Saturday Night Live: Jimmy Fallon And Justin Timberlake
[Ed. Note: Jenny Nelson is a writer and student living in New York City. Saturday Night Live.]
Big news you guys (for me). My parents’ house has Wi-Fi now! I’ve been writing this from the comfort of my childhood bed and also a chair in our living room because I changed locations. Wi-Fi lets you do that, it lets you change locations! Like I said, very big news, and good news of course. I’m leaving behind the ethernet cords for the DINOSAURS to use, you know? But anyways, I just wanted to use this intro to say how thankful I am for wireless Internet and to wish you all a happy holiday season! Did you watch Saturday Night Live this weekend? Jimmy Fallon hosted, with his buddy Justin Timberlake as the musical guest. Let’s talk about it!
Starting with the cold open: Ahh, okay. I will admit I’d never seen the sketch that this is mimicing before. The one where Justin Timberlake is dressed up as breakfast? I had only seen photos. Now I feel like I “get” it. Everything makes so much sense! As a newcomer to this pseudo-recurring sketch, umm, good work? Everyone was *woooo* cheering *JIMMY* so much throughout *JUSTIN* the scene that it was distracting to me, imagine being one of the performers! Wow.
After that initial dose of rap, we got to treat ourselves to a whole episode of music, starting with a song monologue where Jimmy did Bowie, Dylan, and McCartney, but then woops the REAL [Paul] McCartney showed up! If I had to estimate, I’d say this episode was 85% celebrity impressions. The rest was funny music, but often the two overlapped, resulting in impressions of celebrity musicians. And, when all those weren’t enough, we got to see real, live celebrities. This monologue HAD ALL OF THOSE!
“Do It On My Twin Bed” was a digital short about doing it on twin beds. Moving on! Just kidding, this sketch was good; timely, relatable, and with plenty of all-ladies vibes going around, but most of all I liked when they showed everyone’s seventh-grade portraits. Actors as their awkward tween selves is my favorite thing, whether it’s on Tumblr or on billboards or anywhere. More of that, please!
“Celebrity Family Feud” brought back Kenan’s great Steve Harvey impression, and, as mentioned before, a buttload (sorry) of other impressions, most notably Jimmy Fallon’s Jim Parsons and Justin Timberlake’s Jimmy Fallon. The latter was especially cute because they are #bros and Jimmy was breaking a little in the scene from laughing at Justin’s Fallon-style enthusiasm. Everything was so very sweet and #bros.
Perhaps the most expected sketch of the night was the “Barry Gibb Talk Show,” right? This sketch had a bunch more impressions, mainly the Gibb #bros, but also a Megyn Kelley and a Paul Ryan that didn’t seem to do too much. BUT ALSO Madonna was in this sketch, playing herself wearing glasses, and the real Barry Gibb came out to sing the outro with Jimmy and Justin which was real sweet. Just a bunch of Holiday #Bros!
Weekend Update was fiiiine. Seth talked to Jimmy and Michael Bloomberg about the big changes they’ll be going through in the coming year. Bloomberg delivered his jokes pretty well and with a good attitude, nice! Jimmy is the third installment of Update-guests-getting-worked-up-about-Seth-leaving (the first two were Jacob the Bar Mitzvah Boy and Drunk Uncle) and obviously Jimmy’s getting worked up carries the most weight since Seth’s taking his place at Late Night. All in all a good segment!
“Waking Up With Kimye” has been alright before but I didn’t like it so much this time around. It seemed like there were not a lot of jokes? And that most of Pharaoh’s Kanye yelps were just to fill silence because no one was laughing at the non-jokes. That being said, “Holiday bread just became a building,” in reference to a poorly constructed gingerbread house, is good. There was no Jimmy Fallon or Justin Timberlake in this sketch, and I’m sure there’s a reason why, like maybe because they were in so many other sketches, but still a bummer 4 sure.
More impressions in “Now That’s What I Call Christmas!” The amount of impressions in this episode didn’t bother me too much while I was watching but I am noticing now how repetitive it makes this recap. Hmm, umm, anyways, I was happy to see Noel Well’s Zooey Deschanel finally make it on SNL. Other than that, no comment, haha!
When I was watching “Baby It’s Cold Outside” I felt like we were in a vaudeville time, and maybe that’s what this episode was–bringing some old-timey musical joke stylings to the present, just in time for the holidays? As in, I watched this sketch and didn’t laugh too much but I still liked the holiday spirit it embodied?
Justin Timberlake did a good job in several of this episode’s sketches, but also he played music! His two performances were very distinct. I like the first one with all the lights, but could see how someone might like the Llewyn Davis-y setup better. “Sound off in the comments!” is how I always want to end my mini-paragraphs about musical guests, but that maybe sounds dumb. Let me know, roll the comments!