Tonight marked a first for SNL, as it ran the entire episode with only one sponsor. The dress rehearsal sketches were actually the best part of the episode! In fact, why the hell doesn’t SNL simply run the dress rehearsals for the live show? Seriously, isn’t the funniest stuff on the show these days when one of the cast members — or the guest — starts to crack up or makes a funny flub? It’s the best part!

Surprisingly, no SNL Digital Shorts tonight. Here’s some quick thoughts on each of the sketches of the night. Videos and thoughts embedded below.

Cold Open: The Rock Obama — Oh look, another president sketch. Actually, when the real joke of the sketch was revealed with the Rock cameo, it was pretty funny. When Biden entered, though, it started to fall apart and get a bit awkward.

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I remember many years ago that, when a guest was scheduled to appear on SNL, it was a near certainty that at least one skit would be all about some movie or TV show that the guest was associated with. What the hell happened to that? I miss those days of SNL. I think we all do.

Cool thing about this week’s post: ALL of the skits AND musical numbers are embedded below!

Cold Open: Presidential Address — Surprise! Another presidential address, and I think everyone was with me in knowing it just had to be about Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize … for “not being George Bush.” Yowch. Really a weak open, just because it short on the funny and really didn’t have much to it.

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Saturday Night Live seems to go through many up and down cycles. Heck, even from episode to episode the quality of the show can vary greatly. Through it all, though, one thing has remained constant: SNL has always satirized and mocked the politicians and current events of the day. The program has hysterically lampooned just about every politician who has found him/herself on the front page of the papers. Some say that Tina Fey’s scathing impersonations played a big part in the downfall of the McCain/Palin campaign. I’m not sure if that’s actually true, but it brings up the question: Is SNL the most important political show on television?

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You may have noticed that we’ve had a few chat / live-blog posts here the past few weeks. We call them both a “chat” and a “live-blog” because the system we use, CoverItLive, is more of a live-blogging platform than a chat interface, but so far it’s worked very well for us.

The attendance for these chats have been hit or miss, so we’d like to get some feedback from you, the readers, as to what shows you’d like to see us post chats for. We can’t promise anything, but it helps us figure out where to concentrate our energies.

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Week two of the full-tilt-boogie season brought with it some interesting things, including premieres for Animation Domination, The Amazing Race, Trauma, Hank, and The Middle. We also saw more huge numbers from House, NCIS, and Grey’s. But after all of that, the most interesting story again comes from the show with the worst ratings on all of the big four networks, Dollhouse. After season two premiered to a series low last week, things got even worse. Episode two just barely cleared the 2 million viewer bar, while falling below a 1 in the demo. Reached for comment, my BFF Jill said, “OMG! RLY!?”

Yes, really. The situation is dire. Even the hardcore Whedonites are now at DEFCON 1. Someone has got word that the show could be in danger of being pulled from the air. I don’t know anything more than they do about that, but I would expect it to get one more shot this Friday, before baseball takes over. If episode three doesn’t show some sort of improvement though, I wouldn’t be surprised if baseball makes way for a series of House and Bones repeats on Fridays at 9. Read the rest of this entry »

What the heck, I had time to kill this morning, so here’s the lyrics to the SNL Digital Short from last night. Man!

I was walkin’ through the city streets
and a man walks up to me and hands me the latest energy drink
Run faster. Jump Higher.
Man, I’m not gonna let you poison me.

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Tonight I was surprised not more was done with the Polanski case, but Weekend Update took it on a bit. For some reason, though, the doors to the SNL studio flew open for a few notable cameos, one of which will likely have people talking.

We’ll update the below with video clips of the skits from NBC.com sometime Sunday morning, when they’re released to the public. Until then, here’s a rundown on the skits and what I thought of them all.

Cold Open: Presidential Address — I knew the Olympics decision would make its way into the night’s episode somehow. How many Chicagoans now want that 2016 t-shirt he held up? Anyway, this wasn’t all that funny but maybe those who really despise Obama loved it more than words can say.

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