Is ‘Saturday Night Live’ new tonight on NBC? Replaying Russell Crowe and what went wrong

Before we get too far into this particular “Saturday Night Live” article, let’s go ahead and get this out of the way: There’s no episode tonight on NBC. Last week’s edition featuring Fred Armisen is the last one you’re going to be seeing until the fall, and that’s a good thing since you want to go out for the season on a solid episode of comedy.

It’s with that in mind that we’re really thrilled the show did not end with that Russell Crowe episode from earlier this spring. Unfortunately, NBC is replaying it tonight on the “SNL” timeslot, which may not be the best way to start a summer of repeats.

Really, we like to use this space during repeat weeks to highlight a sketch that worked really well; unfortunately, this episode did not really give us that sort of luxury at all. So instead, let’s try to break down all of the reasons why that sketch featuring Henry VIII from the show (watch it below) did not work.

1. The premise – The idea of a holographic Henry VIII wanting random women to give him a male heir was funny one time; about the fourth time, we were ready to put this on mute.

2. The technology – It felt clear that Crowe was on another stage delivering his lines, so this completely blocked out any chemistry that he could have had with the other members of the cast. The lines felt really stunted as a result.

3. Crowe overall – We do think he committed to the character, but it felt through this whole episode like he went in just wanting to play the weirdo in every single sketch, and he would’ve been better off doing this once and then being somewhat of a normal part of the cast the rest of the time.

If you want to get some other news when it comes to “SNL” right now, be sure to head over to the link here! Also, sign up over here to get some more TV news on all we cover, sent right over to you via our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: NBC.)

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