A piece with Rudd as a newly-svelte Santa Claus who was no longer remotely jolly to his elves didn’t go big enough to be very funny. The best thing about this one was Jay Pharoah’s totally incongruous interjections from the side of the frame. NBC Standards & Practices evidently starts relaxing at 12:30AM, which was when we got an entire sketch about the size of the penis in Michelangelo’s David, which much to the discomfort of Rudd’s model was very small. It was still funny, but no doubt diminishing returns will set in–and as if to prove that fact, the segment also gave us the 11 millionth appearance of Bayer’s Jacob the Bar Mitzvah Boy, a schtick that has seriously run its course.
#Snl lawrence welk show will ferrel movie
Thinking of premises repeated ad infinitum, Update featured the almost instant return of Killam’s Jebidiah Atkinson (“Run things into the ground much?” either the character or the performer asked Seth Meyers), the waspish old-time critic who this time went after Christmas TV shows and movies (on It’s A Wonderful Life: “Every time this movie airs, an angel blows his brains out“). Rudd and Bayer were fine, but like so many SNL sketches it didn’t build to anything, just repeated its twin premises again and again.
#Snl lawrence welk show will ferrel mac
The night’s 11:55PM sketch was so odd that it could have aired an hour later, with Rudd and Vanessa Bayer as a couple finalizing their divorce terms who alternated between very literal wordplay gags (her new boyfriend’s name isn’t “Duncan,” it’s “Dunkin’,” but not Dunkin’ Donuts–it’s Dunkin’ Danish) and exuberant dancing to the Fleetwood Mac song that’s his lawyer’s ringtone. It was a very flat iteration of Kenan Thompson’s Al Sharpton talk show bit, where the joke is that he can’t read cue cards or understand technology, this time with Rudd given almost nothing to do as a commentator on the government’s healthcare website. The post-monologue sketch would almost certainly have been the cold open if Wiig hadn’t provided star power for the Sound of Music parody. A fight-to-the-death between the two groups a la Anchorman‘s famous scene would have been nice, but instead we got a group sing of “Afternoon Delight,” which was cute if not hysterically funny. Wiig is in the cast of the upcoming Anchorman 2, which just so happens also to star Paul Rudd, and the monologue brought on the movie’s heavy artillery: Will Ferrell, Steve Carell and David Koechner, along with the night’s musical guests One Direction. Wiig got some big laughs with her prop tiny hands, but a really clever Sound of Music piece (Wiig could have been a sensational Elsa) would have been so much better.
Instead, the sketch turned out to be an occasion for the return of Kristen Wiig’s deformed Dooneese, from the Lawrence Welk Show parodies–which is what this turned into, complete with Fred Armisen showing up as Welk. No one had the nerve to parody Underwood, though (and Taran Killam’s Captain didn’t go after Stephen Moyer either), a massive waste of the premise. The cold open, a “condensed” parody of this week’s hit The Sound of Music Live telecast, was a welcome reminder of the days before the cold opens were reserved for tepid political sketches, and when Kate McKinnon bounded on stage dressed like Carrie Underwood’s Maria von Trapp, the heart leaped for all the satirical possibilities in store.
It all got Paul Rudd’s third stint as host off to an energized start, which the show predictably proceeded to dribble away fairly quickly–no fault of Rudd, an accomplished and likable sketch performer. There were more cameo stars in the first 15 minutes of tonight’s SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE than regular cast members, and since SNL has enough regulars for a small city, that’s saying something.