‘Saturday Night Live’ review: ‘Game of Thrones: South Central,’ Hillary Clinton, ‘Empire’s’ Taraji P. Henson (video)
“Saturday Night Live” loves its politics, so can you really be that shocked that the series decided to start things off with a cold open featuring Kate McKinnon as Hillary Clinton? It was a great chance to mock how some politicians have already used social media to announce that they are running for President.
The biggest surprise to us here was seeing Darrell Hammond return here as Bill, since we figured that the show would eventually decide to find someone knew for him, given that he could be an important part of the weeks to come. (Granted, you do have Hammond aboard for introductions. Why not use him?) This was a fun opening to the show; not hilarious, but topical and better than most political sketches lately.
Now, let’s get to the rest of the episode…
Taraji P. Henson monologue – This was a miss. We have no clue how they made a whole sketch around how Taraji has finally “made it” as an actress. Also, it’s another monologue where the host decided to sing. The best part of it was Kenan Thompson making a “Good Burger” reference. Life is good.
[ot-video]
[/ot-video]
Depends Legends – This worked at first, but the idea of legendary actors on your diapers got old quickly … save for the random burn at “Monk” at the end, and we say this as someone who has seen just about every season of the show.
Courthouse sketch – This was somewhat of a ripped-from-the-headlines sketch, and a reasonably funny one. Not particularly hilarious, but at least they found a way to take a serious situation and make it funny without being offensive.
Home 2 – This is the beginning of what is a weird tradition for the site: Many hip-hop sketches. Pretty good impressions, though, and we’ll take any Kendrick Lamar spoof that we can get.
[ot-video]
[/ot-video]
QVC – Well, this was … interesting. Another sketch that suffered from subpar writing, and we’re actually sure that we have more fun watching real QVC people mess up.
[ot-video]
[/ot-video]
Game of Thrones: South Central – We may have actually enjoyed this more if this was before the “Home” sketch. We don’t know why you push it, since it was a reasonably-funny take on the show. Not as biting as we’d want, but pleasant.
[ot-video]
[/ot-video]
Weekend Update – We came here to praise Cecila and the jokes, and then to completely bury Jacob the Bar Mitzvah Boy. Then, we were suddenly okay with it because of the random Billy Crystal sighting. It made sense given that he has a new show in “The Comedians,” and he was perfect as Jacob’s father.
[ot-video]
[/ot-video]
[ot-video]
[/ot-video]
Hollywood Game Night – McKinnon as Jane Lynch is moderately funny time in and time out, but we were shocked about how many of these impressions were rehashed. We just had Taran Killam as Vin Diesel on the show! Why bring that in again? Beck Bennett as Nick Offerman was also recent.
[ot-video]
[/ot-video]
Janelle – We don’t really think that the YouTuber bit was all that funny the first time around, but having Taraji come in with some great physical comedy and dance moves was awesome … for about a minute. It got old quickly.
[ot-video]
[/ot-video]
Sesame Street – One of our favorites, mostly because throwing Cookie into a scene with Cookie Monster was somehow both on-the-nose and completely original. We’re actually surprised that “Sesame Street” signed off on a bit involving a coat made out of Elmo.
https://youtu.be/CToJuXILmKw
Classic movie – We’ve never loved these Kenan Thompson-introduced sketches that much, especially one that is a bizarre take on women and minorities in baseball. If you’re going to do this, it has to be really edgy and really funny. It was neither.
[ot-video]
[/ot-video]
Connectatron – A silly spoof on “Power Rangers” to end the night. While this was not our favorite episode of the show by a mile, it was nice to see it end with something we can get behind. Taraji did a fine job as host, but the weak point of the night came via creativity. There just wasn’t enough of it from start to finish to really have us completely invested. Grade: B-
[ot-video]
[/ot-video]
If you want to see some other recent “Saturday Night Live” updates, head over here to take a look at our review of the recent Michael Keaton show! Also, sign up to get some further TV updates on all we cover via our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: NBC.)