Zooey Deschanel wasn’t the best “Saturday Night Live” guest host, with lots of cue card reading evident, but she’s just so darn cute the misfires hurt less. A substantial chunk of the show chugged along nicely on charm, and a few big laughs helped elevate this to one of “SNL”‘s best shows this season. The surprise guests are usually a welcome addition, but tonight they were sublime, giving us two of the night’s best sketches.
Best of the Night
Les Jeunes de Paris had to be the perfect “Saturday Night Live” sketch for Deschanel, as it’s the very definition of quirky charm. She wasn’t quite as snappy as the brilliant Emma Stone was in her visit to the stage, but the “New Girl” pixie was perfect with the exaggerated mimes and wide-eyed expressions. Then “The Artist” star Jean Dujardin turned up, so smooth, cool and flawless that it was hard to believe they hadn’t just edited in his scenes from the movie. The handsome French actor had Zooey beaming as he spun her around the dance floor, and charmingly waved off the surprise when he discovered those shapely legs and high heels dancing behind a sheet belonged to Taran Killam. Watch the highlight of the night on the “Saturday Night Live” site.
Andy Samberg’s Nic Cage has consistently been a bright spot in the “Saturday Night Live” Weekend Update guest roster. This week he was twice as brilliant, sitting next to the actual Cage, explained as the product of a successful cloning experiment. This “new” action movie star was apparently more quiet and reserved, and not, as he explained, “an exaggerated, screaming psychopath that doesn’t really exist.” Touche. The “Ghost Rider” actor also kept an impressively straight face as he listed the two best elements of the latest Cage film: “All the dialogue is either whispered or screamed, and…everything in the movie is on fire.”
Bill Hader never fails to earn laughs with his high-pants-wearing Clint Eastwood impression, and tonight he scored with a series of post-Super Bowl commercials that took the “Chrysler as metaphor for life” idea to new heights. His rants about China and Mexico taking over the world were vintage “get off my lawn” stuff, never mind his jabs at complacent viewers who only “get off” to Go Daddy commercials. Extra points for the Eastwood rasp tackling Little Caesar’s “pizza pizza” tagline and the pants getting hiked up to his shoulders.
“Saturday Night Live” brought out Abby Elliot to do a fabulous impersonation of the adorkably twee version of Deschanel, while the guest host appeared on her talk show as Mary Kate Olsen. The impression was uncanny, all limp hair, giant sunglasses and an electric blanket from the garbage, doing her best “vintage” version of her “90-year-old grandmother.” Definitely the guest host’s best performance of the night.
Worst of the Night
The hilarity of the best “Saturday Night Live” sketches had to be balanced with at least one stinker, and that came in the clam bake sketch. This consisted of Deschanel and Kristen Wiig repeatedly informing their guests of how awesome and plentiful the clams would be, while never actually bringing any out. The lines weren’t funny, the guests only seemed mildly perturbed, and the whole thing went nowhere.
The same two ladies got stranded in a sketch about 19th century women writing letters to each other about their lame, “duke of dung” suitors, making an effort to glamorize them. Then they decided to get married 100 years later in California. Or something. We don’t know, we drifted off in the middle and only laughed when Jay Pharoah got hit with a flying log.
Hader’s Verizon sketch about nonsensical technology jargon seemed like it could have been an amusing satire, but it just never got clever enough to actually be funny.
Final Thoughts
The political scene this year has really been a nightmare this year for “Saturday Night Live,” producing sketches as boring as the candidates they are about. This umpteenth political cold open seemed to be the same joke about Mitt Romney’s attempt to be a “normal, everyday guy” that played on a previous cold open, and the only chuckles came from Sudeikis’ interaction with a slightly unpredictable barking dog.
Honorable mention to Nasim Pedrad for her sterling impression of Arianna Huffington on the “SNL” Weekend Update. Loved her take on the news of the day, the snipe at Huffington Post’s tendency to “cut and paste” stories from The New York Times, and her reaction to Rick Santorum’s declaration that men would react emotionally to women on the front lines: “He should quit the race and endorse Newt Gingrich. When Newt sees a woman’s life in danger, he abandons her as fast as his fat feet can carry him.” Bazinga.
The “Saturday Night Live” musical guest Karmin performed “Brokenhearted” and “I Told You So.” This pop/rap duo definitely made an interesting impression, with singer Amy Heidemann wearing both a bell-shaped skirt and spandex pants from the Clint Eastwood high-waisted collection, and keyboardist Nick Noonan looking like Tom Cruise circa “Top Gun.” Whatever you made of the unique group, props to Heidemann for her ridiculously quick word play and to Karmin for making songs that invade your brain whether you want them to or not.
“Saturday Night Live” paid tribute to the late Whitney Houston with a moment of silence and a still of her alongside Molly Shannon in one of the beloved Mary Katherine Gallagher sketches. It’s tough to address news like this in a sketch comedy show, and this was a classy way to acknowledge the loss.
What did you think of this week’s “Saturday Night Live”? A highlight of the season or have you seen better?
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