Saturday Night Live (SNL) 2012-2013 Season thread

Hey! You've got to hide your love away.

So far so good; not a brilliant ep but a solid one. The season has been off to a good start so far.

 

Liked the Hypnotist skit and the political ad for the 6% of undecided voters. Weekend Update was funny too.

Loved the Son Of The Most Interesting Man In The World bits: Tres Equis

The Beatles cover band skit was funny too! (They all looked like different stages of just John Lennon. Mumford and Sons had the mannerisms down pat.)

 

Great show this week. I especially liked Ann Romney.

Mumford & Sons were fantastic -- I'm an instant fan!

 

I thought it was a mostly mediocre episode. Other than the bit on undecided voters, I don't think anything elicited more than a mild chuckle from me. Kate McKinnon was decent as Ann Romney. Too much Jay Pharoah this week and none of it was funny. Tim Robinson seemed to be on a lot for a new featured player. I'm surprised he's getting featured parts.

The music was better this week, at least. I'd never heard Mumford & Sons before, but the first song was okay and the second was pretty good.

 

Great show.

 

Mumford & Sons just didn't seem very authentic. They're like if the band at the Golden Horseshoe at Disneyland decided to start writing songs or something.

 

I liked Romney's wife and the hypnotist bit. The rest of it I found pretty lame.

 

Oh, Family Guy. Yeah, I've never watched it either. Nor King of he Hill and the rest. Those "adult swim" cartoons do nothing for me. Of course having kids around the house, they're out.

 

I thought the Thursday episode was terrible.

So, what a surprise at the rebound last night. I liked the first half of the episode in particular. "Weekend Update" was clever having the two Seth could not hear followed by Stephen A. Smith that Seth could hear too loud. The "Tres Equis", "Undecided Voters" and "Kelly" skits were good. Good to see Nasim get more airtime this week.

This was an episode for those of you who complain here about an overreliance of the same sketches week after week and not enough new groundbreaking material.

 

Bring back Drunk Uncle!

 

Kate McKinnon stole the show as Ann Romney and as the mom trying to introduce her daughter to the prospective boyfriend.

Are they ever going to give Aidy Bryant a role in a skit, or even a line to speak?

They almost have too many good cast members right now - established cast members like Jason Sudeikis and Bobby Moynihan are getting little or nothing to do so far.

 

I liked this week host. I thought he was very talented comically. I don't know who he was again... My daughter said he was in "Inception." But he was pretty funny. Did a great job as the daughter in need of a husband. Made you laugh just looking at him. Musical guest was good. First song was so-so, but the second one had some soul and depth. Never heard of the band either! Next week.... Daniel Craig!

 

He was also the young "son" in the John Lithgow sitcom Third Rock From The Sun. And excellent in the movie 50/50.

 

The 9/19 "BS Report" podcast is with Seth Myers if anyone wants to check it out. It's about an hour long and they talk a lot about SNL - Jay taking over "Barack", best current crop of hosts, etc. Strangely, though they talk about it being a transition year due to Kristen and Andy leaving, there is no mention of Abby Elliot. I wonder if she's not on the best of terms with the show.

 

Chris Elliott had his ups and downs with David Letterman through the years so that could be a family trait.

 

Her contributions were forgettable, in their opinion. People didn't talk about Laraine and Jane, the way they did with John and Danny.

 

Regarding the Thursday SNL Primetime show: the Fox & Friends parodies never get old, especially the corrections at the end (which go by so fast you have to keep pausing to read them-but it's worth it!).

 

Maybe because she wasn't really on the show long enough to develop a large following and a set of memorable recurring characters/skits...

 

A couple of things that may have no real meaning into her or SNL's career decisions, but may have played a part:

Abby was starting to branch out into film roles (support roles) in 2011.
The ending of her relationship with Fred Armisen.

She will appear on 'How I Met Your Mother' in a recurring role starting in 2013.

 

Hadn't heard that but he certainly hated his year on SNL. I was surprised they hired her at all. In the "Live from New York" book he had nothing but bad things to say about SNL, though he also accepted blame himself.

 

I loved Laraine and Jane.

 

Maybe not a large following, but she was known for the Zooey Deschanel impersonation at least. She was on for four seasons, so in a 40 minute conversation about the show and the transition from last year to this year, no mention of her leaving seems more intentional than oversight. I thought Abby was real good.

 

I was just browsing the iTunes Store, and I noticed that, yet again this season, the musical guests are scrubbed from the SNL downloads available for purchase. Why is this? I'm sure there's some copyright/song publishing/legal reason behind this, but why wouldn't the musical guests want their SNL performances to be part of the downloads that people purchase? Isn't the whole point of a musical guest appearing on SNL to promote their new album? It's bizarre that, for whatever reason, the musical guests get blacked out of the iTunes downloads of the show.

In the past some sketches would be blacked out, too, although it looks like the two episodes so far this year on the iTunes store feature all of the sketches that aired on the original broadcast.

 

I thought Abby Elliott's "What Is It?" game show, featuring a clingy girlfriend/host trying to extract a commitment from her confused boyfriend/contestant, was one of the funniest skits last season. I'm sorry to see her go. I really thought with Kristen Wiig gone, she'd shine.

 

Her impressions of MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, Khloé Kardashian and Angelina Jolie were all very good. Obviously, Maddow is one not everyone would be familiar with. She never came up with any true recurring characters/bits to feature other than those standouts. The Zooey Deschanel impression was also quite good.