SNL: Cold Open Was Solid, Rest Was Luke-Warm

With rumors of an Obama appearance, this Saturday I found myself doing something I can hardly every remember doing – getting excited to watch Saturday Night Live.  Sure, I’ve enjoyed it from time to time.  I’m as big a fan of sketch comedy as anyone.  But never a die-hard fan of the show.  But having been watching weeks of telelvision this summer ripe with satirical potential (e.g., the Olympics, the conventions), I’ve been itching to see how the SNL crew might capitalize on some of this.  I was initially greeted with some of the political humor that I was thirsting for, but most of the rest of the show turned out to be a bit less pallatable.

The cold opener (which everyone should watch) featured a guest appearance by Tina Fey as Sarah Palin alongside Amy Pohler as Hillary Clinton giving a joint press conference concerning sexism and politics.  Palin herself couldn’t have done a better impression than Fey pulled off.  If she were still a regular on the show, I might even make an effort to continue watching the show.  But the rest of the show managed to stifle that desire.

Michael Phelps was the guest host of the show and his greeting routine was odd, but amusing – the impersonation of his mom was somewhat expected but fine, but Shatner’s appearance to dispense endorsement advice was priceline priceless.  I was with American in loving Phelps’ sweep of the gold, but I knew better than to have high expectations of his performance on SNL – his placement was as anticipated – in filler roles where you could laugh at whatever hair/clothes they opted to put him in.  Unfortunately, those made up the majority of the laughs the rest of the show drew from me.

Most of the sketches they went with were either obsurd, or good in premise but poorly executed.  The quiz show routine over-stretched a jab at home-schooling and made me pine for more classic SNL game show parody such as Celebrity Jeopardy.  The Charles Barkley Show sketch which featured Darrel Hammond as Bella Caroli had great potential to (a) poke fun at some of the Olympic contraversies and commentators and (b) introduce a decent impression of Barkley (Frank Calliendo is doing one already), but it failed to deliver on either. 

It wasn’t completely horrible.  The Phelps Diet Plan was amusing and the T-Mobile ad was kind of funny (though it made fun of a commercial that has been airing since long before their summer hiatus).  The Weekend Update still offers an amusing twist on headlines and Fred Armisen’s say-nothing editorialist character is good for a few laughs.  But when mixed with digital shorts like Space Olympics and Jar Glove, I’m not as inclined to give then benefit of the doubt.

SNL has gone through dry patches in the past, but I’m not sure that they stock is solid enough to muscle through much more of the likes of this.  And with the election politics stoking as they are, they need to be on point with these things.  Sure The Daily Show and The Colbert Report do a great job with such material, but neither offers us exaggerated impressions of our candidates on which to foolishly base our voting decision.  I hope that they rein it in in time for it to make their impression and meanwhile actually come up with some funnier material.