Pies! Pies! Pies!

not only was it funny, it was literally the first one where I've been able to make it to Weekend Update

Water!

Heh. Definitely one of their better recent sketches. And following it up a few sketches later with closet organizer guy getting recognized in a bar was an excellent idea.

fml, deleted that hamm ep b/c i thought it was rerun. he hosted like a year ago, no?

Barkley was better for me. Although the closet organizer testimonial was pretty LOL

Loved that they gave the closet organizer guy a little bowl to "do his business"

I haven't seen snl in a while, but abby elliott was on fallon last night as part of the 6bee cast. I'm sexually attracted to her.

I can't believe Abby Elliot is Cabin Boy's daughter.

Her Meryl Streep during Weekend Update was awesome.

I'm also sexually attracted to her.

She did an awesome Anna Farris as well. Her celebrity impressions are very good but she hasn't carved out a niche for herself yet. Actually, other than Kristin Wiig, none of the woman have.

The problem is that, whether or not you like her Wiig, she's the most popular female cast member by a mile. And the writers are the same as the actors - they want their material to make the cut. So if they're writing something with a female lead they're usually going to be writing it for KW in order to improve the odds that the skit makes the show.

Unfortunately this means the other girls have to fight for every minute they get on the air and it also results in serious overexposure for Wiig. I like her and think she's talented but this is a case where less is more. I believe she's better than we see on the show but she's used so often all of her characters start to seem the same.

But I've also been enjoying Keenan's work this year so what the **** do I know?

Did anyone else feel like Ashton Kutcher was phoning it in? He seemed to be in fewer sketches than most hosts and didn't have a major role in most of them. I can understand giving this treatment to someone like Derek Jeter, but I thought Kutcher is the kind of comic actor who would be able to take on a big load in SNL. My guess is he wasn't around much this week or was a big douche to work with.

I think he just sucks.

I didn't watch because Kutcher was hosting. Good decision?

Nothing too good aside from the game show "What is Burn Notice?".

Burn Notice was funny but I thought there were a few other solid sketches as well. Having Kutcher as host isn't so bad when he's only a minor player and largely irrelevant in most skits. I don't know that I've ever seen a host so absent.

Will Forte's emperor with the Truman Capote voice and grape fetish was funny and Hader was hilarious doing Elliot Spitzer and his customized Valentine cards. Also liked the last sketch with Armisen playing punk at his daughter's wedding. And you can't go wrong with David Grohl, Josh Homme and John Paul Jones as the musical guest.

Probably about 50% good which is all I can really hope for. The View wasn't very good but I like Perad's Barbara Walters. Not too many recurring skits which is always a plus.

I was sad they didn't bring back Armistan's Paterson during the Spitzer sketch.

Oh yeah, the Emperor sketch was hilarious, although he was basically just playing Hedonism Bot:



Another strange thing this episode was there were several instances of the actors breaking character and nearly starting to laugh. I'd never seen it happen so much in one episode.

Forte was great in that Emperor sketch. Also surprised at the number of times castmembers laughed. Wiig and Armisen basically laughed through their Weekend Update bit.

That was awesome. Those characters were infinitely more funny this time around.

And the Burn Notice skit was incredible.

I don't really remember Wiig or Armisen ever breaking, which made it more enjoyable for me.

IDK how Samberg didn't crack up at Forte's voice.

I also though Samberg absolutely nailed the political sketch with Rahm Emanuel.

Armisen is a total pro. Do you remember a few years back when that Debbie Downer sketch imploded and the cast couldn't even get through it because everyone was laughing so hard? The only person with a straight face was Armisen... in fact he looked kind of irritated with the situation.

Wiig is the same. She never breaks character.

The Armisen and Wiig skit from update was a little different though because they were doing something that you almost never see on SNL.... Improv. Armisen had to invent a song and Wiig was supposed to follow along as if she knew the words. Armisen was intentionally trying to make it as difficult as possible for her. I usually hate it when cast members start to giggle during a skit but it was hilarious in this situation. I think it's because they are the two you would least expect it from. Keenan used to do it in almost every sketch and it was terrible but he's much better this year.

Obviously SNL is a sketch comedy show but, considering the background of most of the cast, throwing in a little improv would likely produce some awesome results.


True. I forgot about that one. Looking back it was actually a solid episode. There were some misses but the stuff that was good was very good.

The show would be about ten times better if they did this, as almost all of the problems derive from the writers and not from insufficient funniness in the cast. EDIT: There are probably some cast members who would not do well in this new setting, but most of them would be awesome at it.

Absolutely. That was my favorite skit in ages.

I find it hard to believe it could be worse than Tina Fey & Jimmy Falon.