‘Saturday Night Live’ preview: Now featuring Taraji P. Henson and Mumford & Sons

We go into this weekend’s “Saturday Night Live” episode with uneven expectations. Talent-wise, we have almost zero doubt that this will be an entertaining show. The presence of both Taraji P. Henson as host and Mumford & Sons as musical guest make that feel very likely to occur.

Now that we’ve said this, we have to wonder if the material will match this. We worry that there are going to be at least three or four reminders of the fact that Taraji plays Cookie Lyon on “Empire,” even though she’s done all sorts of great work before then. Admittedly, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” was the first time that she came on our own personal radar, but she was around for many long before then. The number of “Empire” mentions / sketches should be in the 1-2 range. We understand wanting to make a few jokes since you’ll probably have some viewers who are watching this because of her breakout role on Fox, and you want to please them. Just give her something else to do, as well.

As for Mumford & Sons, you probably either love them or hate them. They’re like the folk band that started very hipster, but are now so popular that most hipsters choose to thumb their noses at them versus giving them a real chance to show what they are capable of doing now. We’re at least interested to see their performance, and we also love the fact that they have three guys who clearly look like they are in a folk band, and then another guy who looks just like a typical guy in a hat.

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