September 16, 2012
Lines that made me laugh out loud:
Nobody was laughing outloud that day in Granada. (Puppet)
When we come back: can Hot Sauce prevent impotence. (Steve Harvey)
Considering the political climate and the concurrent election, the cold opening welcomed back a season that will likely be rife with political satire. Not that this is anything new, however, Jay Pharoah showed a bit of versatility outside of Jay-Z and Denzel Washington and may prove himself to be more than the one-trick phony I’ve taken him as since he joined two seasons back.
I’m not a huge fan of Seth MacFarlane’s sense of humor, but his panache for the old Hollywood and Vaudevillian multi-talent actor I regard very highly. His voices, his singing, his love of musical theatre and his everyman face worked very well this episode. Particularly in the “Lids” sketch where he played a SoCal baseball-hat-monger who cheers up his friend, Keenan Thompson, who was recently passed over for a promotion by hitting a big red button that opens a trap door through which dry ice smoke, dance music and a 70s bar mitzvah tuxedoed rapper comes out and dances. MacFarlane explains this is K-pop rapper, Psy, who recently got two million hits on youtube, because white people can relish in their racism when they are alone. Psy was played by Bobby Moynihan, and then joined by female dancers, horse puppets and hype-men. The actual Psy, this was not made up to my surprise?, comes out dances.
MacFarlane puts his man-child hat on for the next skit playing a puppetry instructor to three would be Shari Lewises, Thompson, Vanessa Bayer and Bill Hader, whose marrionettes are a park ranger, valley girl and an American veteran of the Sandanista Rebellion. Get it? The puppets were great looking, particularly the veteran: a very funny sketch, twisted and dark which harkens back to the mid-80s Jack Handey or Sen. Al Franken.
Frank Ocean comes out to rap/sing a song, “Thinkin’ About You.” Really good stuff. I’m not terrible hip on neo-soul, but I hope this kid makes it. It’s guitar driven atmospheric music, grab the hip-hop crowd and the guitar-rock crowd. Nicely, nicely done, Mr. Ocean.
Weekend Update had three fake guests. First was Honey Boo Boo, the TLC reality star played by Bayer and her mother, Moynihan. They mock these reality-tv bumpkins and their supportive network, where the L apparently standsfor Louisiana-backwater. Ryan Lochte is an Olympic swimmer who is apparently dumb, no stretch in humor for actor MacFarlane. Lastly, newcomer Cecily Strong, who played a Dominicana political enthusiast who knew virtually nothing about either canidates, and she had to constantly swat away the busy fingers of her silent-but-libidinous boyfriend, Pharoah. Nice schtick by Strong not supporting the Dream Act because some of her uncles are creeps and her family has a lot in common with Mormons because her dad wants more than one wife.
Steve Harvey Show mockup was funny because dressing people like Steve Harvey is silly. The sharpest skit was “Blind Date” with Nasim Pedrad and Seth MacFarlane. It really nailed the 18-30 youth culture, a group of people so permeated with TV and movie driven popular culture that an original thought is celebrated because it’s so darned uncomon! Two blithering idiots constantly trying to impress everyone with a terrible metacongnative affectectations modeled on popular culture schlock. Kenan Thompson, probably along with Fred Armisen and recently departed Kristen Wiig, the most versitile impressionist on SNL since 2005, follows Pedrad and MacFarlane’s preface to each impression: “and I’m all like ‘Stop this now.’” Now that I’m over thirty, I don’t get the cultural references and jokes that my students (pre-teens) and my younger, thinner, hipper contemporaries get, “Stop this now” is quite apt.
Speaking of impressions, John Mayer did a great Stevie Ray Vaughn impression during Frank Ocean’s last song of the show, “Pyramids.” Ocean: this little faygeleh has got some promise!
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