Monday, December 18, 2006

Justin Timberlake is the new Alec Baldwin

Last night's episode of Saturday Night Live destroyed me: Justin Timberlake was great as the host and musical performer. I hope that he'll become a Christopher Walken/Alec Baldwin/Steve Martin, a once-a-season host for SNL.

Because of his undeniable talent as a singer and dancer, he has amazing comedic range. This sketch killed me:

There's even a nutshot!

But this was the pièce de résistance -- one for the ages. (There's an official "uncensored" version on YouTube put up by NBC themselves, but I am posting this one because I feel it's funnier with the bleeps. Even so, I wouldn't watch it at work.)
(EDIT (12:14AM Dec. 22/06): The censored version got pulled by NBC so here's the uncensored version.)

Backstage at the CMAs!

As an aside, am I the only person who loves the new season of SNL? Unlike many (most?) people, I am a big fan of the Tina Fey years, especially the last couple where I felt that the show took a big step away from energy-over-wit (cf. the Spartans and Mary Katherine Gallagher), and took a step towards good, old-fashioned, dirty jokes (like Colonel Angus), the absurd (who could forget More Cowbell), and nerd humour (eg. Lazy Sunday). Seth Meyers as the head writer and the rest of the writing staff have continued down that path, and the style is now closer to what I think of as contemporary internet humour, which as we all know I am a big fan of. Trimming the cast appears to have been a good decision: by cutting three players and not adding any new ones, everyone in the cast gets more of a chance to perform, and that's a good thing, because by and large the cast is a much more polished and versatile one than they've had since I've been watching.

Current Music: Justin Timberlake - What Goes Around

EDIT (10:39AM 18/12/2006): Corrected some poorly-worded sentences

3 comments:

G said...

Hilarious! I can't believe they let them get away with putting that **** in a Box song on the air!

I agree SNL was waning in the past few years - the Spartans skit was sooo awful I don't know why people liked it.

BTW, I hope you're being sarcastic with that comment that Timberlake can sing.

Dickolas Wang said...

Yeah, I think Tina Fey has really started a resurgence, and Seth Meyers appears to be taking the next logical steps.

While I think Justin Timberlake has a whiny voice, he makes pretty good use of it, and has some vocal skills. Like, for example, a great guitar player with a shitty guitar.

Anonymous said...

I like it.