‘Saturday Night Live’ review: Deflategate, Bill Belichick, ‘Bachelor,’ Chris Soules mocked in Blake Shelton show (video)
This weekend, “Saturday Night Live” managed to fulfill a dream of ours from the past several years, and it’s a pretty simple one: Have a show hosted by Blake Shelton. We’re a longtime Blake fan, and know that he has a great sense of humor. However, that doesn’t mean that he necessarily knows how to host a comedy show that involves cue cards and monologues.
As with many other editions of our “SNL” review series, we’re going to come back throughout the night with some other updates from the night. Stay tuned for more updates, and there will be videos come tomorrow morning.
Deflategate cold open – We knew that this was coming, mostly because it dominated the news cycle this past week. Everyone was talking about it, and we know that the show wants to mock sports topics whenever they can. Therefore, they had Beck Bennett come out as Bill Belichick and Taran Killam come out as a hilariously clueless Tom Brady.
While this was incredibly predictable, and we have to say that we still enjoyed it very much. The show has done far worse when it comes to cold opens this season. There were so many great jokes in here, from “Brady” referencing real scandals like Aaron Hernandez, and Bobby Moynihan killing it as an angry assistant equipment manager.
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Blake Shelton opening – Yes, the “Hee Haw” tribute was a little cheesy, but we actually liked the shtick of Blake trying to get everyone to do nice, “Southern” humor, only to have it blow up terribly in his face.
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“Bachelor” spoof – A perfect parody of the ABC franchise, especially when it comes to the women being overly desperate, someone crying over a tragedy that happened years ago, and even that the black women tend to go home around week two or three. Blake really didn’t do anything other than sit there, but that’s a pretty accurate representation of Chris Soules’ season so far.
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Wishing Boot – A surprisingly catchy song, but we don’t quite understand completely what the joke of it was. It was instead just somewhat random and another excuse to get Blake to sing.
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Celebrity Family Feud – We’ve definitely seen funnier editions of this over the years, but we still laughed here or there during the “American Idol” vs. “The Voice” themed showdown. The best impression is probably Kate McKinnon as Keith Urban, mostly because of energy.
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Weekend Update – Pretty funny for the most part, but it’s interesting how the last one way way too short, and this one went on forever. The Saudi Arabia joke went over the audience’s head, but Riblet (Moynihan) was classic and Pete Davidson had a pretty good routine this time. Now, just cut out the whole Sasheer Zamata bit, which never really went anywhere.
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Prison cannibal – This was a very silly premise (Blake and company keeping a guy in prison), but for some strange reason, we found that we really liked it! Kenan Thompson is probably the reason why here.
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My Darling Joan – We saw this one coming a mile away: A “sweet” love song from an elderly man to his late wife, which was really just a series of insults all about what she did to him while alive. There were some laughs here, but it was far from unpredictable.
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Magic – This may actually be Blake’s best performance of the night, as he played an inquisitive man who tried to convince a magician that he should be granted all sorts of special powers. It was completely ridiculous, but also a heck of a lot of fun.
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While we’re not going to say that this was a perfect show (the wishing boot and the “Family Feud” sketch were weaker), this was a very pleasant show as a whole. Almost all of it was at least fun, even if there were not many classic sketches in here. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday night. Grade: B+.
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