You might think that after a month off, SNL would return in a blaze of glory, the writing full of new ideas and the acting energized. You’d be wrong, though. Despite a valiant effort by Jennifer Lawrence, who did the best she could with the roles she was given, this was a pretty mediocre offering, especially considering the amount of time they had to ruminate. That said, there were still a couple bright spots. After the jump, watch the best and worst scenes from last night’s Saturday Night Live, and let us know what you thought of the episode in the comments.
The Best:
Girlfriends Talk Show
This sketch was miles below the original iteration, and full of pretty lazy writing, but Aidy Bryant shone as the neurotic, hamster-loving “real” best friend of Cecily Strong’s character, swatting off Lawrence’s wannabe-punk with expert lame-girl delivery.
B-108 Morning Show
Another show-within-a-show in our best-of. We wonder if that means anything. Again, it was the performances that won our hearts with this one, namely Killam and Monyihan hilariously dumb radio banter and Lawrence’s rap-challenged Busty Rhymes, who tries to rhyme “issues” with “Kleenex.”
Danielle: A Free European Woman
Okay, so as far as we can tell, this sketch was totally pointless. It’s clearly a parody of badly-dubbed movies shown on Cinemax, which we’ve never seen (and we don’t think much of the SNL target audience has either, though we could be way off on that), and other than that, it seems like an exercise in absurdity. But we kind of like that. Also, we’ve never seen anything like this on SNL before, which proffers major points.
The Worst:
Hunger Games Press Conference
Of all the things they could have done with The Hunger Games, they chose this? A couple laughs (beard and drug-related), but ultimately pretty boring.
Top Dog Chef
Yikes. It’s never a good sign when the dog costumes come out. Not only was this sketch predictable from the get, but just kind of awkward and unfunny all-around. The only highlight was Jennifer Lawrence reacting to the doorbell.
Starbucks Verismo
This is a perfectly fine idea, but it’s a one-liner, not a sketch. Even a two minute sketch.