Anyone who knows me knows I am totally in the tank for Zach Galifianakis. I’ve been a fan of his since his 2001 Comedy Central Presents, which he concluded by revealing he was wearing a dress, with musical accompaniment by an all-female choir singing “Eternal Flame”. The guy mixes one-liners that Steven Wright would be proud of with random, unjustified and hilarious fits of anger. Zach is so good that he is even funny when he bombs. In a recent podcast interview, he recounted how host Marc Maron and himself enjoyed dinner at an Indian restaurant. “I phoned ahead to reserve a table. To get an Indian reservation…I’m sorry that was so terrible.” He then laughed. A lot of other people did too.
After years of staying under the radar, everyone got to know Galifianakis as the corpulent weirdo in last year’s The Hangover. Zach finally made it big. And fortunately, Lorne Michaels was paying attention.
Listen: RSS feeds don’t want you to know that there are embedded videos of most of the skits in this post.
Live at the Purple Onion Goodness
I’d have to say one of the best monologues in show history, if not the best. They just let Zach go and do his thing and boy did the Marijuana Santa Claus Bunny go. When he mentions remembering hosting “something” before, he was correct: ten years ago he hosted Late World with Zach on VH-1, a late night talk show doomed from the start when he was told he couldn’t make fun of artists like Creed or Celine Dion.
You’d think that after over 700 episodes of SNL that somebody would have made a joke about not getting the musical guest’s name right, but this is the first time I remember anyone doing that. Poor Hoobastank.
Boy that Zach really IS everywhere these days. The twist at the end was particularly inspired.
It had to be done with Galifianakis as host: What Up With That?! I think I’ve said before that by now this bit is more “fun” than “funny”, but hey, fun is three-fifths of the word funny, right?
I had to watch this twice, because during the first few minutes of my original viewing of it I kept wondering what character Zach was going to play. Turns out he went with ambidextrous disco flute player R.J. Sizzle. So predictable. I always love Lindsey Buckingham always being too good of a sport for repeatedly getting bumped from the show for some reason, and did I mention Paul Rudd was in it? Because he was!
Zach is stalking Hoda Kotb. I like how they don’t even bother changing Zach’s name, as if the actual Galifianakis would stalk a fourth-hour Today Show personality himself.
In the 12:55 writer’s sketch, Zach shaved his beard to basically do his effeminate twin brother Seth character. Galifianakis and Bill Hader both had trouble keeping straight faces during the sketch, which I’m always a sucker for. Also it was legitimately funny, even if it was really just a cousin of the Will Ferrell/Cheri Oteri “Dog Show!” sketches.
Zach put on a fake beard for the closing credits, confusing a lot of people on the Twitter. “Thank you for the magic of life!” No Zach, thank YOU.
Bored to Death Average
Hit or miss with the Weekend Update jokes, as always.
Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Hoenig seems to want to be John Lennon Rickenbacker plucker with James Dean hair. PICK AN ANTIQUATED HERO AND STICK WITH IT, HIPSTER!
Will Forte’s Herstory Song. Helen Keller is a lazy target, but come on; that bitch deserves it.
Bidet is said a lot. Aside from appearing on the stilts at the very very end of What Up With That?, this was Andy Samberg’s only appearance on the show.
Yeah we get it, CNN relies too much on Twitter and they’re too old to truly understand the medium. Bit was saved by Zach’s two appearances of his own little situation room.
Out Cold Awful
This started the show. Amazingly, on the episode that had the best monologue in history, SNL precedes it with one of the worst cold opens of all-time. Seriously, it was the Beyonce music video of awful. It was one joke told for four minutes.
I have certain opinions about the excessively kissing family and what it does to certain citizens of the United States, but I’m not Johnny Huffington-Post or nothin’. In terms of humor, this joke isn’t funny anymore. It didn’t help that Zach was clearly nervous in the sketch, his first of the night, causing him to miss a couple of beats.
I just kept thinking how much better it would had been if Zach played Mo’Nique in this. Or Kel Mitchell.
Things to write to Hoya Kotb
“STOP CLAPPING!”
“We have a great show, Hoobastank is here! What’s that?”
“This bidet…”
“I’m a big fan of dark comedies…that’s why I love the Wayans brothers.”
“I was in a Rascal Flatts video once.”
“You smell like a bunch of old stinky Bojangles sausage biscuits!”
“I live in Brooklyn.” Audience applauds. “I hate it.”
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