The Week That Was 0217/25

X-Book Power Rankings, Hadestown, and Review Round-Up

Saturday Night Live: Andy Samberg & St. Vincent

This wasn't the best episode of the season by any means, but at least the show ended on a relatively strong note. Granted, the regular cast was barely on hand for much of it (I wouldn't be surprised if we've seen the last of some them; so long Noel Wells and Brooks Whelan!), as Andy Samberg returned and brought along a ton of his former cast member friends. While the highs weren't all that high, at least the baseline landed somewhere closer to "amusing" than "indifferent", which has been the case more often than not this season.

Saturday Night Live: Charlize Theron & The Black Keys

Wow, the most remarkable thing about this episode is how thoroughly mediocre it was. Like, I'm having a hard time remembering much of anything about it, and while that's probably understandable for everyone reading this who watched it weeks ago, I just watched it Saturday night for the first time. And I still can't remember much that jumped out at me, good or bad, though I do remember that most of what I did enjoy, I enjoyed on a more intellectual "I get why this is funny" level than because I was uproariously laughing at it. This wasn't the worst episode of the season by any means, but it almost feels like the nadir of the season nonetheless, just in terms of how the baseline has been so thoroughly established as "nothing terrible, nothing terribly good".

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.

Saturday Night Live: Seth Rogen & Ed Sheerhan

A bit of a Jekyll & Hyde episode, with the first half consistently strong while the second half was much more inconsistent. A weak Weekend Update (which has, unfortunately, consistently been the case of late) signaled the transition, and while what followed it wasn't, with one exception, completely terrible, the back end sketches weren't as reliably funny as the pre-Update ones. Seth Rogen was fine, doing his usual "confused straight man" and "loud angry outbursts" routines, and the episode as a whole continued this little post-spring break "good enough" role the show has been on. 

Saturday Night Live: Anna Kendrick & Pharrell William

Though by no means a standout episode of the season I probably enjoyed this a bit more than last week's. But we're still firmly in the "nothing great, nothing awful" territory, so I certainly wouldn't quibble with anyone who said otherwise. That's the thing about these episodes: how well they work depends a lot more than usual on personal tastes and how you're feeling when you watch it. As for Anna Kendrick, she did fine. She was given plenty to do, and played a variety of roles (from carrying whole sketches to slotting in a secondary role), though many of them leaned on her musical background.

Saturday Night Live: Louis C.K. & Sam Smith

After an odd three week hiatus (after having been shelved during the Olympics), SNL returned this week with another episode that landed firmly in "middling" territory, one of those outings with no real stinker of a sketch but no real standouts either, despite the best efforts of the host. Like most hosts with a background in sketch and/or stand-up comedy, Louis C.K. acquitted himself well and seemed perfectly comfortable with what he was asked to do. For the most part, he simply played some combination of quirky or put-upon straight men, but that's what he does well, and he did it well here. But after all that time off, you'd have hoped the show would have come back with a bit more energy.

Saturday Night Live: Lena Dunham & The National

Though by no means one of the season's standout episodes, this was a marked improvement over last week's limp Jim Parsons-hosted affair. Lena Dunham wasn't exactly asked to stretch, mostly just playing it straight (though she did get in a decent Liza Minelli impression towards the end), and was occasionally overshadowed by a surprising bevy of guests, but she handled herself well, even recovering nicely from a flubbed line at one point. It might just be the timing of it, but this seemed like a pretty strong episode, continuing the season-long up-and-down streak.

Other Thoughts
Liam Neeson popping up in the cold open made for a decent joke in and of itself (I'm a sucker for "actors are really their characters" bits), but the payoff (Obama starring in an action film parody) wasn't all that great.

Saturday Night Live: Jim Parsons & Beck

Boy, this show did not come out of the Olympics break strong. That Peter Pan sketch wasn't awful, but when it led off the night, I wasn't exactly filled with enthusiasm for the rest of the show, and that mostly panned out. Parsons was mainly a non-entity, showing up in a fair number of sketches but rarely asked to play anything other than comically put upon or lovably goofy, two beats he reliably hits as Sheldon. He seemed to be having a good time; it just would have been nice if the sketches had been better.

Saturday Night Live: Melissa McCarthy & Imagine Dragons

By now, the SNL writers clearly know what to expect from Melissa McCarthy, and wisely write to her strengths. The end result is an episode dominated by McCarthy (she appeared in every non-pre-filmed sketch, including the cold open, save for Weekend Update), one that eschews much in the way of clever structure or recurring characters (just one recurring sketch) and just lets McCarthy come in and play her distinctive style of wacky, over-the-top characters. It may not be the most original episode, but it's still one of the funnier in this mostly mediocre season.

Amidst all the McCarthy hijinks, the show bid farewell to Seth Meyers. While Seth has been an able and effective Weekend Update anchor, both in his own right and with various partners, that segment of the show should be fine: Cecily Strong has acquitted herself well in her brief tenure behind the desk, visibly growing more confidant with each outing, and there remains a decent stable of recurring Update guests that don't require Seth's presence from which the show can draw.

But I am curious to see how Seth's departure as head writer affects the show, simply because his voice has been a dominant one in the writer's room for so long now (almost ten years). He also leaves the show in a transitional period, as it continues to work out exactly what its strong, large, but relatively new cast is capable of and what its voice will be in the wake of so many long time (and dominant) cast members departing.

So far, this has been a mostly mediocre season, but with so many new faces on hand and old faces gone, being mediocre, rather than downright awful, is a success in its own right. It'll be interesting to see what impact, if any, Seth's absence as a writer and guiding voice will have in that development. Is he responsible for keeping the new cast out of the dumps, or will the ascendancy of other voices allow the cast to come into their own? Only time will tell.

Saturday Night Live: Jonah Hill & Bastille

Well, once again this is a thoroughly average episode, with neither significant highs nor lows, and once again, the host is largely irrelevant to that outcome. Jonah Hill more or less did what he was asked to do ably, including a return for his recurring character and a variety of roles as both the featured player in a sketch, a supporting character, or a straight man. But the writing never really required him to do much, and the result was another blase episode (though one that was, overall, still weaker than last week's similarly blah episode).

Saturday Night Live: Drake

Despite being the first episode back from the holiday break, the majority of the enthusiasm and energy in this episode came from the host. I had no idea Drake was such a comfortable performer (then again, I know very little about Drake, including, until now, his turn on Degrassi), and his energy helped lift some otherwise middling sketches on a night that otherwise fit the mold of the season: consistently solid, with neither very high highs or low lows.

Other Thoughts
This was the debut episode of Sasheer Zamata, the first female African-American the show has had in its cast for years, who was hired during the break as part of an audition specifically geared towards finding a female African-American cast member. Now that she's here, all the shows problems with diversity are solved, right? Right.

Saturday Night Live: Jimmy Fallon & Justin Timberlake

It's always tough to be critical of the Christmas episode. Unless it completely bombs, there's usually an effervescent energy to it that manages to smooth out the rough edges, especially if they manage to get a seasoned/favorite/recurring host to do the show (and they usually do). So while this episode definitely finished weaker than it started, there were quite a few highly entertaining bits. Both Fallon and Timberlake (who essentially co-hosted, at least in the first half) performed well, had a ton of energy, and seemed genuinely happy to be hosting. Maybe it's that energy, or just the holiday season, but I really enjoyed this one.

Saturday Night Live: John Goodman & Kings of Leon

Another cromulent if unexciting episode. Few of the sketches were awful, with most having at least one or two funny bits, but there were very few top-to-bottom successes. John Goodman, a seasoned pro at this,  certainly gave it his all and acquitted himself well, playing everything from straight men to more whacky characters, but overall the sketches seemed to have a hard time coming together.

Other Thoughts
Thirteen hosting gigs for John Goodman is pretty impressive, but his consecutive streak from 1989 to 2001 impresses me even more. I mean, Roseanne likely earned him most of those spots well into the nineties, and Monsters, Inc. likely landed him his last hosting gig, but there's at least a few years there where he wasn't doing much of note and was getting asked back just on the strength of his talent (he's third on the all-time hosting list between Alec Baldwin (16) and Steve Martin(15)). 

Saturday Night Live: Paul Rudd & One Direction

 
Apparently, "mediocre" is this season's new baseline status, as this was another episode with neither a really strong standout sketch nor any overtly terrible sketches (and, frankly, "medicore" isn't a bad baseline for a show that has a propensity to set that baseline at "lackluster"). Paul Rudd brought his usual goofy charm to a handful of roles (his standout sketch was likely the pre-taped One Direction bit, and he did an effective job of keeping the premise of that sketch from being too creepy), and though there were guests a-plenty in this episode, they were mostly relegated to two sketches (one of which was the cold open), so Rudd didn't get squeezed out too much.

Saturday Night Live: Josh Hutcherson & Haim

For whatever reason, Josh Hutcherson wasn't given much to do in this episode, and ended up largely relegated to the straight man roles that hosts whom the writers don't think can handle much usually get (and most of the non-straight man work he got, like Lil' Peanut, was built around the fact that he's kinda short), which is a shame, because he seemed like he may have been capable of handling more (maybe the writers just didn't want to roll the dice on a first time host who's pretty much just done one notable thing in his career?).

The end result was another solid, if unexciting, episode, a bit of a letdown after the previous two strong ones but another episode with few completely bad sketches - even the sketches I didn't enjoy as much weren't fundamentally flawed or poorly executed, and at this point in a transitional season, "not many awful" sketches is almost as promising as "lots of really good sketches".  

Saturday Night Live: Lady Gaga

This was a pretty solid episode: a few sketches I liked less than others, but nothing completely awful or deeply flawed in conception, everything generally amusing on some level and quite a few sketches I genuinely enjoyed. In terms of Lady Gaga, I recall thinking, when she'd pop up in sketches during her various turns as a musical guest, that she'd make for a decent host. She passed my first test for any celebrity with an air of pretentiousness about them: the ability to display a sense of humor about themselves. Beyond that, while most of her sketch work played off her image to one extent or another, preventing her from disappearing into roles the way, say, Kerry Washington did, she acquitted herself well. 

Saturday Night Live: Kerry Washington & Eminem

I'm not sure if this was the best episode of the season so far, but it was easily the most consistent, with almost all of the sketches landing on some level, flawed at times and humorous at others, all in the same sketch. Nothing was brilliant, but nothing was terrible either.

And most of the credit for that goes to Kerry Washington, who was a fantastic host. She ended up appearing in nearly every sketch to varying degrees, and did a lot to elevate some of the lesser material. Having not watched Scandal, I'm not terribly familiar with Washington's work (I know her mainly from her minor role in the Fantastic Four films and Django Unchained), but based on this episode, I'd be happy to see her back hosting again any time (or on a sitcom someday).

Last Week in Pop Culture #6: All Halloween Edition

TV and movies make a big deal out of most of the major holidays, but Halloween, arguably, gets the biggest inflation in scope from "real life" to "fiction". Once you've outgrown trick-or-treating, there isn't a whole lot to the day. I celebrate it by going to a party (in costume, of course), listening to appropriately-themed music in the weeks leading up to the holiday, and watching suspense/horror/Halloween-themed movies and TV shows.

Yet while Christmas remains my favorite real world holiday, Halloween is probably my favorite when it comes to fictions about the holiday itself, as the stories, imagery and sensations on display in fiction are so much larger and impactful than they are in real life. And as much as there are some Christmas movies I love, and some fantastic Christmas-themed episodes of favorite TV shows, I have much more fun plowing through the fiction of Halloween every October than I do that of Christmas in December (in part because there's plenty more real world stuff to do associated with Christmas).

Anyways, here's my thoughts on some Halloween-themed TV shows I watched last week.

Sleepy Hollow: John Doe

So the lost colony of Roanoke is lost because the Horseman of Pestilence (aka Conquest) infected it with a plague then sent it forward in time so Pestilence could be unleashed on the modern world, but the colony was protected by the ghost of Virgina Dare, who gave the water healing properties, at least until one of the colonists was lured out by the Horseman and pierced the time barrier, entering the modern world and bringing the plague along with him?

Goddamn, I love this show.

Saturday Night Live: Edward Norton & Janelle Monae

I'm surprised that Edward Norton has never hosted before. I know he has a reputation (alluded to in his monologue) for being a finicky, controlling method actor, so I could definitely see him thinking that doing SNL is below him. But then he randomly shows up to host, not even to promote anything specific, so maybe he was just never asked before? Or maybe he did need thirteen years to prepare...

Anyways, he handled himself pretty well - there were a few times where he seemed to stumble on some lines, but it wasn't clear if he was or if if was just he way he was playing the character - and was given a fair amount of work to do. This was a fairly consistent episode, with very few studs or duds, so to speak. Pretty much all the sketches had at least one flaw (if not more), but most also had at least one or two entertaining moments as well.