‘Saturday Night Live’ re-watch: Do ‘Girls’ video, Aaron Paul, Drunk Uncle, Tina Fey as host still work?
Now that “Saturday Night Live” is back in-season again, we are thrilled to bring back to prominence our re-watch series, where we take a look at episodes in repeats and try to figure out whether or not they still work upon second viewing. In order to be a classic “SNL” sketch, which is one that you’d watch a year from now a la “D**k in a Box” or “The Real Housewives of Disney,” you need to be more than just funny. You also need to have a solid structure, and something that relies on something more than shock value or pop-culture relevance.
This is why we’re going to take a look every time we do one of these at three sketches. There will always be at least one that holds up, one that tanks, and one that we didn’t like the first time that either improves, or somehow gets even worse. Tonight, NBC is repeating the entire show with Tina Fey as host, and you can go back and read our original review for it here.
Still a Hit – “Girls” spoof. The premise of the video is still a little weak, since “SNL” chooses time and time again to use a random Eastern European woman for humor played by different people. But the impressions of the “Girls” cast are really rather funny, and since this show is so quirky and different than anything else, we will still love this sketch as much as we do now in several years.
From Hit to Miss – Anything with Aaron Paul in it. During the “SNL” premiere, we were lapping all of this up since it was right before the “Breaking Bad” finale. Now, it feels like way too much since the show has already repeated the eMeth commercial on one occasion, and you have to wonder why Aaron was not allowed to do something other than Jesse Pinkman. Allow him to show a little range! This is all on the writers more so than Aaron, who did what he was asked and then some.
From Miss to “Hit” – The airline sketch. We admit that the majority of this bit is still stupid and goes on too long. However, we laughed just as much at Kenan Thompson and his over-sized suitcase this time as we did when we first saw it, and this ridiculous image has stuck with us. So even in a bad sketch, congrats to the show and Kenan for finding a funny moment that we remember and appreciate more now then we initially did.
Grade: We hadn’t instituted our grading system back when this first aired, but we would’ve given the full episode a B+ then. Now, we’d go more for a solid B.
Next week, we’ll be back with the show hosted by Edward Norton and with musical guest Janelle Monae. Click here if you want to read some other highlights from this season.
Photo: NBC