Wow. And I thought this one might be better than last week's. Russell Crowe hosted a truly dismal episode tonight, and even though I wouldn't blame it entirely on him, let's just say he wasn't one of the more dynamic hosts. Blech.
COLD OPEN: A fairly boring open with Kate's Hillary opining her recent losses and pandering to New Yorkers in her typical Hillary-esque way. The best bit is mocking her being unable to use the metro card on the subway, but there's no good lines here or anything.
MONOLOGUE: Russell comes out and briefly pokes fun at his "hilarious" filmography, but it seriously lasts like two minutes, making it the second week in a row where they clearly had no ideas for the host's monologue.
PREP H: A lame ad for Preparation H, where Beck is a guy who loudly keeps calling Taran out on his problem in public, but it's a pretty bleh delivery of this obvious joke here.
POLITICS NATION: Kenan does his Al Sharpton impression in front of the real Al Sharpton as a guest, who pokes fun at his weight gain, seeing as obviously Sharpton looks nothing like that anymore. Sometimes Kenan's funny with this, but for some reason this one fell flat, although I did like the joke about Trump's -1,048 approval rating among black voters.
HENRY VIII: Russell is a hologram of King Henry VIII at a museum who keeps insulting patrons and harassing women. Doesn't work.
MATCH FINDERS: Dating show where Russell is one of the bachelors as a pervy old man who keeps making gross sexual remarks to Cecily's contestant. Eh. Russell is trying and he's the center of the joke, but the whole thing just isn't taking off.
UPDATE: A bunch of election jokes from Jost and Che, then Kate comes on as the TV viewer Deenie, and her best bit is that she's actually eating all these brussell sprouts in her plastic container. Then Kyle comes out as the failed stand-up comic Bruce Chandling, and god this whole character is so awful that the audience has no idea how to respond to him. I know his schtick is that he's a bad comedian, but when it's actually truly bombing in front of the live audience it's really uncomfortable to watch. I wanted to cover my eyes for this, it was so bad.
SURVIVOR: The reality show spoof where people's relatives are brought on as a surprise, but Russell is brought out as Pete's uncle's friend Terry, to his befuddlement. Russell goes for it again, but there's just no good jokes in any of these premises tonight.
PORGIE'S PEPPERONIS: A taped Beck and Kyle bit where they're overgrown weirdos excited to work at a Chuck E Cheese style kid's place, so much so that they freak out at everything and eventually, literally explode. And once again, I did not laugh once. Now this episode is starting to feel a thousand years long and I'm getting kinda pissed off while watching it.
NINJA: A horrible skit where Leslie is a ninja saving people from mobsters or something. Oh my god, this sucks SO bad now. When will this episode end???
OPRAH WINFREY: A LIFE OF LOVE: One of those random Mike O'Brien videos that pop up every once in a while, where this time he plays Oprah in a biopic but as himself. That's the joke. Is this over yet?
Yes, finally it ends. My god, this episode was terrible. Not a single thing made me even giggle tonight. I feel like I shouldn't give it an F though, because I've actually seen worse (January Jones will always be the gold standard for worst SNL host of all time, for example). Weirdly, Russell Crowe actually participated in just four skits. Four. None of the pre-taped stuff, and not the Al Sharpton one either. Hmm, I wonder if he was hard to work with behind the scenes, despite his seeming to be putting forth effort in the ones he did do. Anyway, I give it a D- and write this one off as worst of the season. Next week it's Julia Louis-Dreyfus, so hopefully she can bring some life back into this show as it ends the April run. See you then.
