SNL: Nicki Minaj, James Franco (CREDIT: YouTube Screenshot)
This review was originally posted on Starpulse in December 2014.
With a crisis in policing in America, and a movie studio being hacked, possibly in retaliation to the upcoming film starring tonight’s host, this week’s “SNL” was not struggling for topicality. Surprisingly enough, one of the most uncomfortable issues of the year shocked the show out of its politically tepid default, resulting in some legitimately funny material on a difficult subject. However, what this episode was most notable for was a bizarrely naturalistic pace. It was not slow and sleepy so much as it was that many of the sketches took their time to find a joke. Rhythmically, this did not feel like a typical 2014 episode of “SNL,” for better, for worse, and for neutral.
Politics Nation – The Ferguson and Eric Garner decisions were impossible for “SNL” to ignore, though it was a little odd that the show chose to initially take them on with Kenan Thompson’s malapropism-prone Al Sharpton. While this rendition of the MSNBC spoof did keep that goofy element, the reverend came off smarter than usual, with his gaffes seeming more like the result of frustration than incompetence. The conclusion of him eagerly hugging an uncomfortable police officer firmly established this as a genuine, albeit silly, call for solidarity. B
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