SNL: Brian Williams

Yes, I know I am behind in reviewing the Brian Wiliams SNL episode...but with last week's episode being a rerun with Bon Jovi and the writer's strike in full swing, odds are we will be seeing plenty of reruns for a while...also, because local programming went long and my DVR stopped recording at midnight, I did miss the last 15, 20 minutes of the show...

But, overall, I think the Brian Williams show has likely been the best SNL of the season so far... none of the sketches were insanely funny, but they also weren't just stupid, which is what many sketches are.

Of course the show started with an Amy Poehler as Hillary Halloween sketch. Pretty unfunny and to insure it not ever being funny, ended with Barack Obama getting to say "Live From New York..." to kick the show off.

Williams monologue was alright, as he mocked his appearance of being a news man reading words off a teleprompter, they show you that he is a news man reading words off a teleprompter...

Maybelline for men...a fake commercial that is trying to increase makeups demographic by 50% by appealing to men. The commercials this season have all been not very good, including this one.

I was actually somewhat impressed at Williams' performance...playing the fireman character during Bronx Beat wasn't too bad and it seemed almost natural for Williams. I think I've mentioned this before, but does Amy Poehler have to be in every sketch? Bronx Beat has been done before... in fact, I enjoyed it better when it involved Adam Sandler and Jay Mohr and part of the show was a give away (like free dinner at a steakhouse) if you gave the fink of the week (or something like that) 'a beating'.

Next up was a Publisher's Clearing House prize give-away sketch where the entire sketch is Kristen Wiig providing the humor as Brian Williams is an excitable, mult-million dollar winner. The sketch seemed a little too long and after a while, it just seemed as if Wiig was a little over-exaggerating to the point of not being funny...there is a fine line between just the right amount of physical comedy for a sketch and over-the-top. Wiig was precariously close to over-the top.

The SNL Digital Short was a look at a 'typical' day for Brian Williams. Although many of the gags in the short seemed predictable - like Williams leaving an encouraging message to someone but is actually left for himself to listen to at the conclusion of the day - but was still pretty good. Having Williams throwing pennies out of his window at Matt Lauer and Al Roker was likely the highpoint of the sketch.

The Weekend Update was fairly unmemorable... Armison did have a somehwhat funny bit about the writer's strike... we producers make $20 million and the writers make $200,000, we are not sure if they can find anywhere in the middle... I admit that I am not fully informed as to the exact numbers involved in the writer's dispute, but this sketch did seem to best simplify the situation...the writers are getting screwed and want to get some residual money from continued profits from their created content...seems fair to me...

There was a quick iPhone spoof which wasn't too bad and the last sketch I got to see was a democratic debate sketch that didn't have Hillary or Obama featured in it, but essentially all the 'losers' sitting around talking about how they were going to attack Hillary. Overall a pretty weak sketch.

According to the episode recap, I missed one sketch and the musical act Feist...which means I probably didn't miss much but will have to wait for the rerun in a week or two to catch the final minutes.

As a final comment on Brian Williams' performance, I had read that he would do his nightly news each night and then work with the SNL crew almost all night for the week leading up to his show. I think he really wanted to put forth his best effort and I think he did really well.

NBC is no longer posting clips of their shows on YouTube, so to get videos of the episodes is a little tougher and rumor is that NBC is going to provide the clips again but using their own site rather than YouTube. But I did find a couple of clips, enjoy them while you can...