An episode tonight marked by the highlight of the impossibly charming Martin Freeman trying as hard as possible...with C-level material at best. Sigh. To be quite honest, after an aggressively painful episode like last week's, it's kind of a relief when "only" lame skits are the majority and not god awful experiences like last week's entirety.
COLD OPEN: Taran opens the show as Charlie Rose interviewing Bobby and Kyle as the two "architects" of the Bush torture program- it's lame and stupid. You know, in political skits it probably helps to have some semblance of an edge or even a point to make, don't you think? Not just hey, let's mock the torture guys for being "bad consultants."
MONOLOGUE: Martin Freeman of The Hobbit, the original (and best) Office, and Sherlock, comes out and endearingly mugs for the camera and makes self-deprecating jokes about British celebs all knowing each other, as well as William and Kate of course. It's cute and because he's so appealing it's the best thing of the night.
SUMP'N CLAUS: A pre-taped song bit about Kenan as alternate Santa, who gives out cash to the naughties for Christmas. Not exactly hilarious, but sorta amusing?
WEDDING: Martin is marrying Leslie and everyone in the cast has objections to the mismatched pair. Another one that's completely mild. Could have been funny, but there aren't any actual jokes to these objections, so again it just kinda sits there. But Martin sells it.
OFFICE HOBBIT: What starts out promising (Hobbit and LOTR characters in The Office setting) goes into a total misfire because instead of making jokes about the Hobbit characters, they decide to simply duplicate the exact (and I mean verbatim) greatest hits jokes of Ricky Gervais' Office, but said by Gandalf and Bilbo instead. I don't know why they took that approach- this could have actually been really funny if they'd gone in the opposite direction and used the actual characters they were working with and not just the costumes. You'd think that'd be obvious, but the writers are that blind to what's actually funny I guess.
MORNING SHOW: Taran and Cecily are talk show hosts that are a married couple, but Taran's obviously gay, so the jokes are all about his naughty sexual side. It's pretty tame. They also make fun of morning shows for constantly "teasing" segments. I do think Taran & Cecily have some decent chemistry here, maybe it could become something.
ST. JOSEPH'S CHRISTMAS SPECTACULAR: Ok, I kinda liked this one. A pre-taped bit making fun of church traditions, which does seem to hit the mark. It even has a couple of good lines in it.
UPDATE: As per usual, some lame jokes from the terrible Colin and Michael, guests are Sasheer objecting to the lack of diversity in emojis, Cecily as the "one-dimensional female character in a movie role" (she really can't structure her jokes well), and Vanessa's Bar Mitzah boy again, presumably because they can't think of anything else and Jacob always works. He should have been retired by now, guys.
ASSEMBLY LINE: Random quick one with Martin showing nervous factory hire Taran how to work the assembly line. So insubstantial I forgot I watched it in about eight seconds.
TREE LODGE: A lazy one with Kenan doing a variation on his old What's Up With That skit, complete with musical interruptions and all. I'd have preferred to see that old one if this was all they had here.
WATERBED WAREHOUSE: Martin doing a local ad for waterbeds with wife Aidy selling herself as the star of the ad. If you like Aidy maybe you'll like this one, but as you know I don't, so it doesn't do anything for me.
So there you go. Why on earth did they not do a Sherlock sketch? Isn't that the really obvious choice? Otherwise, Martin is likable and morphs into any role that's asked of him- I could easily see him hosting a classic sketch show episode of something that had great material, but alas, that is not SNL. I give tonight a C-, but it was better than last week. Next up it's Amy Adams hosting for the second time before the winter break. Let's see if the Christmas episode can manage to give us something memorable for a change. I'll pretend to be optimistic since it's the season of perpetual hope and all. See you then!
