I’ll take “people we got an earful from this week” for two hundred!

I was going back and forth through the quotes submitted by our writers this week, and I couldn’t quite understand why the haul seemed so light. Then it dawned on me: ABC didn’t air its new Wednesday night comedy lineup this week. Can you believe how quickly those three shows (sorry Hank!) have entered our pop-culture? Yowza.

30 Rock

“Alright hosers: I want all 12 of us fighting for every meter on all three downs. And we’re gonna make this a Boxing Day the Prime Minister will never forget.” – Danny, in his Canadian football movie

“I feel about as useless as a mom’s college degree.” – Kenneth, on his problem with Danny Read the rest of this entry »

This episode only served to prove that last week’s episode really was one of the better of the season, if not the best so far. Tonight felt like we were getting the scrapings from the bottom of the writers’ barrel of material. I held out hope for something really remarkable to come out of it, but wound up disappointed. At least the pre-taped Party segment was decent. It was a shame that we didn’t get a traditional sign-off, though. ‘Peas fans probably loved it.

Cold Open: Vice Presidential Address — Oh, what a surprise: more politics. However, I’ve always loved Sudeikis’s Biden impression, so this was one of the better ones in my book.

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I’ve gotta hand it to Taylor Swift, she did an excellent job as host of SNL this week. Not only was she solid at performing on live TV, but her acting was totally up to snuff and she was in nearly all of the skits (all but a pre-taped commercial and Weekend Update), along with performing twice. I’ll throw up at least a golf clap for all that. That’s the way to do it, though — why only appear in a few skits when you’ve got the honor of being on SNL? (Videos clips of most skits are embedded below.)

Cold Open — Am I the only one getting sick of the politically themed cold open? I think we may as well call it the Political Open at this point. Alright, so seeing them mock FOX News’s coverage of the election was pretty funny. I’m still tired of the politics, though.
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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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