Pretend You Saw It: Dr. House on SNL [SNL Recap]

Posted by Double M



Hugh Laurie (aka, Dr. House) hosted SNL this past weekend. You may be wondering why it took me until Wednesday to get to the SNL recap and the official answer is that I was out of town on Sunday and Monday. The real answer is that the episode sucked. Before I watched this week's episode, I clicked through to Hulu to see how many skits were posted, turns out there were only 5. Not a good sign.

The show opened with a Blagojevich skit. The skit had some decent impressions (and it was good to see Jason Sudeikis back), and the concept was clever, but overall the skit was slow. The last minute of the skit was actually funny but I assume this wasn't included on Hulu because of the slow start. Sadly, this would be the last time you would see Bill Hader in this episode.

Hugh Laurie then chipped in with a forgettable monologue. The biggest takeaway I had was remembering he has a British accent.

In case you didn't know, this was also Amy Poehler's last SNL (she's leaving to do a sitcom on NBC), so Maya Rudolph showed up to do one of their recurring skits, the Bronx Beat. The skit was ok, but I think Maya Rudolph is some sort of SNL zombie - she just won't die. I've included it here because its not on Hulu.

I'm gonna be honest, seeing Maya Rudolph fawning over a dude grosses me out.

The next skit was a family Christmas dinner where the family was mean to each other. As a skit, it wasn't that funny and would have been fine as filler on a funny show. Unfortunately, it was a bad show, and this skit was not a great filler. Honestly, this seemed like a homeless man's version of the Will Ferrell's family dinner skitso I've included that here because its funny.

Next was a skit about a never-ending wedding toast. This is the first skit of the night on Hulu, unfortunately, it was mediocre except for Will Forte's part,

The back half of the show led off with Weekend Update. The jokes were solid all around and I actually laughed quite a bit. The only cameo they had on the night was Fred Armisen as NY Governor David Paterson. If you don't know, Paterson is blind and some people aren't happy with the way he was portrayed. Basically, SNL made some non-pc drops that were really funny. Here's the Hulu clip.

Next, Seth and Amy rolled out a Really? segment for presumably the last time. To be honestm I won't be sad to see "Really?" go - it just wasn't that funny. This version was probably the funniest one they've ever done because they quit saying really after every line and went with some funny jokes instead.

Finally, Amy Poehler says goodbye. I've included it because there's a funny part.

This is sad times for SNL because Poehler was awesome and the news with just Seth isn't as good.

The writers mixed in a Broadway skit about talking lamps entitled Lamps!. I think it was probably funny in concept, but it didn't make me laugh.

The last "skit" of the night was Kristen Wiig dicating a family Christmas letter to her husband from their dead cat. This skit actually made me laugh a few times and was probably the funniest skit of the night. Unfortunately, its not on Hulu, so I can't show it to you. Yet.

Before going to the last musical performance, SNL put out a digital short entitled "Cookies." It was ok, but not all that great.

Kanye was the musical performer for the evening. He performed in front of some crazy screen that was actually interesting to watch. Sadly, he also performed live without the voice correction thing he uses, so he sounded like a nervous person doing karaoke. You can see his performance of Love Lockdown here.

Overall, it was a mediocre show (especially when compared to the awesomeness that was last week). I'll attribute this to it being Amy Poehler's last show as well as the last show of 2008. Hopefully they come back strong in January.