Paul Giamatti / Ludacris featuring Sum41
January 22, 2005
[COLD OPENING] The Bush Twins after the Inauguration
Highlights:
· Amy and Tina's performances as the Bush girls.
· Bush talking about his encounter with Arnold Schwarzenegger at the inauguration.
· The girls talking in their "secret language" and Bush not understanding it.
· Darrell's appearance as Cheney.
· Amy finally getting to say LFNY. Hard to believe this was her very first time saying it, considering how long she's been on the show.
Lowlights:
· None.
Grade: A-
[MONOLOGUE] Paul Giamatti's night at the Golden Globes
Highlights:
· A real monologue!
· Paul was great here, with lots of energy and genuine enthusiasm, and many funny lines.
Lowlights:
· None.
Grade: B+
[SKETCH] Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a.k.a. Condoleezza Rice Hearings
Highlights:
· The return of Seth’s John Kerry impression.
· Great performances and a lot of solid lines from everyone here, and the writing was excellent.
· Amy as Barbara Boxer with all the ridiculous visuals she had about Condoleezza and calling her “Conda-lies-a-lies-alot”.
Lowlights:
· None.
Miscellaneous:
· Why was Rob Riggle even in this? He had no lines and did nothing but sit there. Too bad this also ended up being his only appearance tonight.
Grade: A+
[COMMERCIAL] Gaystrogen
· A rerun from TWO YEARS AGO. Man, the show is really lazy with new commercials this season.
[SKETCH] Paul Giamatti's limo driver
Highlights:
· Paul saying Finesse is like a human TiVo.
· Paul admitting out of frustration that he's "Rob Schnidely".
Lowlights:
· Dead in too many spots.
· Finesse still fails to impress me much. His performance here could've been funnier.
Miscellaneous:
· Why do people always say that Paul Giamatti and Rob Schneider look alike? I never noticed any so-called resemblance (except they both have bug eyes), and Paul looks even less like him lately now that he has shorter hair, glasses, and a beard.
Grade: C-
[NEXT LIVE SHOW] February 5, 2005: Paris Hilton
· NOOOOOOO!!!! Well, I was worried it had to happen sooner or later, but I was also hoping Lorne wouldn’t ever sink that low, especially with the more mature hosting choices he's been making this season so far. Usually when an upcoming host is some non-actor who I usually can’t stand (like Timberlake and Aguilera last season), I still try to remain optimistic and hold hope that it can turn out to be a surprisingly good show (as the aforementioned Timberlake and Aguilera episodes both did). But considering that this is PARIS FREAKING HILTON we're talking about, I just can’t see how this can be a good show AT ALL, and I can’t see the writers getting anything funny out of her. Ugh, 90 freaking minutes of her…damn, I think we could be looking at a big-time disastrous show here, folks. Oh, well... on a different note, since we’re now halfway through the season, I’ll be doing my mid-season review that week, with a list on the best/worst of the episodes, sketches, cast performances, etc.
[SKETCH] Kaitlin at the guitar shop
Highlights:
· Paul's 'rofolcoumet' line.
Lowlights:
· As usual, I can't stand these sketches and Amy is annoying as hell in them. And why does everybody always praise Horatio in these sketches? I think they just like him in these only because he's being low-key and not mugging and yelling for once, but that doesn’t automatically make it funny. He does nothing in these Kaitlin sketches but just sit there (and even then, he STILL has trouble keeping a straight face).
Grade: D-
[MUSICAL PERFORMANCE]
[WEEKEND UPDATE] Fey & Poehler, Rachel Dratch, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
Highlights:
· Tina's Spongebob joke.
· The Arnold commentary had some funny lines.
· Tina's elephant joke.
Lowlights:
· WAY too many bad jokes to point out; almost all of tonight's jokes were weak. One of the worst Updates of the season, and considering the poor state Update has been all year, that's really saying something.
· The 'Dratch in the Ones' segments mostly fell flat.
Grade: D
[SKETCH] The Lundford Twins Feel Good Variety Hour
Highlights:
· While this was really cheesy, it was pretty funny and a dead-on parody of the variety shows from the 70's.
· The various close-ups of Amy making that cross-eyed face as that "boing" sound effect played in the background.
Lowlights:
· None.
Grade: B
[SKETCH] Reinhold Investments, a.k.a. "Ohhhhhhh Noooooo!!!!!"
Highlights:
· I always love any random, bizarre sketch that Will Forte does and there haven't been enough of them this season. We need more bizarre Forte skits, dammit!!
· Paul was a great straight man, and his angry reactions kept cracking me up.
Lowlights:
· The ending was weak.
Miscellaneous:
· What happened at the beginning of the sketch? As soon as the camera faded in at the beginning, the audience was already laughing for some reason, then Rachel, Paul, and Amy looked off-camera at something and smiled really quickly. Did something funny happen off-camera?
Grade: A-
[MUSICAL PERFORMANCE]
[SKETCH] Spy Glass
Highlights:
· I actually found the Gene Shalit segment funny, even though I usually can't stand Horatio's impression of him.
· Paul's delivery.
· Even though there are never any funny news jokes in these sketches, I always like Seth's energetic delivery of them.
Lowlights:
· The usual weak Spy Glass sketch. I never liked these and I don't see what's so funny about the lame, cheesy puns.
Grade: D+
[SKETCH] Franklin the Giant Cat
Highlights:
· Even though this was yet another knock-off of the Giant Parrot sketch (you can always tell when it's going to be one just by the beginning, because these sketches always start out the same - with a couple coming home to a dark apartment after a date), this was still pretty funny in parts and a lot funnier than the dumb Giant Roach sketch from the Colin Farrell episode.
· Like in his earlier performance as the parrot, Fred was dead-on in his mannerisms as the cat, and his reaction to Rachel giving him the pill was hilarious.
Lowlights:
· Still nowhere near as funny as the original Parrot sketch and no matter how many of these "giant animal" sketches they do, they'll probably never top that original Parrot one.
Grade: B
________________________________________
Overall Episode Grade: B
Overall Highlights:
· Paul Giamatti was great tonight and one of the funniest hosts of the season
· The Bush Twins after the Inauguration
· Monologue
· Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a.k.a. Condoleezza Rice Hearings
· Reinhold Investments, a.k.a. "Ohhhhhhh Noooooo!!!!!", a.k.a. "The Typical Bizarre Forte Sketch of the Week"
Overall Lowlights:
· Finesse's performance in Paul Giamatti's limo driver
· Kaitlin at the guitar shop
· Weekend Update
· Spy Glass
Best Lines:
· Will Forte as President Bush: "(to his daughters) Your mother asked the chef for some more of that Crème Broule, or as I like to call it, Freedom Puddin'."
· Seth Meyers as John Kerry: "(talking about what his inauguration would've been like) An inauguration party that would've included a performance by the incomparable Savion Glover, bringing in both the noise...and the funk."
· Paul Giamatti as Jack: "It's kind of like rock meets folk meets country meets fusion metal. I call it 'rofolcoumet'."
· Tina Fey: "Dr. James Dobson, the founder of the Conservative Christian Focus Organization on the Family, claimed in a speech Tuesday that the cartoon character Spongebob Squarepants is gay and is being used in a pro-homosexual video designed to brainwash kids. And yet he gives that carpet-muncher Dora the Explorer a free ride.”
· Tina Fey: "Elephant handlers in Thailand have started teaching the animals to defecate in a huge toilet. Cooler still are the enormous copies of US Weekly."
· Paul Giamatti as employee: "(angrily) I am NOT going to be a wedding DJ again! I can't... I sold all of my equipments.”
CASTMEMBER COUNT DOWN:
ARMISEN: 3 sketches (Gaystrogen / The Lundford Twins Feel Good Variety Hour / Franklin the Giant Cat)
DRATCH: 5 sketches (Paul Giamatti’s limo driver / Weekend Update / The Lundford Twins Feel Good Variety Hour / Reinhold Investments / Franklin the Giant Cat)
FEY: 3 sketches (The Bush Twins after the Inauguration / Weekend Update / The Lundford Twins Feel Good Variety Hour)
FORTE: 3 sketches (The Bush Twins after the Inauguration / The Lundford Twins Feel Good Variety Hour / Reinhold Investments)
HAMMOND: 2 sketches (The Bush Twins after the Inauguration / Weekend Update)
MEYERS: 2 sketches (Senate Foreign Relations Committee / Spy Glass)
PARNELL: 2 sketches (Gaystrogen / The Lundford Twins Feel Good Variety Hour)
POEHLER: 7 sketches (The Bush Twins after the Inauguration / Senate Foreign Relations Committee / Kaitlin at the guitar shop / Weekend Update / The Lundford Twins Feel Good Variety Hour / Reinhold Investments / Spy Glass)
RUDOLPH: 2 sketches (Senate Foreign Relations Committee / The Lundford Twins Feel Good Variety Hour)
SANZ: 2 sketches (Kaitlin at the guitar shop / Spy Glass)
MITCHELL: 2 sketches (Gaystrogen / Paul Giamatti’s limo driver)
RIGGLE: 1 sketch (Senate Foreign Relations Committee)
THOMPSON: 1 sketch (The Lundford Twins Feel Good Variety Hour)
Amy stood out the most tonight.
THE END