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The fact that Jennifer Lopez both hosted and was the musical guest on this weekend’s Saturday Night Live is sort of the problem with Jennifer Lopez. Like, that takes some balls. It has been years since Jennifer Lopez was a viable triple-threat, unless the three threats are Bad Decision Making, Not Being Dead, and One Time Having Your Own Celebrity Perfume. Sure, Justin Timberlake hosts and is the musical guest, but it’s obnoxious when he does it, too, and one could argue that he at least makes sense in the current pop cultural climate. And because Jennifer Lopez still does have something she is trying to sell, kind of (a new terrible album that has disappeared, and a new terrible movie that keeps getting pushed back), her hosting of the show lacked the off-leash bonkersness of a, say, Charles Barkley.
And in much the same way that Jennifer Lopez’s success at the various things she attempts to do as a career is hit or miss, so, too, was Saturday’s episode!
For example, she was the highlight of an otherwise middle-of-the-road “We Are the World” parody.
But then she somehow could not even keep up during the multiple “Latina” sketches that they put her through. On the one hand, shame on Saturday Night Live for writing almost exclusively hispanic jokes for Jennifer Lopez, but DOUBLE SHAME on me for being so surprised that she couldn’t do them. I did enjoy the Telemundo coverage of the Winter Olympics, but my enjoyment had nothing to do with Lopez’s involvement.
Jennifer Lopez was much better in this sketch about an office romance, which was the return of a sketch that I didn’t think was funny the first time but did think was funny this time. LOL, the world is always changing!
And speaking of sketches returning and being great, Jenny Slate was back as the doorbell salesmen, but now she is a car horn salesman. Beep beep!
But probably the best sketch of the whole night was the Smash Mouth sketch:
Good.
While we’re on the subject of demons we can’t seem to shake, did anyone else notice that weird butt twirl that Jennifer Lopez did at the end of her monologue? Right after talking about how she was a different, more mature person, at a more serious stage in her life?
Buttttts! It just goes to show, you can take the girl out of the Bronx, but you can’t take the butt out of the career that was incredibly built almost exclusively on that butt.
AND SPEAKING OF CAREERS (Pulitzer for Writing: Me), the ad for Celebrity Undercover Boss was pretty good. At the very least, I would watch that show.
So, all in all, Jennifer Lopez was pretty all over the place (and that is giving her the benefit of not even watching one second of her musical performance), but I will give the cast and writers of the show extra credit this week for still pulling out an episode with some solid laughs. They were working at a serious deficit, but they managed to not entirely suck. If you want to entirely suck go to New Jersey. (Am I doing this right?)
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Eh, I don’t know how you manage to see the silver lining in every terrible episode of snl (notwithstanding the car horn sketch which was of course great). But hey, you know what else, I went on hulu and saw that an episode of The Marriage Ref is up. How was this not a videogum must-watch?! You let us down Gabe.
I dunno, I thought that episode was pretty awful. They seemed to really get down to brass tacks during the monologue with “J-Blow.”
Is that a ghost of a cute puppy-dog in that pic? Am I the only one seein that?
Seriously, what’s the deal with that picture? It certainly is intriguing…
I really enjoy any excuse to see Latin Fred Armisen and Bill Hader. (Does that make me racist? But I have a picture of a Latino in my wallet.)
Fred Armisen IS latin.
From wikipedia: “Armisen grew up in Long Island, New York. His mother is of Venezuelan descent and his father is of German and Japanese ancestry.”
I think that made him the show’s second latin cast member after Horatio Sanz and second asian after Rob Schneider. Thanks to Armisen, SNL is making their quotas in a post-racial America!
Toofer.
Topher?
Did you say tofu?
Gabe, after years of J.Lo over saturation, how do you not know the block Jenny is from is in the Bronx, not Harlem? Sheesh.
Yes, I believe it was the South Bronx. The South-South Bronx.
Castle Hill!
I love how the Telemundo sketch likened the Winter Olympics’ games as “something you do if you want to kill yourself”. ZING! Cuz that guy died, right?!!?! lolz! Tragic accidents are hilarious.
He’s a sore luger.
You win some, you… (nevermind).
I only saw the J. Lo singing parts, and they were terrible. Then I accidentally caught the Smash Mouth sketch. Strange juxtaposition is funny! Hooray? I forced some laughter to prove to my wife that I still understood the humor of the kids and was still really hip, and then had a hot toddy and went to sleep in my flannel pyjamas with the windows open.
Oh, is that a thing that the olds do, go to sleep with the windows open? Whoops, I’m old.
I’m glad JLO came dressed for success in her favorite trashbag…timeless look!
Zach Galifianakis hosts next week, so that’s promising. While we’re on the topic of sketch comedy, the Funny or Die show has been terrible through two episodes; has anyone else been watching that?
I liked the episode. It was a very mixed bag in terms of quality — a quiet lead up to what is probably going to be the greatest SNL episode of the last 20 years.
See, I have been thinking the same thing–and that’s what worries me. We are going to spook this poor episode.
The J. Lo butt twirl was awesome. Like, when I watched it, I was like “Subtle, J. Lo. Walking away from the camera to show off…wait, no. She literally twirled around to just show off her ass”.
Also, Jenny Slate’s accent in the Telemundo was like Around the World in One Sketch. I think we landed in Russia at one point.
I’ve come out of hiding just to say THANK YOU I THOUGHT I WAS THE ONLY BUTT NOTICER.
I really don’t think the episode was that terrible. I feel like we just want to bash it so badly because J. Lo (is it still cool to refer to her as that?) was a part of it. Had Zach Galifianakis been given similar material, we’d go, “Hey, not too great, not too bad. Love ya, Zach! When’s the next Between Two Ferns?”
But with J. Lo, it’s “Bad Latina! Very bad!” I don’t get it.
I think the point is more “awkward Latina”, not “bad Latina”. She was funniest in the “Eternal Sparks of Love” with the creepy puppets, and I thought the most offensive when she was trying to be stereotypical like in the Telemundo sketch. Fred Armisen pulled off his character way better because he was more interested in the actual humor behind the sketch. Lopez looked like she was crawling out of her skin the whole time.
I’m looking forward to a parallel Summer Olympics sketch, btw, with Kristin Wiig as Bjork trying to understand the Summer Olympics.
I agree with this. There were some sketches that were pretty good and some that were pretty bad.
Sometimes watching SNL I feel bad for them that so much of the show is live. I understand that that’s the whole point, but that soap opera sketch would have been much more effective if it were spread out over the episode like MacGruber. Conversely, MacGruber would be kind of terrible if they did all three segments back to back in one sketch. Though I suppose they might do MacGruber live at three different points during the show…
Well it will be pretty funny if they write a bunch of latina characters for Zach Galifianakis to play. C’mon this is SNL’s way of saying the host is terrible: write all the skits so that they play themselves. Sometimes it works (Barkley as an incoherent nut job) sometimes it doesn’t (Jenny FTB).
Actually J.Lo doesn’t have an album to promote!
Epic recently dropped her, or she left.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love%3F_%28album%29
I think we all witnessed the end of J.Lo’s music career Sat night.
Man, Scott, you know all the news. You should start a music website!
Say what you will about her comedy chops, but don’t say she still isn’t sexy! The little butt twirl might have been unnecessary (strange word for a terrible monologue at the beginning of a live comedy show starring a musician) but I was happy to see her in her very tight, quasi-fetishy leather mini skirt.
She’s 41! She was in Out of Sight 12 years ago! What is she doing to stay so youthful looking? If it’s plastic surgery, it’s the right kind…
God, I totally agree. She looked really hot throughout the episode.
Jenny from the block island area country club
On her way to the country club…
This was supposed to include the picture of her in a wet suit attempting a triathalon. My bad… but not as bad as her spanish accent.
I’m still in shock (not really) about how bad Jennifer Lopez’s Latina accent was.
ugh… SNL is SO BORING. I honestly can’t believe it’s still on television.
More like a terrible, new movie that keeps getting “backed-up.”
I didn’t watch the whole show since I can barely stay up past midnight, but I liked the Digital Short about the flags (“We love Betty White flag”=timely) and the Telemundo sketch.
Was it just me or was the entire episode either latino jokes and/or curling jokes?
Get out the way, a baby ate a penny!
Beep beep! After you, Buick.
When I was in college, I did concert production. One show I worked was a Third Eye Blind/Smash Mouth double bill. A band called Space Monkeys was the opening act. According to Wikipedia, the Space Monkeys’ song Drug Soup was “recorded especially for and features in the soundtrack of the Gwyneth Paltrow movie Sliding Doors.”
Worlds been had colliding.
I wanted to watch these clips, but I also didn’t want to have to watch the same fucking Marriage Ref promo each time.
Thanks NBC!
The digital short was good, that deserved a nod (Neo Nazi Potsie Flag, ha ha)…. It’s no “Cool Guys Don’t Look at Explosions”, but good all the same.
Yeah, I was seriously underwhelmed with this week’s show. And for some reason when I watched it on hulu, they didn’t include either one of her musical performances or the smashmouth sketch, so it only ended up being an hour. And since the whole show felt really phoned in, I thought maybe they had a limited time slot due to the olypmics or something? and edited out the music and a few sketches. So I just attributed a bad show to last minute shuffling of the bits (and choosing to mostly do the latina-based ones?)… but I guess not… bummer.
At least we have Zach G next week… and OMG when Tina Fey hosts in April, with Emperor Justin Bieeeeeeeber as the musical guest, my head just might explode! So, chin up guys… we have lots to look forward to!
For what it’s worth, I thought the last two or three sketches were very funny, but the rest of the ep was just painful (well, ok, except for the Paterson bit on Weekend Update)–and I am nearly always in the minority who thinks most SNL episodes are good. The whole thing seemed so thrown together at the last minute and off the cuff. And J Lo? Really? When I told my husband she was the guest, he asked, “Are you sure it’s not a repeat?” Touche, husband.
JLO is not pretty. She has a hawk NOSE with a bump on it. She has a UGLY forehead. Her FOREHEAD looks like horns were about to form, but never pierced through the skin. She has some skinny baseball bat legs. She has a forehead like Halle and legs like Vivica. And her face is too boney.