The highlights of last night’s Sarah Silverman-hosted second outing of Saturday Night Live were few and far between. That’s bad form for SNL as the noted comedienne surely attracted a broader audience than your average host, and the episode bitterly disappointed her fans, this one included.
Silverman’s opening monologue probably featured a significant clue to her downfall. She felt unnatural and forced, referencing her troubles in finding material that would make it beyond the NBC censors. It could have been a gimmick, but, given what followed, I suspect there was truth there. Her best monologue material employed past footage of her brief stint as a featured player on the show.
The episode offered a great deal of content, seemingly more than the average show. Despite the overall content, most skits felt short and focused. What we were given, though, simply wasn’t funny. But let’s start with the best of the night.
I did find this week’s movie parody, The Fault in Our Stars 2: The Ebola in Our Everything, quite amusing because it so completely nailed the look and feel of the original film while skewering it mercilessly. Nothing was sacred, down to the feel-good platitude employed as the slogan: “Because you can’t quarantine your heart.” Good stuff.
A fake commercial, Whites, also delivered some laughs. Referencing the presumed timetable when Caucasians will become the minority in the United States (somewhere, as the ad says, around 2050 or 2060 at the latest), the commercial featured partying whites celebrating their last few years in power. What was on the agenda? Things like camping and hiking, more camping and hiking, and bad dancing to the Train song “Hey Soul Sister.”
And that was largely it for quality in the episode. I suppose you could say the Joan Rivers in Heaven skit had some merit, particularly in the inspiring imitation of Rivers by Silverman, if only Silverman had been able to accurately remember or read her lines. None of the other celebrity impersonations really registered save Adam Levine’s brief but somewhat inspired Freddie Mercury impersonation.
The remainder of the show had the reliable SNL failures we’ve all come to expect: an unfunny political open (side note: SNL hasn’t skewered politics amusingly since the Tina Fey Sarah Palin days, and that’s largely due to her inspired performance. Why do they continue to even try at this point?), the now officially dead zone Weekend Update sequence lead by the personality-free Colin Jost and mysteriously unpracticed Michael Che, and a back half of the show that was dangerously lethargic. One of the main problems of the episode this week is that they didn’t seem to know how to use their biggest assets in the cast: namely, Taran Killam, Kate McKinnon, Cecily Strong, Aidy Bryant, and Vanessa Bayer, who, historically, has provided great laughs (particularly as Miley Cyrus) but felt completely missing from the show until the very last skit: a weird commentary on the “Keeping up with the Joneses” suburbia mentality called “Vitamix.”
The remainder of the show had the reliable SNL failures we’ve all come to expect: an unfunny political open (side note: SNL hasn’t skewered politics amusingly since the Tina Fey Sarah Palin days, and that’s largely due to her inspired performance. Why do they continue to even try at this point?), the now officially dead zone Weekend Update sequence lead by the personality-free Colin Jost and mysteriously unpracticed Michael Che, and a back half of the show that was dangerously lethargic.
One of the main problems of the episode this week is that they didn’t seem to know how to use their biggest assets in the cast: namely, Taran Killam, Kate McKinnon, Cecily Strong, Aidy Bryant, and Vanessa Bayer, who, historically, has provided great laughs (particularly as Miley Cyrus) but felt completely missing from the show until the very last skit: a weird commentary on the “Keeping up with the Joneses” suburbia mentality called “Vitamix.”
