I don’t watch Gossip Girl, so I wasn’t all that familiar with Blake Lively. I believe she showed up once before as a surprise guest, so they gave her a chance for her own show and pulled it off pretty decently.
Cold Open: The Salahis Crash Obama Speech — I think quite a few people thought SNL would somehow work in the Salahis crashing of the White House state dinner this past week. Definitely worked out funny, the pinnacle being when Obama was asked to take a group picture not once, but twice.
Monologue: Blake Lively — Hot damn, she looked good in her “winter clothes,” huh? The Christmas song would have been funnier with the real Muppets, mostly because Beaker having a singing voice only would have worked as funny with the “real” Beaker. Oh, and “smorg, smorgy, smorgy smorg, smorbybord!”
Carter N’ Sons: Swine Fever — Repeat from a previous episode, so not much to say here.
Vagisil Superstars of Bowling Tournament — This skit has come up before in the Drew Barrymore episode, and it was funnier then. It really all comes down to how funny the lines are from Pete Twinkle regarding Vagisil.
The Situation Room — The finniest part of this skit was the Wolf Blitzer mumbling impression and the flapping Band-aid on Kenan’s face.
SNL Digital Short: Rihanna & Shy Ronnie — Normally I’d type up the lyrics to this, but it was basically a short dialogue written to music … well, at least half of it was. Most of the lyrics I’d put together would be “mumble, mumble, mumble.” Doesn’t meant this wasn’t a good skit, though. The simple concept worked out quite funny.
Gossip Girl: Staten Island — I definitely give SNL props for finally making reference to the guest star’s claim to fame — something I wish they did for every guest — but the funnies part of this skit was: “It’s a whole other world, and the only way to get there is by public ferry.” Maybe it takes someone from NYC to appreciate it more.
Kickspit Underground Rock Festival — I can’t believe they got away with mentioning band names like “Gunt” and “Mrs. Potato Dick.” I bursted out laughing at a bunch of the insane things the festival was going to have. Viruses! Pitchforks for everyone! Have sex with The Iron Sheik! Sad thing: there are most certainly people in this world who would kill for a real festival like that … possibly literally.
Musical Guest: Rihanna — Before I watched tonight’s SNL, I was playing Dragon Age on XBox. So I was thrown off when I saw this singing chick wearing freaking chainmail. Can you really just go out and buy those things?
Weekend Update — Man, this one was full of great references from the past week, and Kenan’s Cosby impression was dead on. There were a couple of flops in there, though, and I love it when Seth seems to be reading some of these seemingly for the first time, and he gives a “really?” look off-camera.
Saks Shopping — What the hell? This one just sorta … ended. Was looking for a better payoff than we got. Some of it was funny, but the mannequin portion went too long and fell flat.
Commercials: UPS — Damn, that is so true. And if you agree, you too can join the Facebook group ‘The UPS Whiteboard Guy Cheats and He is a Butthead.’ Man, I kinda feel sorry for the guy now. What made these especially great was that we got two of them, just like the real ones that invade our TVs during sporting events.
Late Night with Chris Hansen — Anything with Bill Hader as Chris Hansen is OK in my book. Loved Samberg’s “Oh Bogus!” when he got tackled.
NASA Potato Chips — Holy what the fuck? This was the most out there skit of SNL I think I’ve seen in years, and that includes the digital shorts. This was so absurd that it must be based on something that I haven’t seen before…? I’ve gotta say, though, I thought it was pretty freakin’ funny in just how weird it was, even if I almost threw up in my own mouth a little at the thought of what happened.
Clacked by Keith McDuffee 
on Dec 06, 2009 @ 01:03 EST5EDT
In case you didn’t catch it.
Potato chips is a metaphor for Climategate.
The two main characters were pretty keen likenesses
for the climategate players.
Not the best show of the season. Seemed that Blake Lively was barely on. Best of the night was the Digital Short. When Rihanna sang “speak up” to Shy Ronnie, and then kept up her dialog in song, that just killed me. Late Night with Chris Hansen made me laugh the hardest when Cher got tackled one line into “Believe.” The last skit…WTF?!?!?!? Guess I’ll have to do more research into “climategate” if that’s what it was a reference to.
Could you explain more about how you think NASA Potato Chips relates to “climategate”? I don’t see it.
All in all a very uneven episode, but still better than the January Jones debacle.
I have to give Blake Lively props for approving that crazy potato chip sketch. I thought her monologue was too monotone in delivery and her comic timing was off in the sketches she was in, but you could tell she was trying to do a good job and having a good time. Which is all you can really expect from a host that isn’t a professional comedian.
I’ve warmed up a lot more to Keenan over the years, since I wanted him completely off the show. What Up With That from previous episodes proved to me that he can be funny and energetic, and Jean K. Jean proved that he can have a not-so-annoying recurring character. He has to stop those terrible mother shopping with outrageous daughters sketches. They are terrible and completely unfunny.
Nice job posting the SNL episode reviews so quickly Keith and the underground rock festival sketch was hilarious.
For the last sketch as it was about to end I kept expecting Will Forte to eat one of the barf covered chips. Thank God he didn’t.
Something I noticed for the first time that really bugs me and I can’t believe I hadn’t noticed before…
“An SNL Digital Short”
It should be “A” SNL Digital short, but “An” seems to roll off the tongue better. Do they do this because improper grammar is funny?
*POST AUTHOR*
jake — Not to be a grammar Nazi, but that’s actually incorrect. You use “a” and “an” however the following word or initials sound as you sound them out. Since, when reading that, we’re sounding out an “ess” sound, we precede with “an.”
See the Chicago Style Guide for more.
Thanks for that explanation Keith! It drives me crazy when people write “a honor” or “a hour” when you should use “an” because of the sound following it, not the spelling! Now if we could just get people to use “your” and “you’re” properly!