Despite Scarlett Johansson’s surprisingly likable turn as host of this week’s show, all of the accents, accents, accents in the world couldn’t save it from being a fairly forgettable episode.
We opened with a political skit about the Chinese G20 summit that featured a grand total of five not-getting-paid-back-is-just-like-buttsex jokes.
Also, is it just me, or is Fred Armisen being gradually put in makeup that’s really starting to move toward blackface territory? And why hasn”t new cast member Jay Pharaoh been allowed to pull out his reportedly excellent Barack Obama impression? SNL, why won’t you let yourself be great?!
Scarlett’s monologue was energetic and didn’t take too many risks, although I may have been distracted by the fact that Scarlett was distracted by her Madonna-circa-Vogue hair. Abby Elliott, who is constantly being relegated to the role of the happy, smiling and gradually disgusted girlfriend in skits that allow her male cast members to shine, was allowed to pull out a short duration but high impact Ke$ha impression. More of Abby being funny, please. She’s good at it.
This week’s episode rolled out a fairly impressive MTV parody commercial that recharacterized the network as “Maternity Television.
The whole thing was dense and fast-moving, which is the opposite of what SNL usually offers, which is probably why I liked it so much, since most SNL skits should probably be about half as long as they are. The best part of the entire bit, though, was this baby’s reaction shot-
Step it up, cast. You are being upstaged by a baby.
We then zipped right into a brick wall of a Millionaire Matchmaker parody skit that featured a horribly miscast Scarlett as Patti Stanger.
Is it just me, or would this skit have been funnier with someone else as Patti and Scarlett as an incredibly hot woman looking to date a short, balding millionaire with female attractiveness standards that are much too high? Also, new cast member Vanessa Bayer is getting a lot of mileage this episode, playing roles that normally would have probably gone to a hysterical-acting Kristin Wiig. I welcome the change.