SNL Season Premiere, 2007-08 Season

Something I mentioned at the end of last year's season, I think a regular feature on my blog will be critiquing Saturday Night Live. What are my credentials for this? Well, I've seen every episode of SNL... starting in 1980 I would either watch live (or taped) each and every week and in the early 80's (I think it was WGN) the early years of SNL were reran nightly which I watched religiously as well. There is no question that SNL has had it's ups and downs with it primarily being a down time right now... But let's get on with it...

The season premiere of SNL featured LeBron James as host and Kanye West as the musical guest. SNL has often had athletes and other non-acting/comedians as their hosts and for the most part, these episodes are forgettable and this was no exception. The show has to try and fit the non-funny, non-actor into their sketches which a person can tell that the sketch was written to work around the host. The opening sketch was Amy Poehler as Hillary Clinton stating how she will be elected president next year... I didn't find it too funny but more a statement about what New Yorkers and network television have already determined to be fact...so it was more making fun of the popular sentiment of this country... Darrell Hammond as Bill Clinton was the only part that was mildly humorous.


LeBron then comes out to do his monologue which was not-funny and went to a pre-taped segment to give LeBron a short time in front of the cameras alone.


Angry Dog Food was the first of this year's mock commercials, which are oftentimes the best part of the show...this one was mildly amusing when showing the rabid dogs, especially the smaller dogs, but overall, not funny.

Then a came Kristin Wiigs 'lying' character. This sketch just reminds of the John Lovitz character/sketch where he would lie...'Yeah, that's the ticket and I'm married to Morgan Fairchild!" In the '80's and I was in my teens I thought it was funny...now 20 years later I think this sketch is lame and weak. They had this character on several episodes last year and I thought all were extremely lame...the show seems to try and work more of Kristin Wiig into the show, like her Target checkout lady as well but both these characters are not even amusing to me...just the same joke over and over and over and over and over again...boring.


A promo for High School Musical 3 was SNL's next offering. Not even memorable... I don't think I found any part of that sketch even remotely funny.


Then came Andy Samberg's pet project, the SNL digital short of him singing a song about his affection towards the Iranian president (I am too lazy to look up how to spell his name). The SNL digital shorts with Samberg are hit and miss and I think Samberg should just be relegated to that portion of the show because most of his characters within the sketches are lame. But this SNL short was a miss for me... the lyrics seemed to repeat far too often and the entire song seemed too long. Half way through the video I was saying...Ok, I get it, what's next?

Then came the Lyle Kane sketch which is a dorky white guy (Will Forte) hosting a lame talk show on BET. If this sketch was just to make LeBron look like a dork, it succeeded. If it was trying to be funny...it failed.

Weekend Update, again another segment that oftentimes can make the episode at least worthy of watching because Seth Meyers is in it, was really forgettable. I was surprised to see that Amy Poehler cut her hair, the first sign of a woman thinking to herself that she wants to be respected for her mind rather than her body...not sure if that was totally the case there Amy. Keneen Thompson as O.J. - not funny and a total waste of time as was the 'interview' with the Iranian president (again, too lazy).

The Best Of Solid Gold was a mock commercial that featured the Solid Gold Dancers... I give it the same critique as the Lyle Kane show...that if the objective of this sketch was to make LeBron look like a dork and now like a fag, they succeeded. I did smile when LeBron had a huge cape that he would open to reveal the rest of the Solid Gold Dancers and then close again around them after they concluded a song...but that didn't make up for the rest of the sketch.

The Ambiguously Gay Duo was the Saturday TV Funhouse episode and these typically have been my favorite TV Funhouse characters but like the rest of this show, it failed to deliver. Usually there is more innuendo involving Ace and Gary being gay whereas this episode had them only playing charades and wagging their asses at each other...not really funny at all.

106 & Park was just a vehicle for Kanye West to 'seriously' answer questions about him pouting at various award shows and then to make fun of himself... The set for this sketch looked extremely close to the set that Deephouse Dish took place on and hopefully, since Deephouse Dish didn't happen it is the last we've seen of Deephouse Dish.


And somewhere in here is the PSA sketch featuring LeBron and Jason Sudekis as a crew member for the PSA that 'played high school ball' and after doing his best to try and sabatoge LeBron's performance by throwing the basketball at LeBron's head, he and LeBron go one-on-one with LeBron giving Jason a fore-arm shiver. If any sketch had any potential out of the show it was this one...why? Because LeBron seemed relax, didn't have to play character and Sudekis' character is funny.

The show wraps up with Jason Sudekis being a guidance counselor for LeBron James as a high schooler. I thought Sudekis was good, and LeBron had few lines. The sketch was pretty obvious, LeBron was seeing his guidance counselor about whether or not he should go to college or enter the NBA draft. Sudekis proceeds to tell LeBron that if he wanted a diploma he sell his to him.

Sudekis, Hammond and Meyers are the best actors on SNL and seem to get the least amount of airtime. Amy Poehler, who last season seemed to be in every freakin' sketch, only was in a few this first episode. She has some good characters but none in this episode. She did play Dakota Fanning in the 106 & Park sketch, but that was a bit part.

Kanye West, I couldn't give 2 shits about so I fast-forwarded over much of his two performances on the show.

Overall this episode is unfortunately carrying on the trend from last season...that is almost totally sucking. There really wasn't one part of the show that I felt was humorous and SNL shows have usually had at lest one sketch or element that was worth viewing. But, possibly on the bright side, with this first show being a total bomb, imo, they can't get too much worse...can they?