Saturday Night Live-Season 34

Heard a rumor that Obama himself might make a cameo. I'll tape it anyways just on the off chance Fey is on.

Obama said he canceled the appearance because of Hurricane Ike.

Tina's pretty great.

Wow. Phelps is awful. I expected as much.

Tina was awesome. Phelps is gonna be weak more than likely. Athletes usually are.

Well no shit, the guy is kind of dorky. Meh, what else is new.

Heh, the answers the Jaspers are giving are funny, but the actual execution of the skit is not.

Ha, Good Burger just namedropped Dr. Octagon. That was the best part of that skit.

EDIT: SPACE OLYMPICS was great! YOU'RE A WINNER!

I will say upfront that I only watched a couple of sketches here but I'm willing to bet that Phelps is better at swimming than the cast of SNL is at sketch comedy.

ETA: This, however, is fantastic. I had no doubt Tina Fey would nail it. http://blip.tv/file/1259746/

Tina Fey absolutely killed it as Sarah Palin; not just the look but the voice.

"I believe diplomacy should be the cornerstone of any foreign policy,"
"And I can see Russia from my house!"

They should just stick to politics for the first half hour of all the shows. Get Poehler, Fey, and Hammond in the majority of sketches.

And agreed Fey nailed Palin. Fred Arminson could learn a thing or two from her because his Obama sucks.

I great sketch and then shit. I missed who was hosting next week. Did they say?

James Franco.

As for the whole episode, Phelps clearly isn't cut out for comedy, but SNL has one of its stronger casts in its history and they were able to pick up the slack. Kristin Wiig is unbelievably talented.

I'm sure James Franco will deliver next week.

Best sketch, and best for Phelps, was the T-Mobile sketch. I'm surprised that joke ("You find your daughter's friends attractive?") hadn't been made until now.

I'm guessing that the 'pepper' waiter was the new guy's audition piece.

Lord, I hope not. I had to mute that one. Terrible.

Agreed. I'm also kinda disturbed by fat Mark Linn-Baker.

Yeah, I already hate that guy, and I don't even know his name yet.

Gotta say, TiVo has been the most glorious blessing upon my SNL viewing habits. They should just rename this show "Sunday Morning Fast-Forward".

Man I love Kristen Wig... so talented and pretty hot too.

"We disagree on the Bush Doctrine"
"I don't know what that is..."

Awesome

After seeing the digital short, my suspicions have been confirmed. Adam Sandberg is some kind of bird/human hybrid.

That was a pretty awesome mixup, my friend. Andy Samberg.
And yes, quite birdlike.

And not the first time!

Oh, Andy Samberg. My mistake. Name was on the tip of my tongue though.

Would it kill SNL to hire another black person? Keenan is awful.

Not to mention would it hurt to get a black guy to play Obama? I'm sure there isn't a shortage of qualified black comedians.

The meta-joke about 'who will they get to play Usain Bolt?' in the Barkley sketch suggests that they're aware of this problem. But it would be kinda offensive if they drafted some black comic expressly for the purpose of playing Obama.

And I think Armisen has the look for it. It's a tough character to nail down.

It wouldn't be offensive. It would be giving a guy a shot doing one thing that could grow into more. There are thousands of potential sketch ideas that can't be done because of the whiteness of the cast. By the way has there every been and asian person on the show?

It would be condescending to the actor in question. "We're not hiring you for your talent. You just need to be thin and brown."

I actually don't think there has been.

And Phelps with that wig in the T-Mobile sketch looked like a guy I knew briefly. Just much shorter.

And a Pinata filled with corned-beef hash. Not a bad idea.

I don't believe so. I recall they used to have a guy who was a production designer for a long time (maybe still is, I don't know) who would pop up here and there when they needed to shoehorn an Asian character into a sketch. Played Sulu in an old Star Trek sketch with Shatner and even popped up as Connie Chung once.

You'd think they could have done better than that over the last 30 years. Even In Living Color had an Asian cast member. Wasn't utilized much, but still.

"dorky" is an understatement. Phleps makes Eli Manning look like George Clooney.

Observations-

-Pretty much typical SNL. Starts on a high note, then slowly downturns, with a slight uptick from the digital short.
-Tina Fey- love me now.
-Keenan is an awful impersonator of anyone. I think mocking Charles Barkley's gambling addiction is a funny idea, but played by Keenan, who apparently has no idea what Barkley acts like, I feel like the sketch just came off as cruel. I might like Barkley too much, but c'mon- it's like hiring Carrot Top to play George Bush- the original person is so much funnier.
-Samberg waits until the Digital Sketch to remind us doubters why he remains on the show.
-It's clear the real stars of the show now are Kristin Wiig and Amy Poehler. Everyone else is either poorly utilized or deadweight.
-They haven't developed a worthy recurring non-Digital-Short sketch in years, and it shows. Well, ok, MacGruber. Where was MacGruber this episode?
-T-Mobile sketch- fizzled out. Seemed like a product of a time crush, with a promising beginning, and no satisfying resolution.
-Casey Wilson- love me now.
-New guy reminds us that the debut sketch of all newbies is usually unwatchable. Good luck fella.
-Michael Phelps is predictably terrible. But they didn't embarrass him too much. James Franco will be much more welcomed.
-Not a great premiere, but room for improvement.

Mixed-bag as usual. Tina Fey was great as expected. They need to get rid of that annoying Wiig character ("I said WE!"), otherwise she's great. New featured players are not funny (the chick is only good because of her expressive face, new guy = ugh). For some reason I love Armison's political analyst guy. Non-political sketches = poop (I like the Will Forte gym teacher, but it was much funnier when Peyton was on). Agreed that Keenan has got to go.

I thought "leave the phone" was a good closing line. They could have cut the whole thing down to three segments though.

MVPs: Wiig and Armisen. Hader and/or Sudeikis can take over utility-infielder duties from Hammond anytime now. Poehler would be in danger of being overused if we didn't know she's taking time off soon.

See...I actually kinda like the carachter. Although it worked much better with Rogan.

Same here. Although I did like her line:" IT'S A NINTENDO WII!"

Just watched it, it was pretty lame... loved the intro ... laughed pretty hard at one or two bits from weekend update over all it was pretty lame.

All summer long.. really?

No baiting. I'm seriously curious, why? Even if you find Wiig's character funny (which is baffling to me), 3/4 of the skit is set up and bad reaction shots. And its the same "joke" every time. Wiig talks funny, whispers in her mom's ear, does a stupid show and tell, and then makes fun of brother/cousin. Every time. At least with annoying characters like The Spartans or the Simmer Down lady, they changed up location or the content of the joke.

Kabong, had it pretty much right. Opening sketch was great, with so much real life material just this past week from the candidates, they really should go politics until the weekend update. Both of the fat guys were terrible but at the the newbie was new. Keenan should be fired immediatly for a black guy who can play Obama. I'm black and I don't think it would be offensive at all to hire a black comedian primarily to play Obama. You get at least three months of skits in the first half hour of the show, and you know the material will be good. I would take that kind of exposure in a heartbeat over grinding on the club circuit.

To be honest I think it has more to do with my girlfriend's impression of Wiig than anything else. But I'd rather watch that skit than a lame Keenan one or Will doing that annoying fucking coach skit.

Good opening sketch followed by 85 minutes of shit. And of course, Bill Hader continues to be completely wasted. Nothing new.

And was Samberg's video a rip of something? Maybe that's why I didn't find it funny?

Phelps read his lines better than Kerrigan.

I thought the show was okay, but the direction was way off the entire show. Did they hire a new director over the summer? The first joke in the Quiz Bowl sketch was completely ruined because the camera was trained on Phelps while Forte was talking, then the blocking was all wrong when Wiig made her entrance.

It stayed rough the rest of the show, with some of the odd shots in the Wiig/Phelps kids' sketch, the too-long delay before the reveal of Phelps' mom during the monologue, and that odd shot of Phelps coughing against a greenscreen during the final sketch. Was there some sort of crew overhaul over the summer?

So here's news (to me anyway): Poehler won't be coming back to SNL after she has her baby. She'll be appearing on the Office spinoff instead.

Looks like I'll be watching the Office spinoff.

I thought it was just from the guys who brought you the Office and the spin off was nixed.

From one great sketch last week to all shit this week. Parts of the Of Mice and Men had promise but the sketch was a bit off.

I'm sure McCain and Fox News will get a whole week of outrage with the incest stuff.

Angel, I stand corrected. I think.

Mice and Men was good writing, weak execution, with particularly bad cue-card abuse. NY Times/Alaska went on too long. Didn't mind the Cougars. O.J. Jury wasn't bad at all. Agent 420 was just pathetic.