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Sunday, May 4, 2014

Saturday Night Live: Andrew Garfield & Coldplay


This episode marks the beginning of the end of SNL's season, as it's the first of the final three new episodes of the TV year. Andrew Garfield, flush with all the Amazing Spider-Man 2 press, helps usher in the season's endgame with a worthy amount of energy and enthusiasm, though once again, the writing fails to elevate much of the material beyond mediocre. Host verve can do a lot to make an episode enjoyable (if the host is having a good time, it's easier for the audience to have one too), but it takes more than that for a really memorable one.

Other Thoughts
Celebrity Family Feud was, once again, just an excuse for a ton of celebrity cameos, but as a vehicle for that, it works as well as the "auditions for a movie" routine, and Garfield's Justin Timberlake impression was pretty solid (and when he started doing the head bob at the end, Mrs. Teebore just about lost it).

Update once again succeeded on the strength of its guests, as both Olga and Jebediah Atkinson remain favorites (though the Atkinson material this time out wasn't as sharp). Leslie Jones, who rounded out the Update guests, is apparently one of the staff writers SNL brought on during their recent push to add more racially-diverse voices to the show. Her material was relatively funny, though I don't really like it when someone appears on Update just to do a bit of stand-up material. 

The requisite Spider-Man sketch was a bit of a disappointment, built around one idea (real life couple Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield don't kiss like normal people) and little else beyond a vague gay-panic show involving Coldplay's Chris Martin.

The wedding sketch wasn't a bad idea in principal, and it built nicely (revealing that Garfield was married to the maid-of-honor, with whom he has four kids), but it just never came together right, and suffered from a logical flaw: after Garfield's best man reveals his secret love for the bride, she says she doesn't even know him that well, as they tend to just hang out in group situations together, yet later, it's revealed that the bridge and groom are his kids godparents, suggesting the bride and the best man were closer than her earlier comment. 

Apparently, Kyle Mooney's usual end-of-the-night sketch was cut for time (both Celebrity Family Feud and Update felt longer than usual), resulting in the repeated Bird Bible commercial. I watched the Mooney video online, and it was pretty good, a parody of 90s sitcom aesthetics with the usual mix of weirdness and low energy. 

Least Favorite Sketch: Stanx. Look, I love me a good fart joke more than most, but this just never went anywhere or did anything remotely funny.

Favorite Sketch: Once again, the picking were slim, with nothing really standing out, so I'll go with "The Beygency", which was a solid trailer spoof built around a clever premise (it's not that he doesn't like Beyonce, he just doesn't like that one song). 

Olga: Ladies leave your man at home/The club is full of wolves, and it’s very dangerous.

Jebediah Atkinson: Cats don’t care about you!
 
Episodes Featuring a Game Show: 7/19
Episodes Featuring a Talk Show: 11/19
Episodes with a Monologue Featuring a Song: 8/19
Episodes with a Monologue Technically Featuring a Song That Is Not a Song for the Purposes of "Episodes with a Monologue Featuring a Song": 1/19  

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