SNL Recap: Brolin. Palin. Wahlberg.

Posted by Double M



Well, I'm a day late, but as always, I'm here to break down the latest SNL for you. Now, because the intermist is in love with Sarah Palin/Tina Fey the identical twins impression, you've probably seen a few of the clips already, but you'll probably see them again because there was some pretty good stuff (you can get the torrent for the whole episode here).

Before I continue, I have to admit I haven't watched any of the Presidential debates. I don't have the attention span. Instead I read a recap of the reviews later. Here's the thing - I had never seen Sarah Palin in HD. She's actually very attractive - she was even rocking hooker boots! Hot may be pushing it, but I was impressed. Which leads to the question: if Tina Fey can look exactly like Sarah Palin, is Tina Fey hot? I mean, I always thought she was pretty, but if people think Palin is hot, doesn't that make Fey hot? I don't know - someone figure this one out for me.

Anyway, if you didn't know, Palin made a cameo appearance on the show. The first clip was the intro into the show, and, in it, she doesn't say much. Lorne Micheals took a sweet shot at 30 Rock (one of my favorite shows, FYI - so watch it) and then Fey takes one at Alec Baldwin. All funny things.

Josh Brolin was the host of the show, and that's good news - it seems pretty rare that a poor actor (like an athlete) can come through with a good performance (see: Phelps, Michael). So with Brolin on board, the first 30 minutes of the show were gold - there were only 2 short commercials and some really good stuff. The show started off with MacGruber, which is always good, checking his stock portfolio for the first time in a long time.

After the opening, the first 20 minutes could also be called the Kristen Wiig show. Not only does she appear in all of the MacGruber skits, she appears in the two skits they showed in between the skits. The firs skit in between the MacGruber skit was the Kristen Wiig "Surprise" skit.

This skit was good, but not as good as the first one (surprise party). Still made me laugh. After another MacGruber skit, Kristen dropped a Suze Orman skit. It was funny, but if you've seen one Suze Orman skit, you've seen them all. Wiig does do a really, really good impression though.

After that, one of my favorite skits is when Mark Wahlberg showed up. Two weeks ago, Andy Samberg did a great Wahlberg impression in Mark Wahlberg talks to animals. Apparently, Wahlberg said he was pissed about the skit. I assume this was not true and was simply a ploy to promote the movie he had coming out this past weekend (Max Payne). If you didn't see the original skit, go back and watch it, then come watch this video.

The best part of that whole skit was that Mark Wahlberg wanted to talk to the donkey more than he wanted to talk to Keenan. Also, I think that skit explains why Keenan is still on the show - he's the only actor they can get to take care of the animals as well as act. Makes sense now.

If you stopped watching the show now, you'd probably think that this was the best SNL ever. Unfortunately, it went way downhill from here.

They followed it up with "I'm No Angel." A mediocre skit that featured Amy Poehler as a pregnant chick at a bar that all dudes want to hook up with. It turned out to be a perfume ad. Not that funny.

Then, they jumped to Weekend Update. I don't know if the Weekend Update writers are juiced from doing a Thursday show and a Saturday show (oh, the horrors of writing 40 minutes of comedy per week), but the weekend update was not funny (well, ok, it had one funny line when a study showed that black people invest less than white people - something they feel a lot better about now). Even the skits were awful. The first one featured Tim Calhoun - a really quiet and awkward dude/recurring character from Will Forte. It's well done, just not that funny. Then, for some reason, SNL dropped a Keenan Thompson recurring character (!), Jean K. Jean on us. Basically, it consists of Keenan trying not to laugh while telling atrocious jokes.

It's incroyable that Keenan still has a f-ing job. Unfortunately, SNL decided to kick you while you were down by having Palin "cameo" in the last skit - a Sarah Palin rap. I put the word "cameo" in quotations because she doesn't really do anything. If Palin herself had done the rap, it might have been kinda funny (I assume Andy Samberg wrote it, because there were some funny parts), but alas it was not.

The lone bright spot of the 2nd half of the episode was the "Fart Face" skit. The just of the skit was a bunch of old dudes calling each other fart face. I know it may not sound all that funny, but I laughed quite a bit - it reminded me of Kids in the Hall which was always good. Unfortunately, it's not on Hulu, so I can't show it to you, but if someone can find the skit for me, that would be great.

The last few skits, "Narc School" (could have been funnier, but was poorly executed), some music skit with Bill Hader playing Trevor Dix and profiling music from the underground (I'm sure it was funny if you knew who he was trying to parody. It also featured another annoying Fred Armisen character.), and ReadiTrade.com (an SNL commercial about stocks) were all forgettable.

The last skit featured Brolin coming into a board meeting and talking about fall foliage to a board that doesn't seem to care. It wasn't funny until the last 15 seconds when you find out he hasn't worked at that company for 13 years (kinda funny - made the skit make more sense). It also featured the funniest line Keenan Thompson has ever delivered or ever will deliver. I actually laughed and it felt weird. Again, the clip isn't on Hulu or YouTube, so if someone could find the clip for me so I can show you his laugh, it would be awesome.

Overall, it was a good episode, but heavily front loaded. Brolin was good but underused. Honestly, if SNL churns out videos like this all season, I'd be happy.