SNL: Carly Rae Jepsen, Michael Keaton (CREDIT: YouTube Screenshot)
This review was originally posted on Starpulse in April 2015.
Michael Keaton’s innate charm was on full display during this past awards season. That was not as present in his third “SNL” hosting stint (and first in over 20 years). Instead, he reminded viewers of his dark side. While he never actually suited up as Batman or Beetlejuice during the episode, his roles did seem to be inspired by that portion of his career. The result was a surplus of oddly severe sketches, some of which were praiseworthy in their boldness, but others which were cringeworthy in their difficulty to watch.
Final Four Postgame – “SNL” was operating right down to the wire here, as the Wisconsin-Kentucky game ended only about 15 minutes before the start of the show. That was no big deal, as the actual result did not heavily factor into this sketch, though there could have been a problem if the game had gone into overtime and lasted past 11:30. Anyway, this sketch was really about the eternal conflict between the two sides of the student-athlete identity. The alternate reality presented here – in which a star player like Duke’s Jahlil Okafor would miss the championship because of a biology test – was appreciably silly, but also way too obvious. This would have been much more reliable if it had just focused on the announcing crew. It would have been inconsequential, sure, but the latest gambling misadventures of Kenan’s Charles Barkley (now he’s got to eat a basketball) have more energy than a crack about Coach K’s $10 million salary. C+
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