Saturday Night Live Zach Galifanakis/Vampire Weekend

Since SNL is usually at its strongest during election years I expected a drop off for this season, but didn't imagine it would be this severe. However there have been occasional bright spots and they had a lot of hosts like Blake Lively or Taylor Lautner who seemed predestined for a mediocre to bad episode, so when I discovered Zach Galifanakis was hosting I was excited. I am not the biggest Galifanakis fan in the world, but having a comedian host a comedy show instead of a movie star seemed like a novel development. Despite a very weak opening sketch (get it health care reform is unpopular! and if you don't get it we will repeat it half a dozen times) I was excited after seeing a very good monologue even if it was basically Zach's standup act, that is much funnier than most of what SNL has done this season.

Unfortunately my high hopes after the monologued were quickly abandoned and they proceeded to perform the same tripe they have performed throughout this season. One would think that with a team of writers and a cast of a dozen comedic actors they would be able to create more than one or two original sketches a week, but they haven't been up to the challenge. This week they had 6 sketches 3 0f them were more or less exact copies of sketches they have already done unsuccessfully. I am pretty sure they have covered every possible joke about over-affectionate families, Kathy Lee Gifford and What's Up With That.

The other sketches were a mixed bag. The bidet sketch seems like a funny riff that you would have at 3am while sleep deprived with friends. The idea that people would be so have a bidet fetish is a funny one-liner, it isn't funny as 4-5 minute sketch where you repeat that joke ad nauseam. The Situation Room sketch was a less funny, muddled version of this excellent Daily Show piece from a couple days ago. http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-march-4-2010/tech-talch---chatroulette.

The pageant sketch was relatively strong, but it should be a type of sketch they are regularly pumping out and not the highlight of the show. It allowed Zach Galifanakis, Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig to showcase their talent in some funny moments, even though they cracked near the end of the sketch. This ended very abruptly and it got me thinking that SNL does a lot of fake talk shows and game shows because they don't need a to write a good ending since they can just end the show or go to commercial break.

After this episode I am convinced SNL maybe the most creatively bankrupt show on TV, in the old days of SNL the cast was constantly doing drugs, which would be a reasonable excuse for recycling a bunch of bad sketches, but this cast just seems lazy, uncreative and insular. It amazes me that they get hosts like Joseph Gordon Levitt or Zach G who in another world could have been stars on SNL, but they just force them into their formulaic sketches instead of using their talent productively. If DVR didn't allow me to fast forward through a bunch of sketches and crank through an episode like 30 minutes I would stop watching SNL on a regular basis.

Stray Thoughts

- Kenan as Mo'Nique, gee what a surprise Kenan is in drag playing, I can't wait to see that happen next week.

- Wolf Blitzer at Burning Man

- At least Vampire Weekend was a solid musical act.