Saturday Night Live: Amy Schumer / The Weeknd

October 11, 2015 12:59 PM - Season 41, Episode 2

Amy Schumer brings the noise in a tight stand-up monologue, and Weekend Update is finding its groove, but the rest is kind of limp. Considering that the host is a sketch artiste in her own right with plenty to say on her own show, the sketches are depressingly generic. Virtually any female guest host could have served as the overbearing friend at someone else's wedding shower, or a badly improv-ing Mary Todd Lincoln re-enactor, or even one of the flight attendants who fall out of the plane.

On the plus side, Colin Jost and Micheal Che have definitely found their groove -- Jost is a clueless white preppy, and Che calls him on it. And the ads (one for Guns, one for the Original Hands-Free Selfie Stick) had more of that Schumerian bite. Fox & Friends is, as ever, a reliable cold open.

Are we in a new Golden Age? No. But we're not in the mid-'80s Dark Times, either.

posted by Etrigan (7 comments total)

Didn't see it, but after I head that there were multiple gun jokes last night, I thought to myself "you know what they should do whenever the writers can't come up with a good ending for a sketch? Just have a gunman burst in and shoot everybody. There have been shows where that would've improved EVERY sketch." (Of course, Joel Hodgson admitted that was what MST3K did with the "MOVIE SIGN" interruptions)
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:39 PM on October 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

Amy Schumer brings the noise in a tight stand-up monologue...

I would have been shocked if her opening wasn't tight, given that (I assume) it was probably lifted from her current stage routine.

I was looking forward to this episode, and thought it should have been an above average show with Schumer on board this week. Mostly, though, it was average. Which, given SNL of the past few years, is not a bad grade.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:26 PM on October 11, 2015

She seemed thrilled to be hosting. But like Etrigan said, most of the skits were weaker than the skits on her show.

"And now Weekend Update presents, The Weeknd Update" was one of the funnier moments of the show. At least he sounded good during his songs. I like Weekend Update and for a good stretch of time that was the only reliably funny part of snl, but it's so spotty now. A lot of the lines Che delivers during the news are actually really well written and would kill if properly delivered.

Weirdly they seemed to have scaled Keenan and Sasheer way, way back. I'm not really mad about Keenan, but I'm surprised at Sasheer.
posted by cashman at 7:41 PM on October 11, 2015

The Weeknd was just really spellbinding, I thought. It's been a while since I saw an episode where the music stole the show so completely. In terms of other 85% of the runtime...um...Che and Jost continue to be dramatically better than they were last season, and frankly better than most (or all) of the sketches. Certainly some good laugh lines, but nothing all that inspired or memorable.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 11:23 PM on October 11, 2015

I found the intern bit so annoying & pointless I fast forwarded through it. Aside from him Jost & Che are hitting their stride, agreed. Liked the gun sketch, the rest were OK but not memorable. I'm sure The Weekend & Nicki Minaj were good but it's just not my music. Overall I prefer Amy inside her own show. The episode did make me aware of Amy's upcoming special, so there's that.
posted by scalefree at 12:59 AM on October 12, 2015

For those unaware, Splitsider does impressive reviews of SNL—here's their review for this week's episode.
posted by General Malaise at 8:04 AM on October 13, 2015

Overall I prefer Amy inside her own show.

So you're saying you prefer Amy Schumer inside Inside Amy Schumer.
posted by phunniemee at 8:14 AM on October 13, 2015 [1 favorite]