Infamously Bad SNL Musical Performances

Last night’s performance by Lana Del Rey on Saturday Night Live got a lot of attention, but it wasn’t exactly what the singer or her label wanted: within minutes of Del Rey’s American television debut, Twitter exploded with biting comments.  One likened her performance to a real-life example of what they were making fun of minutes earlier in a sketch called “You Can Do Anything”, where people who have never been given honest reactions to their lack of talent perform.  But even more tellingly, the likes of Juliette Lewis, Eliza Dushku and Rachel Dratch had pithy zingers of their own directed at Del Rey’s wobbly singing.  One article even surmised this might be a career-killer.  Her second performance in particular reminded me of an obscure Victoria Jackson character from the late 80′s: Nancy Maloney, a lounge singer who goes from high-pitched screeching to a forced deep, husky voice all in the space of a single song.

The last time a musical guest bombed this bad on the ‘SNL’ stage was in April 2010.  Ke$ha performed “Tik Tok” with an American flag cape a bizarre laser show and astronaut-suited backing band, with a pause to ask “Did anyone ever stop to think we were the aliens?”, which seemed an attempt at invoking Robert Plant’s “Does anybody remember laughter?” while just looking even sillier.  Her second number, “Your Love Is My Drug” was even more bizarre, with her and her band covered in day-glo body paint.  I wrote at the time that Ke$ha came off as a half-assed Lady Gaga impersonator: I stand by that assessment.

Some other SNL musical moments of note, for all the wrong reasons:

• Kanye West’s attempt to replicate his autotune album “808s and Heartbreak” on the SNL stage with a giant video screen behind him.  There were a few times when the autotune “glitches” weren’t able to cover West’s weak singing ability, and the whole stage presence felt completely underwhelming.  I actually don’t mind West’s other performances (despite his braggadocio) and actually thought his 2010 performance art style numbers were a bounce back from this one.
• Ashlee Simpson’s appearance in 2004 has been the subject of enough commentary already.  When she was booked on the show, I just thought it was weak to have someone best known for riding the coattails of her more successful older sisters (who by that point was better known for being an airhead on an MTV reality show than any music she put out beforehand).  For a brief moment, Ashlee did eclipse her sister…as the subject of scorn and derision.  Once her second number began with her vocals from the first song playing, while her mic was at hip level, she realized what was going on, did a little jig to save face and then left her band on stage to play out.  The show had to scramble to fill time because her aborted performance threw the timing off that night, and Simpson blamed her gaffe on her band playing the wrong song during the goodnights.  Post-script: Simpson got a do-over performance for her next album a year later to mass indifference.
• Brian Wilson appeared on the show in 1976, during one of his low ebbs.  Overweight, bearded and with hair resembling that of a Fisher-Price man, Wilson was there to promote the Beach Boys’ “comeback” 15 Big Ones, but despite able backing from the SNL band, was not in any shape to perform.  His missing the high notes in “Love Is A Woman” is painful enough to watch even without the tragic biography, but even sadder is a solo piano “Good Vibrations” in a giant sandbox at the end of the show.
• Laura Branigan had a big hit with “Gloria” in 1982, and was booked on the show in December of that year.  Unfortunately, it seems she was under the weather that weekend because her voice was shot.  She resorts to speak-singing for much of the song, but at one point her voice gives out and squeaks a high note.
• Spice Girls received much criticism when they performed “Wannabe” and “Say You’ll Be There” in 1997: their vocal performances left much to be desired, but their dance moves bordered along the territory of the Juul Haalmeyer Dancers from SCTV, without the intentional comedy.
• Backstreet Boys’ appearance in March 1998 had a dance break where with the Boys doing this bit of choreography with folding chairs.  Even watching this with the benefit of hindsight and a bit of distance from when they were all over the radio playlists, it wasn’t a very good performance to begin with, but the chair dance just made it look stupid.
• The Go-Gos’ appearance in 1981 was completely flimsy, slippy and lethargic at the same time.  Belinda Carlisle has admitted in her autobiography that this is due to being coked and boozed up that particular night, even going so far as calling it the worst performance the band ever did.

Much has already been written about Sinead O’Connor’s well-intentioned but overly-strident protest of Catholic sex abuse at the end of her performance of “War”, and Rage Against The Machine being tossed out of the studio for hanging down an upside-down flag on their amps (which was torn down before showtime) but I didn’t really find too much fault with those performances.

Anyone who has their own nominees for infamously bad SNL performances, please leave a detailed comment.

SNL Season 35: Final cast and episode summary

This is my last part in my series of posts about the 2009-2010 season of SNL.  If I blog about SNL any more during the summer hiatus I’m going to focus on earlier seasons and episodes.  I plan on doing reviews of an earlier season during the summer, but I wanted to give some final thoughts on the castmembers and the shows this year.  I’ve said before that the writing was the big problem on the show, but I wanted to get in depth on the individual castmembers’ performances this year.  I also wanted to highlight a few of the standout moments of this year, both good and bad.

The Cast

Fred Armisen: When they were hired on the show in 2002, Fred Armisen and Will Forte were the ones who usually ended up having the freshest, most offbeat material in a period of the show’s history where inspiration was sorely needed, the years between Will Ferrell’s departure and the hiring of Bill Hader, Andy Samberg and Kristen Wiig.  I do still like Armisen a great deal but although he has had a lot of screen time this year, he hasn’t really done a whole lot that was particularly memorable.  He opened the show quite a bit as Barack Obama: most people call attention to the weakness of the impression, but there’s really not a whole lot with Obama that Fred can work with as a “hook” besides his speech cadences: he can’t turn it into a character like Carvey did with Bush Senior or Ferrell and Forte did with George W. Bush.  Combined with the fact that the impression is mainly used for dull-as-hell cold openings that are short on actual humor, it really seems like he could better be used elsewhere.  Other than Obama, he’s been doing the “improv game” characters on Weekend Update (Garth of Garth and Kat, inarticulate “satirist” Nicholas Fehn) as well as more run-of-the-mill characters that really don’t stand out on the level of his earlier, more eccentric contributions to the show.  He still has his moments (I did enjoy the Wedding Band sketch with Dave Grohl), but I know he’s capable of better.  C+.

Will Forte: Forte’s been with the show as long as Armisen, but he’s not getting the same amount of screentime, and we’re still getting some offbeat material from him: we got a few appearances from his creepy gravel-voiced Obama hater (now named Hamilton), the eponymous hero of MacGruber, and a new character in oblivious sportscaster Greg Stink.  What I really like about Forte is his absolute commitment to his characters, no matter how bizarre or inane: Jon Bovi actually works thanks to the performances of Forte and Jason Sudeikis.  Even this far into this tenure, he’s playing roles like the Closet Organizer (in one of the best commercial parodies of late) or the man who gets worked up when a job applicant steals a lone potato chip.  The peaks aren’t coming as frequently as they had before, but they’re still there.  B+.

Bill Hader: Now that Darrell Hammond is off the show, Hader is now the show’s resident male impressionist on the show, and this year he’s given us return appearances by Vincent Price and Robert Byrd as well as introducing new impressions for James Carville, Rod Serling, Richard Branson and Eddie Vedder, once again demonstrating his talent for impersonating a wide variety of different public figures.  Bill also seems to have inherited the Dan Aykroyd pitchman mantle.  Towards the end of the season he also started bringing back Stefon, a one-off character from last year, in a few well received Weekend Update commentaries.  My main complaint with him is that he does tend to break character a bit more than he used to (mainly in the Stefon and Scared Straight bits) but he’s still one of the best parts of the current cast.  A-.

Seth Meyers: Ever since he started on Weekend Update, Seth Meyers barely appears in the show, something also owing to his duties as head writer.  He’s been doing Update solo for a year and a half now; I do think he’s still had some strong moments, namely when there’s a little more anger and smugly sarcastic indignation in his ranting, but truth be told having a partner for him to bounce off of is when he works best.  Update was also a little too dependent on the guest commentaries, especially in the later half of the season.   B-

Andy Samberg: Samberg still is the cast’s resident go-to guy for just plain goofy material and one of the “faces” of the current cast, but the show seems to know when to use him as a performer and not just a personality.  In fact his presence seems almost muted this year compared to seasons before: Samberg spent a lot of time in the straightman roles this year.  The goofiness is still there but it seems more fine-tuned: he had an excellent night during the Ryan Reynolds show that ended with a silly backstage sketch involving him and Lady Gaga attempting to kiss while both wearing Gaga’s bubble outfit that makes such action impossible.  The digital shorts are still hit or miss but still decent: when they’re good they’re good, when they’re bad they’re just forgettable, but at least they’ve recovered from the dip in quality they took in early 2008.  B-

Jason Sudeikis: Sudeikis is the most solid, dependable castmember this season.  Equally at home playing straightmen, overconfident blowhards, the beleaguered or just plain silly characters, he had a few standouts this year: he easily steals “What Up With That” from Kenan Thompson with dance moves and a facial expression, and I always enjoy his Joe Biden.  Like Forte, Sudeikis has a firm commitment to the roles he plays, and it’s no surprised that the two work well in sketches together: watch “Potato Chip Thief” from the Blake Lively show for .  The writers brought back the ESPN Classic guys too many times but Sudeikis and Forte give good performances each time, and even an idea as dumb as the opposite band Jon Bovi works thanks to the performances of these two.  A.

Kenan Thompson: The former All That regular still can grate at times, and he does have a range only slightly bigger than Melanie Hutsell‘s, but I did find myself enjoying him a lot more than I have in seasons past.  I still think they need to get another black performer to do impressions that he is not suited for (like Tiger Woods), and I’m not really a big fan of his recurring material: Grady Wilson was funny as a one-off but it didn’t need to be brought back, and the same goes for “What Up With That“, while I never cared for “French” Def Jam comedian Jean K. Jean in the least.  The Scared Straight bits are more entertaining for seeing the host get into the action than Thompson’s character.  What Thompson does excel at is straightman roles, especially when it calls for his character to just glare back at the other person (his facial expressions are priceless), which is why his Whoopi Goldberg works so well.  The other thing he can do is get the quick, easy laugh a bit better than his castmembers: usually this involves him in drag but also he does have good delivery.  C

Kristen Wiig: If there’s a performer who’s being stretched too thin, it’s Kristen Wiig.  She is getting the most airtime and the most notice in the press out of anyone else in the cast, but since the show is lacking another full female castmember after Amy Poehler left, she seems to get first dibs on any significant female role.  I still think she does OK in supporting bits and impressions but I haven’t seen enough of those, instead just far too many sketches that are Kristen Wiig doing something annoying and everyone reacting to her; it’s always everyone reacting to her and not the other way around.  Critic Jaime Weinman feels that the weakness in Wiig’s characters is that they’re too obnoxious; I think the main issue is that it’s a steady diet with a dominant flavor.  Just like a little onion works in a sauce, a smaller dose of Wiig was welcome: this feels like a 30-day diet of raw onions with bland generic brand wheat crackers on the side.  D.

Abby Elliott: Her impressions are decent, if not a little too exaggerated.  She does a pretty wide variety of impressions as well, including a few older actresses, butch lesbians and even an androgynous-looking male athlete; some are better than others, and for every Sally Field or Anna Faris, she nails, there are a few that are weaker like Rachel Maddow (good at the mannerisms, but the voice needed work).   The main issue is that we haven’t really seen her do much else besides impressions: the majority of her non-impression roles are bit parts, and even then she has fairly limited screentime.  She runs the risk of being a female Darrell Hammond, who by the end of his tenure was basically doing cameo appearances in one sketch per night just for an impression, and even though she does get some noticed due to the impressions, she may not have made a big enough splash on the show to justify a third season.  C+.

Bobby Moynihan: In his second year, Bobby Moynihan has made a strong impression on the show and it seems almost certain he will be promoted to the main cast for the next season.  Of the featured players in the last few years, he just seems the most natural and at ease in sketches, and gels with the cast well.  There’s a confidence in his performances that makes it seem like he’s already a full castmember, and he also has a considerable amount of charm and likeability that makes him appealing to watch even in small parts.  Of his appearances this year I would probably rank his work as the thing on the airplane wing in the Twilight Zone sketch, his ICP spoof character Ass Dan, and his brief appearance as Susan Boyle as the best, and I’m curious as to what he’ll contribute next season.  A.

Nasim Pedrad: I was having a little trouble distinguishing Pedrad and Slate at the beginning of the season because of some similarities in appearance (the way I finally distinguished the two is that Nasim is a little shorter and Jenny has a distinctively shaped nose), but Nasim has distingished herself from Slate with a couple of strong performances, especially in a Weekend Update performance in her second full show as “Mrs. Ahmadinejad“.  She also debuted a number of characters with potential that hopefully won’t be completely undermined with the show’s weak writing, such as Ravish and Bedelia, as well as a decent arsenal of impressions.  B+.

Jenny Slate: Poor Jenny Slate.  She was getting a bit more buzz going into the season than her fellow rookie Nasim Pedrad on the strength of her live show, but her first showcase sketch had to be the one with all the “frickin’s” in it; Slate slipped and said “fuck”.  After that, she was lucky to appear in a single sketch on some episodes and only in the last half of the season has been getting more steady screentime.  Unfortunately, the loss of on-screen experience also meant she wasn’t integrating as well into the show and for months after still had very awkward delivery and presence, at one time even reading too far on the cue card.  If she is brought back for a second year I do hope she gets a better outlet for her talent than the “What’s Up With That” singer or doorbell hawker Tina-Tina Chanuse.  Some castmembers like Tracy Morgan languished a few years before finding their voice on the show, so there’s still hope.  I have seen some improvement toward the end of the year, but she needs to find a way to distinguish herself.  D+.

Strongest Shows
John Hamm / Michael Buble: Hamm was one of the most pleasant surprises of the 2008-09 season, and his return gig last January didn’t disappoint and demonstrated that they may have a new frequent host a la Alec Baldwin.  A bit more solid than White, including probably the best callback to a sketch aired earlier in the same show in years: Forte’s Closet Organizer guy was the main character in a bar sketch.
Betty White / Jay-Z: The most hyped episode in years thanks to a Facebook campaign, White demonstrated she still has her comic touch, while a half-dozen female alumni make welcome return appearances, including the much-missed Rachel Dratch and Ana Gasteyer.    
Joseph Gordon-Levitt / Dave Matthews Band: Coming off one of SNL’s most notoriously bad weeks in recent memory (January Jones), it was good to have a host so game and energetic as the (500 Days of) Summer star, especially during the “Make ‘Em Laugh” performance during the monologue, with other great moments like the completely left-field bit with Kenan Thompson as Reba McEntire, and Dave Matthews doing a pretty good Ozzy Osbourne.

Weakest Shows
January Jones / Black Eyed Peas: Jones has got to be one of the all-time worst actor hosts the show has ever had, with a performance reminiscent of Nancy Kerrigan in 1994; at one point while on air, she actually asked which camera to look into.  Uninspired writing didn’t help either, and this became one of the most widely panned SNLs in recent history.
Ryan Phillipe / Ke$ha: A heavy amount of recurring material only demonstrated how bad the writers’ lack of originality this season had gotten, especially considering one sketch was done three and a half years before with a largely different cast.  Only the spoof of the Insane Clown Posse’s “Miracles” video saved this from being worst of the season.
Taylor Lautner / Bon Jovi: A night of not particularly funny material, including another unnecessary reprise of Kristen Wiig’s “Surprise” sketch and a tepid at best sketch with Lautner in drag as a Twilight fangirl.  When the show leads off with a sketch about stupid facial expressions, you’re in for a long night.

Best Sketches
The Sarah Palin Network (Tina Fey): Another gleeful jab at the candidate continuing the Republican tradition of unqualified candidates that Dan Quayle and George W. Bush were a part of, with a few well done shots at the Tea Partiers and Jay Leno to boot.
Potato Chip Thief (Blake Lively): One of the silliest, most ridiculous sketches in years, where NASA prospect Jason Sudeikis (who looks more like a plantation owner) jeopardizes his chances of becoming an astronaut by taking one of recruiter Will Forte’s 35 potato chips.
The Census (Betty White): In a sequel of sorts to the classic 2000 Christopher Walken census sketch, Tina Fey goes to the door of one Lee Smith, pronounced “Blaarfingaar Blaarfingaar”.

Worst Sketches
Rear Window (January Jones): Grace Kelly has gas.  That’s the entire point of the sketch.
Snipers (Alec Baldwin): Alec Baldwin half enunciates “tay duh sha!” to his students over and over, as he rolls around.
Riley (Sigourney Weaver): An abortive attempt to give Fred Armisen his own character with a theme song and catchphrase a la Wiig’s Gilly.

Best Musical Guests
MGMT: More than making up for the prior two weeks with Justin Bieber and Ke$ha, we got treated to some trippy psychedelic pop with their two songs in April.
Lady Gaga: Sure, she’s gimmicky, but she has demonstrated actual musical ability behind her radio-friendly hits and attention-getting outfits.  The second number that had her stop everything for a solo piano performance (all while dressed as Saturn) was perhaps the most interesting music performance in years.
Jay-Z: I admit I’m not a big rap fan but for some reason his epic 7-minute medley concluding with “New York State Of Mind” fit perfectly into the Betty White episode.

Worst Musical Guests
Ke$ha: Think of a half-assed Lady Gaga impersonator that looks more like John Travolta, add more gimmicks like dressing your band up like astronauts or wearing day-glo body paint, and you get her performances.
Black Eyed Peas: The most apt description of their act comes from a message board post that described it as “a bunch of club going yuppies that somehow snuck onto stage to do bad karaoke”.  The fact that they were given three performances demonstrates just how desperate they were to fill the January Jones show.
Bon Jovi: Their performances were so leaden, sounding like bloated 80′s arena rock with all the joy sucked out of it.

SNL Season 35: What’s Wrong?

The current SNL season is almost finished, and by and large it’s been a disappointment.  It’s not quite at the point it was in the infamously bad seasons (1980-81, 1994-95), but after coming off a particularly strong 2008-09 season (buoyed in part by Tina Fey’s cameo appearances as Sarah Palin), the drop in quality is still noticeable and if things don’t get fixed soon, it’s going to get worse.

The biggest changes in the makeup of the show over the last summer were the departure of longtime castmember Darrell Hammond (who made several cameos this season anyway) and the replacement of two of last year’s featured players, Michaela Watkins and Casey Wilson.  Hammond, the last remaining member of the 1995-96 “comeback” cast was long expected to leave for years but kept sticking around to do his customary one impression per episode.  It always seemed surprising that he would continue to be back every fall, shattering previous castmember longevity records each season he was on; it was even more jarring when the show’s opening montage no longer featured him.  Of the featured players, Casey Wilson seemed most likely to be replaced either way; I did think she had solid comedy chops and was a refreshingly different presence on the show, but she never really got many significant roles in her 30 show tenure.  Michaela Watkins, though, was a surprise: with two recurring bits (Bitch Pleeze and Today Show) in not even a full season, she seemed all but certain to be back for next year.  Despite the outcry on several SNL message boards and rumors that their dismissal may not have been entirely based on performance, both are now part of a growing list of castmembers who didn’t necessarily reach their full potential on the show.

Watkins and Wilson were replaced by Jenny Slate and Nasim Pedrad.  The petite Pedrad had a relatively strong first season, doing a number several spotlight sketches and Weekend Update commentaries.  Slate had a rougher year, owing partially to the incident on the season opener where she accidentally uttered “fuckin’” instead of ”freakin’”, and hasn’t been getting a lot of airtime, let alone chances for a breakout.  It didn’t help that for the first part of the season Slate had this obvious awkwardness  and discomfort whenever she was on camera (again, probably due to the premiere incident).  Last year’s sole returning female featured player, Abby Elliott, has been getting a few impressions on the show, including a particularly ill-timed take on Brittany Murphy, but has yet to carry a sketch on her own.

The three featured females have been overshadowed by Kristen Wiig, the alpha female and breakout star of SNL’s last few years.  Wiig has been getting a good deal of coverage as the new face of SNL, but like a lot of other times SNL’s reaction to a bit of positive notice is to milk it for all its worth: Wiig has been front and centre on SNL, especially now that Amy Poehler is off the show.  By default, all the significant female roles in sketches go to Wiig, to the point of overexposure.  As well, a lot of  her more recent recurring characters, such as psychopathic schoolgirl Gilly and dimbulb Trina, are not that strong and could be seen as Wiig-for-Wiig’s-sake.  It reminds me of how when Jimmy Fallon star power rose after he hosted the 2002 MTV Video Music Awards, there were a lot more bad, directionless sketches with him and Horatio Sanz such as the aquarium repairmen or the interminable 8-minute Saddam and Osama.

As much as Wiig’s dominance is a problem, it’s the writing that’s been the weakest part for years.   Before the season began, the overstuffed writing roster added a number of new members, but instead of fresh ideas, the writing seems even more stale and uninspired than ever.  This season in particular has been the year of the pointlessly recurring character: chances are that if a sketch in an episode isn’t a recurring one yet, you’re going to see it again later this year.  The most egregious examples are the Kenan Thompson rave-up What Up With That and the ESPN Classic Ladysports featuring Jason Sudeikis and Will Forte; the latter sketch appeared 5 times over the past 19 episodes.  Recurring characters have been an integral part of the show since its inception, but it seems that they no longer have the ability to keep recurring sketches fresh for even the second appearances: sketches that had been done on the show one time before are dug out, revised slightly to change some of the variables, and acted out again (the Hip Hop Kids from last weekend’s show with Ryan Phillippe last showed up as a one-off from the 2006 Justin Timberlake episode).

It really is a shame the writing is so bad, because I find a lot to like in the current cast.  Bill Hader, Fred Armisen and Will Forte are solid castmembers and have this ability to commit to whatever character they play, no matter how outlandish or ridiculous the situation (I’m giving Armisen a pass for his Obama; he doesn’t really have too much of a “hook” as President).  I’m also getting a big kick out of Jason Sudeikis, the show’s utility guy who is usually at his best whenever his character has a big ridiculous grin on his face.   Featured player Bobby Moynihan continues to impress me and deserves to be bumped up to the main cast.  Seth Meyers’ Weekend Update has a little hint of Norm MacDonald’s much missed crankiness.  Kenan Thompson, arguably the main cast’s weakest link, is a decent straight man and usually the show’s “quick laugh” guy when he’s not doing impressions he should have no business doing (particularly O.J. Simpson, Tiger Woods, and Flavor Flav).  And even though the producers started shoving Wiig down the audiences’ throats, she still does have her strong moments like before, though less wheat than chaff these days.

As for the individual episodes, it’s been hit-and-miss, but with fewer true highlights than past seasons, a number of decent to strong shows, more than their share of middling outings and at least one outright stinker on a level not seen in years.  Jon Hamm of Mad Men delivered a knockout episode the second season in a row, and first-timer Joseph Gordon-Levitt brought much-needed energy to the show in November, but this year also brought disappointing outings from Tina Fey and Zach Galifianakis (the latter’s show possibly the biggest letdown in years), and a depressing trainwreck hosted by January Jones, a host on the level of Nancy Kerrigan and Harry Dean Stanton in terms of sketch comedy ability (at one point she audibly asks “Which camera?”).  The booking strategy seems to be a lot blander than in years past: besides Betty White (the first host booked due to a Facebook petition), we got barely relevant former hosts like Charles Barkley and Jennifer Lopez and utterly predictable choices in Megan Fox and Taylor Lautner.  Unfortunately, this has extended to the musical guest bookings: I have really enjoyed some of the guests they’ve had over the last few seasons (including Fleet Foxes and Arcade Fire), but the show’s been getting back to the short-lived one-hit-wonder novelty act booking it was guilty of from the late 90s through the earlier part of the decade, particularly in the last two weeks with Justin Bieber and Ke$ha.

For the most part this year has actually had at least one funny sketch per show.  But the cracks are visible and unless something changes over the summer, next year could have the makings of another bad year on the level of 1994-95, when the show could no longer successfully navigate the line that divides the uninspired and the terrible.