Saturday Night Live: Russell Crowe / Margo Price
April 10, 2016 9:48 AM - Season 41, Episode 17 - Subscribe

Russell Crowe shows the world why he doesn't do more comedies.

On the plus side, Mike O'Brien is back with another one of his biopics, this time of Oprah.
posted by Etrigan (14 comments total)
 
Sadly, after last week's terrific episode, this one felt like a major letdown. The Henry VIII sketch was awful, the rest was basically meh, but the Mike O'Brien Oprah sketch was fantastic, and we did get a couple of chuckles from the Ninja sketch at the ten-to-one.
posted by General Malaise at 12:12 PM on April 10, 2016


I am apparently the only person in the world who liked the Henry VIII sketch, judging by the internet this morning. I don't know, it cracked me up. Apparently misbehaving holograms tickle my funnybone. (And only mine.)

The dating game one needed more of a punchline to be a funny overall sketch, but the German professor character was itself amusing. It just needed somewhere to GO.

Weekend Update was way out of rhythm this week.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 12:43 PM on April 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


I thought Crowe did OK and the Henry VIII sketch was sort of funny, but the sketch needed a twist or at least an ending. If we met his programmer and he was a pathetic, horny creep too, or if we found out the hologram wasn't a hologram but was really just some freaky dude who kept sneaking into the museum and trying to get women pregnant by pretending to be a hologram of Henry VII, or some twist like that, it might have felt like we were going somewhere. As it was I kept waiting for a punchline that never came.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 2:15 PM on April 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


More than once I looked quickly at Russell Crowe and thought he was John Goodman, but not in good way.
posted by briank at 2:26 PM on April 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


That wasn't very good. I hadn't heard of Margo Price before, and I really liked her. But most of the sketches didn't click. I felt like a lot of screentime went to Kyle Mooney and that guy who did the Patrick Swayze thing a few episodes ago, neither of whom are that funny to me. Jay Pharoah, who was terrific last week, completely vanished this week. I didn't really get the Oprah sketch, where the joke seemed to be what if Oprah was a guy who looked and acted like Martin Short. Who cares?
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:50 PM on April 10, 2016


I thought the joke was about whitewashing in Hollywood?

It did seem like there were a lot of good ideas in this episode but none of them really landed. It wasn't helped by an admittedly non-comedic host. The Henry VII sketch just needed some more things for him to say. Anything else.
posted by bleep at 8:25 PM on April 10, 2016


I thought he was really good. The game show, the Henry VII. He was all about vaginas, apparently.

Also good as the russian mobster in the ninja sketch and as Uncle Terry's friend in the reality show sketch.

It was a weak effort overall but not because of Crowe, imo.
posted by the webmistress at 7:51 AM on April 11, 2016


No not because of Crowe I agree. He was game and did his best for sure. It just seemed like they didn't bring much to the table and he wasn't able to help like a guest with an all-around writing/stand-up/improv/+acting and/or musical background might have.
posted by bleep at 10:32 AM on April 11, 2016


More than once I looked quickly at Russell Crowe and thought he was John Goodman, but not in good way.

More than once I was like, 'Wait, don't I really really dislike him?" and then remembered I was mixing him up with Mel Gibson again.

Although I am still annoyed about A Beautiful Mind all these years later.
posted by psoas at 1:06 PM on April 11, 2016


I sort of liked the your-uncle's-friend-Terry sketch, even though it was probably sitting in the sketch ideas vault since like 2002
posted by prize bull octorok at 3:39 PM on April 11, 2016


I think you have to appreciate Mike O'Brian to have liked that Oprah film. I do and I did. I didn't see anything political about it, I thought it was just a goofy little thing like most of his films.

The rest of the show was, yeah, meh. I guess I've seen Russel Crowe in a few films but don't really think much of him. He was an ok host with some weak sketched written for him.
posted by bondcliff at 4:13 PM on April 11, 2016


How come they can do Jeopardy and Family Feud, but Survivor and the Dating Game parodies need to have fake names? Is it some network vs. syndication legal thing? At least Keenan lampshaded it at the end of the dating game sketch.

Bruce Chandling (Kyle's bad stand up character) got no audience reaction at all. I think we're too far past the Evening at the Improv / Caroline's Comedy Hour era for that character to work. Kids just aren't exposed to hours and hours of mediocre stand up anymore.
posted by Gary at 4:41 PM on April 11, 2016


The Bruce Chandling character still gets laughs (at least the previous one did, where [SPOILER] it's revealed he's unwittingly dating a teenage girl) but the joke isn't just "awful hack comic," it's "awful hack comic turns out to have something disturbingly wrong with his life" and the reveal just didn't land this time.
posted by psoas at 9:00 AM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


I am flummoxed as to why Russell Crowe gets the work he does.

Doesn't do comedy = Let's put him on SNL
Can't sing for shit = Cast him as a lead in Les Mis
posted by donnagirl at 11:38 AM on April 15, 2016


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