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Variety Truly Is The Spice Of Life

I went into this viewing with low expectation considering how the second half of this season has been so surprisingly weak compared to the first half, even with the last three hosts being people who I usually find really funny. The fact that I confused Alan Cumming for Adrien Brody a couple seasons back should clue you into another reason for my concerns. Looking over his IMDB resume, it turns out that I really like several of Brody’s films, but he’s just not a name that comes to my mind when I think about comedy.

Once again, these lowered expectations may have actually played into the hosts favor because I found this episode to be one of the best shows of the second half of the season so far. One of the things that I really liked was how Brody played a wide range of characters as opposed to many other hosts from this year, especially throughout the second half, who played heightened versions of themselves only in comedic situations.

The fact that each of Brody’s characters were so different from one another made it so that even the longer sketch format was bearable. I’ve often wondered why there are times where I don’t mind a night filled with fewer but longer sketches while most of the times I find these shows to be a bit of a bore. It wasn’t until I just wrote the fact how Brody’s character range made the night more bearable that I realized the true issue I have.

Take last night’s show hosted by Ashton Kutcher, who’s a goofball that I don’t mind but can totally see why people find him to be annoying. He pretty much played the same character throughout the entire night not only making the already long sketches feel extra-long but also making the show as a whole feel like there was only one note with a few funny moments sprinkled in.

Though I wouldn’t say night’s show, hosted by Brody, was the most hilarious episode that I’ve seen so far, I would say that it kept my attention to the point where I never zoned out, looked at my phone, looked up show related facts on the internet that I may use in my review. No, I just watched with Word and my media player side by side on the screen adjusting my prewritten sketch list adding details whenever they would come up just like I’m supposed to do.

Hopefully, tomorrow’s finale, hosted by the great Dan Aykroyd will continue this trend in order to conclude this up and down season on a high. We’ll have to wait and see how things turn out, until then, it’s now time for me to shift gears and share what I saw tonight, as I give you…

The Wicker Breakdown:

This week's show started with a parody of the American Idol Finale where Jimmy Fallon as Ryan Seacrest repeatedly throwing to commercials instead of announcing the big winner of their year’s season of the show. Of course, with this being the opening sketch, it eventually led to the announcement of, “Live from New York…”
Adrien Brody then officially opened the show wondering through the audience to kiss several women and Horatio Sanz before finally taking to the stage to thank his mom, Sylvia Plachy, who was/is a famous photographer amongst the New York scene since at the stroke of midnight it was going to be mother’s day.
This was followed by a fake ad for Mom Jeans which was a line of jeans with elastic waistbands and made it look like the women in the ad were wearing a diaper which was the traditional mom style at that time.
We then got another installment of Brian Fellow's Safari Planet where this time, Tracy Morgan as Fellows was so fearful that the first guest’s hairless cat was out to shave his head that he could barely pay attention to the rest of his guests.
Chris Kattan then introduced the Self-Involved Guy character who was so self-obsessed that he creeped out his blind date, Rachel Dratch who couldn’t get over the fact that he had a billboard size photo of himself taking up a full wall of his apartment. She also couldn’t grasp the fact that Kattan had Adrien Brody as a manservant who acted like an obsessed fan. The final deal breaker was the fact that all of the music in Kattan’s house were cover songs that he sang and recorded.
This was followed by another installment of Live With Regis & Kelly where once again Darrell Hammond played Regis and Amy Poehler play Kelly in order to interview Adrien Brody as a winner of their Wild, Wild Trivia segment and was there to share his tale of terror about how he barely survived the dangerous vacation that was the prize.
TV Funhouse then gave us a parody of a Middle Eastern cartoon that had Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein as partners in crime who attempted to hide from American forces who were out to get them.
Sean Paul then took to the stage to perform Get Busy.
Once again, Jimmy Fallon and Tina Fey gave us the news. This week, Rachel Dratch returned as Qrplt*xk, the drooling baby with the arm coming out of her head, to share how she became a rejected mutant for the upcoming X-Men 2 movie, only all that she did was stand in one spot and drool throughout her entire appearance. Horatio Sanz also stopped by as Elton John in order to share a new song from a new musical version of Anne Rice’s Vampire Lestat.
LensMasters took place in a LensCrafters-style store where Adrian Brody and Chris Kattan played rude employees who were super competitive in trying to show off the most offbeat glasses in the store to a non-offbeat customer who was played by Amy Poehler.
We then went to a Dance Class where our host played suave Latin dance instructor who had to teach several members of the cast how to dance, which was fun, considering these students were awkward adult losers who seemed like they’ve never seen a dance floor before.
Wayne Wonder then took to the stage to perform No Letting Go.
Velvet Productions took us to a homoerotic pornographic production company that struggled to think up a new name for their porno version of the movie The Pianist along with several other films with titles that already sound like porn titles, like the movie Holes.
Finally, Adrien Brody closed the show by thanking the audience and saying his goodnights.

As I said up above, this might not have been a hilarious episode, but it was still a fun episode to watch thanks to sketched like these that contained my three favorite moments of the night. First, I loved the Velvet Productions sketch because I worked in a movie theater where my coworkers and I would spend hours at a time coming up with porn parody names so this hit a nostalgic spot within me. Next, I really liked the Mom’s Jeans ad because it’s such a classic fake commercial. Finally, I was a fan of this week’s Brian Fellow's Safari Planet, and this segment will always land on my favorites list whenever it’s on the show.