Saturday Night Live, April 4th 2009

Saturday Night Live
April 4, 2009
Host: Seth Rogen
Musical Guest: Phoenix

Cold Open.
Whenever I hear Obama speak now, I can't help but hear Fred Armisen's impression of him in my head. Which means Armisen must be doing something right. Does he even put the dot on his nose for this impersonation, or is that just a natural coincidence?!

Monologue.
Seth Rogen sure fluctuates weight a lot. Does he do that on purpose for his various film roles? I'm glad they're addressing the frequency of mall cop movies these days.

Commercial Parody.
Looks like a live-action yaoi manga adaptation.

Save the Funnies.
They finally wrote a sketch to put Cathy into besides Weekend Update, I guess? Farside was a random throw-away gag--is that strip even in syndication anymore?

La Riviste della Televisiona.
This sketch reminded me how often Seth Rogen and Bill Hader appear in movies together.

Digital Short.
Musically reminded me a lot of the Natalie Portman digital short. I thought it was the weakest of the Lonely Island raps so far, but it still had a couple of laughs.

Girlfriend voice.
Started out good, but they kind of dragged it out too long. Mogwai singing is always worthwhile, though.

Remember GE Smith? I haven't for a long time. But something made me think of the old days during this break.

Phoenix.
Reminded me of a calmer version of the band Of Montreal.

Weekend Update.
I enjoyed Seth's jabs about the gift exchange with the Queen of England.
Madonna and Angelina Jolie's baby-off was good stuff. Especially Abby Eliott's exit.

Business Meeting.
Felt like the lamest sketch SNL has ever done. Nothing but people sitting around listening to a song from Grease. The "twist" ending was predictable in way that wouldn't have been surprising on a preschool show. It was more like, NBC had the rights to that song and wanted to use it AND waste TV time simultaneously, to save costs.

Milestone High.
ALMOST funny.

Bad country music commercial.
Three strikes. It's sad to see such talented people like Kristen Wiig and Seth Rogen stoop to Will Forte's level of non-comedy. Totally painful. The kind of sketch that makes it hard to justify SNL to your friends. Someone really needs to tell Will Forte that just singing random stuff in a "funny voice" isn't enough.

Phoenix.
The singer looks like some random guy that walked off the street and a rock band let him join them on stage. But the song was pretty decent!

SNL really has had a thing about Muppet parodies over the years. Some of the costumes were pretty fun, but everything else was a bit too average. Seemed like a lot of trouble visually for so little amount of actual parody or humor.

Third song by a band that isn't Coldplay? Craziness.

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