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Ashlee Simpson Walks Off SNL

Well the cable news channels are having fun with last night's Ashlee Simpson screw up on "Saturday Night Live". You can even pay to download the video at CNN.com (!).

The internet is certainly abuzz... as it often is in ridiculous celebrity stories.  Ashlee Simpson's "official" website has been under attack ever since the incident occurred, with reports of the moderators deleting posts nearly as fast as naysayers can post them. Last time I checked it seemed like the mods had given up though.

The story has certainly been nice to me within the blogging community.  That's pretty cool.

The AP and other wire services are offering up versions of the incident: Did 'SNL' Gaffe Expose Simpson Vocal Aid? (AP). So far there have been no official comments by either Simpson, "Saturday Night Live", or NBC. All we get are "anonymous" sources and other non-official comments about the whole thing.

SNL: Jude Law / Ashlee Simpson

Ok, everyone's looking for the Ashlee Simpson lipsync screwup video.  Well here's a link.  And here's another.  Now back to the regularly scheduled post...

Jude Law hosted tonight's SNL.  Let's get to the recap:

* Opening sketch: See, I like political observation more than I do direct parody of specific events. The Hardball beginning was much better than the previous two shows' debate spoofs.

* Monologue: Meh. I guess after seeing 97 episodes where the male cast drools over the female host it was time for one where the women drool over the guy. Doesn't make it any good though. "Hey Jude" always makes for a good sing-a-long though.

* Actual commercial: Seed of Chucky looks absurd.  I'm looking forward to Zygote of Chucky and Drunken Glimmer in Chucky's Eye.

* Sky Captain parody: Eh... clever idea, sorta.  Too long, bad ending.

* Vacuum commercial: Boy, the vacuum prop sure looked expensive.  Were there any jokes?

* Earlier actual commercial: A few hours ago I saw a Jeep commercial where whatever new Jeep they're advertising is shot out of a volcano's eruption. After landing safely it drives away. The disclaimer reads: DO NOT ATTEMPT. So, do I not try to drive my Jeep into a volcano to see if it'll shoot out? Or do I just not attempt to drive a Jeep so soon after erupting from a volcano? Since it's not clear, I'm going to try it out. Screw you, Jeep.

* Debate: Good lord, another debate parody? They had an extra week to write sketches and we get one joke that had already been beaten to death in the opening.

* Paris Hilton Apologizes: Wow, how long ago did the sex tape come out? Timely. Current. Unless this is referring to a new one, which um, I haven't seen yet. In which case I apologize.

* Ashlee Simpson Song #1: Sounds like every song on Top 40 radio.

* Weekend Update: Decent banana joke... flashy new swirly WU graphic on screen.

* Bush and Blair Press Conferzzzzzzzz: ...oh, sorry I fell asleep there for a few minutes.

* Trump Promo/Jane Eyre: Ok, I wish I'd stayed asleep.

* Simpson Song #2: HA! What the hell happened there? That's why you purists argue to keep the show live? So you can have 10 seconds of a song and the "talent" then walks off the stage, leaving the show hanging? Such a shame, I was enjoying the band awkwardly rocking out. *She revealed during the closing credits that her band started playing the wrong song. So she throws her stupid band under the bus and then doesn't bother to help cover for them. Class act, that one. (In case you missed it.)

* Bear City: WHAT THE BLOODY HELL?!

* Adventures of Peter O'Toole and Michael Caine thing: Well, maybe this had potential, but the impersonations were bad and they had to have been stretching for time thanks to Simpson's wonderful live TV trainwreck moments earlier.

* More Bear City: Wow, if a bear poops in the woods, and those woods are then processed into paper and used for SNL scripts, will it appear on the air? Yes! Twice!

Everyone seemed off their game tonight. Lots of line flubs and other assorted stumbling. Jude Law was underwhelming. Oh well, I'm sure next week's episode with Kate Winslet will put all my worries to bed.

SNL: The "Best" of Jimmy Fallon

This weekend's SNL was a compilation of former cast member Jimmy Fallon's "best" work. And shocker, the powers that be were unable to find 90 minutes worth of skits from his six seasons on the show that didn't have him giggling.

It's so frustrating to watch a sketch with Fallon in it. He's really talented at certain impressions (there's a montage of them in the show), but he'll just start giggling at the dumbest things and then the sketch is ruined.

Channel surfers might have thought it was the Best of Ben Affleck, as two sketches were from Affleck hosted eps. And the odd thing is, one of those sketches (the unfunny Boston teens thing) doesn't even air in reruns. So a skit that's not even worthy of being included in the syndicated reruns makes a Best Of?

The best segment was probably the montage of the best Weekend Update bits, but in a way that angered me as well. Norm MacDonald got fired from Update back in the 90s for being "unfunny" (even though he's easily the best to ever do the gig), but yet Jimmy Fallon and Tina Fey do the exact same types of jokes with nearly the same kind of delivery as Norm. A perfect example: "Researchers concluded that night is the most dangerous time for police officers. The second most dangerous time? Day." Norm does that kind of joke and gets fired. Fallon does it and gets to stay for six years.

But, all is well since The Barry Gibb Talk Show was deemed worthy enough to appear.  Oddly enough, Fallon manages to keep it together in this one.

SNL: Queen Latifah

OK folks, some brief thoughts about tonight's SNL:

* I have now officially tired of debate parody. Will Forte is injecting his Bush impression with some sort of spastic energy that's just flat out annoying.

* Monologue... blah.  Pubic hair shampoo commerical... blah. 

* Prince talk show... ugh. Why is every other skit on this show a talk show of some sort? With all of the things ripe for comedy and parody... why are talk shows still the main drive of this show?

* Oh yeah, the racial tension headache commercial... blah.

* Wow, two shows and already a much needed break.  No new show next week.

* Hey great, the Vice-Presidential debate too!  Good lord, we're 30 minutes in and I haven't even laughed yet.

* Heh, I like it when someone asks the audience to sing lyrics to a song they've never heard before, as Queen Latifah just did.

* Sidenote: I love how the commercials for "Father of the Pride" are determined to prove that the show isn't for kids, and then shows Eddie Murphy's Donkey character from Shrek showing up.  Kids, don't watch!

* They cut Jimmy Fallon saying "Yayyyyyyyyyyyyy!" at the end of the Weekend Update intro. This was the only notable thing about this week's Weekend Update.

* Ok, I liked the basketball recruiting sketch, mainly because I like Kenan Thompson. "I'm gonna go buy the Millennium Falcon!" Robert Smigel's X-Presidents cartoon was good too. I sense this trend won't continue though.

* Oh... too soon for a Rodney Dangerfield skit. I realize it was kind of a tribute, but still... it just sucked the life out of the room when people saw Hammond there as Dangerfield.

* Wow, Chris Kattan was there for two seconds to introduce Latifah's second musical number. What a waste. And ugh, she just asked the crowd to give it up for her. "Make some noise for me!" That's not how that works. You ask the crowd to make noise for the band... not for yourself.

* I saw this "Zing" thing twice last week in E! reruns.  I didn't like it then and it still doesn't work.

I think one of the main problems this season is that there isn't that one breakout star in the cast to latch onto. There's no Murphy or Farley or Carvey or Ferrell who can boost any crappy sketch simply by being in it. Darrell Hammond seems depressed everytime he's on camera (which isn't often), Kenan Thompson is hardly used, and the majority of the other cast members have seemingly been poured out of a white guy vat into a broken Kevin Nealon mold.

Blah, bad show.

The Escalator Sketch

In the last couple of days, people all over the web keep muttering that they've seen that Escalator sketch from last weekend's "Saturday Night Live" before. Discussion has ranged from it having been an actual SNL skit from years earlier or even a ripoff of a "Fridays" skit (the ABC late night show from the early 80s).

Here's one place you can see it, on the web site of an comedy troupe called Last Call Cleveland.  You decide if SNL ripped them off or not.

A while back I plowed through the great book Live From New York, which is a collection of interviews with nearly all of the cast and crew of Saturday Night Live. One thing from the book that stuck in my head was how after the show airs live on the east coast, it is then edited and revised for the west coast airing and for future reruns. These revisions will include replacing material from the live telecast with footage from the dress rehearsal. This means that something that happens on the live show might never be seen again.

Now recently I've been recording SNL reruns on E! nonstop, in order to catch up on the shows I've missed in the last 10 years or so. I get to the Rob Lowe episode from 1996-1997 (infamous for Norm MacDonald accidentally dropping the "F" bomb during Weekend Update), which is a show that I also have the live version of on tape. So I decide to do a side by side comparison of each sketch to see what's different. Sure enough, there are trims, cuts and total replacements throughout the show.

The main change in that show between the live broadcast and the E! rerun is the Joe Pesci Show sketch. The entire opening, up until the first guest comes out, is entirely different... the rerun obviously using the dress rehearsal version. Then, the rerun completely cuts out Chris Kattan as David Spade, jumping straight to the introduction of Lowe impersonating Eric Roberts.

What's the point of all this? It's just annoying to think that if you miss the live broadcast of SNL, you may never see certain material again. It's also annoying to me, being the completist that I am, knowing that my DVD transfers of these shows now require twice as much work to put together the most complete version of the show possible. Even if NBC gets off their ass and starts putting SNL seasons out on DVD, you just know they won't include both versions of things.

I really wish they'd just drop the whole "live" thing and put the show to tape. That way you assure the audience the best product possible.

SNL: Ben Affleck / Nelly

"Saturday Night Live" kicked off their 2004-2005 season tonight with host Ben Affleck. Here are some thoughts and questions that you don't have to answer.

* Was that the longest opening sketch ever? What was that... 12-15 minutes worth of almost comedy? I'm not a huge fan of Will Forte's version of George W. He comes across sometimes as Robin Williams doing a Crispin Glover impression. It's improved a bit from last season though.

* Why is Don Pardo still announcing? He announced Will Ferrell instead of Will Forte. You have all summer to get it right, not to mention that Ferrell hasn't been in the cast for two years, and it still gets botched? Would anyone cry foul if he was fired? Is he that crucial to things?

* Alec Baldwin crashing the monologue... good stuff.

* So without Jimmy Fallon to giggle all throughout the sketch and break everyone up, the jokes in Debbie Downer consist of a camera zoom, a take, and a funny trombone sound? This is the 21st century right?

* Weekend Update might be completely unwatchable at this point.  Thank goodness for the hilarious Tony Soprano cameo.

* Ugh, that escalator sketch. You know how critics like to say that most SNL movies would have made a good 5 minute skit? Well, this skit would have made a good 10 second joke in a channel surfing montage.

* Affleck did a fine job, despite looking at the cue cards a few times too often. If he can come back and host every year he could be what Tom Hanks was to the show in the 80s and 90s.

* Oh, and I can't see myself owning a Nelly album... ever.