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A Surprisingly Solid Second To Last Episode

If you haven’t been following my progress and aren’t aware of my thoughts of this season, my surprise doesn’t stem from thinking that they host did an unexpectedly good job and is more over the show actually pulling it off considering this has been a pretty weak year. In fact, I wasn’t a Twin Peaks fan due to my hatred of hour-long TV dramas so I’m not all that familiar with Lara Flynn Boyle’s career.

Though her name is very familiar, and it turns out I’ve seen her in a couple of films but it wasn’t until she hit the stage that I put the face to the name. This led me to feel that this was going to be another case where the host for the night may be a perfectly fine actress but wasn’t a real fit for the world of sketch, at least not the sketch world that this season has created. In fact, I feel most of these hosts from this year that I’ve complained about would have done just fine in a season where they could have been sprinkled in amongst more hosts who were known for comedy.

As always, I think tonight’s saving grace was the fact that there were a lot of short sketches instead of the fewer but longer sketch format that I feel was the major problem with this year. If they were to have cut four of the sketches out of the night to get it down to the typical segment count from this year and made the remaining longer, I bet I would have hated this episode as well.

Thankfully, that wasn’t the case and we were in and out of every sketch before I even had the chance to get bored. Other than that, the sketches were slightly above average but good enough to keep me entertained. Lara Flynn Boyle did a pretty good job as well but she seemed very serious to the point where I couldn’t tell if she was actually having fun. That said, her questionable attitude seemed more like her personality and not like she didn’t want to be there, or was just there to promote.

I’m so excited that there is only one more show to go. I think another big part of the problem that I had with this year was that the cast and style barely changed from last season so watching the show on a daily basis made it feel like I’ve been stuck in this season for forty days/episodes in a row. Hopefully, there will be some bigger changes next season so that it would feel like a sixty episode year.

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. Until then, it’s now time for me to shift gears in order to share what I saw in these seventeen segments, as I give you…

The Wicker Breakdown:

This week's show started with A Message From The Vice-President Of The United States where Darrell Hammond as Dick Cheney talk about America’s need for energy conservation in a way that seemed like a real deal address since it was so serious and dry. It got funnier as he started to point out why he was so dry and low key in order to conserve his own personal energy since he was so down with the cause. Of course, with this being the opening sketch, it eventually led to the announcement of, “Live from New York…”
Lara Flynn Boyle then officially opened the show with a monolog about her role on the show The Practice and joked about how working on the show taught her a lot about laws. She then went to start a joke about the laws broken by SNL only to be cut off by Adam McKay as an audience member who didn’t know who she was and then went on to make fun of “the fat lady” on The Practice which was quickly shut down. Lara then tried to return to her joke only to continually be interrupted by McKay who kept on heckling by asking about the size of her famous ex’s penises and then finished by making fun of Boyles weight, suggesting she doesn’t eat. To prove him wrong, Lara then pulled up her shirt to reveal that she was so skinny that we could see the content of her lunch.
The was followed by a repeat of the Corn Chip Nail Tips commercial that has already aired a couple times this season which was an eatable false nail that was being promoted to a hip-hop crowd.
Fake Hernia Doctor was a sketch where Will Ferrell faked being a doctor in order to trick Chris Parnell as a patient into a fake hernia test so the Ferrell could grab his balls and have him cough over and over again. At first, we even think that Will is the real deal because the nurses also got involved, grabbing Parnell’s balls as well, until the end when it was revealed that they were a team of weirdos who sneak into hospitals all of the time to fulfill their quirky kink of grabbing stranger’s balls.
DeMarco Brothers then returned with the two Chrises, Parnell and Kattan as their interpretive dancing characters and this time the two audition to dance in the background for an upcoming Bon Jovi tour. Of course, with Bon Jovi as tonight’s musical guest, he and Richie Sambora were involved in the sketch to judge their extremely literal dance. Their last dance must have switched from rehearsal and Parnell and Kattan threw on wigs in order to recreate Bon Jovi and Sambora’s performance at the MTV Movie Award because the second the wig went on, our musical guests couldn’t control their laughter as if they were totally caught off guard.
We then got a parody of MTV Cribs where we got a quick tour of Chris Kattan as Robert Downey Jr.’s jail cell after he was recently arrested for something to do with drugs.
Save The Starving Actresses Foundation was a parody of the Sally Struthers ads for starving children only with Lara Flynn Boyle as the spokeswoman who shared photos of actresses who need food. Yes, she made fun of herself in this sketch but, especially watching with modern eyes, it’s bizarre how ruthless the body shaming is toward other actresses who were constantly bothered about their low weight.
This was followed by a telling of The Scarlet Letter where Lara Flynn Boyle has a scarlet “B” and “J” on her chest and not the scarlet “A” like the one on Ana Gasteyer. Though Ana was ostracized for her letter, the men of the town much more lenient towards Lara because who doesn’t like a BJ. Though the men love our host for the letters on her chest, when Will Ferrell arrived with a BJ as well they instantly banished him from the town, even after he revealed his HJ undershirt and BF tank top.
Bon Jovi then took to the stage to perform It's My Life.
Once again, Jimmy Fallon and Tina Fey gave us the news. This week, the real Lou Reed dropped by in order to squelch any rumors that he had passed away only to admit that he actually was dead in a way that seemed like he was barely aware he was there.
We then got a parody ad of Moulin Rouge film that came out around the time that was set in the 1890s but the music was from the 1970s without any real explanation the mashup of time-period references.
This was followed by a parody of MSNBC Investigates that followed a story of how emulating The Golden Girls endangered a teenager played Chris Kattan’s life. This was in reference to all of the teens at the time who kept getting hurt while emulating the stunts in Jackass.
Wake Up, Wakefield then returned for another installment of the High School Produced morning talk show hosted by Maya Rudolph and her sidekick Rachel Dratch. This week, the interviewed Lara Flynn Boyle as their gym teacher/stereotypical lesbian coach.
Tracy Morgan then played Shaquille O'Neal in order to explain the tone of his voice to the audience.
Bon Jovi then returned to the stage to perform You Give Love A Bad Name.
Bloder Brothers brought back the ginger-headed, nerdy brothers, played by Jimmy Fallon and Chris Parnell so that this time they could flirt with Lara Flynn Boyle as a barmaid only to lose all of their nerves the second that she flirted back.
Finally, Lara Flynn Boyle closed the show by thanking the audience and saying her goodnights.

I’m not only glad that this season is winding down but I’m also glad that tonight turned out to be so fun thanks to these sketches that contained my three favorite moments of the night. First, I loved The Scarlet BJ because The Scarlet Letter is a book that I actually read in high school, plus the twist at the end with Will Ferrell had a Scarlet BJ as well caught me off guard and really cracked me up. Speaking of cracking up, next, I really liked the return of the DeMarco Brothers because of how Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora were caught off guard by a surprise joke and couldn’t stop themselves from laughing. Finally, I was a fan of the Fake Hernia Doctor sketch because it was funny enough when it seemed the Will Ferrell would be the only fake doctor but I thought it was hilarious that he was working with a team of fake doctors who loved to grab balls.