After seeing January Jones trash talk her way through a beer pong match with Jimmy Fallon on Tuesday night, we allowed ourselves to get our hopes up for her to take on the hosting duties of Saturday Night Live this week. In retrospect, this was quite an unfortunate mistake.
After a landmark 34th season filled with creative triumphs and strong ratings, it has felt as if the cast and crew of Saturday Night Live have been suffering from a creative hangover all season long. With each passing week, it’s becoming clearer and clearer that the show’s writing staff is suffering from fatigue and a lack of inspiration. Much like a pitcher who has thrown too many innings and begins to break down physically, the ramifications of Lorne Michaels’s decision to schedule episodes in four consecutive weeks (on top of three episodes of Weekend Update Thursdays) in September and October are starting to be felt here in November. Last week’s Taylor Swift hosted episode contained more than its fair share of strong moments, but this week’s January Jones episode was one of the more stale installments of the venerable program in years.
After a landmark 34th season filled with creative triumphs and strong ratings, it has felt as if the cast and crew of Saturday Night Live have been suffering from a creative hangover all season long. With each passing week, it’s becoming clearer and clearer that the show’s writing staff is suffering from fatigue and a lack of inspiration. Much like a pitcher who has thrown too many innings and begins to break down physically, the ramifications of Lorne Michaels’s decision to schedule episodes in four consecutive weeks (on top of three episodes of Weekend Update Thursdays) in September and October are starting to be felt here in November. Last week’s Taylor Swift hosted episode contained more than its fair share of strong moments, but this week’s January Jones episode was one of the more stale installments of the venerable program in years.
As dull as Jones was as a host, in her defense, the writing for this episode seemed particularly witless. The Rear Window parody in which Jones portrayed Grace Kelly as a person with chronic farting problems was exactly as uninspired and juvenile as you would think, and the toilet humor continued in the most literal fashion possible during in the evening’s digital short, the premise of which was simply Fred Armisen constantly walking in on Andy Samberg while the latter is pantsless and sitting on the toilet. Additionally, the reveal in that Dr. Jekyll sketch that Bill Hader turns into Mr. Hyde so he can fulfill his homosexual desires was utterly moronic.
Sensing that this week’s material was thin at best, Lorne Michaels did the unthinkable and let the Black Eyed Peas perform three songs (!) last night, which would’ve maybe been okay had the band not proven to be one of the least compelling live acts we have ever seen on the program.
While we’re far from declaring the show “Saturday Night Dead,†we implore Lorne Michaels to figure out a way to lighten up the workload for the show’s cast and crew and stop booking guests to appear in back-to-back-to-back weeks. It’s becoming patently obvious that the show works better when everyone’s got more than six days to prepare new material. Still, we remain optimistic that Joseph Gordon Levitt can come in this week and make some magic happen.