SNL: Season 40 Ep.4

This SNL had some fairly extreme highs and lows. Jim Carrey was his usual goofy self, and as for Iggy Azalea? Well.......yeah, lets just say less than spectacular. Onto the review

The cold open saw SNL mocking the new "ebola czar" hire. It felt rather forced, and just fell flat. Kenan Thompson was actually a bright spot, portraying Al Sharpton as the "only NY politician that would want to be seen with Obama", but not enough to save this one. The writing for political skits has really faded over the last season or two.

The monologue was rather, well, strange. Jim Carrey was dressed as "Helvis", a Elvis/Devil hybrid, singing about pecan pie. It was just, weird (but somewhat amusing).

There were 3  ads where Carrey parodied Matthew McConaughey in those Lincoln ads. The first one was solid, but the weaker of the 2 that were to follow. The 2nd one saw McConaughey with some random kids in the backseat (the strongest of the 2), and the third one saw a cross between the AllState ad and the Lincoln one.

The first skit was a Carrey family reunion, with Jim as himself. It featured a variety of his former movie characters, even a cameo from his Dumb & Dumber To co-star Jeff Daniels. All in all, it had its moments (especially when Bobby Moynihan, at least I think it was, came in as The Mask).

One of the top skits of the young season (but 1 trumped it in the 2nd half), saw a haunted graveyard trying to scare a young couple, except for Paul & Phil, who wanted to let you know that they're just good dead guys. Jim Carrey really made this work.

Michael Che was on point during weekend update, but more importantly, Colin Jost might just be coming into his own, so watch this space. The jokes were solid (prob. among the best so far this season), especially when Che talked about ebola panic. With all the romantic comedies on TV this season, SNL brought in a "romantic comedy expert" portrayed by Vanessa Bayer to banter with Michael Che with cliche romantic comedy jargon. Drunk Uncle made his return and it was a pretty good appearance. Was kind of surprised it took this long to see Drunk Uncle for the 1st time this season.

There was a "secret billionaire matchmaker" skit that was just sort of random and blase, although Carrey's "Illuminati old man" character was sort of fun.

That was followed by a Ghost chasers show parody, starring the newest cast member Leslie Jones. Her role as the easily believable homeowner was amusing, but all in all this fell flat.

There was a walking dead/high school zombie apocalypse skit. It was rather predictable, with Carrey portraying a father still caring for his zombie son. It wasn't intriguing or interesting.

Now for the skit of the show, an office Halloween party. Poor Aidy Bryant, she was "just a woman trying her best" being confused for a variety of costumes, but the stars here were Kate McKinnon and Jim Carrey who each dressed up as the young dancer in Sia's music video for "Chandelier". They then proceeded to have a dance off across the entire SNL stage. I don't know why this was stashed to the back-half, because it was brilliant.

The final skit was a bizarre Halloween emporium commercial thing, where Jim Carrey had been possessed by a demon. Not that interesting.

It was an enjoyable, but lukewarm Halloween episode for SNL. As I mentioned from the start, this show had its extreme highs and lows. The bright spot though continues to be Michael Che, who is shining on Weekend Update, and Leslie Jones should be a big component joining the cast.

Avg. Score: 7.01 (each segment was scored out of 10, and averaged, including the musical act).

Bill Hader - 8.06
Chris Pratt - 7.5
Sarah Silverman - 7.15

Jim Carrey - 7.01