‘Saturday Night Live’ re-watch: Are Jennifer Lawrence, Manti Te’o spoof still strong?

With “Saturday Night Live” now off the air until the show returns for new episodes in April, we’re going to be taking a look back at some of the older episodes of the season just as NBC airs them in repeats. This weekend, the focus is on the show hosted by Jennifer Lawrence, which was the first new broadcast of 2013 back in January. If you want to compare this article to our original review, and also check out some videos from the show that we mention in the paragraphs ahead, you can do so over here.

What makes “SNL” such a great show to watch live is pretty simple: so many of the jokes are based in the moment, and are not nearly as funny weeks down the line. Meanwhile, there are also some bits (such as most of Justin Timberlake’s work with Andy Samberg, Stefan, or the show’s game show spoofs) that are really pretty funny to watch at any point since they are not typically dependent on a given period of time.

Unfortunately for Lawrence, many of her show’s funniest moments are not exactly things that stand the test of time very well. The jokes about Manti Te’o and Lance Armstrong feel tired, and even the spoof about “The Hobbit” is not as funny now that the movie is out of most theaters. The “Hunger Games” news conference was never really that great since everyone was sitting down for the entire time, and the show has already repeated the Verismo commercial on more than one occasion. In going back and re-watching the clips today, most of these jokes did not hold up well when compared to the average show. (Then again, this was just an ok episode to begin with.)

The one exception to this? Anthony Crispino. While Bobby Moynihan gets a great deal of love for “Drunk Uncle,” this is one of his other fantastic characters that is so absurd, we don’t know how he does the “Weekend Update” interview with a straight face. Even though there was some news in here based on current events at the time, the jokes are so original that it doesn’t matter that they are dating. Watching a Te’o impression, meanwhile, is an entirely different story with material that isn’t quite there once the “moment” is gone.

Do you think that Lawrence’s show holds up well for repeat viewing? If you want to see the currently-announced hosts for “SNL” in April, you can do so over at the link here.

Photo: NBC