Bruno Mars on Saturday Night Live

A few observations on this week of Saturday Night Live. The cold open this week again featured a look at a Presidential debate, this one being the second held last week. It was funny in a different way than the first debate parody which we saw earlier in the season.

In this round the folks asking the question became part of the humor, the debate having been held on Long Island made for some easy to mock characters just in the asking of the question. For all the accolades Jay Pharoah gets for his performance on Obama the real star of these skits is Jason Sudekis, his take on Obama while not physically as similar is spot on with his speaking patters. When Sudekis as Romney says " Candy, Candy, Candy just let me make three more points" he is Mitt Romney. Perhaps the standout moment of the skit however, was the wry observation of when a voter asks what they two will do to keep AK-47's out the hands of the wrong people and both the fictitious candidates quickly agreed that the answer to that was " Nothing, Absolutely Nothing."

Tom Hanks as he is often want to do hung around Saturday night and appeared in a couple of skits. It must be nice for both sides, clearly Hanks has an open invitation to show up whenever he feels like it, and what a good day it must be for Lorne Michaels when he walks in the door.

The star of the show was, unequivocally, Mr. Mars. When he came out to do the monologue the first thing that I noticed was how incredibly short he is. This man is tiny, both small and short. He talked a bit about being the host and the musical guest and away the show went.

Mars appeared in a Pandora music skit that showed off his range and an incredible range it is, he sang a few lines of six different singes and did it amazingly well. Mars cannot not be listened to and not make one think of Michael Jackson. He is an amazing singer. His second performance of the night, of a song I have not yet heard, called Crazy Lost Girls, or something like that, was amazing. I assume that it is on a forthcoming album.

Another win was the short called Sad Clown featuring Mars and a return to the tunnel ride at an amusement park that breaks down leaving the amniatronic figures to menace those on the ride. Hanks made a special appearance in this role and it was solid.

There were misses, Weekend update wss subpar, I never find Stefan to be that funny and the Brad Pitt themed commercials did not strike gold.

Still another great week for SNL, they are on a roll.

Saturday Night Live Season Premiere

Saturday Night Live returned this past weekend for it's season opener with Seth MacFarlane as host. MacFarlane, best known behind the camera for his show Family Guy and this summer's hit Movie Ted, showed that he is certainly more than just a voice actor.

From an opening monologue where he went from impression to impression while singing, actually singing, to an impression of Ryan Lochte on Weekend Update, MacFarlane showed he is very talented.

The funniest skit was called " Introduction to Puppetry" with MacFarlane spot on as the energetic, over sincere teacher and Bill Hader as a dark Vietnam Vet who creates doppleganger puppet withthe same memories as him. When the camera shifts to the puppet and he is smoking you realize the skit is a pure homerun.

Jay Pharoah began his run as President Obama and in a classy move Fred Aremison introduced him as part of the handoff. Pharoah is a great impressionist but Aremison had geown into the job and had rhe nuances and verbal ticks down pat. There is no reason to think Pharoah will not be succesfull as well.

Frank Ocean played twice and showed why he is such a dynamic performer. On his second song, Pyramimds, John Mayer played guitar for him and in a move that has been talked about everywhere, during Mayer's solo, went to the sode of the stage and played one of the video games that lined the set. I do not know if it was planned or spontaneous but it was clever and certainly memorable.

All in all a good start for the season.