacFarlane). It's just that it was so much worse than I'd imagined.

But, yeah, edit this down to the cold open, Stefon, maybe Donkey Punch and the haunted ride (I really love that bit but I can dig that it might not be everybody's groove) and you've got a solid half hour amidst the crap. I can always find something to love in even the worst episodes.

I can always find something to love in even the worst episodes.

Lorne designs them that way. I'm sure good stuff gets left in the writers' room every week.

Well, I live in hope that "Bruno Mars does shitty singing impersonations for ten minutes" and "the Raping Yeti" weren't the cream of this week's writing crop.

Oddly, the frontpage ad on Hulu for the Bruno Mars SNL seems to be taken from a sketch that didn't even air.

people still say "mulatto"?!

no, just cankles

I'mma give 'Sad Mouse' another chance. I checked out about halfway through the Pandora sketch so I wasn't a particularly receptive audience at that point, but in theory, it fits the bill for the type of slightly more dramatic work SNL used to feature all the time but slowly moved away from (like this classic short). And I really want to support any move in that direction. Even if Bruno Mars is unfortunately a part of it.

Oh, for anyone who's curious (especially since, to my knowledge, there's never been any follow up publicity about his exit), Paul Brittain is back doing regular improv gigs at iO in Chicago.

I think you're all being to hard on Bruno. He was a fine performer, he didn't fuck up or look like a deer in the headlights, I mean, would you rather have a sports figure (excepting the few who are actually entertaining). The material was mostly pretty week but I'm not blaming him for it.

And mulatto? That's weird.

I'll admit to coming into the episode with a pretty strong bias against Bruno Mars. But the same was true of the Seth MacFarlane episode and he definitely pulled that one out. I know nothing about sports and the sports dudes are usually stiff as hell when they host but they don't usually come across as so completely in love with themselves as Bruno does so it's more fun to see them goofin' around out of their element.

It is very difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between being in love with what you are doing and being in love with yourself.

bruno mars hosting gig due to whatever internet input they were soliciting (purely speculative on my part) and hopes for another timberlake probably right?

also w/ athletes hosting i think there's been a big difference between major pro team athletes hosting (a la barkley, the mannings, or oj and fran tarkenton way back when) and olympic athletes (phelps, kerrigan), the pro athletes have had alot more experience w/ media, building their brand, major ad campaigns, etc. by the time peyton hosted he'd already been in nearly an hour's worth of awful awful snl type sketches for oreo or whoever. these guys also have big, well known personas or auras that snl can play off even if the athlete host isn't a natural (eg michael jordan).

good point. Barkley and the Mannings were relatively great, Phelps was terrible.

Man there have been some awful sketches this season: Pandora, My Kitty Cat, Foot Locker/Gangnam Style, Haters, Dance Studio...

I liked My Kitty Cat for no defensible reason.

kitty cat will probably be seen as a beloved classic 10 years from now

It's funny to imagine the writers watching alien and thinking, "who brought the cat?" The parodies of various aliens crew members were also good. Already a beloved classic imo.

Yeah, I liked it.

And I know everyone thought I was crazy by noting how little Vanessa there was last week. Well she barely did better this week.

SNL is a total Rorschach test. Quality-wise, I don't think there's anything universally agreed upon except maybe that the late '80s/early '90s era was the show's peak. The highly subjective and wildly differing opinions of what works and what doesn't and what's good and what isn't is probably due to some formula Lorne's worked out that keeps the show successful. "There are too many highbrow sketches this week. We need something dumb that some people will love and that other people will spend all week complaining about on the internet."