Tue, January 13, 2004

It's hardly a secret that Saturday Night Live has been pretty disappointing for a while, particularly after the departure of Will Ferrell. However, it's worth tuning in, because occasionally you catch a break. (For example, The Simpsons continues to be less-than-perfect, but this week featured a handful of dead cats and Lisa was miserable for most of the episode – I was the happiest I've been since "Take that, Lisa's beliefs!") (Oh, one more thing about "I, (Annoyed Grunt) Bot," this week's Simpsons episode: at the end, I applaud the car crash and multiple explosions; nice move. But here's how you know that the current writers just don't have their heads in the game. They opted to have Gil crawl out of the car wreck so they could make a few cheap jokes about how pathetic his life is, and the insurance money was going to make it possible for him to eat. Cute, but kind of lame considering how often Gil has been called upon to deliver a similar punch line. Whereas anyone who knows anything knows that it should have been Hans Moleman in that car. There's just no question.) Anyway, the point is, you watch The Simpsons in case they kill Lisa's cats – or, better yet, Lisa! – and you watch SNL for the Falconer or just in case.

I like Jennifer Aniston and I think she's really good. She's come into her own on Friends in the second half of its run, and her movie career is going all right now, despite some early setbacks. Also, I like when the musical guest is someone I've never heard of, and from the sound of their name I don't want to hear of them. Makes for some very easy fast-forwarding. (Although, I can't remember the last musical guest I actually watched anyway. Probably Avril, and that was as much a result of watching it live without TiVo as liking her songs.) Unfortunately, the Aniston episode largely failed to deliver. First of all, way way too many sketches featured southern accents. What's the deal with that? Also, I'm against guest hosts playing themselves. With political and sports figures it's all but inevitable, since there's 90 minutes to fill, but with actors I really wish they would quit it. Even worse is playing someone else in a sketch where another performer is portraying the host. I was okay with it in a Friends sketch when Matthew Perry hosted, because he's a pro and the whole thing was pretty well done. But the paparazzi sketch that Aniston did was just dopey. The main joke of the piece was that she as a photographer was harassing Jennifer Aniston, and that's just not that funny.

Early in the night, SNL made the predictable move of spoofing Britney Spears's recent Las Vegas nuptials. (Hello, southern accents! Keep 'em comin'!) Aniston actually nailed Britney's voice at first but then slowly lost it as the sketch dragged on. (And, as usual, it did drag on.) Here's the thing: I don't think SNL should feel compelled to necessarily do a Britney sketch, just because Britney made big news. If you can't find the funny, then move on. Nobody's going to be around the water cooler Monday asking where the Britney sketch was. They might even be talking about the Falconer sketch you aired in its place! If you insist on doing a Britney sketch, at least do a funny one. For example, instead of making the central joke about how quickly the marriage was annulled (a joke that's already present in the news story), what about setting it up so that Alexander (the husband) is the one to break it off? That's just off the top of my head, and the comic potential is ten times what SNL did. And that's just playing it safe. Conan would have put in aliens or something and really made it wacky – aliens are always funny. Things were looking up, though. At the end of the sketch, Aniston stalks off leaving Jimmy Fallon (the husband) to holler something about high school football. Then, Rachel Dratch (the officiator of the wedding) looks up at him with a little smile and nod as if to say "Right on, chap!" It was subtle, but it was hilarious. I was feeling good because I thought, "Clearly this episode will suck, and I can write that the funniest thing was that look between Dratch and Fallon, and nobody but me even saw it so that will be funny."

But then the "Country Roses" sketch came along. (Southern accents, anyone?) The show had been pretty much disappointing as planned for the rest of the night, with the possible exception of a fairly funny performance by Seth Meyers as John Kerry. But SNL knows my weakness, and they got me. Probably among the top five non-Falconer sketches that I adore from the past five years is the ad for the Valentine soundtrack that lists a bunch of fake band names, lampooning the ridiculous names that musical acts choose for themselves. I still have the list somewhere, but it included such favorites as Cunk, Stab the Bishop, Dirty Yellow Hammer, Half Of, and Rabbitpunch. "Country Roses" was advertising a CD collection of classic country songs by women, and – like the Valentine bit – it started with a couple of real ones and then got silly. The joke of the piece is that the singer played by Aniston is a mean and jealous wife, but that's not really the funny part. The funny part is a series of three fake country songs that come before the "punch line" where Aniston's singer and Maya Rudolph's singer start singing about each other. The great thing about "Country Roses" is that they actually perform a line or two of the songs, unlike the Valentine promo. So, Amy Poehler sings about memories of her mother boiling corn, then Rachel Dratch sings "She said mamma/ why are there snowflakes?/ And I said, Crystal/ because of you..." which is worth a laugh, then Poehler goes in for the kill. "Ain't Nothin' Cuter" reads the title card, and she launches in – "Ain't nothin' cuter than a fat country baby eatin' peaches off a hardwood floor!" This was at least a quadruple-rewinder, and had me crying on the floor for a few minutes. Ordinarily I can't stand Poehler on this show, but she really got the most out of that little singing part. Hee.

Still, this is only about five seconds out of ninety grueling minutes, but it proves the point that you have to watch SNL just in case. However, you can now officially fast-forward through any footage in which Jimmy Fallon and Horatio Sanz share the screen. What started off as Fallon occasionally trying to throw Sanz off track during Weekend Update guest appearances has now apparently spawned a whole genre of sketches where the two of them just go at it, off the script, trying to crack each other up. This week, Fallon was bin Laden and Sanz was Hussein, but that hardly mattered. I have to applaud Lorne Michaels for finally relaxing his grip on the cue cards – he's reportedly very strict about adhering to the lines of each sketch as written – but this isn't the direction to go. Whereas I'm sure Sanz and Fallon are really funny in person, bantering back and forth, on TV it just dies. This is probably because they can't say half the jokes they think of. When they're hanging out on weekends and cracking up their friends, they can say controversial things, including "fuck." On SNL, they're dealing with the pressure of live TV so they have to think up five times as many funny lines and instantaneously censor out the best ones to avoid getting bleeped. Maybe this is why Michaels is so concerned about the script. Richard Pryor and Martin Lawrence made him paranoid.

Next week: TV's smartest couple, Nick and Jessica. I'm hoping Jessica plays Justin Timberlake. Stick it to him, Jess!

***

The actors who appeared in last summer's ingenious Joe Schmo Show on Spike TV have started appearing in other TV roles and it is freaking me out! (Apologies, by the way, for never completing my review of The Joe Schmo Show, so you could all watch and love it along with me, but I think there will be a second one.) First, Melissa Yvonne Lewis (Ashleigh, the rich bitch) showed up on Cold Case and this week Kristen Wiig (Dr. Pat, the quack) appeared on I'm With Her. The reason it's so weird is that when I recognize them, I don't have that "I've seen her on TV before" feeling, I feel like I'm recognizing them as people from real life, because they played real-life people (yes, admittedly, on TV), and somehow they just got entered in the facial-recognition brain cells as people and not actors. It always goes the same way: I see them, I recognize them, it's on the tip of my tongue throughout the whole episode, "Where have I seen her?" and then I check the closing credits and I realize where the name is from and I start screaming and tearing at my clothes.

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