Bruce Springsteen, Maya Rudolph Salvage Lackluster 'SNL' Co-Hosted by Fey, Poehler

by Julian Spivey
When I heard about a month ago that Tina Fey and Amy Poehler would be co-hosting “Saturday Night Live” with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band as musical guest I realized this was the pairing that dreams were made of – it had an opportunity to become an instant classic.
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Unfortunately, my anticipation got the best of me. The episode couldn’t even muster enough laughs to be the best episode of the first half of the show’s 41st season (that would be Tracy Morgan’s triumphant return to the show in October).

It did have its highlights, though.

The show kicked off with an impressive take on the most recent Republican Debate with Darrell Hammond thankfully reprising his great impression of Donald Trump (Taran Killam has previously been impersonating Trump this season). Killam gave up Trump for the night to do a Ted Cruz impression that sounds very little like the real Cruz, but I was completely fine with it because Hammond as Trump is gold. The sketch also featured Jay Pharoah’s impressive take on Ben Carson, but it seems we won’t see it too many more times as Carson’s light is fading fast in the real world of politics.

The only real highlight from the early portion of the show was Kate McKinnon as modern day Hillary Clinton meeting up with Amy Poehler’s Hillary Clinton circa 2008 in her dreams and excitedly telling her that she was finally going to get the chance to become President thanks to the craziness of the Republican Party. Speaking of Republican Party crazies … the best part of the sketch was when Tina Fey showed up in Hillary’s dream as Sarah Palin, which would instantly turn any sweet dream into a nightmare.

Weekend Update was particularly weak this week with only one guest coming in the form of Kate McKinnon’s “Somebody’s Mom” Deenie, who recapped the year of her favorite soap opera. It was comical, as is almost anything McKinnon chooses to do, but it wasn’t one of her best characters. The jokes throughout Update were relatively weak this weekend and they kind of blew a great opportunity with former Update anchors Fey and Poehler as co-hosts. Both were given the chance to tell one joke apiece on the segment, but it truly proved to be a wasted opportunity.

Typically, fans get really excited when favorite cast members from the past return to host. This was part of the reason I was really anticipating this episode for weeks, but Fey and Poehler, usually comedic gold together, really disappointed in mostly poorly written sketches. In fact, they were both outshone and outperformed by another former cast member and good friend Maya Rudolph who appeared as a drunken ‘70s variety Christmas special performer slurring her way through a gibberish version of “12 Days of Christmas.” That really just goes to show how truly hilarious and underrated Rudolph is when she can utter absolute gibberish and be funnier than an entire night of comedy goddesses Fey and Poehler.

Rudolph would find more time to shine in the final sketch of the night when she and Poehler performed the old-favorite Bronx Beat with Fey also getting one of her few funny bits of the night as a guest from Philadelphia who baffled the Bronx gals with her accent.

While Fey and Poehler – and the show’s writing staff – failed to live up to their side of the bargain on Saturday night the musical performances from Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band were as legendary as usual with the Boss and company performing ‘River’ era songs “Meet Me in the City” and “Ties That Bind” from the box set re-release of his 1980 album The River, which includes cuts that didn’t make the original album.

The true highlight of the entire episode was the very end during the scrolling credits when Springsteen and the E Street Band performed their memorable cover of the Christmas classic “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” with Fey, Poehler, Rudolph, the entire ‘SNL’ cast and special guest Paul McCartney. You could tell everybody on that stage was truly having a blast.

The show, overall, wasn’t nearly as special as I’d hoped for, but the highlights gave enough smiles to mostly make up for it. 

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