Holiday homecomings at “Saturday Night Live” can mean a raft of former cast members making their reappearances with other stars. Such it was this week when the Paul Rudd hosted episode featured both Kristin Wiig and Fred Armisen in the cold open before the host ever appeared.
And when he did, three other stars joined him during his opening monologue — Will Ferrell, Steve Carell and David Koechner, all looking like they just stepped off the “Anchorman 2” publicity tour.
The idea is that Rudd’s posse would take on the musical guests, One Direction, the boy band of the moment. That the climax was that they all sung “Afternoon Delight” indicated that strong writing wasn’t going to be a big force on the show. After all, they figure, you’ve got so many cameos and One Direction to boot, who will notice?
The cold open was a strained parody of NBC’s hit broadcast of “Sound of Music Live!” earlier this week. While there was much to spoof in that shaky production, they chose to make it a showcase for Wiig’s tiny handed, big foreheaded weirdo named Dooneese, who messed up every song she was in as the smallest Von Trapp child. Armisen played Lawrence Welk, which sort of didn’t make sense — the Wiig character frequently appeared as a misshapen sister in a Lennon Sisters variation.
Oh well. Rudd said something about how his earlier two appearances were overshadowed by musical guests — Beyonce in his first, Paul McCartney in his second, and was determined not to be this time. They acted like One Direction was a huge deal, creating a strange skit about how Rudd’s character was the biggest fan, making a fool of himself among the group’s very young fans while awaiting he band.
The group themselves weren’t used in other skits. Their two musical numbers were interesting though, seeming to rely more on the acoustic sounds an anthems of Mumford and Sons rather than some echo of ‘N Sync. But generally as dull as you’d expect from a group put together by Simon Cowell on the British version of “The X Factor.”
Early sketches are supposed to be the strong ones on “SNL,” but these were pretty thin – an Al Sharpton one that fell flat, a divorcing couple who’d dance everytime their favorite song came on (Fleetwood Mac’s “I Don’t Wanna Know” — this show thinks there’s something inherently funny about Lindsay Buckingham),
They brought back the 19th century critic played by Taran Killan, Jebediah Atkinson ,after just three weeks (“Run things into the ground much?” the character justifiably asked, before running down the usual Christmas specials).
One sketch that was brought back for the first time in maybe a decade was “Bill Brasky,” in which a group of suited drunks toast an even more tasteless legend while occasionally spouting a weird admission. Ferrell and maybe Koechner used to do this skit and Killan and Rudd were worthy additions to the drunken crew — all of them oddly wearing misshapen choppers (was this part of the sketch previously?).
Ferrell plays his character like it’s straight up Harry Carey though. Nobody seemed to mind.