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Last night, NBC’s Saturday Night Live earned its highest meter-market overnight rating (5.3/13) since the late-night sketch show’s season premiere. Last night’s holiday edition of SNL, hosted by Paul Rudd with musical guest Paul McCartney, was up slightly, by 4%, vs. the same night last year. The two Pauls had about equal presence on the show, with McCartney popping up in a number of segments in addition to performing several songs, including a heartfelt salute to John Lennon days after the 30th anniversary of his death. Here is Rudd’s opening monologue that also featured McCartney:
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I guess nobody goes on forever, it had to happen eventually, but: McCartney really sounded old last night. Sorry to see it.
And he’s been putting “Give Peace A Chance in at the end of “A Day In The Life” for a while now.
It wasn’t Macca but the sound check and the sound engineers. Vocals were great on Fallon!
I watched the entire show, hoping it would be a bit better than it actually turned out to be. The Armisen/Obama opening was weak. Now Fred is a talented guy, but it turns out that Jay Pharaoh (one of the new second-string players) does a dead-on Obama impersonation. Nothing against Fred, but he is white, so maybe they should let the African-American actor give it a shot? (If you remember, they also futzed around with Bush impersonators after Ferrel left. Chris Parnell did it – poorly – until Jason Sudeikis stepped in.)
The “overly affectionate” Vogelcheck family sketch was not much better (they did this the last time Rudd hosted). The premise wears thin very quickly.
This seems to be the way SNL writers are structuring sketches – around an irritating character or premise that simply keeps repeating itself. Look at “What’s Up With That?”, the Wiig-characters Gilley and one-upping hair twirler (Penelope?), etc. You could argue that this goes all the back to Belushi’s Samurai character and maybe that’s true too. But it is lazy writing and certainly Lorne can find writers with more creativity? Or maybe not.
While I always enjyong seeing Sir Paul perform live, for some reason the vocals just did not seem up to par – not just for Paul but for the entire band. Maybe it was the way NBC’s engineers handled the sound? He did sound better when he performed live on Letterman’s theater marquee a couple of years ago. Of course, the guy is getting older and our pipes don’t last forever.
It was also a bit disappointing that Paul just did a “greatest hits” set. Given this performance was close to the 30th anniversary of Lennon’s assassination, we all probably thought he would do more than an abbreviated version of “Give Peace A Chance.”
Oh well, maybe the Jeff Bridges SNL will be better next week.
Fred isn’t white. I think hes half Asian and half Hispanic.
The problem isn’t Armisten’s impression. The voice doesn’t have to be good (as Chevy Chase proved) you just have to do SOMETHING funny.
Dana Carvey did probably the most iconic presidential imitation with his GHWB and in the grand scheme of things, he sounded very little like the president, but man he was funny. To this day, people don’t imitate Bush, they imitate Carvey doing Bush. (And for the people who think SNL is some GOP-bashfest, Carvey’s Bush was never hateful or even particularly political).
They are not writing ANYTHING funny for Armisten’s Obama and he doesn’t seem to even be trying to develop a caricature. It’s almost treasonous to SNL’s tradition of iconic presidential impressions.
Okay, ‘treasonous’ is hyperbole, but some of us comedy nerds take this stuff very seriously. I want them to do something about this but I’m afraid they’re “Nah Ganna Duit.”
what an absolutely horrible episode. snl is dead.
If by dead you mean delivering huge ratings, then you are absolutely correct.
Another dumb deadline commenter who believes their views portray everybody elses.
Hey that was the probably the funniest opening in decades.
You thought that stale Obama opening was funny. Seriously?
There are funny, talented performers on the show. They get great guests, great musical guests, but they need a whole new writing staff, immediately if not sooner!
The kissing family was funny…once! You can’t keep going to that dried up well. Is Lorne Michaels the person who actually over- sees the writing staff? if so he should give up that responsibility.
There is definitely something wrong over there, the show wasn’t even funny when Tina Fey was the head writer and she is hysterical. Might be time for Lorne to step aside and get some new writers up in there
The problem is everyone keeps watching, waiting to laugh. The laughs hardly come, BUT, since everyone was watching, the show SCORES – and Lorne gets another pat on the back.
Something’s gotta give here.
Yup. The only thing I laughed at last night was Stefon the gay club guy. Other than that, wow it sucked.
Lorne Michaels, according to Mike Meyers’ little-finger-to-his-lip impersonation of him as Dr. Evil, is the nefarious creator/puppet master behind all the SNL skits and actors, manipulating his “discoveries” into performances that either please him or else there will be no contract for next year. Dana Carvey once told the story of how he was on set waiting to go on the air as the hilariously popular Church Lady, when Lolren come up to him and whispered some last second encouragement: “You know you suck. I know you suck. Just don’t let them know it.”
The problem with SNL is the Head Writer! Seth has to go.
Good show, that only a guest like Paul could have me watch for the full period, but I would have to question, did we all may have watched a long Itunes commercial?
Anne Hathaway is still the best SNL host this t.v. season , and the episode she hosted is so far the most entertaining of all the SNL shows this t.v. season. It is amazing how certain actors shine on SNL , but other actors come off hideously.
SNL has been horrible this season. And how can you have a cast member on the show (she’s new this season. I forgot her name) who does a perfect, dead on impression of Myley Cyrus and you don’t have a sketch, let alone a
mention of her and the Bong incident? What happened to topical news Lorne?
Should have just let McCartney play the entire show. The sketches were all terrible. All of ‘em.
when you have a sketch satirizing people that make bad jokes (rudd’s school teacher mc sketch last night) yet that same quality of jokes appear in other non-satirical sketches as your legit A material, something’s inherently wrong. never thought i’d say it, but snl has lost it. sorry.
I mark out for all the “SNL is awful, it’s horrible, it’s dead” comments.
People have been saying this for, what, 35 years????
Another crappy episode with great ratings. I love Paul Rudd, but the sketches were ill-conceived for the most part and Paul McCartney sang 3.5 times. This was barely an episode. They should have saved McCartney for a less-talented host (like an athlete) so we could actually enjoy the comedic talents of the host.
The Anne Hathaway, Jane Lynch, and Jon Hamm episodes were much better than this (and the Deniro) episode, but oh well.
I think the problem with the writing on SNL is that someone there is a little embarrassed about the idea of a sketch having a point.
The problem with, say, the Wiig irritating lady sketches is that they have nothing to say. They’re pure, abstract, “yes and, and heighten” improv. They probably grew out of some improv scene that was hilarious when Wiig first came up with the idea live, but there’s not enough there, there to sustain a bunch of SNL sketches.
People might say, “Well, then, what was the point of the Land Shark bits or the Samurai hibachi chef bits?” but I think Belushi, for example, always had a point, even when he didn’t say what they point was in so many words. The idea was something like, “I could kill you, but I won’t,” not just, “I’ll keep doing this over and over till you hit me on the head with a brick.”
I thought the funniest sketches Saturday were the Assange bit and the What’s My Name? game show parody, and those sketches had a very obvious point.
The opening wasn’t that funny, in my opinion, but at least I can remember what it was, which is more than I can say about a lot of the sketches Saturday. I think the opener was memorable, if not all that funny, because it had a point.