Tonight’s the season finale with Will Ferrell as host and Paul McCartney as the musical guest. There’s a bubble of speculation online that this is Lorne Michaels’ swan song, with one of the show’s biggest stars hosting and one of Lorne’s favorite musicals performing.
I’d love to see Ringo show up and try to collect on Lorne’s 1976 offer to reunite the Beatles. He and Paul do have a song out together right now…
Anyway, I’ve been looking forward to this episode since these two were announced as the host/musical guest.
Every year there’s speculation that Lorne Michaels will retire. Among the possible successors mentioned over the years, I can remember off the top of my head Al Franken, Tina Fey and Kenan Thompson. I’m sure there have been many others.
I’m looking forward to the show, but I’m not holding my breath waiting for a big bombshell announcement.
I’ve heard Tina Fey’s name bandied about over the past several years. But Lorne just hangs onto this job like grim death. Death may be the only thing that forces his retirement.
Well, that season is done. Will Ferrell had his ups (Epstein) and downs (the Nudemans). But I really wanted to remark on Paul McCartney’s singing: Ouch! Obviously he can still handle the guitar, and his encore song was fine, but his vocals in his first two sets were so cringe-worthy that I felt sorry for him.
I’m sorry, Seth is not funny–he may write funny, but his SNL schtick as Weekend Update was a one-trick pony; when he was host on SNL, he didn’t do well interacting with skit, and his other role was reporter, which he could handle. As host of his own show, he couldn’t even deliver on the jokes, even jokes borrowed from Jimmy–they fell flat, and then he’d sit there with fixed smile on his face hoping audience would respond, even uselessly repeating the joke
The Colin-Michael Joke Swap was a hit (with me, anyway). It seems like the two of them talked things over and made a gentlemen’s agreement that Che wouldn’t bring Scarlett into this. They also broke the trope, used in previous iterations of this gag, that Jost=Racist and Che=Pervert. I was kind of bummed that Che didn’t hire an actor to portray someone that Colin would be ashamed to read his jokes in front of, like they did with the “civil rights activist” (just some actress) and the “rabbi” (also just some actress, I assume).
I read somewhere last year that they (the SNL staff) dressed her up a bit more conservatively than she usually is, with a kippa and tallis, as you can see on her page on the temple website.
I felt there was a consistent thread of 90s crudity to the sketches, but Ferrell brought his A-game (regardless of crudity).
They kinda took Che=Pervert to Uncomfortable levels.