‘Saturday Night Live’ review: Stefon, Amy Poehler return; Black History Month, Sheila Kelly also shine

This “Saturday Night Live” review is technically about the Melissa McCarthy show, even though we admit that this is at times had to do for one simple reason: Seth Meyers. The man said goodbye to “Weekend Update” tonight after more than a decade in various roles on the show, and his exit was both a funny and teary one.

Luckily, McCarthy did a good job most of the rest of the show distracting us from the fact that this was the last time that we will be seeing Seth around thanks to his new “Late Night” gig … at least until he was gone. After the end of “Weekend Update,” the quality of the sketches dropped to a point where even Melissa was not really able to fully save them.

The good

Football Cold Open – We knew that there was going to be football mentioned in this episode somewhere, but we kind of love that “SNL” decided to mostly give the middle finger to the old rule of “don’t mention the Super Bowl unless it is on your network.” This entire musical themed around the game was great, in particular “Peyton Manning” as the star. Kenan Thompson as Ben Vareen as Richard Sherman was somewhat funny, even though Kenan was really not doing an impression of either one of them. It was a very random, very funny production.

Melissa McCarthy monologue – This was random, but also a pretty hilarious monologue thanks to the lack of singing, and for the aerial acrobatics associated with it. Also, Melissa stealing a llama backstage was proof that we probably had a very good show ahead for us to enjoy.

CVS commercial – This is probably a truer sketch than some men would want to invent, since this was an “advertisement” basically for terrible Valentine’s Day gifts. It was very funny from start to finish, and is “SNL” perfectly capitalizing on an idea that you already think they would have covered extensively.

Sheila Kelly returns! – Remember Sheila? The last time she was around, she was an overall aggressive basketball coach. This time, she is a politician. She was thankfully ridiculously funny on both occasions.

Women’s group – This is a sketch that would have probably bombed had Melissa not been on board as an aggressive Lian Neeson – revenge type out to murder the man who killed her father. She was surrounded by ordinary women, who all were around mostly to express their feelings about menial things.

Guess That Phrase – Once again, it would have bombed without Melissa as a nutty game-show contestant who broke all the rules and tried to do dirty things to both the host and one of the contestants. The entire game show format is really tired on this show, save for a little curveball here and there that the writers find.

Black History Month – This may be one of our favorite sketches of the entire season. We really didn’t see the twist coming here that the “28 reasons to hug a black man” would basically be the word “slavery” 27 times. It was clearly tongue in cheek, and Bobby Moynihan’s attempt to try to get involved with a rap verse made it somehow even better.

Weekend Update – Let’s talk about some big returns to the show, shall we? Not only did this week mark the return of Stefon for Seth Meyers’ final show, but we also had Amy Poehler! Basically, it was everything that we could have wanted and then some, as it got emotional near the end. Also, the first bit about the Atlanta traffic jam was very funny in its own right.

Girlfriends Talk Show – Hell must be freezing over for us to include this sketch in the “good” portion of our review. But honestly, we laughed a couple of times. We still hate it as a recurring sketch, though, and like we’ve said a number of times, it worked only because of the host.

The bad

Art exhibit – We found this pointless, and it went on for far too long. However, we do have to also admit that anything that came on right after the end of “Weekend Update” was something that was going to be hard to hold our attention. Can’t really blame them too much.

Park bench – It’s Melissa doing something gross! Thank goodness this late-in-the-show ad was gross, since there was nothing to see here.

Kyle Mooney at Super Bowl Weekend – We’ve said this before with some of these Mooney shorts lately: They are almost so awkward that they are not even funny. You can have it both ways, but there needs to be some balance to it.

We wish that we could give this episode a full-on A, but the latter part of the show really took some of the air out. But still, the first hour and five minutes or so were some of the most glorious entertainment that you are going to find this time of year. Grade: A-.

What did you think about McCarthy’s stint as a host for the third time, and the final “Weekend Update”? Share below! Also, click here to see some more highlights from the show, or here to get some more updates via our CarterMatt Newsletter.

Photo: NBC