There was an inspired, unexpected piece of comedy toward the end of tonight’s SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, although it was pretty lonely in the mostly bland context of the rest of the episode.  Early in the post-Update half-hour, host Zach Galifianakis did a sketch called “Darrell’s House,” where he played an intense guy named Darrell […]

  Edward Norton, a very fine actor who’s shown occasional comic chops, is the oddest choice to host SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE in recent memory.  It’s been a long, long time since he was anywhere near the forefront of the pop culture zeitgeist, and he didn’t even have anything new to plug this week.  It would […]

    HATFIELDS & MCCOYS, already a blockbuster hit, kept its best and most compelling hours for last.  Although the conclusion of the 6-hour tale, directed throughout by Kevin Reynolds and with this installment written by Ted Mann and Ronald Parker, has its share of tense confrontations and large-scale action, it dwells more on the […]

    It was perfectly appropriate to dread the news that an athlete was hosting SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE–the show’s history abounds with deadly sports hosts like Michael Phelps and Tom Brady.  And in case that wasn’t enough pressure for tonight’s host Eli Manning, one of the rare exceptions to the rule was his own brother […]

  Comic crumbs were hard to come by on tonight’s mostly dreadful SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE.  It’s a particular disappointment because after two episodes struggling with non-comedy hosts Adam Levine and Justin Bieber, the show had a definite uptick with the slyly funny Christoph Waltz, and this time the host was Kevin Hart, who’s proven his […]

  Tonight’s footnote to SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE history was that it featured the debut of new cast member Sasheer Zamata, who is, not incidentally, an African-American woman–“not incidentally” only because her hiring came after a rather embarrassing amount of pressure, both internal and external, was applied to force Lorne Michaels to acknowledge that SNL was […]

  The heart sank when 15 minutes into tonight’s SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE–the part of the show that’s still supposed to be funny–the first post-monologue sketch was a labored, silly bit that went nowhere with host Daniel Craig as a construction worker unable to come up with coherent catcalls when women walked by, instead praising her […]

> This week UP ALL NIGHT was promoted to NBC’s version of the big leagues, where many felt it belonged from the start.  It’s switched places with Whitney and been given the benefit of The Office, NBC’s one genuine lead-in, for the Thursday 9:30PM slot.   Let’s take a look at whether it merits the […]